Submitted by M Tovey (United States), Aug 7, 2020 at 23:38
Apostates of Religious Callings are a Portent to Collapse of Societies:
Elsewhere in this forum, the contemplations of the survival of 'Western Civilization (Civ)' are debated with observations of the loss of civility in many sectors of world societies due to a combination of failing cultures amid the medical inability to handle the latest pandemic of COVID-19. Indeed, there appears to be a humanist secularist advocacy of allowing a freefall abandonment of the normal conduct of government in protecting its citizens and allowing replacement attitudes with overt shifts towards totalitarian control, undergirded with oligarchic seditions to benefit the erudite elitism of the privileged few. When attempting to make a comparison of how governments should rule to protect the people, freedom and liberty are now thought to be secondary when the central ideology that once was founded on moral religious terms is seduced and the delusion of secularistic humanist themes, like that found in Marxism, finds its way into the self-induced mentality that mortal mankind can govern itself.
That having been said, the historical record indicates that religion has always been a component of societies; that only in modern contemplations of an ancient gnostic sense of the human existence does religion get to be challenged with the 'atheistic' contention that mankind can exist without resorting to some 'spiritual' reliance upon something in life that cannot be seen. This resistance to things 'spiritual' is fundamental to the tragedy that is mortal humanity. Religion, whether the ancients of Ur and the Chaldees or the Egyptians; to the faith of the Patriarch of the Hebrews, Abraham, and His children the Jewish nation; to the replacement theologies of Babylonians, Medians, Persians; then later practices of faith by believers in the Jewish Messiah; and in more recent annals of history, the Muslims pursuing the pillars of Islam by exporting its influences for centuries by claiming a replacement theology; all of which being called to be central to the formations of differing societies through religious practices, but none being able to be the 'one' universal religion to which allegiance is required. Therein lays the basis of apostasy.
In the modern context, the two main contestants of religious persuasion are the Judeo-Christian and Islam belief systems, both claiming strong adherence to the tenets of belief, but both having hard times in convincing followers; both are in contention for attempting to lead the world to peace. But both are in trouble, for the voices of dissent of anti-religious attitudes are calling out in siren songs of freedom from religion and this appeals to more and more as self-analysis seeks separation more and more from moral obligations to others in a general societal sense and release of responsibility to society in the larger sense. Aberrant behavior ensues, and in the context of the rebellion to societies, apostasy finds its own soullessness.
Apostasy in the Christian congregation takes on its separate loss of love in religious affirmation, that its decided mission to advance the Gospel as required by the Savior is made out to be less and less important. The church that is supposed to be filled with obedient disciples are more and more reluctant to be ministers of that Message, allowing the Gospel to be replaced with social programs from all sectors of denominational dictates. However, apostates in this venue are not necessarily sentenced to death for departing from the faith-essentially, the mortal consequences are not considered a defeat. Only in the loss of eternal rewards does the apostate find the judgment has already been pronounced. The greater threat to being Christian is that the unbelieving world is the greater danger; or in the case of a convert from the Muslim world, the greatest danger exists.
Then we come to the apostasy of a person of Muslim beliefs, of lapsing into being an infidel. As the article indicates, there appears to be greater numbers that are seeking relief from the imposition of requirements of submission that have become harder and harder to live by, seeing that there is a world outside that Islam no longer overtly controls and the freedom that may provide is compelling. To the other extreme of religious freedom, Christianity has enough of a witness to deliver rewards of faith and peace not found in other belief systems, such that many turn there to find a sense of fulfillment not found outside the mere mortal expressions or expectations of wanting to be loved, the true essence of being a disciple of Christ.
Still, apostasy is the malaise of civil societies; and if allowed to devolve the moral applications of living in peace and love with one another, total societal destruction is the accomplishment that the world will not survive. It is written that apostasy is when the love of believers and others grows cold to the Almighty and to one another; when that happens, only in the singular belief system that desires to follow the Gospel of the Savior of the world is there safety, the place many former Muslims have found for inspiration to live completed and respected lives.
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