Flowcharting faith-based faith versus faith-obeying-reason
Mapping Christian byways of worldbuilding by way of a flowchart.
an aside
The usage of terms like “worldbuilding” here is the reason this writing has been written, i.e. I hope I can more fully explore and explain what wworlding is, as a substitute for a lot of 'things' that are outcomes of the moral/worlding urge, but we treat as causal, or worse, requiring more explanation that is actualy necessary (often at the behest of the urge itself).
“Worldbuilding” is what we do most days, it’s one-part extended phenotype and one-part moral urge.
What are we to do with that 'knowledge' is now a question of ethics.
The 'world' is as integral to us as the terrain we move over, as the body we live/use to move over it and compose our lives in the world: seeking nourishment to embody that movement, while seeking the world to landscape that movement. The agency of surviving bodily requires a world be built/made/grown figure/ground for it.
The blue circle labelled “the world” above is inchoate, it is outcome and source. Our choices turn it into our day by day lives. Politics seek to inform it. Narcissists seek to god it for themselves alone.
History is made by those who turn up. Regardless of whether you obey or believe.
A supplement to the above flowchart written 3 June 2023
And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them, "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:25-27
This is a worldbuilding instruction. You can take your pick of the following as to the aim:
- teenage loss
- ascetic indulgence
- alienation
- early attempt to destroy bourgeois family values
- warrior band formation against the dark angels
- general chaos
- just the usual basic devotee and their charismatic leader relationship, or,
- grandiose narcissism of a cult leader
- all of the above in an undifferentiated mess?
What was the intention, what was the design? Did they convert to anything, or were they just following a personal distinction that made sense at the time? Were they just living a practice with rebellious undertones? What part of this was no longer Jewish?
St Augustine’s City of God came much later, between Constantine and Vespasian, after the Goths sacked Rome. Christianity was now the chosen state religion and on the verge of becoming an exclusive government department of direct community engagement and control, and not just a royal imperial cult. The city of god was a world-building exercise drawing on past practices and the then contemporary matters of state. That is why the Catholic & Orthodox Churches are structured like military hierarchies. And why obedience is more important than belief, and belief in belief is a heresy, a choice away from inclusion/membership/identity and a step towards desertion if not treason.
More widely it was a worldbuilding exercise based on re-couping the ancient polis with it’s local concerns, it’s parochial view of who is human, and replacing that with a vision of a universal church of souls obedient to the emporer, i.e. as a new imperial polis that applied to everyone. i.e. the glory of Rome.
Christians are no-longer devotees to the person of Jesus, but instead obey the church and so do not choose choice (heresy) over obedience. Faith in faith, belief in belief, in a relationship directly with Jesus was not good enough for what become Orthodox Christianity.
Especially as the western empire collapses and any technology of worldbuidling that emphasises the loyalty of young fighting men becomes paramount, and that then helps create the feudal medieval order out of pagan barbarian invaders. Especially as cities themselves fo rthe most part disappeared or retreated into swamps.
Curious how important women and families (a Latin grouping which includes the household slaves) are in spreading Christianity before this imperial outcome.
Christianity was so confounded.
Did the first disciples, the first bikies of christ, choose anything at all in leaving their familes, kith and kin, that is in the Roman Orthodoxy?
What would they think of the pope in Rome, or, Luther with his nails?
The flow chart of this Christian story above, re-frames it within a wordlbuilding framework, i.e. drawn consciously as a description of a worldbuilding history.
Religions are created by the state in their image. You think Christianity is better because it gives everyone souls, or recognises that everyone has souls? All are welcome in the city of god? All have individual rights (as it is later interpreted) as humans in the city of god? No, this only gives you the responsibility to obey the church and emperor. Or its zombie descendant organisations. It took the rise of the city, its rennaisance, to give us market liberalism, where city air makes one free.
First posted in 2023 at whyweshould.substack.com. and