What Do We Need
According to the experts, we already have what we need. We only need to tweak something and try it one more time. This time, according to the experts, it will work.
The solution may be a politician, a political party, a political solution, a political policy or platform.
Or perhaps a religion or particular branch of a religion. Maybe what is needed is one of the world’s economic theories, with a slight modification of course, customized by one of our political parties, with a new leader with slight variations in the way he will do things.
In other words, the world is in rough shape, but it has the answers all we need is that last slight tweak and we will find ourselves in a new and almost perfect world.
But then there are the people who say it all needs to be destroyed. Despite what they think, this has been tried. First of all, it was tried every time a new nation or civilization emerged. It was built on the ruins of what came before or even with a relatively clean slate.
America had its revolution and we ended up with America.
Mexico tried several revolutions and we ended up with is modern Mexico.
Russia and China both destroyed what existed and came up with what exists now.
Germany managed to have others destroy it and out of the ruins of its destruction emerged one of the greatest tyrannies of all time and out of this destruction arose a nation that no longer believed in itself.
The same thing appears to have happened to Japan but to a far lesser extent.
In other words, we have destroyed and rebuilt in many places, but if we do not destroy the template on which the new creation is built, what point is there in destroying what was built previously, on the same template? We destroy one nation only to rebuild on the same precepts and assumptions.
The system is has not failed because of a failure of technology; technology is neutral. There is only one reason why anything fails, including technical structures; consumption exceeds production. The machine or other implement cannot require more in inputs that it can produce or obtain. The difference between what someone consumes and what it produces is its entropic debt.
When output cannot match consumption, the system begins to decay, maintenance cannot be kept up, and the system ultimately collapses, after bleeding the surrounding support systems dry.
A community that cannot maintain itself ultimately hits a threshold at which point it self-destructs.
This is the situation we are in. The system we are in can no longer produce the output needed to sustain it.
A portion of every society is parasitic. As this portion expands more and more of the system requires subsidization by the remainder. At some point the system will implode and those in it will face a revolution and societal collapse.
What is needed is moral leaders. These are men and women who do not consume more than they produce and indeed, are charitable, producing more than they use themselves. The moral leader produces a surplus.
Moral leaders need faith to give us hope but also to discipline us.
To have faith is not to acquire a substance. Faith is something hoped for and something unseen. It is predicated on the possession of truth for faith only comes through truth.
But we need to have moral discipline. Moral discipline helps us arrive at the truth. Only the truth can give us the faith and discipline needed. However, there needs to be a correlate of the truth, something that will divide truth from lies, in an objective and verifiable way, for faith to grow. Moral leadership requires affirmation and a clear and constant direction.
Apriorian Apologists reject the faith of Christian and apostates alike. The Christian faith is said to be based on the sacrifice of Christ. But Christ said that he is leaving us but will give us a Comforter that will lead us into the truth. This truth is moral, not ethical and there is a difference.
Jesus died not so that we can be led into death but so that His death will give us access to the Holy Spirit.
Jesus guilds us into the spirit of truth. He is our go-between. When people know the truth, the truth sets them free. Buttruth is moral, not ethical, there is a difference.
The thief on the cross was not saved by works but he was saved by the truth. The thief on the cross showed moral leadership and was indwelled by the spirit of truth.
But what is the truth? What is the wisdom we all must imbibe? It is that we must pay our own way. We must become oral leaders in a moral crusade. Christ reconciled us to the cross. He repaired our relationship with God. But there is a verse many Christians prefer to ignore, and that is Matthew 18:18.
What is bound on earth is bound in heaven. The spirit of the truth is found in the church. It is through the church we are saved. We need the church. But the church is the epitome of the moral leader. The church ought to instruct us in moral leadership. But morality is not ethics, there is difference and the difference is in the accountability of a moral leader.
Moral leaders need a unit of account to keep us accountable.
Moral leaders require the discipline of objective verification. It was the absence of accountability and of moral leadership that that led to our fall in the Garden. The law cannot discipline us. All of the troubles of Isreal came about because they lacked discipline and because the law was never able to impose discipline on them. They continually sought ways around the law, and justifiers for breaking the law. They lack moral leaders and moral discipline.
