In the western world, this time of year used to be about the coming of Jesus Christ into the world as a beacon of light and hope. Indeed, the Christmas Eve edition of the Ouest France featured a front page editorial about the nativity and its meaning. It was not a bad piece at all, but it was from a humanistic perspective: it therefore talked about justice for the underprivileged, for example. Fair enough.
But Jesus, bringing spiritual light into the world, God coming in flesh to restore us to relationship with God – no, of course not. Understandably. The Ouest France is a self declared humanist publication. Again fair enough.
Jesus Christ as God actually come in the flesh takes some swallowing for most people. Understandably. After all, the Bible tells us that to be converted you actually need God given faith. God must act in your life to enable you to believe: ie actually to accept as true and to live your life trusting in that truth.
God broke into history 2000 years ago. Since then, God has entered countless human hearts as the God who becomes flesh and dwells among us full of grace and truth. I give thanks that God deigned to make it Christmas in my life all those years ago.
Grace and truth. Grace and truth being predicated on the spiritual reality and presence of God. Objective truth. Real. Real to so many people over the centuries and in so many lives today.
A grace and a truth by which we may live and learn to live as Christ came and taught us. As a Christian I literally live and learn, not just intellectually, but in very real ways. Accommodating God’s truth in my life demands that I acknowledge where I am wrong, and that I then put right the wrong – invariably an attitude or habit. This is fundamental to all else; it informs all else; it determines how I view all else.
Being a disciple means learning to live as Christ requires. It means that my approach to life is one of adaption and appropriation. I adjust me, not my circumstances, and certainly not other people. I will answer to God for my life, and others must answer to God for themselves come the fearful Day of Judgment – and yes, that is real and I can say so because of God given faith, not my own natural, fallen sense of credibility.
I am keenly aware of the fact that human beings find it so difficult to change and adapt. Experience shows that normally we don’t. We continue to make the same mistakes regardless of the evidence or the harm it may do. Clear evidence of the sinful, Fallen nature of our humanity.
It’s why I need Christ and his teaching to remind me and show me the way. Otherwise I know how easily I can fail.
I pity those whose outlook has no such safeguard or point of external reference. They have no where else to look but inside themselves, or else to those belief systems in this world which grant us excuses to remain self centred.
The problem in todays western world is that the prevailing Religion is Materialism. Consumerism, selfism, atheism. They all have the same root: a purely Material and Godless conception of our existence.
God does not actually cease to exist, except in their perception. Their need of God does not cease to be there in their hearts – but they address that need by filling it with some aspect of the Material.
Instead of changing themselves and their outlook, they look everywhere else but to the real answer. Where there is blame, it with others or with “the system”. So, others must change, or the system must be changed. Everything else must change, but not the real root – ME and my wants and my ambitions and my material, man centred answer. Change the world, but not me…
Change the Rules. Change everybody else’s attitude. Get inside their heads and make them change. Not me.
So they go with human centred plans. They cancel out God, and they put MAN into the place where only God should be.
That’s the western world today. That’s the mindset ruling its intelligentsia. That’s the mindset ruling its governance in every area. That’s the mindset ruling academia, to the point of absurdity.
The really clever, clever people just don’t learn … And because they understand so much and know so much with their intellects, they fail to see the fundamental issue and the true key. It’s not intellectual power that makes you better able to see the answers to this lifes problems, or to make a superior judgement about politics and morality.
It’s your attitude and your perspective. If you are your own god, then you don’t need to change, others do – especially as you know so much better than they do, being blessed with a superior intellect. And if they don’t want to comply, then you are morally obliged to oblige them. To compel them through re-education and rules and laws, and sanctions for the recalcitrant. Even though your own mentality has and continues to show you to be so wrong about how you are looking at things.
So, it is no real surprise when the authorities at the University of Oxford refuse to face facts and see that what they are doing is making things worse, not better.
They set up a new election procedure to elect a Chancellor. Embarrassingly, they had to change it because they had originally insisted on invoking an article of their Materialist religion, Equality Diversity and Inclusion. They had not understood that so many other people see EDI as fundamentally religious and ideological: Dogma, Intolerance and Exclusion – DIE – as I have tried to elaborate above.
