Missionary Care for Creatives in Los Angeles; or for others

I wrote a post about cultural altruism hubs. That post, and this one, which is related, discuss a kind of organizational or "scenic" structure or structures that people could build. I don't feel like this is a thing I should pursue, so I'm not looking to try to build those structures myself. But I think the ideas are worth writing up. Maybe someone else will find them useful.

I often write to a secular audience, or to no audience / to myself. But in this case, I write more to a Christian audience.

Creative people are especially susceptible to spiritual attack. Culture war brings out Satan. Some cultural-spiritual warfare is fought by "foot soldiers" (through interpersonal contact). Others through "air support". Airplanes are sophisticated machines. Books, movies, etc. are machines made out of thoughts and images. Culture "flies in the air". So producing cultural artifacts puts new "airplanes" or "drones" in the sky. These artifacts fight each other and fight people on the ground. With good air support, ground troops can have an easier time. So (I think) with good cultural artifacts, interpersonal evangelism and discipleship can go better.

Los Angeles is a center of the movie and music industries, which manufacture cultural artifacts (that part of the "air war"). Those industries are not always kind to the people who try to work in them. Many people have dreams of success in them, but only a few can succeed. There are stories of exploitation in those industries. This can affect everyone who tries to "make it". The overall culture of these industries seems to largely be non-Christian. Christians trying to work in those industries may experience as much exploitation and as many broken dreams of success as non-Christians. They may also experience culture shock and spiritual attack (for instance, being invited to hedonistic parties (something that I would guess happens), or being acculturated to the dominant secular culture to the point of compromising their faith). They may also experience hostility, due to their beliefs.

Are Christian creatives in Los Angeles missionaries? Arguably yes. So they can be supported and cared for like any other kind of missionary. (I recommend reading Serving as Senders Today and The Reentry Team, both by Neal Pirolo, to understand what I have in mind by "support" and "care". Briefly, churches or other sending teams can provide moral support, prayer support, send and receive messages about what's going on in the field, maybe money or logistical support, and help in missionaries transitioning in and out of service.)

Creative missionaries could care for fellow creatives and engage in evangelism and discipleship like any other kind of missionary. But they also "translate the Bible into the native language" of their fellow creatives, by being creative themselves, and/or into the language of the US in general, or even of other parts of the world, where LA culture industries reach.

I feel like if I were a suspicious secular person (perhaps an ex-Christian), an incorporated missionary agency sending financially supported creative missionaries into LA would be disturbing and lead to bad press (if evangelical Christians think that there is an oppressive, militant "other" in the cultural world, so do secular people -- everyone is "David" seeing "Goliath" in each other). Creative people tend to have their own ideas and some might not want to work with a missionary agency themselves. (It's good for creative people to be independent-minded in order to see what other people don't see.) Financially supported missionaries might be harder to relate to by struggling actors, writers, musicians, directors, etc. that they may be trying to reach.

So I think maybe the best way to implement creative missions is to set up structures to care for and support the creative Christians who find themselves in Los Angeles, as though they have sent themselves already, but maybe without enough support.

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Implementation:

I don't know anything about what might already be going on in this area. I can imagine that something like this is already going on.

I think churches in Los Angeles are already doing some of this support and care work. What they might not have is the sense that their creatives are missionaries dealing with spiritual warfare, culture shock, etc., and not know as much as they could of how to be good "senders" and "carers". Perhaps what is needed is to equip those churches.

Also, creatives might not have the sense that they are missionaries on a mission field. They might benefit from additional teaching and encouragement in having a really Christian worldview and practice in their art and life.

Other ideas:
1. Establishing refuge places in Southern California so that people can (affordably) get out of LA to take a break from it.
2. Connecting churches that have creatives to creatives in LA. (Not every church is a good place for a creative person to be.)

Southern California (plus northern Baja California) could be seen as having two areas of strategic significance for cultural people: Tijuana which is a gateway to Latin America and/or to understanding the non-American, non-"developed" world; and the cultural artifact manufacturing center of Los Angeles. In between is San Diego, a quieter place (maybe the military in San Diego is of cultural strategic significance?).

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Caveats:

I have not spent a lot of time in LA. I was involved in a low-budget film production that got actors from LA and have seen the incentives for exploitation and selling yourself in filmmaking. I can sense a certain amount of felt unhappiness and spiritual darkness from Los Angeles filmmaking (Hollywood and I guess "aspiring Hollywood" or indie film productions). I don't have direct experience with the music industry in LA.

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Postscript:

What about film directors? I mentioned them above. They are employers, people in positions of power. But they are at the mercy of their funding sources. Directors have to cobble together funding and employees from various sources, and then work intensely during production, with long pre-production and post-production times. Once finished, they sell their product on the market and hope for critical and financial success, which is uncertain. A lot of money rides on what they do. If they lose too much money, maybe they can't work again. It sounds like a risky, stressful, "disestablished" line of work.

This sounds like perhaps a more intense (or not) version of what entrepreneurs in general go through.

A film director could do the wrong thing because they are under some kind of pressure. Perhaps it is true of any kind of entrepreneur. Or business executive. How much wrongdoing comes from powerful people who are (subjectively or objectively) in insecure positions? Perhaps it would be good to come up with care and support for them.

Maybe if a person doesn't have money, that's their hard limit, and only with additional funding would they be able to do the right thing. (Maybe there could be funding to help them do the right thing?) With better support (prayer, moral, logistic, communication) and the expectation that they can get care if they fail, they might have more courage to do the right thing in marginal cases where they may not really be risking their success, (where perhaps it is some kind of delusion of danger or sin that puts its thumb on the scale of their perception of risk), or even in self-sacrificial cases where they have to sacrifice their success (their business venture/film? / career?) to do the right thing.

(Funding to help do the right thing: a director could develop a relationship with a funding agency that would commit to providing at least a significant part of the director's funding for each of their films, conditional on them doing the right thing and not necessarily on them being commercially successful. In other words, provide grace, or slack, so that directors can fail commercially if they do the right thing on set or in their other operations.)

(Conservative talk radio, to me, sounds like the voice of people who are suspicious and hardworking -- maybe small business owners who could easily go out of business and who have to deal with other insecure people who might cut corners or make untrustworthy deals to survive. Can there be care and support for them?)

Likewise, people in the spiritually dark worlds of the elites. Do Washington, DC churches adequately care for politicians and staffers who fight a culture war of their own? Political theater is part of the "air war" that movies are also involved in. Political decisions and governmental implementations of them have cultural consequences.

(Silicon Valley sounds like a place with its darkness and its own, different culture. What about it?)

People with bad reputations (criminals, prison guards, and police, for instance) may need care and support. It requires discernment how to support someone who has directed their life toward wrongdoing.

Like with creative missionaries in LA, I don't know anything about what might already be going on with care / support for people in these areas.

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The church I grew up in had a sign over the door as you went out, that said "You are now entering the mission field". Probably everyone could see themselves as a missionary, and everyone experiences occupational hazards as they interface with the world. And so everyone could be sent and cared for -- by other people who also could be sent and cared for. Do churches send and care for their own pastors? (Maybe pastors should have some support from outside their own congregations.)

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Everything is powerful, culturally. Everything sends a message. The way you do business as a small business owner affects the overall culture, the sense of how things are and how people act. Similarly with the products a business owner releases on the market. Each one is a movie or book, conditioning people's minds. The caring professions are culturally powerful.

This raises the question: if everyone has cultural power, if each person can say something that has a significant effect on someone (at least on him- or herself), what should you say? Are you the missionary for God and the truth, or for an off-flavor of God and a somewhat misleading truth? You have to seek to know what is true, so that you can correct what is wrong.

This process of self-correction has to go on on a societal level. Society (people within it) must speak against what is believed by society (other people within it). What does it take to oppose a consensus or effective consensus? What if the consensus involves the caring structures that you can find? Who will care for you when you burn out? Will the price of getting care be that you have to stop pointing out what's wrong?

So as much as care and support sound like a good thing, for at least some people, those who would point out what is least popular, it may be good to develop independence from human support and care. A wise society concerned with protecting itself from its own blind spots might try to develop the strength behind that independence in people, and not only promote care and support for people. For a believer in God, deriving strength from God, rather than from people, is a way to be strong enough to say what's unpopular.

It's possible for Christian (church-based) culture to somewhat discourage the individual from seeing things from their own perspective, and instead tries to enmesh them in a social organism. An individual church, and many individual people, will fare better if they are simply in-some-sense-"properly" interrelated socially. But Christianity as a whole suffers if it becomes blind due to its success in orienting individuals toward the points of view of their nearby congregations, which all can potentially be misguided.

Blog Review: Formulalessness, 2019 - 2023

I have often written things in a sort of diaristic way, not knowing how they would appear to me until I finished and re-read them for the first time. This blog has been a diary of my thinking. I feel as though I've been approaching the end, or an end, of my blog (for instance, not writing too much since fall of 2022). So, I've been engaging in behaviors of summarizing and wrapping up, and included in that, I've been re-reading my blog.

I re-read the whole thing up to the present post, except I didn't finish reading the Feeling of Value notes (1, 2), because simply to read them was too philosophical for me, and as I've mentioned, I'm trying to abstain from philosophy until October 2024. (Reading notes requires trying to figure out what I was saying, and trying to evaluate what I was saying turns into philosophy, according to me.)

Certain things stood out as things to come back to someday. Maybe re-reading the Feeling of Value notes and the Lukas Gloor sequence on moral anti-realism, plus other sources, to do a better job of talking about moral realism / anti-realism. Also, maybe writing a clearer presentation of the arguments implicit in my review of X-Risk by Thomas Moynihan. Occasionally, people find my blog through the Feeling of Value and X-Risk reviews, and what I have to offer isn't too user-friendly.

Generally, I could go back and try to improve past posts, and maybe make a few books out of them. Perhaps one for effective altruists.

Another thought is to use my wiki [January 2024: which I took down] as a place to write clearer versions of many of these posts, or to break down their ideas and recombine them in different ways that suit the subject matter better than my sometimes arbitrary lumpings of them. Then I could make a book or books based on the wiki.

There were times my present self (reviewing the blog) wished my past self had been clearer, argued better, or wrote more fleshed-out posts. I suppose that if I were a professional writer, I might have evaluated myself sooner than after four years as I'm doing now. I got into writing this blog just to put my notes online (at least, that's mainly what I did), and once the habit got going, I guess I didn't question what the product would be.

What niche does the blog fill? I would say that if you are a Christian interested in futurism, it takes you a certain way into the topic of Christianity-and-futurism. If you are a futurist, it shows a vision of a particular kind of theistic/Christian input into how the future should go. I don't know what my actual readers get out of it -- maybe something else. Blogs often are really all about their themes, their vibe, and a few of their memorable ideas. I do think that this blog has a vibe to it, and that's an undercurrent of it, that there's a spiritual world that connects to our everyday experience, and a spirit that breathes through us, which is imaged by the writing. Some themes of this blog are openmindedness, trust, truth, reason, and ethical theism (not a complete list).

If I'm thinking hopefully, I think this blog communicates a unique vision of how to be a Christian, or a Christian-like theist, a new religion or set of religions that helps deal with the divisions (progressive/conservative, secular/religious, perhaps Christian/non-Christian) and lack of motivation that keep people from God, and keep society locked into conflict and ineffectiveness.

