Arresting Mysticism

I am a Christian Mystic. I follow Christ, who was a Hebrew Mystic. At least once, He cracked a whip and hit some people not too long from the time He surrendered and died.
The Post-Modern Western approach to this complex image is slicing and dicing until any idiot can grab any part of a false image for their fantasy obsession. Obviously, I don’t like that approach. If you analyze the testimony about Christ from the viewpoint of His own culture, you get a different image. He cracked a whip when it was necessary to fulfill eternal moral imperatives, to shine the light of truth. It was God’s justice to drive those thieving thugs out of the Court of Gentiles in the Temple; Israel’s sole existence was making a way for Gentiles to approach God. It was personal for Jesus. He stood before His Father personally responsible for that justice. It was the same justice by which He surrendered to the criminal abuse and death. If you understand the justice of God, you can understand that complex image quite easily.
I’m not particularly brave. Pain hurts me and I generally try to avoid it. This world is terminally broken and a lot of pain is simply unavoidable. That’s a mystical understanding, because it brings into this broken realm truth from some other realm. I expect a lot of pain before I’m allowed to leave this world. In clinging to the justice from the Spirit Realm, I expect I’ll have more than my share of sorrow in this Fallen Realm. I’m not eager for the pain, but eager for the justice. I’m also eager for my departure.
In God’s justice, there are restrictions on that departure. I have to wait on His hand to bring death as a final blessing in this world. It will probably be a complete surprise, but it will never be bad news. It will probably hurt, but hopefully not for too long. I’m no hero. While people do bear pain with grace, we aren’t really designed to handle too much of it. The wiring in our systems can be overloaded and the alternative mechanisms aren’t reliable, in the sense we don’t have a clear understanding how to use them. They are there, but tricky. So it’s common sense to avoid pain when you can, but not if that avoidance conflicts with justice.
In this world, an awful lot of things people have labeled “justice” are very much in conflict with what God calls justice. A critical element in Christian Mysticism is trying to understand the difference. Not simply in theory, but in application. It includes trying to perceive the moral fabric with spiritual eyes to the point we see grand trends. The current trends are more against justice than for it.
I’m a former Military Policeman. While hardly the same thing, there is a huge overlap between what I did and what civilian policemen do. As part of our work, we were exposed to a lot of their training and philosophy, if only because we had to work alongside them so often. During the time I served, our rules were looser; we had more authority in our own realm to act against violations. For example, we were encouraged to shoot long before their rules of engagement called for it. Not any more. Things have changed and they are now more likely to shoot than the military. Worse, their rules for handling those arrested is far looser than the military would ever allow. Abuse isn’t simply common, it’s almost mandatory.
I’ll reduce for you many hours of reading fair and impartial reports of civilian police behavior in the US: Innocence means nothing. It is their job to lie and say whatever it takes to get you into custody simply because the system demands a certain amount of people be incarcerated. The people at the top are utterly certain almost everyone is a criminal who hasn’t been caught yet. If they can’t get you by the rules, then they’ll bend the rules like Gumby dolls. Policemen are under fierce pressure to invent violations and lying is simply built into the system. If the policeman stops you, the chances of decent treatment are not even 50-50 in your favor any more. Abuse it far more likely than not. Worst of all, it’s perfectly legal. It’s policy.
I’m not referring to our common American mythology about what’s fair and just. Forget that. I’m referring to God’s standard of justice, which is most certainly not the same thing. Americans have never really understood biblical justice, but used the Bible at one time as a source of words and phrases to support their Western Post-Enlightenment notions of justice. No, as a Christian Mystic, having embraced the ancient Hebrew standard of justice, I see injustice from an entirely different angle. For those of you poorly acquainted with the real biblical standard, the point is not a matter of whether or how much current civilian police policy is unjust, but in what manner they are unjust. We don’t have room for that right now, so I’ll save you some time: Don’t get arrested if you can avoid it. You will not be treated justly. In broad general terms, God will not require you to submit in every context.
I’m not suggesting you spend your days finding ways to provoke government officials. Indeed, we should avoid provoking anyone at all. It’s not hard to figure that out. However, walking in the Father’s justice will do that despite your best efforts to avoid provocations. Do what’s right; always keep an eye on the moral imperatives, as they are not a simple matter of rules and laws. It requires a living connection, a mystical awareness of context and divine purpose, of a call to mission. All the more so as the context continues degrading. It’s going to get worse. At some point doing what is truly your divine imperative will get you in trouble with the authorities.
At that moment, you’ll have to decide what God requires of you. He still has plenty of miracles for all occasions, so don’t despair. But be prepared in your soul for the moral imperative to fight. Now, in this quiet moment of reading my silly drivel, consider the probability justice and mysticism means you won’t be taken alive. Fight; make them kill you. In broad general terms, what they plan to do will make you wish you had. In terms of God’s moral laws for humanity in this Fallen Realm, you need not submit to what they will surely do to you.
I won’t suggest it’s worse than what Christ suffered, but it will be at least as diabolical. We have in our government service today a broad darkness, a foul spirit of evil the human mind cannot comprehend. The people involved who aren’t the source of this are nonetheless overwhelmed by it. Ostensibly decent cops will treat you so bad you’ll be shocked. You cannot trust them to do right in the first place; the likelihood of compensatory justice later is ludicrous. While submitting to this may well be God’s plan for you in that moment, don’t assume it is before you face it. