I knew I had to do something in light of the truths of the Millennial Kingdom I’d discovered, so I acted fast.
By this point, I had built out philosophical explanations of just about everything, and most of this site had been assembled as well. All I had to do was convert the ideas into feasible solutions.
Act 1: ChurchNet
Starved for human interaction and change from what I’d seen, I made my way back out to church in 2021, and saw much of the same post-pandemonium cowardice.
I started trying to design a social network to update the Church to the modern era, a bit like Gab but with more features to accommodate the needs of any church. Most church websites have been stuck in the GeoCities era of UX development (with a static website that serves as a billboard for their in-person services), and my natural gifting in computers would have lent well to it.
But, mid-to-late 2021 that all fell apart.
Act 2: Incarceration
I was brought low by waiving my Miranda Rights and ending up in jail for 7 weeks, which gave me plenty of time to think:
- The traditions of the Church have mostly stifled it against any progress or change, so any social movement would be me creating a new denomination to add to the monstrous pile of existing denominations.
- If I did build an an open-source platform for the Church, they’d only adopt it after it reached maturity as a social network, which wouldn’t happen until they adopted it, creating a recursive problem, and I’d only grab the early adopter new-and-trendy churches, which wouldn’t really do much in the way of uniting churches over a common Jesus.
- The Southern Baptists, United Methodists, Roman Catholics, et al. are all territorial enough that they resent equivocation, and that will include being in a digital space together.
- Siloed-but-federated social networks (e.g., Mastodon, Lemmy) already exist, so the problem is in the general resistance of the Church to new technology more than the existence of the technology itself.
- In small places all throughout society, some believers embrace the change Jesus calls humanity to, but even the politics of persecution won’t wake up the Western Church at this point.
- And, persecution among Christian culture would probably foster nationalism or make everyone submit to fear before provoking further devotion to God. God permits governing authorities to take away freedoms, but Christianity in the USA has a very bad rebellion problem.
And, after my completely event-free re-entry and release from probation, the legal fiction that follows me around has been burdened by a blight that will make me a pariah against any image-conscious job or church management role until October 30, 2028. Big Eva will never permit me to serve in their self-sanctified halls again.
Act 3: More Answers
In a frenzy of study, I examined the original traditions of the Church and the elements that made the Church what it is now, specifically with respect to their rituals and customs.
I used to be concerned about the Bible saying “don’t forsake assembling together“, but I now know it’s talking about that second “Service of Thanksgiving“, not simply going to a public gathering of Christians with heathen present in it. I’m a geek who makes lots of things for fun while alone and enjoy the company of a few others at most, so I only see the corporate church as a networking platform.
However, I also saw my solutions weren’t new. I became acquainted with a Hutterite group and realized going back to the way things used to be is also a lost cause. Every culture comes with its own moral hazards, and abdicating yourself from the surrounding culture is simply asceticism by another name.
At this point, there have been no ways forward for me.
Act 4: Patience
Ever since then, I’ve been working toward what I can. I had the goal to create an “Open Church Model” for a time, which requires drawing out the truths across the centuries from deep in the historical tradition of Christianity, irrespective of cultural considerations. Given my track record, it’s only rational that that’s my most spiritually advantageous place, but it’s slow going in light of the other projects I’m working on.
I’m not sure where I go from here, but it’s simply my job to keep marching forward and let God figure the future out. The only goal I have in this fallen age is to someday be like the writer of the Theologia Germanica: someone who helped inspire a profound trend-setter/heretic toward a good purpose, but history forgot who the heck he was.