Writing the blog served me. I started the blog (in early 2019) because it felt like time to write a blog. The fact that I had been reading Slate Star Codex since fall of 2016 was in the background of that decision. In early 2019, I was experiencing a mental breakdown (which lasted about three years at full strength and then diminishing to now), which largely was caused by others' indifference and hostility, lack of support and poisonous support. Having something to focus on other than the memories of the people who caused the mental breakdown, and the thoughts of despair they put in me, was helpful and gave me a direction forward.

Reviewing the blog from start to finish eventually started resembling, to me, reading any number of my diaristic works from 2015 - 2018 (most of the books found here). Those books emerged from me as a flow of writing, expressing something subtextual through their wholes. I think the same could be said of this blog, although to me at least the subtextual note is fainter. Both those old books and this blog have an aesthetic of "formulalessness".

MSL's Relationship to Christianity

Reading New Wine for the End Times makes me think again about the Bible in more depth. This makes think I should write about MSL's relationship to Christianity.

One way for me to look at this question is to look at myself, as someone with some kind of relationship to both MSL and Christianity.

I was raised in a moderate church, probably "theologically conservative" but moderate in tone. I think I'm reacting to that, and assuming that, a lot of the time. I think the flaws of progressive and conservative Christianity are the flaws of "Los Angeles" while the flaws of moderate Christianity are those of "San Diego". In other words, moderate Christianity seems nicer than the other two and thus is more likely to have a serious but unexamined problem with it. MSL and New Wine Christianity call for excellence, while I think both being basically moderate in other respects. Hopefully that call for excellence makes up for the danger of complacency within moderate belief systems.

I had a significant, highly negative experience with a progressive Christian (this blog comes out of that experience, to some extent). I don't want to assume the worst of all of progressive Christianity because of what I went through, but I can't assume that all progressive Christians are different than the person that caused my negative experience.

Progressive Christianity has an epistemic openness and a willingness to question. I find this aspect of it trustworthy (assuming it is really willing to consider things that are or could be coded "conservative"). What I don't find trustworthy is its emphasis on ethical humanism to the exclusion of ethical theism. Perhaps it sounds good for God to serve humanity, and for humans to serve humanity. Then who serves God? Or are humans the highest end of both God and humans? It sounds like we are making ourselves the center of the universe.

A progressive Christian might look at that last paragraph and think "so you're basically on the side of the conservative Christians". I think conservative Christians (at their best) do try to put God at the center of the universe and not put humans there. But conservative Christianity isn't always good. I think there are (at least) two kinds of conservatives: the kind who like to say "no" to other people, and the kind who value things so much that they try to protect them from other people. "Liberals" (the generous and free) have straightforward human desires. They think (often) that all conservatism is of the "say no to other people" kind, and they feel entitled to their straightforward human desires and think of conservatives as people who are unfair and want power over other people, this power which is proven by their ability to say "no" to them and restrict their straightforward human desires. They (seemingly) do not think that any conservatism is of the "there is something valuable, perhaps delicate, which must be protected from harm". I don't like saying "no" to people, so in that sense, I am a liberal (or, maybe I should say, I am not an "invalidating conservative"). But I also think there are things that are valuable, to be protected from harm, which are not part of what most (or most liberal) people think are "canonical, established straightforward human desires". In that sense I am a "protective" or "sensitive" conservative.

If a man has "straightforward human desires" for a woman, and she says "no", is she invalidating him? Or is she protecting something? He might think that her "sensitivities" (maybe her religion which she calls on to justify her desire to not have sex until marriage?) is a scam when all she really wants is to say "no" to him, to humiliate him and have power over him by keeping him from his natural desires. She has to invalidate him in order to protect herself, but her goal is to protect something, a good or a value which he does not respect. I think it likely that at least some of the time women do try to humiliate men and have power over them. (They really are the "invalidating conservatives".) But often (most of the time?) they are protecting something from the man. (They are really "protective" or "sensitive" conservatives.)

I think that conservatives reading this post would think that they were protective or sensitive conservatives, and generally I would agree with them. The "will-to-invalidate" is also in conservatives, some of the same who are at other times protective or sensitive, others who are only invalidating, with no concern for protecting.

Some progressive Christians might assume that I'm really a front for invalidating conservatism. That's not my intention. But I am not sure that I've made a case in my writing so far which forcefully establishes my actual intention. (Maybe I have, maybe not.) However, I think a truth-seeking progressive Christian should consider the possibility that maybe there is something to protect which they don't already recognize as being worth protecting, which conservative Christians (in this case correctly) think is worth protecting. Maybe my writing is a scam, maybe it's not. If it's not, what then?

A conservative Christian may then think "so you're a conservative Christian, like us". I think that there's something to that. However, I don't believe the Bible is necessarily inerrant. I am not committed to the Bible primarily as my foundation for my faith in God. Nor am I committed to the church (the existing body of people who identify as Christians, or the culture of those people) in the same capacity. This is a radical difference ("radical" as "at the roots") from conservative Christianity as I understand it. Basically, I think that the idea of proving the existence of God through reason (MSL) is the kind of thing that would be undertaken by a rationalistic person, and if successful, would take weight off of the Bible and the church, if they were less reliable than it. So here we see MSL making me "epistemically progressive" or "epistemically liberal", which seemingly disqualifies me from being a conservative Christian (I think it's pretty fair to say it does disqualify me from being what we normally call a conservative Christian).

So far my blog has not had any pushback from conservative Christians, but that may well change. I do not have the mental resources to try to deal with huge texts like the Bible, or with history, or with reams of peoples' arguments one way or the other. (At least not now.) But I will discuss a little bit why I think the way I do about the Bible and the church, and at least if there are objections try to put them on my wiki [January 2024: replaced by this.] so that I (or someone else, perhaps) can address them someday. (My mental exhaustion may be another thing I have more in common with progressive Christians than conservative Christians.)

I can think of one major reason to doubt that everything in the Bible necessarily comes from God, which is that it (even its Jesus (Matthew 24:34)) expected the end of the world to come soon. But it didn't. Maybe we can dig in and say "well, there's a sense in which the world did end" or "the words that make us think Jesus expected it soon can be interpreted differently" or even "God changed his mind because maybe things were going better/worse than he expected". If I were committed to the Bible, I would choose one of those, or some other similar thing, to believe. But if uncommitted, I would think about how the early Christians thought one thing was going to happen, and it didn't, and say "well, there might be some sense in which the words that gave them that expectation are trustworthy, but it might also be the case that they were misguided by expectations that didn't come from God, and maybe the rest of the Bible is a mixture of good guidance and misguidance. Or maybe there are things that Jesus said that are accurately conveyed by the Gospels, but the end-times beliefs weren't among them".

However, I have found the Bible to be very helpful in my own life, trusting it as though it is true, at least as I understood it (i.e., reflecting what parts of it said, as it "plainly" or "naively" appeared to me). I think that the basic project of the Bible is the same as that of MSL, and that MSL is a continuation of it (though some conservative Christians might disagree). This increases my credence that the parts of the Bible that I don't trust might be trustworthy anyway. Sometimes perhaps that causes me to re-evaluate what I don't trust, so that I do trust it, but it does not make me trust everything in the Bible, and I am not certain everything in the Bible is true.

I believe in the Jesus of the spiritual world. The Bible is an introduction to this Jesus, but there is a world in which the spirits live. Occult people "dial up" the spirit of Saturn (the god? the planet? both in one being?) and there is a whole world of spirits, one of whom is Jesus. (The Bible as it lives in our imaginations and memory is the Bible in the imaginal world, which is an access point to the world of spirits.) In my experience, this spirit is to be trusted. But is this spirit 100% the same as the man described in the Bible? I don't know. Does this spirit lend enough credence to the many things in the Bible to validate them all? I wouldn't assume so.

One argument for founding a person's faith on the church is that Christianity has to have a lot to do with the Bible (even progressive Christians seem to care about what the Bible says in some sense). Where did the Bible come from? The individual texts came (it is believed) from the Holy Spirit through human writers. But the church are the ones who canonized the Bible (selected the texts to go in it). We assume that the church was guided by the Holy Spirit when they did that. And the church are the ones who preserved and transmitted the Bible through time. So without the church, there would be no Bible.

Does that mean that we are beholden to the church? What exactly goes into the word "church"? If you don't go to "church", are you a bad Christian, or simply not a Christian? I think the church "wants" (it's a culture more than a conscious individual) you to go to church. Is that what God wants? Is church-centricness a cousin to progressive humanism? (Putting the focus on people rather than God.) Well, if the church is divinely inspired (a presupposition for the Bible to be divinely inspired, we think) then maybe the church is a source of authority in itself and individual Christians must submit to it. But if MSL is valid, then it takes the epistemic burden off of the church. The Bible gains credence because it resembles MSL (a publicly verifiable source of credence) and because its Jesus in some way is the same as the Jesus of the spirit world (a non-publicly verifiable source of credence, unless we all get in conscious contact with that world). The church gains credence to the extent that it is aligned with MSL's God.

Because of my experiences with the spirit world, and the confirmation from MSL, I think I trust in Jesus enough for me to be considered a Christian. But that spirit, and MSL, are the only points on which I'm significantly committed, and the Bible, and the culture that flows from it, I'm not so committed to. Not everything that is socially (or perhaps even Biblically) "church" is in tune with MSL and the Jesus of the spirit world (i.e., instead it takes Satan's side rather than Jesus' side, in Satan's war against God and God's creatures.)

(My example doesn't have to be normative for all people interested in MSL. But I mention it because it's something concrete that I know about, and maybe it provides some guidance.)

So at this point, maybe it seems like I have struck blows for the side of "uncertainty" (a "progressive Christian" thing), so does that leave me really being progressive? I think that uncertainty could lead to a practical liberalism (where we don't know anything, so we default to our natural appetites for guidance), but it could also lead to a practical protective conservatism (where we don't know anything, so we consider the things to protect in every different likely scenario and try to figure out how best to manage the task of protecting things).

So far I've mostly talked from a Christian perspective. But I think that MSL does lend credence (or may; I haven't studied this myself) to non-Christian religions (a progressive Christian thing to say?). I don't think that any religion other than a basically Biblical Christianity (a New Wine Christianity) could be the most compatible with MSL, so the Bible would be most-recommended by it for the purposes of seeking God's preferences (a conservative Christian thing to say?). (But I suppose there might be some obscure religion somewhere that does better. In many ways that obscure religion that I hypothesize would have to be a form of Christianity, but perhaps using different terminology.)

We want to obey God, and so we search for his preferences, for wherever they might be: in reason, nature, and in holy books. We focus first on obeying God in the ways that we are most certain: what MSL recommends. Then, when we have time, we implement the less-certain obediences which are found only in the Bible (or perhaps other holy books). (This motion toward obedience is a typically conservative thing.)

The process of seeking ways to obey God, in the uncertain space of holy books, suggests an intellectual project: To seek what to obey (to come to prefer, act, and trust) from sources that may indicate what God wants -- uncertain obedience. Since we are not sure whether these ideas are from God or not, we consider the possibility that they are not from God, possibly even from Satan. Can we implement these "obediences" to what God may want in such a way that we minimize the damage caused in case they are from Satan, and maximize the good resulting, whether they are from Satan or from God?