Farce followed as their default psychology – Rule making – bound them into an untenable position when it comes to doing real things in the real world. They allowed 38 candidates on the ballot paper, many of whom had nothing to do with the University or had no aptitude for the post. One candidate expressed his interest in just one, questionable sentence …. Yet the Authorities excluded one highly experienced graduate of the University for the simple reason that his religion did not accord with the Materialism dominating Oxford today. Even the sophisticated electorate of the Convocation of the University of Oxford could not be trusted with the option of electing a Monotheist believer… The control freakery of the mindset dominating Oxford today was demonstrably incapable of allowing even the remote possibility that Imran Khan might be elected. Complete outsiders and inappropriate chancers were on the ballot, but not a former Prime Minister …
But this entirely self generated and self inflicted farce did not teach the authorities at Oxford just how foolish is the dominating influence of their de facto religion.
Instead of reviewing and changing, they doubled down as if they were perfectly right and any criticism plainly wrong.
The Vice Chancellor went ahead with a new series of termly discussions on contemporary topics to be held in the symbolic inner sanctum of the University, the Sheldonian Theatre. The Sheldonian Series is billed as a termly event that will model what free speech and the vibrant exchange of ideas should look like in a University.
The first was held on November 25th 2024. The official news report of that discussion highlighted one contribution as follows:
it would appear to be ‘a very careless moment for democracy,’ and that Trump’s election would empower authoritarian populists elsewhere, who will all say that they are anti-system not anti-Democracy – that they in fact represent the majority over a small elite, instead of the other way round…………… But this is America in 2024, and Anne-Marie suggests that the framing of the rights of minorities within the American constitution is now at risk.
I am pretty safe in saying, I think, that the above reflects the moral, philosophical, political and psychological assumptions via which the Oxford Authorities view the world. It is an ideological and patently partisan stance which should have no place in a University. It reflects an ideological conception of democracy, not a realistic or practical one.
Trump was elected constitutionally, and convincingly. Yet something, they say, is seriously wrong with democracy ….
Yet again the University manifests its de facto religious stance.
That stance – also apparently spearheaded by the Vice Chancellor – saw the introduction of “EDI induction” for Freshers at 17 colleges of the University in October 2024. The perspective and paradigm of Oxfords unfortunate new religion are to be instilled in new students as a matter of course, now.
Students no longer go to Oxford simply to be educated for a degree in their chosen field of study. The University now arrogates the right to tell them how to conduct their thinking and behaviour. It assumes the right to propagate a particular worldview – a worldview criticised in the wider world as questionable, and a worldview which exposed problems in the way the University actually handled the election of a new Chancellor.
The University of Oxford now reinvents and redefines the relationship between university and student. It is a redefinition born out of an ideological view of the university function. As I have attempted to explain above, it is an ideological view which refuses to accept other views as valid and which instead seeks to propagate its own mentality as universally correct and uniquely legitimate. It manifests the traits of religious zeal.
It is all the more remarkable for being a Christless counterfeit of the simple Christian tenet, love thy neighbour as thyself. Five words needing no financial outlay nor new administration of true believers to propagate it.
What, I wonder, would be the reaction if I were to suggest that the University of Oxford should provide courses in Christianity – such courses to be endorsed by the University as the official moral reference for the behaviour of University staff and students ?
Outrage, I suspect. But this new religion may be introduced on the pretext that it is not a religion. Actually, atheism is a religion. It is a symptom of a Materialist view of life and is held just as tenaciously.
And then of course there is the new “partnership” with EIT – the Ellison Institute of Technology. On 3rd December 2024 the University announced this as ” A Grand Alliance” and stated:
Larry Ellison, Chairman of Oracle Corporation and Chief Technology Officer, said:
‘At EIT, our mission is to have a global impact by fundamentally reimagining the way science and technology translate into end-to-end solutions for humanity’s most challenging problems. This long-term, strategic partnership with the University of Oxford is at the heart of delivering on that goal. By collaborating on transformational, world-class research programmes harnessing new technology and compute capability we will together deliver positive impact on society at scale.‘
Man is now his own salvation. He can reimagine this world any way he wishes, and the Superman elite are entitled to foist the solutions offered by their man centred faith upon the rest of us.
MAY GOD HELP US !
DEUS ERGO SUMUS 
Leave a Reply