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11 May 2025
This post could be for a wider audience.
As I've extended my philosophical and theological writing project, I've come to the point where I might consider in a more concrete way what would happen if it was actually adopted. This is my current guess at what an MSL, voluntary millennial holiness (VMH), ethical theism (ET) (MSL/VMH/ET) reform movement would look like, primarily within Christianity. A different question which I address a bit in this, and also have already done so, scattered around in various other writings, is what a free-standing MSL/VMH/ET religion would look like, that is, one which did not rely on any traditional religious texts or traditions. (I recommend you read the links in this paragraph before continuing, if you haven't already.)
I will mention that, while often in my writing I can go either to some kind of logical principle or my personal experience, here I will be going beyond my experience sometimes. So my thoughts here may not be as reliable as I would like. But they can be taken as suggestions. Particularly I am not certain about my understanding of history or the state of the church now.
A long time ago, the Catholics and Orthodox split. Then, later, the Lutherans split from the Catholics and very soon after, the Reformed, Anglicans, and Anabaptists did as well -- the "Protestant Reformation". Later the Methodists, Restorationists, and Pentecostals established themselves and drew members from other denominations. Generally speaking, all these reformers were Christians intentionally trying to imagine a better Christianity. They could be called "endogenous" reformers.
Another "Reformation", besides the "Protestant Reformation", could be the "Secular Reformation". Deists and atheists in the 18th and 19th century (and even some convinced Christians) produced ideas that ended up undermining the authority of the Bible and the church. This "Reformation" continued to this day. It being to some extent an "exogenous" reform, caused by those outside the church.
An exogenous reform can motivate a church to change by threatening the church's survival, and also by introducing ideas that it adopts, without necessarily changing its core identity. I'm not sure I could prove this 100%, but the sense I get is that modern-day Catholicism is more Lutheran in spirit than it was right before the Protestant Reformation. But the Catholic Church hasn't simply converted to Lutheranism. Perhaps the shift in spirit being partly caused by Luther. The "Secular Reformation", I think, took away much of the church's intellectual authority, and made it so that the church had to appeal to "seekers" and lay members more. In places where people could choose what church to go to, like the US, there was already the sense that you could choose "what" kind of Christian you were, introducing competitive market dynamics where churches might try to, and might have to, appeal to the "customer", a consumer. But now there was the added question of if even "that" you should be a Christian. People were even more able to opt out of a given church, by opting out of church itself, and perhaps this led churches to try even more business-like and entertainment-based ways of drawing them in.
I think churches on the losing end of reforms can sometimes recognize some benefits as a result of them, nonetheless. For instance, the Secular Reformation probably weakened the power of abusive churches. There are still abusive churches out there, but it's somewhat easier to say "no" to them and leave, when you can just say "no" to Christianity as a whole. Having lived in the "post-church-and-Bible-authority" (/ postmodern) world my whole life, I have a distaste for the business-like, entertainment-based, hedonism and preferentialism forms of Christianity that exist, but on the other hand, sometimes the "customer" is right, and maybe churches don't have as much reason to take their members for granted as they might have when "everyone knew" that God existed and the Bible was his word.
The MSL/VMH/ET reformation would be one that tries to address problems of intellectual authority (is there a knowable moral truth?) and the possibility of abusive churches. Also it would seek to counteract the spirit and practice of compromise within church. (Thus opposing the most obvious problems of conservative churches (abusiveness) and liberal and moderate ones (lukewarmness).) Also it would seek to be a reform of secular culture.
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MSL, as presented in the MSL booklet, is a relatively simple, concrete proof of the existence of God. Is it persuasive, that is, sound? That's a question that I probably can't answer by myself at this point. I think it is, whenever I think about it. But maybe under pressure it would be proven false? I don't think it's possible to lower its credence below a certain percentage. I think this percentage might be high enough to make it worth obeying, even if it might be false. If so, practically speaking, we should see things and act as though MSL is true. (It depends on the competitors to it in probability space.) Ruling out the possibility that God exists, I feel, is impossible, because it's always possible that everything is conscious experience, and that there is one being that experiences everything, which would be God, as in the M argument (see MSL booklet). So as a society we could search for the truth freely and rigorously, knowing that MSL will be proved enough to make it worth living according to it, so we will have a stable ideology, even if our truth-seeking produces much to disturb us. As a theistic society, we can seek the truth wherever it leads, knowing that we will have a stable, theistic ideology.
However, as far as I can see, the percent likeliness that MSL and VMH are true may be proved high enough that a more enthusiastic pursuit of them can be motivated, something closer to certainty.
If people believed through this more strongly that God existed, this would be a "reformation" (change in teaching), or maybe better yet, a "revival" (change in spirit), because MSL isn't very different from what I guess is many Christians' concept of who and what God is. It does contradict classical theism. But most people aren't that into classical theism as such, and I would not guess that classical theism was true if I simply read the Bible.
