No, your ASSUMING is self-evident.
Why wouldn’t Pike’s work’s assuming also be “self evident”?
The assuming you accuse me of isn’t “self evident” at all. The things that the Declaration of Independence called self evident were only so because of the light of God. Where is the light of God in your scheme? You cannot show me the light of God. The light of God raises up. Your work only pulls down. It has many words of criticism. None of encouragement, except to encourage keeping up the total blasting no matter what the worship environment and what was seen in it. That is a bad blasphemy of God, my friend.
If you expect perfection in this decaying creation you will not see it except in God piercing through. But if you complain about God piercing through in an imperfect church environment, you will complain about God piercing through to you as well, for you are imperfect as well.
Anyhow, you appear to be in a bondage of a mental loop that you can never break and keeps pulling you down, down, down.
But God can break that loop. If you allow Him in. Where is the joy that the bible speaks of? That is the sign of God. You have no joy. Only grimness.
P.S. Friend, I wish you joy.
Not just happiness.
Joy!
Maybe the nearest secular term we would have for it is gusto. But it is an eager pleasure that seeks to build up and strengthen. If and when you permit yourself to encounter it (you only have to stop saying no to God in order to encounter it, and God may have to smash you into a corner before you will stop) you will find that it is spiritually unique. The bible is not woofing when it says the joy of the Lord is your strength. The devil only has grimness. His pleasure is in tearing things down, which Pike does quite energetically. The Lord comes in kindness and builds you up. But He may have to smack you down first before you will let Him in.
I wish you God’s blessings and joy.