(Given this project, why not look everywhere there are old values and revive or preserve them (to undo cultural Moloch), using the same metric of "how do we implement this to maximally serve God and minimally serve Satan?". Perhaps some old values are not compatible with God, but even with them, how much can be salvaged?)

Book Review: New Wine for the End Times by Philip Brown

This review is intended to be linked to outside this blog.

The Potential of the New Wine System

The ideas contained in New Wine for the End Times, by Philip Brown (the "New Wine System") have power to help revive the church. There are two basic ideas: we must overcome all our sinful habits (by entering into a relationship of service for the Kingdom, the Holy Spirit removes our sinful habits) in order to go to heaven -- and it's possible not to make it, if we harden ourselves to God's voice; and there is a period of time after this life for us to complete that process.

If we must become completely holy, now we have something to do after conversion. We have something we must do, or else. We must become more trustworthy people (so churches will become less abusive). We must move, and grow (so churches will become less apathetic).

Lay members don't always understand why they need to become more serious followers of Jesus. Lay members who become more serious become like, simply become, leaders in the church. The more leaders, the more the burdens of leadership can be shared, and/or the more can be accomplished. The New Wine System gives people a reason to become more serious followers of Jesus.

There is an idea that Christians have some part to play in saving people from a bad spiritual fate (usually, from hell). This is a nerve-wracking idea to hold if you think people go to hell if they don't make a decision for Jesus in this life. But if there is another one for them to accept Jesus then there's a second chance.

Are people saved by faith? Then they are the ones who must make a decision for Jesus. But what about children who die? The New Wine System has a simple solution -- they can make that decision in the next life.

Are people saved by baptism? If they "slip on the way to the baptistry", are they going to hell? According to the New Wine System, they can be baptized in the next life.

Overall, the idea "needing to get saved" makes more sense under the New Wine System. When things make sense, it's easier to trust them and act on them.

Additionally, Christians should become more trustworthy people, more active in doing good, as defined by the world (in the large area where Christian values and worldly values overlap), if they take to heart the New Wine message. Secular problems (some of them vexing to Christians and non-Christians alike) should be at least somewhat ameliorated by Christians living out the New Wine System. This may make the church look trustworthy to people in the world.

Is the New Wine System true?

New Wine for the End Times tries to show that it is true by considering many of the verses of the Bible that relate. (It is about 600 pages long.) I wish I could say that I know for certain that it is successful in that. But I am not qualified to make that judgment, because I don't have the kind of mind or the interests to be good with comparing the details of Bible interpretations. However, the first time I read it, 10 years ago, I was more into that kind of question. For some years I had accumulated a sense that the verses in the Bible related to salvation didn't all make sense according to any of the existing soteriologies I knew of (Calvinist, Catholic, Churches of Christ, Arminian Baptist), at least in their most basic forms. When I read New Wine for the End Times, I saw that those verses all made sense under the New Wine System.

A few readers of this review may have the sense either that a coherent understanding of the Bible can't be had: either because it's too much cognitive labor for most people, or because the Bible simply isn't coherent as we read it (it may be a collection of human texts that the Holy Spirit uses, it may be something that makes sense in a way we will only understand in heaven, or maybe something else like that). In that case New Wine for the End Times can't be successful in convincing us of its ideas. However, we need to live our lives and how we understand salvation could be life-changing and could help us achieve eternal life (and avoid hell).

As a response to that, as a more philosophically-inclined person, I would say that God is holy, and so he has to be against sin. He can't keep it around forever. We have free will. If we choose sin, we are sinful. If we don't completely reject sin and choose God, God can't have us around forever, so he has to destroy us. It makes sense for him to give us more time than we have in this life to reject sin and choose him, since we generally are not done with that process by the end of this one.

If you found that last paragraph convincing, then I might still recommend reading New Wine for the End Times if you want to see how Philip Brown connects the New Wine ideas to the verses of the Bible.

Other information about New Wine for the End Times

Philip Brown believes that the end times are coming soon, and a significant part of New Wine for the End Times relates the New Wine System to end-times prophecy. His emphasis in the book is on preparing for the return of Jesus, by becoming holy.

I don't have an opinion about when Jesus will return. I'm not sure Brown is right, or that he's wrong. If you do not trust the pursuit of end-times knowledge, the New Wine System is still something worth considering.

New Wine for the End Times is not a perfect book, but it's the best book on a potentially important subject of biblical doctrine.

The Unpardonable Sin; Satanic Miracles; Love and Trust de Re

I re-read New Wine for the End Times recently, which serves as a reminder of what kinds of New Wine teachings are in the Bible. The New Wine component of MSL can be illuminated by New Wine for the End Times.

One teaching is that of the "unpardonable sin", which is "blasphemy of the Holy Spirit". What does this mean, and should we expect that teaching to be true if all we believe is MSL and not the Bible?

Apparently, according to Philip Brown (author of New Wine for the End Times), it's when you see the miracles that attest to Jesus being the Messiah but you deny to yourself what you see. You say it's from Satan rather than from God. (This from Ch. 7 of the book. Ch. 8, which I read after drafting this, is also on the subject, but didn't change my views as expressed in here. (10th ed. of the book.)).

What Brown says seems like a reasonable inference from the Bible. But does the Bible make sense in this area?

Here's one Biblical passage, for reference (Matthew 12:18-32):

12:18 "Behold, my servant whom I have chosen; my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my Spirit on him. He will proclaim justice to the nations. 12:19 He will not strive, nor shout; neither will anyone hear his voice in the streets. 12:20 He won't break a bruised reed. He won't quench a smoking flax, until he leads justice to victory. 12:21 In his name, the nations will hope." 12:22 Then one possessed by a demon, blind and mute, was brought to him and he healed him, so that the blind and mute man both spoke and saw. 12:23 All the multitudes were amazed, and said, "Can this be the son of David?" 12:24 But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, "This man does not cast out demons, except by Beelzebul, the prince of the demons."

12:25 Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. 12:26 If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? 12:27 If I by Beelzebul cast out demons, by whom do your children cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. 12:28 But if I by the Spirit of God cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you. 12:29 Or how can one enter into the house of the strong man, and plunder his goods, unless he first bind the strong man? Then he will plunder his house.

12:30 "He who is not with me is against me, and he who doesn't gather with me, scatters. 12:31 Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. 12:32 Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this age, nor in that which is to come.

If I saw a miracle, why would I be sure it was from God, or the particular God that is Jesus? Jesus seems confident that Satan couldn't, or wouldn't, drive out demons. But that seems like something I would expect Satan to be able to do (he's the leader of demons) and would want to do (it could be useful in deceiving people). I would say, from an MSL perspective, that we should be cautious in assuming miracles are always done by good beings.

However, being confident that a miracle is from Satan also seems like a bad idea. Satan can use the belief in Satan to deceive people. I think the Jewish religious leaders described in the Gospels were not being rational if they were sure that Jesus' miracles were from Satan. So if they were confident he wasn't doing God's work, they were choosing to see reality a certain way, rather than what was there. That choice could have been made because they wanted to reject Jesus, a priori, and did not want to see the moral fact that he was a good person, doing God's work. (Seeing a moral fact can call for a change in heart.) An enmity against God, whoever he really is, taken far enough, leads a person to reject God permanently. This is a concern in MSL. (Being the enemy of anyone or anything is dangerous if God reminds you too much of them, or turns out to remind you too much of them, or in some other way by being an enemy of them, you become an enemy of God.)

Probably we should lean toward thinking God was behind a miracle if it did something that as far as we can tell favors God's interests. Maybe it makes sense to assume that such a miracle is from God unless we have a good reason to think otherwise. Did the Jewish religious leaders have a good reason to think otherwise? If not, then they should have ascribed Jesus' miracles to God, and trusted Jesus. However, it is reasonable to be cautious in trusting a miracle-worker and only tentatively ascribe miracles to God, watchful for signs that the miracle-worker actually isn't working for God.

If we take Jesus to be authoritative in everything he said (and believe that the Bible is so accurate in reporting what he said that its words are authoritative as a result), and assume that he literally meant what he said here about "a house divided against itself will not stand", then perhaps we conclude that Jesus knew something about the strange nature of demons, how they don't do strategic things like letting evil people cast them out for deceptive purposes. We might imagine demonic miracles happening (as in Midnight Mass, which I know through this video), but actually, they don't happen. All miracles advance the kingdom of God. Maybe they just happen in bad contexts, are deceptive experiential truths. All miracle-workers are from God -- somehow or other, even if they further horror and evil. Or maybe Midnight Mass is fictional to the point that there just aren't miracle-workers in real life who bear such bad fruit as the priest character's miracle-working. Bad miracle-workers in real life are all frauds who fake their miracles. No actual miracles are done by bad miracle-workers.

I don't know enough to say on this issue. Perhaps as a Christian I should bias myself against calling miracle-workers bad. Certainly if I have no reason to think that they are really working for Satan. But I think without assuming that Jesus is authoritative and literally meant what he said (maybe instead he meant "generally Satan doesn't drive out Satan and if you think he's doing that here, you have been ignoring my character and the quality/spirit of my teachings which indicate that this isn't what's going on here"), the "MSLian" should assume that Satan can drive out Satan, and possibly perform other miracles, although they (Satan) would prefer not to, generally, since they don't like benefiting humans. (I use "they" as both singular and plural since "Satan" could be a collective of demons that is coherently led by one of them.)

Aren't we surrounded by miracles? Some laugh at the simplicity of people who see the world that way, but perhaps the simple see reality closer to what it really is, unjaded. What about the miracle of an argument that comes to a valid conclusion and is true in all relevant contexts? Perhaps the one that proves the existence of God would be a miracle, a noetic rather than sensory miracle. People "see but do not see" both what is in the sensory world and in the noetic world.

Brown thinks that when we see God work in undeniable ways, we are forced to either follow God or reject God. (More specifically in Brown's words, follow Christ or reject Christ.) My thoughts: To know God (to really know God) is to love God, or at least to be strongly called to love God. To see God is to be called to love God. When Satan's deceptions are taken away (all the noetic padding we have to protect us from seeing God), we are stuck with God and our hearts, and if our hearts aren't well-trained, we have a higher likelihood of choosing to reject God rather than love God in that decisive moment.

So we have to be protected from God -- this makes some sense from an MSL perspective. Does this mean that I shouldn't try to prove the existence of God? MSL does not spell out everything about God. It is intentionally incomplete, pointing toward what goes beyond public reason (we can only come to fully know God through our own individual experience, following intellectual conscience rather than what can be argued and established publicly). It sort of does, but doesn't fully, preach Jesus. When it talks about God, does it talk about Jesus? I think in a sense (if Jesus is God) then it must (de re), but at the same time, in another sense, even if he is, it doesn't (de dicto), or doesn't narrow down its "Son" person to being the Jesus of the Bible. So the reader of MSL can turn away from believing in Jesus, as such. Also people who only believe in the Metaphysical Organism, or Speaker, may stop before trying to apply the arguments of legitimism. There is room for people to be irrational (assuming that belief in God is the correct conclusion to rational thinking). Irrationality is not ideal, but it's better than hardening. There is the irrationality that leads to hardening or just is hardening, and there is the irrationality that protects against hardening.