VMH is the more "reformational" element. I believe that it gives a better intellectual foundation for seeking conversion and holiness than existing theologies. There are some Christians, I think, who already subscribe to a form of VMH (some Orthodox, and LDS), and they don't seem radically motivated to be Christian, no more so than any other denomination. (At least, if they are, it's not to the level that I would hear about it, someone online a lot, somewhat connected to religion discourse.) Maybe what's "really" needed is revival, not just that we believe that God exists, but that we care about the world. Evangelical culture (in this case, and usually in this post, the culture that is concerned about the lostness of the lost, more so than the meaning of "good news-based") more truly approaches the revival of having God's heart, of caring about the world. But the problem with evangelical theology is that it undermines itself in practice, through "wretched urgency". Optimizing for conversion, fearing the end of life or the end of the world very soon, unexpected, or at the latest around age 80, which is the last chance for salvation, we are tempted to sacrifice psychological health and holiness in order to "reach the lost". People need to care about holiness, we recognize, but that doesn't make sense with narrow conversionism, where conversion is not to a life of holiness, but rather to a minimal state of being saved.
VMH enables us to care about the lost, care about holiness, and believe that a sane, loving God would bring us into existence and have a knowable plan for how we could come to him as kin. I don't think that in practice we care about the lost, outside of the evangelical world, nor care about holiness in much of the church, especially not pursuing it with the expectation of having to go all the way, nor know how it is that there is a plan for our salvation such that it makes sense that some may be lost, thus that we need to do something to help them not be lost. (People are lost if they don't hear about God -- but then why does he let so many not hear about him, through no fault of theirs? VMH says that they can hear in the Millennium. They are lost, but not hopeless -- God isn't making an unforced error, throwing them away without having a plan to reach them.)
Perhaps evangelism, holiness, and the sense of God's soteriological plan are "on the books" in some sense, but we don't really get them, and I think a big part of that is that our soteriology doesn't really make sense. The Christians who may become VMHers "on the books" can be motivated to take it seriously, recognizing it as valuable. The others could have the spirit of saving the lost, but their own theologies undermine that, and conversion to VMH would open them up to having the spirit in a greater amount. So then, MSL and VMH could enable Christians to be real Christians who engage with the real world, producing a real Christianity.
(Perhaps VMH can be "ported" to other religions. In descending order of likelihood in my estimation right now: Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism. If it can be adopted by Muslims, it could shift Muslim culture away from conservative control and toward dialogue, which could ease global tensions and favor reason in religious discussion. Reason in religious discussion might favor Christianity, but would also allow Christians to question some of their own culture, in the light of Muslim perspectives. Widespread adoption of VMH in both Christianity and Islam would reduce the need to convert and defend against conversion.)
Ethical theism could be seen as supporting VMH, but also reforming our image of God and how we relate to him, producing a greater level of maturity. VMH should also produce greater maturity. Ethical theism may help with relating to the secular Western world where care for those harmed or those potentially harmed motivates ethics.
MSL and VMH allow people to increase the amount that they take Christianity seriously (or possibly other religions) further without it not making sense. So it allows people to encourage themselves and each other further.
So MSL/VMH/ET should produce more mature people, more "real" people, more holy people, more caring people, and could ease tensions between religions.
All those sound good, but one area of controversy might be over its relaxation of the concern that people be converted in this life (which is part of its virtue, from another perspective). I expect some Christians to reject it because of that, these being the more conservative or consistently evangelical churches. There are liberal and moderate churches that effectively or officially don't care about hell as much, and they might be more receptive. But even for them, VMH itself opens up the possibility of there being some kind of hell that actually matters, perhaps opening the possibility for the traditional view, where your eternal state is determined by what religion you adopt in this life. Then the question becomes, what's the truth? Christians seem to be able to be confident that the Muslims are wrong. According to both the Bible and the Quran, the negative consequences of choosing Christianity, or Islam, when they are false, are high. I'm not sure 100% about Islam's perspective, but I would say those who choose wrong either go to hell or are more likely to go to hell. Yet Christians seem confident in their choice of Christianity -- presumably because they know the truth. If the truth can lead people to Christianity, it might lead them to VMH Christianity.
It also seems less likely that the very entrenched and developed denominations would adopt it, at least at first (maybe they would be influenced by it without adopting it, or some of their members would adopt it anyway). Catholic, Orthodox, and LDS churches might be slow to adopt it corporately, if ever. Perhaps similarly with Methodists, Lutherans, Anglicans, Pentecostals, and Presbyterians / Reformed. (All these, IIRC, with episcopal or presbyterian polity.) However, the more splintered a tradition is, the more likely a small denomination within it will adopt it. However, congregationalist traditions like Restorationists (Church of Christ, Christian Churches, etc.) and Baptists, and the "non-denominational" and some charismatic churches would not have denominational structures impeding their adoption of VMH.
