- 21 Sep 2022 06:03
#15247766
You could even say that this is our role in a time like this... To not wield political power, but to wield power just in our own personal sphere, not even in terms of literally having followers, no, never like that, but only in terms of being there for a few different people to point like arrows to the truth.
There is no magical formula of words that changes someone's will and makes them repent. They have free will.
Even Jesus Christ, in the flesh, speaking the divine words of the Gospel, working miracles, could not get everyone to repent and follow Him. How can we expect to get a single person to do so through ourselves alone..?
It's a time for humility for us.
May my posting expereince on PoFo just teach me how to be less of a prideful loser!
August 8th, 2019
annatar1914 wrote:There is a political aspect to what St. Paul called " the Mystery of Iniquity ".
Since Satan's kingdom on Earth is not in fact divided, all evil, all sin an all death, all ignorance and errors, tend to the building up of that infernal kingdom, the sinful structures of " spiritual wickedness in high places " .
So in short the political aspect of the building up of evil involves the mechanisms by which say, moral rot from certain people in country "A" can effect the strength of a popular false religion in country " B" perhaps. Or similar connections.
And yet since only a few perceptive persons can even see even a limited amount of such connections, the best policy from a concerned Orthodox Christian faced with the inevitable ineptitude and clumsy flailing about of confronting collective evil, is the striving for personal holiness. And collectively, an awareness of exactly what organized evil must be fought, when and how.
The important thing to remember in that latter societal conflict is that the organized evil will likely be presented as something good, because (given the nature of evil as a privation or distortion of something good) it will be for the most part exactly that. It will resemble the Truth in clever ways, but contain absurdities and facile lies. As an Orthodox Christian, I see this Organized Evil as a false religion apeing the true one, an entire way of life resembling almost as insult the true way of life, integral and complete.
You could even say that this is our role in a time like this... To not wield political power, but to wield power just in our own personal sphere, not even in terms of literally having followers, no, never like that, but only in terms of being there for a few different people to point like arrows to the truth.
There is no magical formula of words that changes someone's will and makes them repent. They have free will.
Even Jesus Christ, in the flesh, speaking the divine words of the Gospel, working miracles, could not get everyone to repent and follow Him. How can we expect to get a single person to do so through ourselves alone..?
It's a time for humility for us.
May my posting expereince on PoFo just teach me how to be less of a prideful loser!
August 8th, 2019