So I would say that in trying to convey the truth, we should be respectful, notably, not forceful (nor, by the way, be any other disrespects, like malicious, lazy, or merciless). A forceful conveyer of beliefs can push another person to build a wall of Satanic deception to protect that other person from God. I'm not sure it's likely or possible to force someone to meet God through words (maybe only miracles like Jesus' can force people to meet God?) but the defense mechanism of believing Satanic deceptions protects people from committing the unpardonable sin, and that defense mechanism, or the beliefs formed as a result of that mechanism, can themselves become part of the spiritual calculus that hardens inside them, creating an obstacle to them coming to love God fully.

From Jesus' example, it does seem like it's better to not be sure, rather than deciding to go all in on a theory that rejects the possibility that someone is from God or is good. There are different kinds of unsureness. "Skepticism" may be loaded against believing that someone is from God. Perhaps a "skeptic" has really already decided that someone is not from God, although on the surface they are openminded. There is an unsureness that effectively ignores that the possibilities might each be real, versus one that effectively assumes that each of them might be real. The latter is safer than the former, since it does not close itself to the possibility that the person in question is from God. (One skepticism/doubting/unsureness closes the discussion, but the other seeks to keep investigating.)

So openmindedness is a virtue that can save you from destruction in hell. Wicked people (those who have sold themselves out to opposing God) can be virulently, irrationally committed to their point of view. Some of them manipulate, intimidate, and deceive openminded people, seemingly because they are deeply sure that they are doing the right thing by doing so. Those that they pressure with non-truth-aligned psychological tactics are thus tempted to closedmindedness. We need to have a definition to what we believe in order to resist lies, but that in itself can set us up to not believing the truth. This is a two-step scam of Satan -- we don't believe the lies that are blatant, and hateful to us (step one of the attack), but we do believe the lie that is closer to the truth, which resists the blatant lie more strongly in the psychological/social battlegrounds than if we are really being rational / openminded (step two of the attack).

If this makes sense so far, it doesn't address the idea of "unpardonable". Why can't God forgive this sin of completely selling ourselves out to being his enemy? Maybe "unpardonable" is a shorthand to communicate with us, but the "longhand" is "if you do this sin, you will have destroyed your own ability to repent, so while God could technically forgive you, he will still have to destroy you"? This would make sense in MSL. The unpardonable sin (hardening) is a choice you make at a discrete moment in time. Maybe it is the last in a series of choices to not see what you see and you don't fully realize what you're doing to yourself, as you go down a progression. (I think the previous sentence goes against things I've said before, so I should try resolve this as I go through my old blog posts.) You do this thing, and there is no pardon for it -- you will not seek pardon for it.

(If you love the truth, you will desire in your heart to see what you see. If there is at least a little bit of this desire, God can work with it to restore you to whatever level of love of truth that you need to be saved. If you are concerned about being out of tune with reality, if at least you consciously think you are, or try to think you are, then you have at least a little bit of the love of truth in you. Perhaps if you don't care, then you don't have it in you.)

What about people who are like Judas? Judas felt remorse for what he did to Jesus. But (Brown argues), Judas committed the unpardonable sin, by so knowingly becoming Jesus' enemy. I'm not sure what I think on this subject. I don't think from an MSL point of view that Judas could have committed the unpardonable sin unless he wasn't really repentant, though very remorseful.

(Judas felt remorse, then killed himself. Did he really repent? Maybe so, maybe no. Remorsefulness and regret are one thing, and repentance is another. Judas did not seem to have hope in himself becoming acceptable, and that lack of hope can prevent repentance.)

I've been undecided in MSL on the role of justice. Is it a primitive of reality? Or is it something socially-constructed? If the former, then maybe we have to pay for our sins, unless there is some way they can be forgiven. For us to be saved, all of our sins must be forgivable -- but perhaps there is an exception for the unpardonable sin of selling yourself out completely to being God's enemy? The Biblical explanation for why it's unpardonable is that it involves crucifying Jesus again. One sacrifice covers all sins, and that's the last sacrifice, so there's no more sacrifice if you break your covenant with God, where he says your sins are forgiven if you trust his Son.

I'm not sure what I would assume in MSL, given justice as a primitive. I have written before about how the "Son" of Legitimacy might have to die for everyone's sins (very much like some theories of the Christian Atonement). I've written before that it would make sense to only have the "Son" die once (see Legitimism Without Atonement). One innocent death balances out all sins, but a second innocent death makes the world unjust again. If the "Son" only dies once, does his death cover the sin of rejecting God intentionally? I think so. If somehow that sin weren't covered by the first death, another death could be arranged. But, a person who completely and irrevocably rejects God is not going to be saved even if they are forgiven. They will have to be destroyed in hell. They might be punished for their sins (the hellish part of being destroyed) as a deterrent to people rejecting God, although those sins would be forgiven (the deeds themselves would not be traumatic/irritating/offending/angering to God because of the restoration of justice by the "Son"'s death, but the action of punishing would still be performed for the greater good) (See Is Eternal Conscious Torment Compatible with MSLN?).

Practically speaking, what's the important thing here, that God does or doesn't forgive, or that we do or do not reject him? Sometimes God is much more powerful than we are. He decides what the world looks like, whom we meet, what ideas we encounter, what our brains are like, etc. (There are other actors influencing that as well, but God is the greatest determiner of things.) However, we are the rulers of our own hearts. We can choose to reject God or follow God, and in this we are the ones who have power over God, forcing him to live with the consequences of our decisions.

Whether rejecting God completely and irrevocably (closing our minds to what we really see so that we can no longer be anti-tempted, knowingly calling good things evil so that we don't have to trust God, or whatever else might effectively accomplish that rejection) is pardonable or not by God, is almost a red herring. What is clear, and of greatest practical consequence, is that our effective rejection of God condemns us to destruction.

--

On re-reading, I see that there is a thread in the above that I didn't follow. I said "If I saw a miracle, why would I be sure it was from God, or the particular God that is Jesus?" In Jesus' day, it appears that the spiritual world was seen to be a binary or spectrum with Satan on one side and God on the other. This is more or less the worldview of MSL. MSL gives us (I hope) a fairly high prior belief that God exists and would work in the world, when we encounter apparent spiritual power. But what if you don't believe in the Biblical or MSL worldviews? When you encounter a miracle or a sign from God, you might justifiably not be sure which God, or spiritual being, it's from. Maybe it was Odin, the spirit of Saturn, one of the Dreaming Beings, the God of Islam -- these being spiritual beings that people trust, or have trusted, not to mention all the possible blatantly evil beings. There is an uncountable number of potential ideas about what spiritual power is, if you have no prior belief to ground you.

So in the past, I think I've written something like if your evidence for any one idea of the spiritual world is so low that you could just make up another one with equal rational support, you are not bound to do what that first idea requires of you, since there could easily be an "equal and opposite" idea of what you should do in response to the spiritual world that requires you to do the opposite of what the first one does. Is this how you should approach an apparent miracle, as potentially being explained by anything, and so no practical or fiducial response is required?

Infinities (and thus potential infinities) can be bounded. Of the natural numbers (the whole numbers counting up from 1 (1, 2, 3, ...)), there are an infinite number of odd numbers, and an infinite number of even numbers, but all natural numbers fit in one of those two categories. So the infinities are bounded. Of all the potential gods and spirits we might hypothesize, there are those who are for humans, against humans, or neutral (or we might say that there is a divide that divides the neutral into basically being for humans or being against humans).

And there are only three (or two) kinds of humans, no matter how many humans are born. So we are on the same side as the spiritual beings who are for humans, or against humans, if we are for humans, or against humans. So whatever you think about God's existence, when you see spirits who are working for humans, are you on their side? Do you allow the possibility that a miracle is being done by that spiritual nation or army? Or do you decide that you know that it is not being done by them?

(This is too simple, though. A spirit could be on the side of a certain group of people and not on the side of another. Some humans would prefer a god who favors their group and not another group. But, if we don't know anything else, to see a spirit help one person, I think we should assume that they probably are in favor of all persons, since one person is substantially like all others. Perhaps if you saw someone eating a particular salad, you might think they liked salad in general, with or without some exceptions. This idea could be overturned soon enough, but I think it's a good starting assumption. With spirits doing pro-human miracles, we should be cautiously trusting.)

We have a bias in Western culture against belief in and trust in the supernatural. We are avid consumers of ideas that come through culture, scams though they often are, and even settle on ones that we accept, believe in, and fight for. Why not do the same with supernatural voices? In fact, isn't it the case that many ideas in culture come from "flashes of inspiration"? Isn't it the case that artists feel like something other than them is working through them when they create? A natural reading of this phenomenon is that these accepted modes of being influenced are the tools of spirit beings. So, if we have our favorite bands, philosophers, and intellectual institutions and cultures, why not have our favorite spirits that we listen to? That they are our favorites does not mean they are 100% trustworthy, but we know with ideas, art, and cultures that it is better to trust something than to not trust at all. We trust and even obey our favorite ideas, art, and culture.

If you see a person who is listening to a spirit, does that spirit seem to be for or against humans? You might want to "judge a tree by its fruit". Now, as the Bible points out, people like Abraham and Sarah, and everyone else from Hebrews 11, had hard lives. Could it be the case that the spirit that told Abraham to leave his homeland was a scammer that just wanted him to suffer and make a fool of himself, all in the name of "blessing all the families of the world"? From a Biblical, or MSL, perspective, Abraham was a hero for being that kind of fool. He loved and wanted to participate in what was worth pursuing. But maybe it would have been better for him to not have listened.

Abraham and Sarah were strangers among people who did not share their vision. They probably lived with the indifference of the people around them, grating against them, quenching and starving them. Although I don't think Genesis records this, it's also possible (and likely for people in their situation) that their neighbors were hostile to them. (The experience of the prophets and the early church shows how the descendants of Abraham can experience hostility.) So, if a spirit tells you to do something that is pro-human, isn't that a pro-human spirit? It might not be, it might be some kind of scam to torture good-hearted fools. But who's doing the torture? Isn't it the people (and spirits) who are hostile or indifferent to the pro-human project? Maybe they're the problem, not the spirit that calls a person to the hard life of making things better. It would make a lot of sense for pro-human spirits to call people to fight on their side, but be unable to protect them from all the harm from the fight (if the spirits are not literally omnipotent).

Abraham was able to successfully carry out his small part in obeying the Abrahamic promise. Nothing was keeping him from doing that. Maybe if we live in a dystopia (like in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where individual agency seems to be inevitably crushed by the evil status quo), then someone who hears a spirit calling them to bless the whole world should not listen -- the wisest course of action is to do the little thing that actually can work. I think a lot of people live for some reason as though in an Orwellian nightmare, in this area of their lives, and would not listen to the apparent voice of God. But I think the world we actually live in is not that strictly bounded, and we are still able to plausibly carry out the simple task of abiding by a culture and passing it on to some biological or non-biological descendants (Abraham's task). So for us, as for Abraham, it is rational to pursue the Abrahamic vision, if a voice calls to us furthering it. This doesn't mean our lives will be easy if we listen and follow it, or that we will succeed, but just that it isn't crazy to try.