I would guess the biggest theological objections would come from the Reformed (/ Presbyterians), Lutherans, and Baptists, who could have a problem with the "holiness" part of VMH. (Also, for the Reformed and Lutherans, the denial of predestination.) I'm not sure how much the culture of liberal Protestantism might impede the adoption of MSL/VMH/ET, and I could see it being an obstacle, but I think it might also be a fertile area. (I don't know enough about Anabaptists, Quakers, Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, or any of the smaller denominations to say anything right now.)
MSL/VMH/ET, all three components together, or individually, could work both as things integrated "endogenously" into existing denominations (by that I mean organized bodies like the PCUSA or Southern Baptist Convention) or traditions (by that I mean families of denominations, like Presbyterians or Baptists), or by being a force existing in religious culture outside of existing denominations and traditions, influencing them without them adopting them, could be "exogenous" forces pulling people out of them and motivating them to change internally. This "pulling people out" does not sound entirely pleasant for the groups losing people (and possibly not for those leaving or even accepting them).
1. Work with the momentum, nature, and comparative advantage of existing cultures and institutions. For instance, evangelical churches are comparatively better at having purpose and urgency. They have an energy and effectiveness. Conservative churches are comparatively better at preserving specific doctrines and practices from change, as though they are books -- useful when read. Liberal churches are comparatively good at being a break from purpose, urgency, and doctrinal purity. For those who burn out on evangelical and conservative churches, liberal churches can provide a place to rest, process, and vent. Each of these three types of churches may have a tendency to exaggerate itself. Evangelical churches may burn out the people who would have made them less-evangelical. Liberal churches may end up being "evangelical and conservative in reverse", their own unbalancedness reflecting the unbalancedness of the evangelical and conservative. (The liberals have to be unbalanced to provide a safe space for the victims of evangelical and conservative unbalancedness -- some of these victims (or survivors) couldn't handle even a balanced church. And perhaps the conservatives and evangelicals have to be unbalanced in reverse, due to the existence of the unbalanced liberals who are a threat to orthodoxy.) One more type of church is the moderate church. It may mix two or three of these other types, and possibly has no comparative advantage other than being less unbalanced. It may be balanced, but have no clear direction, unlike the other three. This lack of clear direction and culture may "burn out" some members of moderate churches (although the metaphor of "burning" might be less apt since they are lower-intensity environments), sending them in more extreme directions.
So if you are a "VMHer" (an MSL/VMH/ET person, emphasis on VMH), you might realize that these churches all have their place. As long as these churches have their failure modes, they generate the need for each other. In a way, VMH aims to be a less unbalanced, less unhealthy, less unholy evangelical religious movement, or a more intense moderate religious movement (which might end up being the same thing in some cases). But it's unlikely that everyone will belong to a VMH church and in the meantime it may be appropriate for VMHers to attend the churches that are out there, as missionaries. And as missionaries, they should respect that (generally speaking) these churches are each fulfilling a necessary function, a function which may require them to be somewhat out of tune with MSL/VMH/ET. In an ideal world, there would be no need for out-of-balance churches to balance out other out-of-balance churches, but it's good that it's possible for there to be such compensatory churches, because it's always possible for "the right kind" of churches to go out of balance / go bad / etc. Since I don't have experience with being a VMHer missionary to a church, I can't say too much more. But I think that radically changing the nature of a whole group to fit MSL/VMH/ET may be a bad idea, and I don't think it's a good idea to try to wage war on these natural types. The VMHer hopes that in the Millennium, the deficiencies of misguided churches can be ameliorated, and in the meantime, it is better to make them more "practically VMHer" while still openly being conservative, evangelical, moderate, or liberal, so that openly they can provide a safe haven for those repelled by the other groups.
One way to do this is to find the disaffected people, the people who might leave a church, and tell them about MSL/VMH/ET. VMH especially allows people to be balanced and intense, and thus may keep them from needing to seek a compensatory church. I see the culture of MSL/VMH/ET as being a missionary culture: self-reliant, outsider, observant of different cultures, "third culture". So a "missionary" is someone who can remain in adverse cultural situations, where they don't really belong anymore. I think a moderate amount of "pastoral" work within non-VMH churches could be good, something to highlight from within the logic of the non-VMH church how people can be more "practically VMHer" (more holy and more open to coming to believe what is actually true, whatever that turns out to be, another move of avoiding hardening).
2. The role of the missionary never ends. Even if all churches are VMH churches, congregants are missionaries to their own churches. They both belong and don't belong. A congregation (and maybe also a denomination or tradition) has a tendency to lose its spirit over time and gradually (or maybe not so gradually) shed members, like a fading ember. Missionaries observe their own cultures and try to bring reality to them. The words of MSL/VMH/ET might be good, but do we really mean them when we say them? Sometimes it's probably okay not to focus too much on that particular problem, but the problem will recur over and over, and perhaps never finally come to an end. So there should be some vigilance. We each are missionaries sent by God to whatever social contexts we are part of, including our own "mother" congregations, VMHer though they may be, and to our own families, VMHer though they may be. We individually report to God first, then to our social contexts. This opens the possibility of excessive and inharmonious individualism, but I think if we stick to MSL/VMH/ET, it should give us the necessary moderateness and patience to keep us from becoming excessively discordant. If we are wise, we will not go against our social contexts unless we have reason to think we know better, and this thought filters some tendency to excessive and inharmonious individualism. Unwise people will fail, some of them no matter what you say to instruct them, and individualism can empower unwise people, but I think it's important to err a bit on that side, so that VMH churches (or maybe non-VMH ones, if they're receptive) do get the feedback when they're doing something wrong, and people do take responsibility for their own engagement with church culture, the way a lone missionary has to.
