*
This is William Arkle writing in the persona of God, who is writing a letter to us to explain himself:
You
are in a situation where your own private world which you live in will
be what you make it. If you allow it to be dominated by the wishes of
your physical nature, you will feel alien to it even if you are carried
along by it. If you feel like a stranger to yourself it will make you
unhappy, and you will doubt your own true identity, and you will lose
faith in all the higher values in life.
You may disguise the situation to the people around you but inside yourself you will feel lost and helpless and degraded.
My work is to increase your sense of reality to yourself, and make it
feel of great value to you, without it spilling over into pride and
selfishness. The balance between the over-subdued nature and the
over-inflated nature is not easy to keep, and is a necessary balance to
be achieved before other values can be built in.
The balance between the over-subdued nature and the over-inflated
nature is not easy to keep, and is a necessary balance to be achieved
before other values can be built in. The foundation lessons to be taught
are thus integrity and responsibility, combined with affection and
sympathy, but added to an ability to feel a balanced importance in the
scheme of things.
It is not an easy thing to believe you have great value and ability,
and at the same time maintain a temperament which does not try to show
off and impress people, and perhaps even dominate them.
Every new gift I give you with trepidation because I know you are
more likely to misuse it before you learn to handle it correctly, so, to
me, a gift can appear like an ordeal and a temptation, and I am worried
when I see some of you working to achieve special powers which may well
be your downfall so far as the graceful balance of your temperament is
concerned.
On the other hand, I am glad when I see you developing gifts as a
result of loving aspiration and wise discrimination, for such gifts I
know will surely benefit you and all those associated with you.
http://www.billarkle.co.uk/prose/letterfromafather3.html
*
In our culture there is a tendency to assume that gifts and abilities ought to be
developed - people should make the most of themselves -- in general,
the idea is that power and capability (in persons or in our groups or
nations) are 'a good thing'.
But from a divine perspective
there is a big problem - and it is a problem that we can see with many
geniuses - especially the most recent twentieth century geniuses.
*
Gifts are potential abilities to affect the world - Gifts are Power.
Is
power a good thing? It depends on what you do with it: But we would
agree that giving power to an evil person, or even just an irresponsible
person, is a bad thing.
Bad, that is, from a divine
perspective, even when the specific person with power got what they
wanted. And bad from the perspective of that individual's 'graceful
balance of temperament'.
(Think of Gollum and the Ring
of Power - Gollum 'wanted' to possess the Ring, but it was bad for
Gollum's balance of temperament, and bad from a divine perceptive that
he should have it.)
*
I think this used to be much better understood than it is nowadays: That before someone has power, they need already to have learned the foundation lessons of integrity, responsibility, affection, sympathy, balance...
It applies to individuals, and it applies to nations and cultures. Yet not only are the foundation lessons neglected, they are not even attempted!
The
situation is perilous enough when dealing with natural (divine) gifts -
but the worst possible situation is when people, nations, cultures are
systematically and successfully working to achieve special powers
without any recognition that powers are intrinsically likely to be
corrupted. And this applies to powers of all types - including medicine
and healing, including art and literature, including housing and
clothing... But obviously so in terms of science, technology, and
bureaucratic organization.
Insofar as we fail to
perceive the probability of hazards, we have chosen to misuse power -
while blinding ourselves even to the possibility of misuse.
*
The
situation is really very simple: it is a matter of motivation. From the
divine perspective; gifts and powers in the hands of the badly
motivated are a horror - and only in the hands of the well-motivated are
they a good.
Since everybody claims to be
well-motivated (even Gollum) - but nearly everybody is this requires
discernment on the basis that people tend to be self-deluded and
dishonest about their bad motivations - and what people say about their
motivations needs to be compared with their actions; and their ability
to maintain good motivations in the face of temptations needs to be
evaluated: power does intrinsically tend to corrupt, and corrupted power
is far worse than no power.
The divine perspective
would therefore seem to be: Better no geniuses than corrupted genius;
Better no breakthrough innovations than those which would be used with
bad motivations; Better cultural decline and extinction than an
unstoppable evil empire.
*
In other
words, from where we are, and as we are, and what we want to be - gifts
and powers, energy and determination will all do more harm than good - much more
harm than good; and we cannot use the excuse that we have evil enemies
and it is 'us or them' because - from a divine perspective, we may both
be bad, but we may be worse because of our superior gifts and powers...
*
Therefore
- the situation is that on the one hand, we in The West we have
cultural decline (decline in power, achievement, capability, efficiency,
courage and will) because we have rejected Christianity - because we no
longer place religion above all other considerations; and on the other
hand we should not even allow ourselves to hope that Western cultural
decline is reversed until after there has been a Christian revival, a Great Awakening.
And
if religious revival does not happen (as seems all-too-probable) then
it is better that we do not reverse Western cultural decline.
Because - motivated as we now are - with our policy, propaganda and multiple laws and regulations systematically enforcing explicit moral inversion (a situation of depravity previously unknown in human history) - we are already and are still much-too-powerful
So
enhancement of Western power, achievement, capability, efficiency,
courage and will in the absence of prior religious revival would (from a
divine perspective) likely be regarded as one of the worst possible
outcomes.
*