Why would anti-human spirits call pro-human humans to be more pro-human? It seems like a dangerous gambit. What if the pro-human humans start a religion that is pro-human? It's possible anti-human spirits can scam people with pro-human leadings, but I think our default assumption is that pro-human leadings come from pro-human spirits.

How do we know what is pro-human, or anti-human? There are some things that are clear: dealing with the problems we all recognize, like material poverty. There may be other things that are not so obvious to all of us. Religions (and other antagonists in cultural / axiological disputes) claim to tell us which of the controversial values are actually pro-human, and some of them may be right, and it is worth investigating and potentially trusting what they say. Religions are bundles of values, goals, etc. and some bundle untruths with truths (controversies imply that someone is saying something wrong). But the truth in them probably comes from pro-human spirits, and some of the truth of them is not up for dispute, at least by us (that which aligns with consensus reality). There are certain things that humans can generally know are pro-human (as humans, we have a privileged access to knowing what is pro-human).

If you are really vehement in your rejection of the possibility that pro-human spirits are behind something (especially something that is prima facie good), then you may be closing yourself to the voice of God.

--

Am I in any danger of committing the unpardonable sin? I don't know. This passage in Hebrews relates:

6:4 For concerning those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, 6:5 and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, 6:6 and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance; seeing they crucify the Son of God for themselves again, and put him to open shame.

Maybe I am not, because I haven't tasted "the powers of the age to come" -- or have I? Maybe I have without realizing that was it.

If I reject Christianity, but then repent, does that mean it wasn't the kind of "falling away" that is talked about in this passage? Or is it the case that if I think I repent, I'm not really repenting (in this case "repent" doesn't refer to "a change of my heart" but to something else)?

If I "fall away", does that mean that in doing so I crucify Christ again for myself, or does it mean that in order to do so, I must crucify Christ again for myself? I think that Jesus' blood covers all sins, no matter what. The thing that makes the unpardonable sin unpardonable is that for me to commit it, I have to get in the state of never being willing to ask pardon, of rejecting the forgiveness that comes from Jesus' blood. Jesus doesn't have to be crucified again, in the sense of "dying to cover sins", but he can be crucified again, for someone, when they "despise him to the point of wanting him to die". (Then, despising him so much, they see no value in what he did, and reject his forgiveness.) Am I 100% sure that I interpret things correctly when I believe all this, though?

Should I commit to Christianity out of fear, even though my noetic eyes tell me it might not be true? In that case, I would not be "seeing what I see". Not "seeing what you see" is a risk factor for hardening.

My practical concern is that I find MSL more convincing than the Bible, and yet I have believed in the Bible and had experiences that honestly seem to me to be connected to Jesus specifically, although I am currently not certain if that Jesus was literally the one mentioned in the Bible, or was rather something spoken to me by God because I grew up Christian. I have believed more firmly that they were connected to a being who literally satisfies the Gospels' description of Jesus, but now I am not sure. If I became an MSLian, I might accept the Bible as a guide to preferring, acting, and trusting (including the form of trust that is intellectual belief), out of a sense of generosity toward God, seeking ways to obey him. (The Bible is a likely source of information from God given MSL, because of its resemblance to MSL.) But then, would I have committed the unpardonable sin, by converting away from Christianity to MSL? There is some chance that the Bible is true, in a way that I must accept it in a sort of "conservative" way where I root my belief in its words, rather than rooting them in something outside the Bible. So there would be some chance I had committed the unpardonable sin.

Christians often choose to believe in the Bible more than they can rationally support. (Maybe that's the overwhelming status quo.) When they do so, they choose to obey what the Bible says God wants them to prefer, act, and trust. I don't see how I would be different than them in that. But they would call themselves Christians, and I might not. I think in a sense I would be a Christian, and in a sense I wouldn't be, and that might be enough to have committed the unpardonable sin.

(Taking the name of Jesus is necessary in order to not "fall away"?)

An MSLian believes in the "Son", the person of Legitimacy who bears the burden of finite life, and MSL leads us to think that the Son has particular attributes beyond what MSL specifies (since a person requires more than a few sentences to adequately be described). Could this Son be the Jesus of the Bible? Certainly. So an MSLian who loves and trusts the Son may be loving and trusting Jesus -- only if Jesus actually exists, though. They love and trust Jesus de re, and even de dicto. They can say (de dicto) they love and trust the Son, whoever and whatever he really is, which refers to Jesus -- if Jesus really exists. (By existing, he would fit the description of the Son.)

In that case, the Christian may choose to know less about Jesus (or acknowledge their lack of knowledge) as they identify more as an MSLian, while still being as committed as ever to the person of Jesus.

Would a Muslim object to trying to love and trust the Jesus that actually exists? (I'm not sure, but I'm guessing at least one might not -- the Muslim thinks Jesus is merely a prophet, the Christian that he is God, but the Jesus that actually exists, the way he turns out to be, who can reject?) In that case, if Jesus is God (and has the other important attributes from the Gospels) such a Muslim would have begun to be a Christian, without leaving Islam.

An atheist seeking (and trusting) the truth (the pattern of belief that is trustworthy, including what it points to) could seek and trust whatever the truth will turn out to be, and thus would begin to be a Christian, while still being an atheist.

This is a beautiful thought, and might resolve the issue -- as long as we seek the truth, and seek God as he will turn out to be, we will be okay.

There might be a simpler resolution to my dilemma, which is to say that if something other than me causes me to no longer believe as firmly in the Bible as I once did or sometimes do, then it is not I who fall away. When I see what hadn't been shown to me before (the defeater that lowers my credence in the Bible), or I see what I already should have acknowledged (a gap in my knowledge), then I see what I see, and it is something other than me that determines my reduced level of credence.

--

In MSL, Legitimacy must value what is valuable, and try to keep it existing forever. We are valuable. It is only by our power (by our free will) that we fail to exist forever. Legitimacy (God) must forgive us if there is a way. But we can "sin an unpardonable sin" by cutting off our own ability to repent and be open to God's forgiveness.

I believe I should believe in the Bible (to the extent that I should) through MSL. I also believe that I should believe in at least part of it (I don't know 100% which parts) through the connection that Jesus (the literal God or the imaginal/noetic being) has with spiritual warfare (those on Jesus' side can be trusted, and those against Jesus cannot be). If MSL says something clearly, it is true, and I adjust my interpretation of the Bible to be in harmony with it, especially where the Bible is perhaps lacking in fleshed-out detail, as I think is the case with the unpardonable sin. I think the interpretation that the unpardonable sin inherently involves the sinner cutting off their willingness to repent, and involves their permanent effective rejection of God's forgiveness through Jesus' sacrifice, is not incompatible with the Bible. That would be MSL's way of reading things, and MSL I find intellectually trustworthy. So then the question is, is MSL true?

--

On this important topic, I think it's worth it to "keep score". Why is it that someone contemplating leaving Christianity (not relying on the Bible primarily, not identifying as a Christian) for MSL would not be at risk of committing the unpardonable sin? Can I give a more organized list of reasons?

1. MSL says that God, by his nature as Legitimacy, has to validate that which is valid, and thus preserve everything that is good forever. The only thing that can get in the way of that is a person's free will. We generally do not make final decisions to reject God. Each of us can make that final decision to reject God at some point. But we would know we had done so, and be unable to (that is, unwilling to) undo that decision, forever. So if we are concerned about maybe having committed the unpardonable sin, we can try repenting. If we are still able to intend to change (and a "mere" conscious belief that we intend counts as something) then we have not committed the unpardonable sin. If Jesus is God (and MSL is valid), then all of the above applies.

2. If anyone loves and trusts the truth or God or God's Son (i.e., MSL's Son) as it/he/he really is, then they have not fallen away from whatever reality is behind our beliefs in the truth/God/God's Son. If Jesus exists, he is the truth/God/God's Son, and our beliefs in the truth/God/God's Son ultimately connect to him. If he does not exist, there is no problem.

(What about the name of Jesus? Christianity claims that Jesus is God and the truth. So if we are theists (those who seek to love and trust the God who actually is, actually turns out to be) or aletheists (those who seek to trust trustworthy beliefs (and ultimately, that which those beliefs point to)) then we take the name of Jesus ("God" and "the truth"), if he exists.)

3. Jesus' blood covers all sins. The unpardonable sin is already pardoned. We can reject that forgiveness, but that rejection is only final if we stop wanting to repent, permanently. So if we leave Christianity, for the sake of truth, we can be brought back to Christianity by better understanding. If we leave it out of enmity with God, if that enmity is not complete and final, then we can be brought back.

--

I think those three reasons make sense. Do I 100% know that they are valid? I guess I could have at least a little bit of doubt. (Similar to how I have my reasons to not believe in eternal conscious torment based on MSL, but I can't say for 100% certain that MSL is correct and thus excludes all possible reasons to believe in eternal conscious torment that are out there.)

I have to face the possibility that I could be condemned due to my rejection of Jesus (by diminishing my allegiance to Christianity, or something like that). What do I do with that thought? Suppose I am condemned due to my rejection of Christianity. God's goodness is not diminished. (I imagine some Calvinists may have gone down similar mental paths.) I don't see why I should not work for what is good, for God, even if I don't get to experience the benefits of goodness myself (or only a lifetime's worth, instead of an eternity's worth). Why should I not love and trust God? I can generously love God, even if I have lost my salvation.

It is ethically called-for to preserve your eternal life -- it's what God would want. But if it's too late to do that, there is still a lot of work to do to help others.

--

26 September 2023:

I found a fragment of a blog post that is relevant to this topic:

I think one of the strongest Biblical objections to my writing is the end of Revelation (ch. 21 - 22), where very explicitly it says (21:4) "Death will be no more; neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more. The first things have passed away."

22:19 is a very strong statement: "If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, may God take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book." Is it the case that if I say that I have reason to think that God would mourn the lost, and that we would mourn in order to be in tune with God, that I have "taken away from the words of the book of this prophecy"? It's possible that Revelation is a vision, and thus we should not take it literally. It doesn't take away from the words of a book of poetry to read its symbolism as symbolism. Revelation is an image of a particular kind of life story: going through the cross and then living in peace and rest (like Frodo across the sea?), no longer struggling, having "overcome" like in 1 John. There can be a moment in life like the end of Revelation. And then we decide whether to return to earth to continue God's work, or remain in heavenly retirement.

One reason to think that, if Revelation is inerrant, it must have been symbolic, would be to look at 22:10-11:

22:10 He said to me, "Don't seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand. 22:11 He who acts unjustly, let him act unjustly still. He who is filthy, let him be filthy still. He who is righteous, let him do righteousness still. He who is holy, let him be holy still."

If the time was literally at hand (i.e., the end of the world was coming in a matter of weeks or months), then this advice might make some sense. But if we take this advice literally, over centuries (the distance from the writing of Revelation to now) then we would cause, occasion, allow, etc. massive amounts of spiritual harm. Or if this is not advice, but rather a kind of blessing/curse (a powerful word that makes things so), then the fact that the unjust, over the centuries, sometimes have stopped acting unjustly, and those who were filthy, sometimes no longer are, counts against it being something God literally enacted.