3. VMHers in leadership roles, especially in VMH churches, need to be able to listen to the criticism of individuals who may offer ways to keep the system from running down. However, there is a division between "structure" roles and "change" roles. "Structure" makes sure that there is a body of believers, which we can call a church. (Similarly with other institutions.) "Change" is responsible for what the body is. Structure tends to be conservative, inclusive, and dependable, typically to create one big harmonious body of people. Structure people might be incentivized to try to keep the money coming in to pay the pastor and maintain the building, in a typical congregation. They may strive to care about people's change into really holy people. But they can't take risks, they are often over-stretched for time, they can't offend too many people, and they have to keep their personalities basically centered, thus fit for certain people and not for others. "Change" people, ideally, are out of the leadership loop, can just leave a church if things go bad, have less concern for offending people and if they offend someone they are not taken to be very representative of the church as a whole, and they can be as individual and idiosyncratic as can be (fit for just one sheep and not for any of the ninety-nine). Such people can prioiritize holiness, truth-seeking, etc. Perhaps VMHer church leaders simply have to maintain that there is a body of people, and allow the change agents to do what they do. These change agents, if VMHer, should remain somewhat hard to detect by the structure, and should not pose a problem to the structure people's values, which ultimately converge on the change people's. (If they don't, then perhaps conflict is unavoidable.) Hopefully a VMHer structure person doesn't even have to listen to criticism, because the change people are simply making things better on their own, quietly and more or less invisibly. If it's necessary to communicate openly about a problem, the structure people should listen and then have the sometimes difficult task of weighing whether the person offering advice should be followed in the matter. It's not like every time a change person offers advice it's good, or that if they do offer good advice it will be heeded. But at least a structure person can open channels of communication and respect criticism and advice coming from anyone in the church.
4. The church is a microcosm for society at large. VMHers may apply the thinking of how to relate to churches or other relatively small social contexts to society at large. Just as they work to keep churches from running down, promoting holiness and truth-seeking and whatever might keep people in them from hardening, so they do in the world. This may have civilizational benefits -- seeking good, self-corrective sustainability.
Similarly, the church is a macrocosm for immediate and extended families, and friend groups, especially ones that have a significant institutional component (rituals, traditions, expectations, etc.) The church is analogous to workplaces. In these areas, VMHers may apply the thinking of how to relate to church, attempting to bring about excellence and longevity, as they do in the church.
5. VMH and ET are potentially powerfully alienating beliefs. It depends on how seriously you take them. Some people are strongly oriented toward truth, and can't unsee things. This is part of what it takes to be a serious person in touch with reality. But this can make life difficult when you are surrounded by environments that do not change to fit the truth. Yet, this is exactly the predicament missionaries must find themselves in. In fact, if there isn't this tension, then they are likely to be unable or unwilling to do their work, or they are in a context where they aren't really facing the unrealistic world.
To make this tension somewhat more bearable, without compromising on the truth, it can be good for VMHers to have at least some kind of space, or some set of VMHer relationships, in which their beliefs are validated by people attempting and hopefully often succeeding in pursuing VMH, other VMHers. The aforementioned VMH church idea is one way of doing this. Perhaps such a church would meet on a day other than Sunday, to allow VMHers to attend their mission churches. It would be a space of recovery, and education, to help VMHers in their work, work-oriented rest. It would not be a piece of heaven on earth, as some church services seem to try to be.
Such a church (if "church" would even be the right name for it) could exist online. MSL/VMH/ET writing would be readable by anyone who found it online. It might not be possible or practical to have a local church in every city where there is a VMHer. So at minimum there would have to be an online support system.
6. People who are attracted to new religions or social movements often (I would guess) have some kind of instability, trauma, hunger, unmet need, etc. Part of this is because often only unhappy people look to "a new country". They have the drive to get out of the status quo. Another part of this is that, especially initially, those attracted to MSL/VMH/ET may be people who have not fit in in the status quo, because they are already "practical VMHers", fully or somewhat, and have suffered from that social dissonance, the indifference and hostility they attract. Pursuit of MSL/VMH/ET may in part (or in some cases, almost wholly) be a mechanism for dealing with some kind of personal issue. This does not make it invalid, as long as people develop a real understanding and commitment to MSL/VMH/ET. However, a person attracted to MSL/VMH/ET should be prepared to see some of this dynamic in others, and likely in themselves. Unrooted people trying to become rooted in something new just for the sake of being rooted in something, trying to pair up with each other romantically or platonically independent of VMHer work ethic, sometimes pulling each other away from what they ostensibly believe in to pursue their psychological hungers, are potential challenges that can distract from VMHer identity and belief. However, a more positive view would be that those psychological hungers can provide a lot of energy (maybe more useful in the more "how can we love?" mode, see below). And those hungers to bond and to be rooted can give energy to do good.