Moral leaders need to see what is most invisible, the line between good and evil.
But where do we find this? How do we make what is invisible, visible?
It is a far different thing to say that what is needed is a new leader, or a new religion. The results will be different if all we look for is new tax code rather than a new political system.
Perhaps all we do need is a new understanding between labor and business, but it is also true to say we might need a new understanding of what it means to be human.
What difference does it make what we think we need if no one has any faith in what we do?
Faith is denigrated by the world as something not seen and therefore, something without substance. Yet, what is this position but something they believe. In short, atheist strongly believe that faith has no value or relevance. Atheists believe God does not exist, though they cannot prove it. Their position is based solely on faith.
The truth cannot be proven, for there is nothing greater than the truth. One cannot prove 2+2=4 because it is definitions. We cannot prove a definition is true, because it just is.
But we do not need proof, we need faith because in the end, faith is all we have.
We need faith because without it, we have nothing.
This world of the flesh is built on facts. Facts are statements about the physical world. But no one has faith in them because they are conditional and probabilistic.
Faith starts with man and woman and extends to the child. If this trust is not broken the family survives and in time creates a community. All communities are to some degree, communities of faith and these build nations of faith. Without this faith that comes from the family, the nation could not survive.
We need faith because we do not have anything else.
When we cannot trust our neighbor, society collapses.
When we no longer trust ourselves, and begin to question ourselves, then we are insane.
If we cannot trust the flesh and the law cannot properly regulate or constrain us, then what is there we can have faith in? What we need is something that we can have total faith in. If there is such a thing it will be God, regardless of what you might think God is, the pre-eminent conception of God is that which is the highest and most perfect of conceptions, which is that which we have absolute faith in. If there is any doubt or qualification, it does not attain to the definition of God.
What we can be sure of is that regardless of what is needed, it will not be found in the physical world. Whatever we need, it will not be found in facts or in the law.
We need moral leadership and we need, moral perfection.
We need truth and truth is perfect because the truth is metaphysical and absolute. Truth provides discipline because it has no variation.
Indeed, truth systemized is faith in the religious sense. We need faith, personally and as a discipline.
A pure faith, undefiled, is this, a life lived wholly in the word of God, without relying on the world or any of its ways. For perfection does not come from the flesh, nor does truth come from ethics. If the truth is perfect, then it is from God and if from God it is worthy of faith. Indeed, we have no choice but to believe the truth. If we cannot believe in the truth, nothing is left.
How can we believe in the truth if the truth is defiled by our relations with the world? How can we be perfected by the imperfect facts of the world?
There is a path that is open to us along which only the Holy Spirit can guide us. It requires moral discipline. We must pay for the costs we create. To externalize costs is to grieve the spirit.
All the things which grieve the spirit, come down to this, we stray from the correct path given by the truth and the discipline of the one true faith. We fail to become true moral leaders led by the Spirit of Truth.
What can we believe in more than the truth? We are made in the image of God. God is the Creator and He believes in His creation. God Created truth. This is His portion.
It is by following the leading of the Spirit that we are guided into Truth. We add value to the things of God by adding to the truth, by inculcating it in the form of a moral leader.
There is only the creation of God, the assets and the property that make up the physical things of the world, and the value added by man. When guided by the Spirit we become creative. Satan is a liar and a destroyer of morality and truth. Therefore, he is an unmitigated consumer of the value created by others.
The line of division between good and evil is this; the undefiled moral leader who adds value, though works of faith, to the things of God and the free rider who consumes what was produced by others.
Consumption without production is not love it is not charity.
Apriorians are Spirit followers because it is the Spirit that gives us the reason for the faith we have.
Apriorians are led by the spirit because they are follows of deductive logic and guided by logical reasoning. Apriorians are ruled by truth and disciplined by the Holy Spirit. He is our comforter.
The reason for the faith we have is the value we produce; it is the fruit of our works of faith. As we are ready to give, so we are a leader.
A moral leader is a follower of Christ. To be a leader we must have a path to follow. Leaders require a destination. We cannot lead without a place to arrive at.
What the moral leader needs is the truth and a guide to the truth, and this is the Comforter, the Holy Spirit who guides us into the perfect truth of faith.