I think that Revelation is either not inerrant (may contain errors), or not to be taken literally in every respect. I do think that it may be an important source of truths from God. In cases where common sense sufficiently strongly rules out it being literally (or inerrantly) true, we should go with common sense. But, as with the idea that the Millennium lasts 1,000 years, if there is no obvious problem, it's wise to consider the possibility that the text is literally true.

If Revelation has errors, should we take them as truth because Revelation threatens us with not having eternal life for "taking away from the words of the prophecy"? They aren't true, no matter how much we heed the threat. Are the errors in a prophecy really prophecy? They might be false prophecy. The prophecy worth heeding and protecting is whatever is true. So then, there is no danger in "taking away from" (failing to heed?) the errors in Revelation, if they exist, and we only need observe the true parts. Would God want us to heed the words of false prophecy?

Should texts have the ability to intimidate us into believing them? Any text that is more than a certain percent trustworthy will seem compelling to us. Then, if it says "If you take away a single word from this, you lose out on eternal life", do we have to accept that and everything else in the text? Even if the text was produced by the Library of Babel and contains some questionable content (literally "questionable", things we would ordinary reject but which we can plausibly accept given the right amount of glory given them).

The possibility of mischief through this kind of channel (some spiritual beings moving someone to write a text which then gains a kind of perennial power over people, enshrining error) seems real to me.

(It could be the case that "taking away from the words of the prophecy" is really about "not corrupting the manuscripts that transmit Revelation".)

--

Keeping score: It sounds like there's a curse on people who change the words of Revelation. If this means that you can't deny the truth of anything in Revelation, then maybe I'm in trouble. But Revelation is a vision which you're supposed to take at least somewhat non-literally. Revelation is written as though the world is supposed to end very soon, but it didn't. That's a pretty major error, if it's supposed to be overall literal. Clearly there are elements of it that are not literally true. If there is error somewhere in Revelation, are we really cursed for not believing it? Revelation can have error from a literal perspective, and if it does, it doesn't make sense for us to believe that error. Or, if Revelation has no errors, but its seeming error comes from a misinterpretation, then if it's questionable how to interpret something, whether literally or not, and how to interpret it non-literally, are we also cursed, for getting things wrong? That doesn't make sense. God doesn't want people to lose their salvation.

Overall, given what else I've written in this post on the unpardonable sin, Revelation's curse on those who alter it only makes sense if it's a case of someone irrevocably rejecting God.

MSLN and Evangelicalism

I am thinking of posting links to this post on outside sites. If you have come from one of those links, this post is about the New Wine System (a system of Biblical doctrines) developed/discovered by Philip Brown. I last read the comprehensive book on the subject that he wrote, New Wine for the End Times, about 10 years ago (when I was 25) and though it seemed to be convincing to me at the time, I haven't been able to reassess it from my more critical, older-self perspective. I will suggest that it is probably at least as Biblical as Reformed, Lutheran, Catholic, etc. doctrinal systems, possibly more so. In other words, it has at least as good a claim as any of those to being what was originally meant by the Biblical writers (or by God in his role as author of the Bible), possibly more so.

Being more philosophical than scholarly, I believe in the New Wine System more through reasoning, this taking up much of my efforts as a writer. My project called "MSLN" attempts to prove the existence of God (one whose nature requires/implies the New Wine System), is more complicated, more of a work in progress. However, I have also written up a simpler argument for the New Wine System which presupposes that the reader believes in God (a certain kind of God that many Christians and possibly some non-Christians would accept as the one they believe in), in an 8 page booklet called Simple New Wine System.

I'm not sure how Philip Brown would summarize the New Wine System (I mention that as some degree of deference to him since the label "New Wine System" originates with him.) I will summarize it as I understand it as being the following two ideas: 1) we must become completely holy (repent 100%, come to have God's values and heart 100%, love God with 100% of our beings, overcome our sinful habits in partnership with God 100%, perform any positive acts that God requires, maybe other things like that) in order to enter heaven (or else we must be destroyed in hell (annihilationism)), 2) there is a realistic amount of time for us to complete our part of this process, in the Millennium/Resurrection.

To some extent this post may be unwelcoming in the sense that I don't discuss it in terms that would make the most sense to someone unfamiliar with my writing. I think that writers try to be trust-producing (so that they have an audience), but sometimes that outstrips their trustworthiness. Someday maybe I will be so confident in the trustworthiness of what I say that I will present what I say in a more popular way. I think I'm moving in that direction, even with this post.

I'm trying not to get into the Bible or Christianity too much at this point in my writing life. However, MSL, the natural theology I do want to talk about, shares many structural similarities with Christianity (and with legitimism (the "L" in "MSL") could be seen as a proto-Christianity or minimalist Christianity).

So this post is trying to talk about "evangelicalism", which is a phenomenon in MSL, but also a phenomenon in Biblical Christianity. So talking about "evangelicalism" is something that serves the purpose of understanding MSL, but also shows how New Wine Christianity might "reform" or "restore" existing Biblical Christianity, perhaps solving some practical problems the church faces, and thus helps me explain the appeal of MSLN to some Christians.

"Evangelicalism", here, is not about cultural affiliation with "Evangelicals", but rather is a basic attitude, which could be something like this:

1. People are at risk for something other than loss of secular life. (Usually, for loss of eternal life.)
2. The way to deal with that risk involves that we care about others' well-being and act on that.
3. There are consequences to our inaction (or misguided action) with respect to #1. (People being lost from eternal life, usually.)
4. We should care about those consequences and feel and act accordingly.

Does MSL commit me to evangelicalism?

Does MSL commit me to evangelicalism? I think so. One interpretation of MSL would imply that if people don't do their part in "anti-tempting" people so that they turn toward God, God can do it in the Millennium. Therefore, under that interpretation, people would not have to care for other people's salvation. I suppose that's possible. But another possibility is that tragedy is possible. God is not so much in control that he can make up for all our deficiencies. This may sound impious, lacking in regard for God. A God who is great should be powerful, right? Who are we to not think God is great? So we must think he is powerful.

But what is the truth? Not everything that happens in this life seems like it comes from God. Maybe it's as simple as, it's not something God wants. (Atheists can provide strong examples of horror and suffering. Jews have had to struggle with the Holocaust as a religious fact, and it should concern us just as it does them.) But if God doesn't want it, then it's possible for things to happen that go against God's plan. My belief is that God always has a plan for everyone's life. But people's choices (whether their own, or other people's) send their lives down different tracks, so that God's first-choice plan ("plan A") gets replaced with his second-place plan ("plan B") or eventually further down the alphabet. And some of those plans that are far from plan A have to involve horror, lies, and suffering, and temptations to despair, delusion, and rejection of God.

What force compels God to allow our lives to become gratuitously bad? God is a holy God, so he can't will us to sin. He is unable to tempt us. But temptations help produce holiness (part of being like God is to turn against sin, ourselves -- so sin has to be presented as a positive thing for us to really strongly do that). Who will tempt us except evil beings? These evil beings then can refuse to work for God in their roles as tempters unless they get concessions, concessions such as a world that contains gratuitous evil. One of these evils might be that God is contractually not allowed to do all of the work he would otherwise do himself (more competently than we would), so we have to do some of it ourselves. Of course, it's good for us to do some of the work, for our own sakes. We anti-tempt ourselves when we care for other people. But there are times when we are not competent in doing our job (or not willing to do it), and there are consequences to that, which fall outside God's desires (and thus are tragic).

While it's always possible that God and Satan negotiate a world where God can do all the anti-tempting necessary, so that if someone rejects him it's 100% their decision, I don't know of any reason from MSL that would make me say I could assume that was the case. So there is uncertainty.

According to this post, God must do everything he can do to save us. Any lack of salvation is due to us, and he must provide us the ideal environment to be saved. So how could God fail to make up for our deficiencies in anti-tempting?

God cares about the salvation of his creatures. In order to have his heart, we must do the same. In order to be saved, we must have his heart. So we must care about the salvation of his creatures to be saved. The best way to do this is through practice.

It may also be the case that the most effective way for us to take this practice seriously is for us to be responsible in some way for others' salvation, in a way that does not get made up by God. After all, nobody makes up for what God does, so God's heart has to face that level of responsibility.

There's a trade-off between the benefit to the worker (who needs to have a reason to take the work seriously) and a risk to the one helped (or who should have been helped, if the worker doesn't do their job). God balances these two, and the result is that to some extent we are responsible for the eternal well-being of other people.

This makes sense to me, and I'm at least provisionally inclined to believe that it simply is the case. But if I want to doubt it, I think I still have to see it as a live possibility.

What is the best way to handle uncertainty? I can think of two natural intuitions. One is to say something like "agnosticism about the existence of God should lead to practical atheism" -- if you can't know about something, assume it doesn't matter. I think this is a fairly common one in culture. But, for people into risk management (some businesses, government, the military, effective altruism), certain uncertain outcomes are worth preparing for or trying to prevent. Practically speaking, if you have a solid-enough idea that God might exist, and of what that would entail, you should act as though God exists (in keeping with how likely you think God might exist), even if you are agnostic.

So which approach should we take, with respect to the possibility that people are needed to produce the best outcome with respect to the salvation of other people? If people aren't needed, and we try anyway, and we do a good job, then there are no downsides. And, if people aren't needed and we try, and do a bad job, whatever mistakes we make will be offset by good decisions God makes in anti-tempting them. (At least, in terms of whether people reach heaven, our mistakes will cause no lasting harm.)

But consider the case where people are needed. If we don't try (or don't do a good job), then there could be tragic consequences.

So I think the natural choice for a believer of MSL is to value evangelicalism. I would say "the natural choice is to live it", and I think most should, but perhaps some could lack competence or good-heartedness to the extent that they might feel it wisest to do nothing evangelical. But, if so they would be doing so for an evangelical cause (by getting out of the way).

What if we are uncertain whether MSL is true or not? To the extent that we think it might not be true, we should consider other goods besides eternal life. But to the extent that we think it probably is true, we should be evangelicals.

What kind of evangelicalism would MSL produce?

Michael Spencer's "Wretched Urgency" talks about evangelical (in the sense I use) church culture that is sort of "crazy". (It's a fleshed-out example from someone who saw that world better than I have.) I would use the term "dishonest" (people forcing themselves to care about things they don't naturally care about). Also, people who are focused heavily on conversions and not the moral life.

Isn't the moral truth that we should save people from hell, and go about it by converting them? But why does that go against what the New Testament seems to exemplify? Spencer makes the point that there isn't much about preaching to the lost in the New Testament. It happens, but the emphasis is more on morality.

The MSLN answer is: if you don't focus on morality, you could be one of the lost. The person you have the greatest chance of reaching to prevent eternal loss is yourself. We know ourselves the best of anyone (although we can sometimes be self-deceived or misguided), and we have the advantage of being able to just obey ourselves when we tell ourselves to repent, with an act of unilateral will. In some sense we can will that other people repent, but also, we are powerless. A mistake that evangelicalism can make is to try to push people to the point of repenting, using pressure and manipulation. MSL and New Wine evangelicals should not do that, and it doesn't make as much sense for them to do so, unlike in some non-New Wine Christianity where it does more so.