7. I mentioned "how can we love?" above. This is a reference to a book I wrote called How Can We Love?. That book is basically a particular mixture of VMH and effective altruist ideology (specifically the Drowning Child Illustration). It has a kind of secular energy to it, and I think it can give a lot of psychological power to do good -- in other words, to work hard, pile up a kind of wealth, make things, learn things, spend the wealth, a kind of economic production. It motivated me to write for 12 years, making a kind of impersonal product, my writing. (It gave me an initial, and sustaining, push that eventually wore out.) It could also motivate activism, more confrontational and open attempts to change systems. Because I was alone with it, I never got to explore where it could lead. I never had the social support to enable me to sustain it. I found it to be intense and taxing, and at that point in my life, I would have needed a functioning religious / social movement to allow me to continue in it. Unsupported (or falsely supported, as the case sometimes was -- some of what I call "burnout" may really be "the aftereffects of psychological trauma from bad people, some of whom I tried relying on"), it eventually burned me out, as effective altruist ideology sometimes does, and as VMH apart from effective altruist ideology may sometimes prove to.
I'm not sure if I should recommend it highly or not at all. The alternative is a more purely VMHer ideology, which is more oriented toward quiet excellent sustainability, what I've been trying to write about above in this post. Is it good for people to openly confront the world, as "how can we love?" promotes with its vibe? Is it my own fatigue that causes me to say "no, the quiet way is better, don't break eggs, don't feed the discourse"? Or is it the wisdom of being older? Is it perhaps the case that How Can We Love? was necessary for me to write and live by, but now that I know better, no one else needs to? Or perhaps I will wake up to How Can We Love? someday, and return to it. I don't know, but I think that book might be the surest way (of what I've written) to the more profound moral truth at the heart of VMH and ET, the thing that alienates you from non-VMHers if you get it, which enables you to be a more effective missionary.
"How can we love?" is maybe for culture warriors of various sorts (artists, intellectuals, activists, perhaps others), while the more purely VMHer culture is maybe for missionaries (who could be culture warriors in a sense, but are more essentially something like pastors, if not always in charge of flocks).
So then there may be a dichotomy between "movement" (openly world-confronting VMHer activity) and "religion" (quieter, smaller-scale, more peaceful VMHer activity). "Movement" and "religion" may sometimes step on each other's toes, though they seek the same goal. Some people may find themselves pulled toward both at the same time. The two could intentionally see each other as complementary, and just like men and women, might not completely understand each other. I suppose it's also possible that the two would get along with each other and flow into each other naturally.
I personally think it might be hard to enter a church as an MSL/VMH/ET missionary simply because it would be hard to hide my 12 years of writing when talking to people. Somewhat analogously, the movement may make it harder for missionaries to work under the radar. I suppose conventional Christian missionaries, say, in a Muslim-majority country like Turkey or Indonesia, manage to work more or less quietly even though Christianity has always been a thing Islam knew about, and even many people in those countries may have some kind of real acquaintance with Christian teaching, if they are religiously curious. So maybe it wouldn't make too big of a difference in this case.
Culture war breaks eggs that maybe missionaries have to put back together. That metaphor makes it sound like the culture warriors put very little effort in, can break a warehouse full of eggs in one enthusiastic evening (maybe when they release that big blog post), and the missionaries have to do a lot of work on their end, tedious reconstruction, requiring many laborers though only one warrior launched his or her missile. There may be some truth to that. Should culture warriors try to be more responsible with their forays? It isn't good for the truth to be compromised, but otherwise, yes. There has to be a degree of irresponsibility in making information public, since you don't know what other people are going to see in it, or do with it. Yet, you can avoid unforced errors.
The advice of the Epistle of James says "not many of you should be teachers". Perhaps one could say "not many of you should be culture warriors". That's fair enough, but I think in a democratic society, many of us want to be culture warriors. So "how can we love?" might attract many people who resonate with culture war, yet who need to learn to not be culture warriors. Fortunately, in a way, there is a natural tendency for most artists and intellectuals to live in obscurity. On a small scale, like at an open mic night, artists operate more like missionaries than celebrities, and their culture war is something that won't break a warehouse full of eggs, and they can even be the ones to reconstruct the broken eggs. "How can we love?" (and the book) doesn't have to motivate culture war, rather more essentially it's about work in the world, often in secular contexts, with a somewhat secular vibe (something I feel in it, though I am not sure I could explain why to someone who didn't also feel it). But that engaging energy probably would motivate proto-culture warriors to get even more into culture war.
