In my opinion that means that selfishness, sin, crime, violence, and war will remain endemic features of society into the foreseeable future. You might have thought that religion would make it easier for people to trust each other; and as this mutual trust grew, gradually it would blossom into perfect trust. You might have thought that religion would provide the way forward to a better society, if not to a world without sin. But it is not so. Maybe this is how things were meant to be; but it is not how they are. Church-going is not a catalyst for close friendship. Climbing friendships often last a lifetime, whereas church friendships do not. Friendships on the hills are much closer, I suppose. But then when you tie onto a climbing rope, you agree silently to see it through with the others, until you are safely back in the valley. There is no corresponding silent agreement among church-goers. They are just a motley collection who go to worship God, from a variety of differing motives. Some go for the splendour of Cranmer’s prose; and it is the most majestic language, incomparably finer than any modern liturgy I have read. Some go to find an anchorage in life; and the clergy say, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and for ever”. It sounds fine, until you realize that his teaching would have us capitulate to terror. Does the risen Christ change his opinions? Is he not quite as timeless as he used to be? Is he like a bed of seaweed on a lee shore: a place where no anchor will hold? Is it wise to look for certainty, when science only offers probabilities?
Mountaineers tend to see eternity in the hills. It is only a symbol; we all know that mountains weather. The Lake District fells were once 10,000 feet high; and even the Alps are old compared to the Himalaya. But they last much longer than a human life; so they can symbolise eternity. And many mountaineers find in climbing an approach to reality; a very good approach it is too. On the hills you silently agree to show courage, honour, truthfulness in your judgements of what is safe and what is not, and to risk and even sacrifice your life if circumstances turn adverse and demand it. If you are looking for the still point of the turning world, as the poet put it, you are more likely to find it in this loyalty, than in creeds and dogma. Just as you are more likely to find it in a sense of communion with the Risen Christ, provided you are confident this is not fantasy, than you are in church fellowship.
So if the roots of evil are in ourselves, and something new is needed to root out evil from ourselves, and enable at least a few people to trust each other completely, where does one look? Not much good looking at Church teaching; there is as little chance of reform from within, as there was in the days of Erasmus and Luther. Nor is it much good lamenting that the Church never developed a political philosophy, whereas Islam did from the first; which possibly is why Christian States went down like ninepins in the early days of Islam’s aggressive conquest. The Church might have developed in a different way, and provided different solutions, but it didn’t. What is needed is to remove from Church teaching the influence of Plato, whose philosophy we now know rests on a basis that modern science says is false. I gather that Dean Inge, the gloomy Dean of St.Pauls, said that this would split Christianity down the middle. I have read some of his Outspoken Essays; they are dated and orthodox, and offer no prospect of serious reform, even if they were “outspoken” in his day. So I hardly think one need be put off by his melancholy prophesies. I imagine that Thomas Aquinas wanted to displace Plato, when he championed Aristotle so enthusiastically; but it was beyond him. Plato was too entrenched. And indeed the Inquisition turned Aristotle, the great experimenter and prophet of experience, into the sacred text they used to condemn Galileo; such was the malign influence of Plato’s “immortal truths”. It may seem an unromantic solution to the Church’s malaise; but unless an institution gets its thinking right, nothing else will prosper. And it is anyway only a first step.
Quite simply, for two people to trust each other fully, each must be certain of the thoughts of the other; each must know the thoughts of the other. Which is telepathy.