In MSLN, while the need and call for holiness is absolute, the time period in which people can pursue holiness is greatly expanded over what we get in secular time. So it doesn't make as much sense to be "wretchedly" urgent. You can dilute your urgency, not to the point that there is none, but you aren't forced into "wretchedness" by the fact of the brevity of secular life -- instead of saying "if this person doesn't change before the end of this life, they will go to hell" you say "if this person doesn't change before the end of this life, that's not the best sign but it's not certain they will go to hell". Because your urgency is diluted, you don't have to drive yourselves and other people as hard in response.

I grew up in a church that in my memory was "practically non-evangelical". This is a term I made up -- "practical non-evangelicalism" (PNE) parallel to "practical atheism". A nominal Christian may really be atheistic in how they prefer, act, and trust ("practically atheistic"), and a nominal evangelical may be non-evangelical in how they prefer, act, and trust. PNE can happen when you have all the doctrinal ingredients necessary to be evangelical, but you just don't derive evangelicalism from them. You might do this by technically still believing in hell and lostness, but just never preaching about it. Maybe the older half of the congregation has memories of the "wretched days", so the Spencer-like preachers emphasize all the things Spencer does (including spiritual maturity, and feeling OK instead of guilty all the time), and the younger half of the congregation, having only heard Spencer-like preachers and not the culture Spencer-like preachers are responding to, again, may have some technical sense that hell exists (it's mentioned in the Bible, after all), but has no real concept that that's a real thing, no concept that people have eternal as opposed to secular well-being, and thus do not care about their own or other people's eternal well-being. It has seemed to me that this sets up two problems: 1) we love people less because less is at stake, 2) we make secular well-being our real concern, and then as soon as the secular world cares for this well-being better than religious people do, religion will have no purpose and die out. #2 matters if there's some reason why God is supposed to matter to us, and we come to know God through people having concern for people (concern in the name of God / religion).

Typically, I like to solve as much of my problems as I can with principles, and avoid laws and practical wisdom. If you can found your thought structure on good basic truths, then everything should follow well. Get your basic truths right, if you possibly can, to save you work in the law-writing and practical wisdom phases. I think it's hard to avoid laws and the need for practical wisdom, though. But with better principles, I think MSLN should do a better job than traditional evangelicalism.

However, traditional evangelicalism isn't totally a failure from an MSL/New Wine perspective. That is, from my natural-theological point of view, it does some good, and probably more good than bad, and even from Spencer's Biblical point of view, it was successful in conveying at least some concern for morality and it did transmit the Bible which he uses to correct "wretched evangelicalism". The messed-up, simplistic version of something might be popular and powerful, at least for a time. I don't think it makes sense to ignore the special genius of "wretched evangelicalism", which is that, though "wretchedly urgent", it actually was urgent. That's not something to dismiss lightly, and it is not good to substitute "wretched urgency" with a "wretched apathy".

What we want is excellence. How do we achieve that? An athlete has to train hard, and even risk injury, in order to be excellent. But, they have to have good technique in order to be excellent. I think that traditional evangelicalism lends itself to bad technique. But being too concerned with health leads to lack of effort. I think MSLN brings better technique in that morality (holiness, spiritual maturity) is part of the goal. You can singlemindedly pursue the goal of salvation of the lost and still attend to morality. That takes care of one of the failure modes of traditional evangelicalism, that "consequentialism" (evangelicalism) "tempts us to sacrifice deontology/virtue ethics" (tempts us to sin, fail to be good, fail to expect goodness from others).

It's possible to associate "spiritual maturity" with healthy living (with secular well-being), such that healthiness (especially mental health) is an inherent part of spiritual maturity. I think it is more dangerous to overemphasize health than to overemphasize effort (because if health is your idol you might not get punished for it like you probably will with effort). But health is a valid concern, and does play into the longevity of a religious movement (if everyone burns out, the movement loses ability to expend effort in the long run). I don't know if I've written about this on this blog, but my belief is that legitimism implies that, since the good is the best thing, we should put the good first, and be willing to sacrifice everything to the good. (Legitimacy is the good, God is the good, and both MSL's "Father" and "Son" persons of Legitimacy (the good) risk their existences in order to conform to Legitimacy. God is self-obedient.) This implies that willingness to pursue "the cross" (risking yourself for the sake of the good) is essential to salvation. We can't let health get in the way of that, and MSLN calls for the cross more clearly than non-New Wine Christianity. But, you pursue the cross attempting not to destroy yourself but to be effective, and effectiveness calls for a concern for health. I don't think MSLN clears up this on the level of principle, occasioning law and/or practical wisdom to make sense of this. (Maybe Jesus' example of only dying on one cross and avoiding all the others is helpful.) (Also "Give to health what is health's and to God what is God's" as in this story)

What MSLN does do is say that if you're pushing too hard, in your pursuit of working for your salvation or others' salvation, and you are starting to burn out, you can say "Well, there's time in the Millennium, so I don't have to make this effect happen now, so I can take a break". But if you're becoming too apathetic, you can say "Wait, there's something real at stake, I need to go to work. Who can say if my work won't help someone escape hell?" MSLN's ideas about how reality is set up allow us to move away from either extreme position of "there is no work to be done for God, only to attend to secular well-being, if that" and "the work for God is so urgent that we need to pursue it dishonestly, insanely, etc.". MSLN is in the middle, motivating work for God without too often leading to "wretched urgency".

--

Perhaps, to sum up so far, the problem with evangelicalisms are that they can be unhealthy, dishonest, immoral, "wretched", and thus be counterproductive.

A traditional evangelical could keep their "heaven or hell when you die" perspective and say "while it looks as though there is an intense, burning urgency to help people find God, what actually works to achieve that is to not think about that or in those terms, otherwise you become unhealthy, dishonest, immoral, 'wretched', etc.". In other words, things are "not what they say on the tin". You might naively think that you should care about other people and feel the feelings, think the thoughts, etc., that go along with their objective state, and then act on those feelings/thoughts. But actually, you shouldn't care about other people, nor feel those feelings, think those thoughts. Actually, to "really" care about other people is like not caring. Caring is "not what it says on the tin".

When I admired traditional evangelicalism's possession of urgency earlier (even if it might be "wretched"), part of what I thought was good was the way that urgency gets us to actually do things. The doing of things follows from objective reality. Just to see someone as lost gives you a power and direction to do something. Their lostness is a moral truth. How will you respond to that truth? If you don't respond to moral truth, what kind of person are you? Probably someone lacking in moral sensitivity -- having a heart unlike God's.

Perhaps in some grim world the best we can do is live the paradox. Maybe the paradox lurks in non-New Wine evangelicalism (at least all the non-"wretched" varieties), and the best we can do is be paradoxical.

With MSLN, you don't need to distance yourself from the objective fact of someone else's lostness in order to relate to it in a healthy, honest, moral, non-"wretched" way. So then the "MSLian" or New Wine Christian can better maintain their connection to the fact of lostness. They can trust the category of "objective truth" more. They can derive strength from the truth in a way that a paradox-minded person can't. They can be more passionate, and thus will probably be more fruitful than they would have been as "paradoxical traditional evangelicals" or "practical non-evangelicals".

This assumes that MSLN (a set of ideas) is well-implemented by the people who adopt it. And like anything, it might not be well-implemented if its adherents do a bad-enough job. But MSLN itself isn't starting them off at as much of a disadvantage as the other views do.

Can MSL evangelicalism be trusted by traditional evangelicals?

This post is written at least in part so that non-New Wine evangelicals might consider New Wine evangelicalism. One question such people might have is "We think that what matters is that people make a decision for Jesus -- that they are converted. Could the New Wine System be a scam that gets us to no longer emphasize that thing, which we have always thought mattered? What if we mistakenly believe the New Wine System, although it is false, and fail to do work we should have done, and people go to hell who otherwise would not have?"

I do think that being concerned about intellectual scams is valid, and that a change in the beliefs that affect what you consider highest is one to make carefully and aware of the risk. A New Wine person like myself, considering traditional evangelicalism's arguments if they were presented to me, might feel like they are a scam, to get me to give up my concern over holiness's role in salvation. Traditional evangelicalism at its worst produces shallow believers who think they are 100% OK in the eyes of God (effectively -- they know "they are sinners" but don't think being a sinner is really a bad thing since they are guaranteed to go to heaven). In this regime of moral shallowness, people can harden on little sins that they like, and in some areas become deaf to the voice of Jesus. So traditional evangelicalism, when it succeeds at what it thinks is sufficient to save people, could bias some people toward choosing hell, if in fact New Wine evangelicalism is correct. Both evangelicalisms are potential scams, depending on your perspective.

How can you choose between two potential scams? (Especially when, in this area, all the alternatives are potential scams, things that if you adopt them might cause you to take focus off of what really matters.)

How much are New Wine and traditional evangelicalism in tension, practically speaking? Maybe in practice they achieve the same ends, more or less.

Conversion matters to a New Wine person because it enables people to point themselves in a better direction with respect to God. It's part of holiness as I understand it. Can you reach God without a conscious trusting relationship to him? No. Likewise traditional evangelicals (despite "wretchedness") still teach holiness.

It's true that MSL doesn't require a person to trust in Jesus by that name. In some languages, Jesus is known as "Yeshua" or "Isa", not "Jesus", so it's not the string of letters that is essential to the name of Jesus, but rather some minimal set of traits in the person associated with that name, that makes the name really the name of Jesus. MSL does require trust in Legitimacy/the good/God in multiple persons, does require that that God take on the form of a limited personal being such as we are and die, and I think (although I'd have to check), most of what Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount (one exception being his call to keep the Law) are implied by MSL. I think if you want to implement the idea of a good God, and a good God in human form, according to MSL's view of God and goodness, you might well recreate many or most of the sets of traits of Jesus, when looking at the person of Legitimacy who takes on limited form, such that it makes sense to give that person the name of Jesus. However, not having spelled out all of the essential traits of Jesus, nor of all the implications of MSL, I can't say that MSL preaches Jesus, exactly. If it doesn't, it gets people relatively close to trust in Jesus, but that might not be close enough for the comfort of some traditional evangelicals.

(If the name "Jesus" or something etymologically similar is one of the minimal essential traits that identify Jesus, then MSLians could easily use that name to refer to the person of Legitimacy that resembles the Biblical Jesus. I've used "the Son" before in MSL contexts, which might also be adequate. I suppose this is only a fair thing to do if we can identify the other minimal essential traits of the Biblical Jesus as well as the full MSL conception of its "Son", and the two line up sufficiently that they refer to the same being.)

However, New Wine Christianity (as opposed to the MSL natural theology) holds Jesus as high as any other kind of Christianity. Evangelical Christians do not need to convert to MSL, but rather to New Wine Christianity, if they find the ideas held in common between MSL and the New Wine System convincing.

