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Yes. Your analysis is exactly the conclusion I came to reading, of all things, the late David Graeber's "Debt: The First 5,000 Years". Graeber is a dyed-in-the-wool Leftist, and his thesis for the book was that the very idea of "debt," in the financial sense, was basically conceived as a cynical manipulation of religious impulses to subject the populace to eternal servitude. He correctly observes that there has always been a moral implication to "paying one's debts," and that this implication appears to get stronger and more explicit the farther back in history one goes. So, he argues, what originally happened is that the state needed a way of keeping the populace in line, so it hijacked religious notions of moral obligation and connected them to this new idea of "money," by declaring that the taxes they were collecting could only be paid in specified forms.

Of course, the whole thing is based, almost but not quite explicitly, on the assumption that because Graeber finds notions of religious belief and supernatural morality to be completely silly and unbelievable, that ancient people must have always felt the same way. Ergo, the connection between morality and debt was, from the outset, a manipulative lie. Graeber excludes, from the outset, no argument, and little discussion, idea that anyone could have seriously believed that there really was some genuinely moral reason for paying what one owes, or even that there is a genuinely supernatural valance to morality at all.

Which seems to be exactly what you describe Modernism as doing with respect to Faith.

One minor quibble though: I'm not quite sure that's what Nietzsche means by "God" being "dead." I've always understood that as a way of saying that once society no longer bases its morality or ideology on God--not just the idea of God, but God as a personal entity!--the resulting moral and ideological outcomes will, necessarily, not resemble the old ones. It turns out that God did an awful lot of heavy lifting in making Western European notions of morality, society, etc., function. The nineteenth-century Moderns thought they could remove God from the picture but still end up with a society that looks basically like the one bequeathed to them by Christendom. Niezsche, the mad prophet, is here to tell them That's Not How That Works. God doesn't animate or motivate society the way he used to, and you need to stop expecting things to work as if he did.

Still. It occurs to me that you might simply be describing the same phenomenon from a different angle. I just re-read the above before posting, and I wonder whether you would agree that your description of "Faith" here is trying to get at the same thing, i.e., that once you move away from a genuine, functioning Faith in God, everything stops working.

Thoughts?

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Faith is walking off a cliff and trusting that He will not let you fall. It's the hardest thing to do. James 2:24 isn't the argument against Sola Fida, it's Mathew 14:29-30.

I find it very difficult to love Jesus, I just want Him to give me the grace to love Him more.

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Very deep and good food for thought ~ I wish more self proclaimed "! CHRISTIANS!" would read this but because it reveals the basic lack of Christianity in most of them they'd never even look .

Believing in God because of fear means you missed the entire message .

-Nate

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I've had one great prayer answered in my life. This took place over the course of several months, and then all in a day. For several months, I was basically a wreck, a shell of a human being who could only best manage not to ruin every good thing I had, just quietly toiling and wondering how such terrible things could happen to me. Then, in a day, everything was better and I was literally sent to Paradise.

If I had acted on any of the million terrible ideas I'd had in my time of trial, I don't know if I'd seen the rewards, but I know that if I had, I'd have felt at best ridiculous and at worst ashamed at receiving them. I could only have gotten to the good ideas by prayer, and I only got to prayer because it was abundantly clear that I was out of good ideas. When you're out of good ideas, that doesn't mean there aren't any at all! Just because you've given up on the good, doesn't mean it goes away.

"Fear of the Lord" always invokes the future, which is why it isn't a state of petrification and inaction. In fact, it's always invoked during some prudent and righteous action that prioritizes the good over some immediate consequence. God is putting Himself out there, and you can deliver. That's a heavy burden, it's no wonder people don't enjoy it, but hey kid at least this one you didn't get to choose!

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Nicely written. I like your concept of culture Christianity. Elsewhere I have referred to this as an attempt at collective salvation. Where an individual delegates the work to a group, at a distance. The term cultural Christianity sums that thought up nicely and the way you explained it was a really good read.

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Cultural Christianity and "acting as if God was real" only works as far as the pro-social goals are in line with your personal goals. A safe society is great, and worth working for, but their own personal safety is a big part of why people are willing to make concessions and sacrifices for it.

To the extent that the two diverge, that's the difference between the 90%-a-Christian modern liberal citizen and the 100% a Christian believer. A cultural christian's argument for why one should sacrifice themselves holds little weight without an irrational (which is not a bad thing) belief that morality is transcendent and real even absent any social consequences, which is all cultural christianity can muster as far as a rationale for why someone should do any of this in the first place. God is love, truth, and beauty because you have to accept all of them as real or none of them. No half-measures.

Also: Satan is called the accuser for a reason. When I have been about to engage in sin and am tempted (both before the times I fall and the times I resist), the accusation is always "God's not real so why don't you just enjoy yourself, stop lying to yourself", never "What you think is moral is wrong". Everyone post-Christ fundamentally accepts that if morality does indeed exist, it is the Christian one, the only viable alternative to Christianity is nihilism.

Even the internet pagans, as their whole complaint about the modern world rests on their view of Europeans/Men/Themselves as the victims, which is clearly a Christian formulation of morality. The ancient Romans or anyone who truly lives by the Might Makes Right mentality would prefer the WEF over BAP because the WEF are the ones with real power.

The truths unveiled on the cross can never be unseen.

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Rt

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I think Nietzsche and the long line of psychoanalysts he influenced may have something to do with the scepticism to religion. When you think everything is a result of defense mechanism and distortions it is hard to believe in the honesty of extravagant enotions like fear and trembling

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