Somebody said that the Ukraine/Russia conflict is really spiritual in nature and also a fulfillment of Russia taking over Europe in some way, albeit gradually since this is limited to it taking over Ukraine for now. Celestial said that Russia will take over all of Europe because it’s a region that backslided the most, consider how Europe was the major Christian hotbed for centuries that makes the judgement all the more consequentially inevitable. That if you drift away from God, consequences happen as it did to me before. But with Europe this is on a wider scale because it affects nearly all nations there, sometimes the reasons may be caused by negative impressions of Christianity (not helped by that some Christians are inappropriately insensitive, hypocritical or whatever that only worsens people’s impressions of both God and the religion).
There’s something like intergenerational trauma where for as long as the suffering’s ongoing in some way, where somebody who got traumatised passes on that pain to their child and so on and so forth. So I propose something like intergenerational backsliding where a parent passes on their backsliding and unbelief to their child and it repeats every generation, which explains why the Biblical passage of having to train up a child in the way they should go, so that they won’t depart from it. In the sense that it’s important to pass on the faith to others in some way or another, but most especially younger generations (related or not) as to keep faith in God alive and strong. Sometimes parents fail to pass on their faith to their children successfully, especially their conduct only gives them negative impressions of God and Christianity. This is what somebody else pointed out to them, regarding their own father and why it affected their perception of God.
My father would hit me if I cry or exclude me from the house, not to mention he doesn’t really console me whenever I feel terrible. But he’s the opposite with one of my sisters, whom he’s actually kinder to. This kind of affected the way I perceived God in that even though I know he loves me, I sometimes find him untrustworthy whenever my worries kick in, though I’m trying to manage it with his help these days to prevent certain bad things from happening again. It’s not always perfect and it sometimes gets me into questioning him, given how bad my feelings get at times, with the feeling he doesn’t understand me, nor is faithful to me. My father sometimes promises things, but he’s also remote and sometimes gets really busy with something else. Also I got harassed a lot in a Baptist school, with some classmates victim blaming me and others betraying me in some way.
Something like hurting my feelings, or siding more with the abusers with very few being truly loyal to me. So it does affect one’s perception of God that if you’ve been around people who betray you in some way, that you start to think God doesn’t always side with you even though his love for you is constant. Even the supposedly nicer ones don’t side with me, sometimes justifying harassers’ actions and being more lenient on them than they are with me. So sometimes it does feel this way around God at first, like as if you suspect he doesn’t love you, doesn’t care about you, doesn’t know what you’re going through or something like that. Sometimes I faced the consequences of distrusting him, though I’m doing my best to lessen this these days, even if I don’t always get it right, especially regarding certain things I listen to a lot like radio stations and certain channels.
In the case with France and Ireland where people have been abused by priests in some way, that even when no outright violence occurred but when a number of clergy (especially those from the upper echelons in France) tend to rub shoulders with aristocrats and spend more time caring about worldly things in life, instead of actually helping out the poor, weak and needy among them, that one might only wonder why the French Revolution came about. Or for another matter, the paedophile priest scandals in Ireland. When you’re surrounded in a supposedly Christian environment where people hurt or betray you in some way, it makes it harder to trust God because of the way they treated you. In my case this was a Christian school where people would come around at a certain hour to listen to sermons, but where teachers and headmasters turn a blind eye to those getting hurt.
And then this gets compounded by how Christians object to something in one medium, but are indifferent to it or even condone it in some other form (though I’m also like this), that only worsens people’s perceptions of God and Christianity. It’s like this with one of my aunts who feels disgusted at me looking at shirtless comics superheroes, but has no issue with nude women in paintings that in some way it risks being hypocritical to others when the latter could also make somebody else lust. Somebody on Reddit also said that a lot of Christians are very worldly people, so they often let in things that worsen their situations (as it is with me visiting certain things, hard to say). So a lot of Christians are worldly hypocrites who do want to be on the side of angels, but often condone or justify doing things on the side of demons. There’s something about worldly Christians that often puts atheists off of God, even if it’s not something they intended.
So in the case with both France and Ireland, it’s not hard to see how and why intergenerational trauma may go hand in hand with intergenerational backsliding, especially with the contradictory and unholy things Christians do that make them distrust God and Christianity a lot. When you have Christians mistreating you, doing things they know is wrong but enjoy doing it and stuff, it only gives atheists more ammunition to distrust Christianity with. If actions have consequences, Christians shouldn’t be too surprised why some people become atheists this way, when they themselves act in ways that are contrary to the Bible (this is what I also do). This may not be unique to both France and Ireland as there are other European countries with an anticlerical bent, but it’s not hard to see how these two intersect in ways that reveal about how and why Christians unintentionally put people off of God and the Church.
Whilst intergenerational trauma could be a major cause of intergenerational backsliding in some European countries like France and Ireland due to clerical abuse, Satan will find other ways of engineering disbelief in God with things like prosperity gospel and other heresies that make people sick of Christianity just the same. Or perhaps something like popularising certain ideologies and philosophies that serve to undermine one’s faith in God, sort of like how the Enlightenment made it harder for people to trust God. This is a a gradual process but a risky preposition for those new in their faith like it was for me before, regarding certain things and the like, such a dying pet and my own vices/sins. Another one and one that would be really controversial to some is how America really is Mystery Babylon, the prophesised nation-state said to corrupt the entire world with its filth and abominations.
If Mystery Babylon had been God’s golden cup, then America was previously a Christian colony that tolerated ungodly beliefs and practises (per Dumitru Duduman) and eventually got much worse over time. Even more horrifying is how it will come to persecute Christians in earnest, which makes this a very Kafkasque transformation from Puritan colony to an anti-Christian authoritarian state. If America is Mystery Babylon, then it’s responsible for popularising many heresies and false beliefs. Not just Laveyan Satanism and the like, but also something like the prosperity gospel and feel-good Christianity. The latter focuses on this-worldly gain and an avoidance or ignorance of suffering in Christian life, even if suffering doesn’t make somebody less of a Christian, whether if it’s their own fault or not. Not to mention, though less popularly mentioned, is how America kind of engineers fandoms for mass media.
Something like cartoon stories (both animated and print) and programmes where such people behind those franchises and brands will often encourage people to enjoy this sort of stuff, at the expense of becoming closer to God day by day. I even said before fandom is pretty much concentrated idolatry, thouigh it’s possible to make idols out of something Christian as it is with me before and risked consequences for this, but it’s something not a lot of Christians notice because cartoon characters don’t seem particularly suspicious compared to Catholic practises, even when the risk for idolatry’s the same. If a parent fails to pass down the faith to their child due to idolising something else in God’s place, whatever this may be, then they’re failing their child lest they risk backsliding and the latter never becoming a Christian.
Whatever factor that caused the backsliding but even then what Europeans have been doing is intergenerational backsliding, even though the rate of secularisation varies between countries, but it’s still the same Europe-wide problem.
fynm 