Leaving the Wrong Gate Open

Scripture uses the image of a thick thorny hedge to keep predators out of our lives.
It’s not as if someone can’t get through such a hedge, can’t cut themselves an opening. But doing so will be slow work, and draws attention. Someone who is expecting trouble will catch the predator and react. No one with an ounce of wisdom expects to sail through life with total security and ease. There will always be those who try to steal your fruit. That’s the way life is here on earth, but God offered a way to even things up a bit. It’s not magic; it’s morality. A pattern of moral care raises a barrier to all those threats so we can at least get a chance to respond.
It requires periodic maintenance. Even if you are able to build a stone wall, you still need to check every now and then to see stones aren’t working loose. There will always be parts of your life which remain morally dynamic, never entirely settled. And some parts of your life are too busy for a hedge. You have to put in a gate, allow others to come and go. You’ll never be able to harvest it all by yourself, and somebody has to buy and consume that productivity or there’s no point in having a life to protect.
In keeping with the previous post, we sensibly choose dependencies which we can negotiate. In reality there will always be a constant haggle over details, but there’s no question of shared dependency itself. The problem is leaving the gate untended. Too many people open dependencies without the slightest thought simply because that’s the local custom. We idolize a culture where we can leave the keys in the car, the doors unlocked, etc. We assume a shared community of trust where hedges simply aren’t necessary, because all that security takes up time away from more entertaining pursuits.
That society never existed. It’s a myth. Where you encountered anything which seemed to feel like that, it was artificial, and someone somewhere did indeed mean for you to be deceived. It was thoughtfully designed to feed you false expectations which don’t at all match with reality. You might be somewhat guarded against little problems, but you’ve left a wide gate open for oppression in your life because you’ve allowed them to convince you they would never do the exact thing they plan to do.
Let’s go camping. For a few days we’ll go out in the wilderness and almost everything we need we have to carry with us. Some provision for life is out there, but in a raw form. The provisions you don’t carry will require tools to extract from nature. We leave behind many modern conveniences, and try to experience things at a lower level of existence. Suddenly, just eating and drinking consume a greater portion of our daily routine. Ordinary sanitation is a huge burden, and we quickly decide some of those little habits just don’t matter. The more primitive we make it, the more we become reacquainted with brute survival. It’s good for the soul.
Have you ever found yourself having to work around someone who is helpless? You don’t take them camping if you can help it. Then again, it might teach them to stop being so wretchedly open and vulnerable, demanding so much from the world. These are the people who swallowed the myth, and we want to disabuse them of it, but it seems the lie is so deeply ingrained, nothing can awaken them.
This is what we have come to in Western Civilization. In some ways, there is not a single Western government which has not worked night and day to make people that way. You don’t have to go to war against society, but you darn sure better not stay inside that bubble of false happiness. The mental exercise of going camping serves as a reminder of the ways we have swallowed that mythology, and we have left the gate open for demons to come and go at will, regardless of what form they assume.
If you were one of the victims of that horrible storm which struck places like Ohio, leaving them all without electricity still yet these ten days later, would you be ready to cope with life? Would this make you suddenly unfruitful? Stop and consider just what fruit are you growing in the first place. What really matters? Then consider all the ways people and systems around you keep demanding you open the gates. Sometimes you have to say no, and accept the consequences for being different. You can’t stop everything, but without some conscious choices, you’re just renting your life at someone else’s whim. You may not believe in my God, but I can’t imagine anyone being fruitful if they allow the State to be their god, either consciously or in effect.
Scripture says the Devil uses people. While the people are not our enemies, they are the weapons and tools used against us. Military training teaches you to sleep with your weapon and gas mask. You need whatever counts for armor against the most likely form of attack and at least one means to hit back at evil. In this fallen world, your moral habits are your armor, and your assertion of moral choices is your weapon. Your greatest vulnerability is ill-considered dependence.
Is Facebook the place where you let your hair down? It’s hard to imagine having a bigger gate more wide open to abuse than Facebook. The greatest threat today is data mining. I was permitted to see some early forms of government data gathering when I helped set up the computer routines at that first Military Police station I was assigned. That was quickly replaced with a mandated software system we couldn’t adjust. Whenever some genius has found a way to improve data aggregation and mining, the government simply steals what it cannot buy. If the designer complains, the government treats them as a dangerous criminal. Ever hear of Inslaw and Promis? Look it up. Or Catherine Austin Fitts and her efforts to let communities know what government wanted to keep from them. Bad enough people were required during hiring interviews to allow the HR representative to see their private Facebook stuff, but the government has bought software which allows cyber-snoops to maintain a large number of fake Facebook identities. The Facebook “community” is shot through with spies and represents a near complete loss of any privacy hedge.
The government’s new favorite gate is data mining. Your thoughtless participation leaves you standing naked before the lictor. It’s too late now to go back and hide that stuff, but it’s not too late to begin reducing other ways in which you leave the gates of your soul open for exploitation. At the very least, you can stop updating everything which says too much about you. Don’t be paranoid, but thoughtful. Not in fear of what you don’t know, but using what you know already. The point is not how much they know about you, but how you can’t make it through the day without spilling your guts to someone.
You need the habit of mind to choose consciously and carefully who gets inside the hedge, because God isn’t willing to help you fight the demons if won’t participate.