In the 1960s, "bonds were broken and energy was released", like in a chemical reaction. Similarly, perhaps, in Luther's day. The Protestant Reformation and the Secular Reformation had their dramatic, explosive periods. There was noise, confrontation, passion, and controversy. But if there is a reform movement that is trying to build bonds (interpersonal trust, collective direction, institutions), or reform existing ones without breaking them, maybe it is best to be quiet, non-confrontational, maybe passionate but in a different way, and uncontroversial.
Perhaps the underlying truth of the bonds being built would be something that is really profound, the disjunction, between it and the rest of the world, greater than that between Catholicism and Protestantism, or Christianity and atheism. The job of building bonds says to avoid pressing the point. The duty to the truth, and seeing it as it actually is, a part of being truth-oriented, says to speak clearly and in a sense without pity. One way to resolve this tension is to reveal the cutting truth to people you know, and not to publish it widely. There might be some wisdom in this approach. But in a world where publishing things is very easy, as ours is in the Internet age, a dark secret that is important to a social or religious movement can't stay completely hidden for very long. It's better to have some way to be public, given that it's basically inevitable. Artists in the MSL/VMH/ET tradition would have to work on how to express this. In my music, I have sometimes tried to mix world-confronting lyrics with a sorrowful and peaceful tone, which is one approach. The bond-building and truth-speaking impulses can work together, at least to some extent.
8. MSL/VMH/ET could be seen as a "Mosaic" thing. People live in slavery to their sins. They are low-born, and have the sins of being low-born. With "how can we love?", I focused on the moral truth. This produced a sense of confidence in how I wrote. Other people saw that power without really investing in the truth that I saw. From that, they saw me as a "leader", though that wasn't what I was going for.
People tend to want to have leaders, but not necessarily to care about what the leaders care about, nor to want to become able to bear the burdens that the leaders bear. They make a "Moses" out of them. It feels nice to have a strong-looking person in your life who will guide you and take care of you. You latch on to them, they feel responsible for you and to you, and you can get what you want. Maybe they change your mind over time, maybe they don't. But you definitely get fed, maybe for years. People seem to want a certain kind of person, with a certain kind of vibe, to be theirs. Like a woman or man who wants their spouse to be accomplished, perhaps to sing beautifully, but not to actually pursue their talent seriously. They just like their spouse to have that detail on their personal image painted in nicely -- passion, talent, and dedication as decoration.
The sheep/shepherd division is frustrating if the whole point of your movement is to teach people to become the kind of people who could lead. This is much more the goal of MSL/VMH/ET than the church as I see it. Certainly sometimes sheep do become shepherds, but sometimes sheep can drain your energy for years without changing, because they feel entitled to the food you give them. They have no intention of becoming mature, they just like being served. I feel like the church already exists for people like them, and VMHers should avoid getting sucked into shepherding-for-shepherding's sake, when it's possible to help other people actually change. Perhaps for "structure" people, it does make sense to keep feeding people without them really changing, to hold the social structure together, but for "change" people, especially with limited resources, it's better to focus on the people who might actually listen. Where are people headed? What's their attitude toward listening and changing? What's their attitude toward truth and goodness in general? Those who will move are promising.
People will get into power struggles with you if you look like a strong, confident person. They are dealing with their own craving for status and their sense that they are not good enough. Perhaps the answer, which my future self can be wiser to adopt than my past self was, is to not appear so strong and confident. I think the quiet VMHer missionary (as opposed to the strong "how can we love?" person) might not come off as much as someone to be torn down for the sake of building other people up. You can waste a lot of time and energy dealing with people who think that you're a living confrontation to their identity and self-worth. On the other hand, at least the people who come after you because they are threatened by you care, at least in some sense. The people who are not threatened by you because they don't take you seriously, or the things you're into, in some ways are worse. (They can betray you higher on the hierarchy of betrayal.)
The Mosaic life, then, can easily be one of confrontation and broken relationships as people work out their issues with authority using you as the actor in their personal drama, and try to get psychic food out of you, try to lower you to their level, sometimes trying to enslave you, make you their own captive sheep. Maybe this is worth it sometimes? If you're making a strong public statement (what the moral truth requires in its unvarnished form), then maybe there's no way to avoid Mosaic dynamics. Maybe a more robust movement can make it sustainable by supporting the "Moseses"? I'm not really sure what to advise here. But I can attest to the costliness of the Mosaic approach.
Maybe if you are the bearer of something that seriously questions society (as MSL/VMH/ET does), even if you are skilled with people and careful and wise in your approach to life, you can't avoid the possibility of culture war and Mosaic dynamics from entering your life. But you can reduce that possibility by being more careful, wise, and skilled.
9. The energies of "how can we love?" could spill out into activity that is not really directed toward theistic ends. In a way, I could lament this, but if it has to happen it would be good in itself -- at least, I think usually -- though potentially a distraction from the theistic concerns that are really necessary. This would be a kind of "secularization" of "how can we love?".
