The Course of Miracles on The Antichrist: Part I

I have often credited the book, A Course in Miracles, with awakening many people to their mystical selves and this is a great contribution in a culture where religion as a whole has failed to do that. 

But recently, after finishing my book on Trump & MAGA as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, which is more prophetic than mystical, I ran across a text in A Course in Miracles about “The Anti-Christ.” (chapter 29, The Awakening).

This passage constitutes an incisive discussion about evil—as it should.   It adds insight to my book and especially the section on “18 signs of the Times: The Antichrist in American Politics, 2024).  Number 18 is “Blasphemy/Idolatry” where I speak to how MAGA followers of Trump revere him as a religious figure, a head of their cult, and are engaged in nothing less than blasphemy and idol worship in the process. 

The entire first page in the CIM never mentions the “Anti-Christ” but rather speaks about idols.  It begins: What is an idol?  Do you think you know?  For idols are unrecognized as such, and never seen for what they really are. That is the only power that they have. 

That is a very insightful observation.  Trump & MAGA are not seen for what they really are, and their power is in their lie.  The text goes on, idols “are feared and worshipped….An idol is an image of your brother that you would value more than what he is.”  It can be a body, thing, place, situation, an object “owned or wanted or a right demanded or achieved, it is the same.”

I say the same thing in my own way when I talk of the archetype that the antichrist is, an archetype for evil.  What is being said is that evil is no thing so much as a projection, a wish, a choice to get even. 

Says the CIM text, let not their form deceive you.  Idols are but substitutes for your reality.  In some way, you believe they will complete your little self, for safety in a world perceived as dangerous, with forces massed against your confidence and peace of mind.  Thus, an idol fills the hole in one’s soul—as all addictions do.  And there are a lot of such holes in America today, obviously, judging by the amount of depression and drugs and other addictions that are busy filling voids in our souls.    

As we saw in a recent DM, young men especially in our culture are feeling they are missing something. They may follow an aggrieved and hating and raging demagogue who fills that void.  That is what an idol does.

This CIM warning speaks volumes: They have the power to supply your lacks, and the value that you do not have.  No one believes in idols who has not enslaved himself to littleness and loss. 

There you have it.  When one’s original blessing is belittled or forgotten—and an anthropocentric religion puts original sin as the starting point of its faith system—preaching a lack of peoples’ value and a littleness ensues.  Instead of being born a son or daughter of God, one is born a misfit. 

Bad parenting or a culture lacking adventure and fairness can add to this oppressive message.  

To be continued.

See Matthew Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, pp. 77-79.

And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.

And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society.

And Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors To Awaken the Sacred Masculine.

Banner Image: “Million MAGA March, Washington D.C., 11/14/2020.” Photo by Victoria Pickering on Flickr.

Queries for Contemplation

“No one believes in idols who has not enslaved himself to littleness and loss.”  Do you sense that many Trump followers are enslaved to littleness and loss?  And many young men especially at this time in history?  How can we assist their liberation?

Recommended Reading

Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election

Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE. 
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE. 
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society

Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them. 
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science.  A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics

The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine

To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature,  to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God