Yet they still might be concerned about the existence of MSL. Could MSL be leading people astray, to 99% of what it takes to be saved (having an understanding of the limited person of God that almost amounts to the Jesus that is the way, truth, and life), but stop them before going 100% (really believing in Jesus)? From one perspective, we could say "well, among all the not-100% versions of the truth that are out there, this one is better than most". But I'm sensitive to concerns about coming up with something that is 99% right and therefore highly trust-producing but which is fatal by not going the full distance. I think (I hope I've said this before and say it later by way of emphasis) that MSL naturally calls us to say "we don't know everything that we might need to know about God and we're listening to hear the answer". An MSLian certainly should listen to a traditional evangelical talk about Jesus, and I think naturally would welcome hearing about their ideas and considering adopting them. Why not become a Christian, at least in some minimal sense? Hopefully that (if put into practice as much as it should be) would reduce the danger of MSLians not hearing the truth about Jesus that traditional evangelicals possess. I don't think the world (in this life, at least) is ever completely safe, nor is any state of affairs not at all apt for concern. The traditional evangelical must consider the danger that they are wrong and MSL is right, just as the MSLian should consider the danger that they are wrong and traditional evangelicalism is right.

What if the New Wine System causes us to not be as concerned with converting non-believers, given that they can be converted in the next life (according to the New Wine System), and we miss opportunities to convert them in this life which is all we get for this task (according to traditional evangelicalism)? This is a fair concern, and I can see a real risk here. One way to resolve the tension is epistemic. If the truth says the danger is "here" and not "there", then that settles what to do. (Though I'm trying to talk about risk management in this section, ultimately you should believe what's true rather than focusing on trying to be safe.) I think the New Wine System is favored by the truth, but the reader should make up their own mind.

It may be the case that the New Wine System is more effective at producing conversions than traditional evangelicalism. Traditional evangelical conversionism is something I would expect to produce a strong feeling at one point in life which may or may not lead to a lifelong commitment. It's a good way to increase a church's size in the short run. But what kind of people become leaders in a church?

What if churches were full of people who were leaders, who were examples of people living like there's something other than human flourishing that matters or in some other way were deeply and genuinely living like God exists, and who were deeply and genuinely concerned about their neighbors' spiritual lives (that they aim toward the person of God consciously, and that they come into tune with God morally even if they sometimes do that unconscious of the person of God). The New Wine System might be expected to increase congregants' seriousness as Christians at the same time as it decreased (but not to zero) their emphasis on having to convert people in this life. Possibly more people would become the kind of people who could convert others, by increasing their own trustworthiness through the pursuit of holiness, and by taking their faith seriously enough to love and reach out to the people who don't have it, even if their individual urgency to convert decreased. It could be the case that the New Wine System would perform well from a conversionist point of view (although that remains to be seen).

Another perspective is that the church universal is an ecosystem. Traditional evangelicals are effective at conversionism, but they sometimes are "wretched". People who are converted by traditional evangelicalism but don't do well in traditional evangelical churches leave -- perhaps they leave Christianity entirely. Or perhaps they go to a PNE, liberal/mainline, progressive, Catholic, or Orthodox church (maybe even fundamentalism would sound better than traditional evangelicalism to some). Each of these variants of Christianity provide homes that people might like to stay in -- they are not all in line with the truth (they couldn't all be since they differ from each other doctrinally), but they serve a purpose.

The existence of New Wine doctrine allows PNE, and possibly also liberal/mainline and progressive Christianity to move in a more evangelical direction -- and thus as a byproduct produce more conversions. The New Wine System is more congruent with PNE (and maybe some liberal/mainline and progressive) Christian cultures, would be more fitting for the kind of people attending there.

From this, a committed traditional evangelical might look on the New Wine System as being among a number of doctrines that are not completely valid, but not the worst of them. And possibly also as a less-risky thing to consider believing and recommending to others.

Some editing issues explain the redundancy of the following paragraph:

That goes for New Wine Christianity. But MSL might sound risky, still, if it does not insist on the name of Jesus. I think that the exact same belief can move one person closer to the truth, and another person further. It's possible for MSL to move people from atheism and non-Christian spirituality toward theism, and while MSL does not force people to accept the Bible logically, it does recommend the Bible to some extent, I think. (I haven't done all the thinking that I feel I should on this subject, but on the surface, because MSL sounds like a proto-Christianity or minimalist Christianity, it makes Christian scriptures seem like they might be from God. And, as I said before, an MSLian should have the sense that they may not know enough about God.) Depending on how things turn out, this could lead non-Christians to become Christians who otherwise wouldn't have, although the risk remains that some people would think that the name of Jesus wasn't necessary for salvation, given that an intermediate step in becoming a Christian did not insist on that.

Maybe practically speaking, we should seek to prefer, act, and trust according to both MSL and traditional evangelicalism (should both aim for complete holiness and seek to convert and be converted). If those were the only two versions of the purported truth out there, I think it would be easy for me to try to satisfy both personally, and emphasize both in my behavior to other people. I feel like MSL "has nothing against" conversion, and traditional evangelicalism "has nothing against" holiness. I personally find MSL and the Bible the only options I'm interested in obeying, and so that doesn't seem like a huge leap to me, and perhaps the reader is in the same situation. Then, neither belief system is practically speaking risky from the other's perspective.

But, if I'm trying to be openminded, I consider the possibility of views like Islam, or "Christianity+" religions like Roman Catholicism and Mormonism. Do I have to satisfy Muslim doctrine? I think MSL rules out Islam's insistence on its version of the oneness of God (this is not my official opinion, but seems like a safe guess about the Islam I've heard of). I can't satisfy both Islam and Christianity at the same time. But could I satisfy Catholic or Mormon Christianity along with the Christianity of the 66 book canon I grew up with? I don't know. What if there was some little sect of Christianity, 200 members strong, in some obscure part of the world, that taught that salvation requires a certain kind of faith in God, the real faith that died out in the first century, a specific kind of faith that they know about, and this is the only way to avoid hell? So I have to have their kind of faith? What if it conflicts with MSL and traditional evangelical faith? Can I know that such a sect does not exist and that they are not right? Sure, they are small and thus I might claim are insignificant, but the church was small in the first century.

Is it easy to know the truth, and know that you know the truth, sufficient to prefer, act, and trust so that you are saved? Maybe not. If not, and God exists, and God loves you, and God wants to achieve what satisfies his desires, wouldn't he provide you a way to come to know whatever truth is needed for salvation, whether in this life or a later one? This is essentially an argument against traditional evangelicalism and for something like MSL. This doesn't mean that it doesn't matter what we believe in this life, but that the significance of, what kind of beliefs we believe in this life, is diluted by the provision of God for an afterlife where hopefully the epistemic environment for our trusting of God is more favorable. (If it's useful in saving us, I think we will be given clarity someday.)

Are traditional evangelicals more afraid of hell than they believe that God exists, loves us, and wants to achieve what satisfies his desires? If so, then it makes sense to be suspicious of MSL and the New Wine System. Otherwise, no.

What about "dark evangelicalism"?

This section is somewhat of a footnote or note to myself, not as well-thought-out, and weirder.

Someone could object that maybe God is not ultimately in control enough of the process of salvation, such that he can't guarantee a clearing-up of salvation doctrine later. This does not sound like traditional evangelicalism, whose God is simply omnipotent. But one could imagine a dark evangelicalism, where people need to hear about God in this life to be saved, and God is powerless to give them a second chance.

God really loves, and God doesn't want any of us to be lost. He doesn't create any of us to go to hell. God would not create us if he knew that there was a chance any of us were bound for hell at the time of creation, which would be the case if he didn't provide a way for us to be saved (like an afterlife where we could hear the truth adequately). We might end up going to hell, through the mishaps of life and our turning away from him, but to not provide something like the Millennium would be an unforced error on his part.

So now the "dark evangelical" has to claim that God is not fully or sufficiently loving. But this contradicts the Bible. The Bible says (1 John 4:8) that "God is love". If God was not fully loving, love itself would not be fully loving. Or, if "God is love" is a figure of speech for "God is loving", the love that we have comes from God (1 John 4:7), so we can't exceed God in being loving. And I would assume we can't exceed God in practical wisdom. (Although maybe a "dark evangelical" would contest that? I think creating the world would require a lot more practical wisdom than living one human life.) So if a human can figure out that it doesn't make sense to make an unforced error that prevents people from going to heaven, and doesn't do it out of love, God would also be able to figure that out, and wouldn't do it. So the Bible does not give support to the idea that God is insufficiently loving to avoid "dark evangelicalism".

A traditional evangelical (we will say) believes in "sola scriptura" and so would reject the dark position for being unbiblical. But an "MSLian" might take the dark evangelical position seriously. Is there evidence for dark evangelicalism?

Possibly some can be found in MSLN itself, at least in the first two arguments (the Metaphysical Organism (M) and simantism) (S). The idea that God has to be fully loving is developed in legitimism (L), where love is a form of value, everything that exists is at least temporarily legitimate, Legitimacy has to value what is deserving, everything that is legitimate is deserving, and so everything that is not illegitimate (something like "sinful") is something that Legitimacy must value/love/will-to-exist-forever. But if a student of MSLN does not accept L but only M or MS (S implies M), would they have any reason to think that God is loving, sufficient that he would have to be competent in choosing whether to create us?

The Metaphysical Organism, and by extension the Speaker, is a being of perfect empathy. They feel exactly what we feel. While I don't know how to measure how much unbearable pain there is in our world, I think there is a lot of it, probably unrelenting for thousands (or perhaps millions?) of years. The Metaphysical Organism/Speaker would likely understand this long duration, unrelentingness -- perhaps understand after a few weeks of the load of pain, and then think "is it worth going on?" If they decided to, it would be an action of love, tested over the years by the constant or near-constant barrage of qualia of unbearability. They would show their value for creation by the pain they were willing to bear for us. So the pain and tragedy of creation gives us a reason to think they love us enough to not create if things were going to be really hopeless.

Under M or MS, why would the MO/Speaker need us to accept Jesus as our savior? I don't know of a reason off the top of my head. Why would they require any particular thing for salvation? I can understand them not being able to keep us around if we insist on doing unbearable things or being unbearable to them. But otherwise, why would we have to do any particular thing, like make a decision for Jesus? In MSL, it makes some sense because part of being legitimate is to trust/follow Legitimacy and if Jesus is who he says he is, he is part of Legitimacy. Accepting someone like Jesus is part of MSL. But it's not as clearly a part of M or MS.

A reason why the Speaker could be known to love us is because he created the simantic word of "love", and so understands it deeply himself. Thus, if we can apprehend it and participate in it, we know what he knows. If we know that love is greater than its competitors, he knows that, and will see love as we do, so that he will only create if there is a chance for each of us to be saved. (He know sadism (for instance) as well, but perhaps if you understand love and sadism perfectly, you will always automatically choose love as the best, and sadism as not measuring up.)

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People think they have experiences of God. Probably they do sometimes, if it's sufficiently possible that God exists. Is God loving? I think for most people (maybe even in different religions?) he is. God is supposed to be trustworthy, and somehow he tells us he is. Not everyone experiences him this way necessarily, but I would guess it's the majority view and maybe that should count for some kind of evidence.

Maybe we could view religious experience as experience with spirits (some of whom claim to be God, or working for God), as opposed to with God. If the spirits are trustworthy (we know from relating to them), maybe if they tell us that God is loving, we should believe them?

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If something claims our practical attention (our trust and/or obedience), if the credence we can give it is below a certain amount, it's as likely as so many other conflicting things that it's not worth worrying about. Can dark evangelicalism rise above that threshold? It's an open question. Can it be deemed likely enough, and also recommend a clear-enough course of action, that we can trust and/or obey it?