The Pentecostals are a family of denominations, I suppose generally having started in the early 20th century. Their main claim to fame is continuationism (the gifts of the Holy Spirit coming down on people in modern times). But they tended to also have some other typical views. I think they are all Arminian, some ordain women, and I think many preach holiness doctrines. Now, as they gained in success, they helped make continuationism look attractive to non-Pentecostals. So that eventually there were such things as "charismatic" Catholics, Anglicans, and I think others, who stayed within their traditional denominations. Also there arose some churches that were not exactly Pentecostal, that were charismatic. I believe a similar thing happened with Calvinistic doctrines, where there were Calvinistic Methodists, and if Max Weber is to be believed (my knowledge of Weber comes from what I remember of his famous The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism), Wesley himself was influenced by the Puritans, part of why he sought holiness, so that all of Methodism is influenced by Calvin. And there are of course the Reformed Baptists and Anglicans. Perhaps they are just like other Baptists or other Anglicans, except Reformed. Reformed theology is not just the Doctrines of Grace / Five Points of Calvinism, but has other features, but there are Calvinistic Baptists who are not the same as the Reformed Baptists, who simply are Calvinistic, without adopting the rest of Reformed theology.
I couldn't exactly call the process discussed in the previous paragraph as "secularization", but it resembles secularization, the exporting of a basic doctrine, or the spirit of the doctrine as with Weber's take on Methodism, outside of the tradition that it formerly had its home in, thus not bringing with it all of the other doctrines and practices associated with it from its home environment. In its new environment, it could do strange new things (as secularized Christianity has done, again citing Weber, who attempted to show that secularized Calvinism allowed the rise of secular capitalism). Or it could do about the same as you would expect, which I would guess is often the case with continuationism and predestination, the examples above.
This "re-traditioning", we might call it, could apply to MSL/VMH/ET. How so? I've already discussed the possibility that congregationalist congregations could simply convert. Hopefully in not too painful a way. Although I don't expect this to happen too often, a presbyterian or episcopal denomination or tradition could adopt VMH officially. The Catholics, Orthodox, Methodists, and some Anglicans might not have to stretch too much of their belief system to accommodate it. The Reformed, Lutherans, and I think a lot of Baptists would not like to hear the sound of it too much insofar as it says complete holiness, significantly up to us and not God, is necessary for salvation. (I think the LDS may officially be VMH already, but may have to shift their emphasis -- and LDS soteriology and eschatology is different from mainstream Christianity and MSLianism, and I don't quite grasp how that works out practically.)
However, though (for instance) officially-VMH Catholicism or Presbyterianism seems unlikely, individual Catholics or Presbyterians who wish to may become "practical VMHers", who live as though VMH is true, even though they on some level continue to officially espouse the Catholic Church's teachings in the one case, or even the Doctrines of Grace, in the other. From a VMH perspective, this is basically OK, although it is true that explicit VMH belief is good, and potentially very powerful. The analogy of the iceberg says a bit of the iceberg is above the water, and far more beneath. Practical VMH is what is below the water, and does more good than explicit belief. But, explicit belief, if held to seriously over time, produces practical VMH, and I'm not sure what else does in as reliable a way. Explicit VMH belief allows the will and intellect to focus on the helpful doctrines that produce the habits, intentions, attitudes, etc. of practical VMH. "Unbelieving VMHers" may further the VMH project (I guess by putting their effort into promoting holiness and truth-seeking, and opposing hardening, and maybe other things that could be added to the "practical VMH portfolio") without necessarily holding to VMH itself.
This post is somewhat provisional. One lingering question for me, for instance, is what to call things. "MSL/VMH/ET" is not quite a nice thing to say out loud, although any two out of three isn't so bad. Possibly "MSL/VMH" is OK, because VMH and ET are discussed in the same booklet. I have already written about "MSLians", who are those who base their religion on the extended MSL philosophy, rather than on traditional texts. (This "extended MSL" includes VMH and ET.) Maybe in contrast, VMHers are those who are also into MSL/VMH/ET, or at least VMH, and often MSL and ET, the emphasis on VMH rather than MSL, and they may subscribe to traditional texts, for instance through the New Wine System, the biblical system developed by Philip Brown from which I learned what I now call VMH. Perhaps this "MSLian" vs. "VMHer" distinction is sufficient to name the two approaches to MSL/VMH/ET, and this post has tended to lean toward talking about VMHer theology and practice. "VMHer" being the MSL/VMH/ET doctrine and practice for the interface between VMH and existing religions (Christianity, likely Judaism, maybe Islam, maybe others), while "MSLian" is for the freestanding philosophical religion of MSL, which is maybe best to present to those with no religion or no theism (atheist/agnostic, New Age, occult, maybe some Hindu, maybe Buddhist, undifferentiated non-religious or spiritual). Or maybe some completely different terms would be best (after all, it's the critics who sometimes get to name the movement).
