Reasons to Become a Christian

If you're not already a believer, the idea of being religious, or Christian, may seem impossible to accept. Don't worry about that for now. Just go with it. If this was already something you could easily accept within your existing view of the world (for example a mechanical/materialistic view) then becoming a Christian wouldn't be much of a change at all.

Learning anything truly new, other than just more facts that fit neatly within your existing view of reality, requires genuine, significant change to your view of reality. This means learning the reality of things which flatly contradict with your previous views. (You may have noticed that the word "reality" as used in the previous sentence was written from the perspective of the new viewpoint. If you didn't notice, it's not important.) For now, just aim to get used to reading about things that you think couldn't possibly make sense.

Many More People Were Believers In the Past

To prep for and survive a collapse of modern civilisation, the important skills will be the self sufficiency, sustainable living, wilderness survival skills and other ways of living that people knew in ancient times — before we became dependent on modern fossil-fuel-based technology. In those past times, a lot more people were religious (and/or "spiritual") than today. Quite often, religion and/or spirituality was a central aspect of their lives. Or the central aspect of their lives.

Therefore, the logical conclusion is: A major way to become more like people from the old days is to become religious.

This is something which can be extremely difficult for many people living in our modern world. It's also something which is often passed over and ignored by modern people who seek to learn about and emulate the way people lived generations ago.

The usual reason that it's ignored goes something like this: In the past, people didn't know much and were kind of dumb. Now, with science and modern knowledge and technology and intelligence and (insert here any aspect of modern life you like), we know better than they did. And we know that most of those old beliefs were false. And silly/superstitious/illogical/discriminatory/etc/etc...

But the bottom line is, this is something which people in the past were into, so it's something which must be addressed on survival.org.au.

Agnostics, atheists and other non-religious and anti-religious people will no doubt be unimpressed by this idea. One way which some might begin is to think of religion and/or spirituality as just another old-fashioned way of living. Obviously a stone knife or axe, or even a steel one, is in some ways less powerful than a modern chainsaw, or an industrial saw or diesel-powered mining machine. Sleeping in a shelter made in a few hours out of natural materials, or in a tent, is in some ways less comfortable than sleeping in a modern house. Yet many people seek these experiences.

If the idea of religion (or anything spiritual) seems ridiculously archaic, just go with it. Try to think of it as having merit because it's old-fashioned. Even if at first you don't think of it as a better replacement for your current understanding of the world, that's fine. To be interested in hunting, gathering or growing your own food, you don't have to believe it's easier than going to the shops, or that you can compete with commercial factory farms, or that you have to give up everything about your modern life right now. You could start with learning about religion just because it's something that goes along with living more old-fashioned, and for no other reason.

Something To Rely On In A Very Uncertain Worldly Future

In the last 10-20 years, the idea that our civilisation may not have very much time left has gone from the not-widely-reported opinions of scientists to much more mainstream. Talking to teenagers over the last 10 years or so, it's very clear that basically everyone has heard ideas that the future is doomed, and many have accepted them to some extent, even if it's just enough to acknowledge them and then try their best to forget about them and become absorbed in the many distractions of modern life.

If you like, right now do a quick mental survey of the things you look forward to in the short and long term future, of the upcoming things you are about to do in your life, and why you are going to do them. Now imagine taking away modern society, including electricity, town water and sewage, possibly anything electronic at all (assuming there is an EMP as part of the collapse and war), oil/petrol/diesel, and everything in the shops. Also include the wars, violence, theft, illness, and other types of disturbances that will follow such a collapse. Now consider, out of those things in your mind to do in the future (and look forward to, etc), how many of them are still valid? In this kind of scenario, religious ideas like having a future in heaven to look forward to, and having a foundation to base your life upon that's just a valid after the crash as before, become hugely more valuable than when viewed from comfortable modern life.

The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. 1 John 2:17, NIV.

Even the vast majority of those few who are totally successful at adapting to a collapse of society, life in the future will be much more materially challenging. It will be physically much more difficult. It's not hard to imagine that this kind of physical difficulty could bring emotional difficulties (e.g. feeling depressed and hopeless) along with it.

A very deep and fundamental motivation of humans is to do things which will improve their lives, so that life gets better in the future. Or at least doing things that they believe will make their life better in the future, based on something they're currently doing (for example, going to work, studying to get a job, or doing some type of leisure activity which will bring pleasure). It's much more difficult to become motivated towards doing something which you believe will end up with your life being worse than before (e.g. less pleasurable and more difficult). This is the main problem which people face in trying to prepare for a collapse of society — if it all seems so hopeless, then why even bother?

The answer to this problem can be found in Christianity, which gradually teaches to focus less and less on the material things of the world, and more and more on higher things which endure. Because Christianity teaches you to expect that worldly things will pass away, obviously being used to this idea before it happens will make the transition much easier.

If you seriously accept that there's not much time left for the world as we know it, you'll probably experience a feeling of fear and uncertainty about the future. The way to balance this out (or even to improve it overall) is to increase your levels of certainty and trust in aspects of the future that are not in this world. Recall the previous point that in the past (when life was materially less stable than modern Western society has been), many more people were religious. It's not that in the past people were terrified all the time because there wasn't mobile phones to rely on if their car broke down, or even phones at all, or even cars at all, or pensions, or superannuation,... Its much more like the increasing material affluence and certainty we've experienced has allowed people to forget (temporarily) the need for a feeling of certainty in things of the spirit. When you take away those material things, the natural human need for a spiritual foundation re-emerges. Just knowing this one thing can help a lot with fear of a materially greatly impoverished future.

Another point here is that for many people, having a focus on things outside their material world-based life is actually itself a pre-requisite to fully contemplate the future. Or even to accept that our future (and that of our children) isn't going to be anything like the lives of our parents and grandparents. Without anything else to believe in but the familiar worldly values and things of modern Western life, it's much more difficult to even think about the future where those familiar worldly things are taken away. In this sense, having a religious belief can free up a lot of your being in a way that allows you to realistically prepare for a materially dark future on this earth.

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