Speaking of "MSLian", what would the MSLian approach to MSL/VMH/ET belief entail?
Many of the things that I say about VMHers could also apply to MSLians (and vice versa), where I'm really talking about VMH or ethical theism (this is true in this post and in others by me), or theism in general, or where the minimal or proto-Christianity of MSL overlaps with something like the New Wine System. One area of difference, though comes from how MSLians and VMHers more naturally work with different kinds of people.
It would not be wise to make MSLians try to recreate church, because their comparative advantage is to reach people (atheist/agnostic, New Age, occult, undifferentiated non-religious or spiritual) who are often ex-Christians, some turned off by the Bible, some turned off by extra-biblical Christian culture, some turned off by the specific implementations of church that are out there, and some turned off by church itself, in itself.
Personally, I find myself identifying less with the church. So I see myself being an MSLian more than a VMHer.
I'm not sure exactly what the right way to be an MSLian is. But my attempt at it is:
1. Discipline myself, cultivate myself, feed myself, turn myself, etc. to be in line with MSLianism (extended MSL like in Formulalessness). I want who I am to be in line with it.
2. In social situations, be myself. Exert minimal intentionality. Don't be a "master", don't be a "disciple". Don't "be Jesus" (as much as there is demand for that). Don't impose my will or beliefs on others. But don't do things that go against MSL. Try not to intervene in others' lives, unless there is some really urgent danger (which will usually be something that makes sense from a secular perspective). But still quietly "anti-tempt" them.
From these two points maybe "everything else follows". At times, it's appropriate to share about my MSLian beliefs. I am not very good at explaining things in person (I am a writer more than a teacher), so I give out my booklets as an introduction, and if someone wants to know more, maybe I can do that over email.
I am not sure what would happen if someone I knew accepted MSLianism. I have some ideas, like that it's good to avoid dependency, turning me into a "shepherd" or "guru". Better that they be able to read the text and apply it themselves.
Generally, here and with VMHers alike, I like the idea of people being driven by their understanding. Understanding more and more, to the point that the understanding motivates their action. I have tended to avoid writing how-tos or sermons in which I tell people that they should do things, or how they should do them. Deep understanding of how the world works, where it should go, and how its parts interrelate, should show what to do and motivate learning how to do it, in its practical details.
I could see, in spaces that are explicitly MSL/VMH/ET, some kind of education in how to understand things, which hopefully should train MSLians and VMHers in how to come to understand things on their own.
The MSLian paradigm is the "scenic-discipleship polity", less established than even the congregationalist. A scene has groups of disciples who coalesce in small informal groups. In the classic, "traditional discipleship", a master leads the disciples (like Jesus with his disciples). But a different way, more endemic to MSLianism, would be "unseeing discipleship", in which whatever (inevitable) differences in experience and maturity between one person and another are maybe on some level understood, but also disregarded, because the two people are friends or family (this is what friendship and family often does naturally).
Historically, new religious groups have done things like found magazines and newspapers, and especially, educational institutions. I don't think there is anything wrong with there being some kind of newspaper or equivalent that ends up being read by many or most people in the movement or religion. I think that that sort of thing can arise if it is needed. However, I am not so favorable toward educational institutions. Mainly because they cost money and concentrate leadership in a credentialed elite. I think that leadership and education are most beneficial for leaders and the educated. Even if everyone tunes out a sermon, the preacher put in a good 20 hours of study. Diffusing leadership and education seems to me like a good way to go.
However, for those, maybe VMHers, who are interested in the Bible, learning Hebrew and Greek may be best done through an institution. Similarly, for some, learning about theology may be best done through an institution. Perhaps the best way to satisfy those educational needs is to go to a seminary or Bible college of a church you might be interested in being a missionary to. This can teach you a sort of "inside knowledge" of that culture and its teachings. I suppose you probably can't actually get ordained in many or most traditions, due to significant doctrinal differences. On the other hand, having a degree from, say, Westminster Seminary (a Reformed seminary), attending a Reformed church, but not really being Reformed, might seem sort of suspicious (perhaps like you were a missionary to them?).
Other than Hebrew and Greek, I personally would probably not bother with formal education in religion. I feel like I could figure out whatever I would need if I were to be a missionary to a Christian tradition. But I'm probably more autodidactic than many people. Some kind of widespread informal culture of, say, study groups, or something like that, seems like it would be good for a lot of less-autodidactic people. Even Hebrew and Greek, I suppose, could be taught in that way, if the knowledge can be moved out of academia. These study groups could be within the MSL/VMH/ET movement / religion, or could be outside it or somewhere in the middle, depending on what one wants to learn.
Other groups could be set up for developing artistic ability, or other skills or sensitivities that are useful in MSL/VMH.
I think at least for now this is as much of the architecture of an MSL/VMH reform as I can imagine.
Further reading:
I got the term "wretched urgency" from this article.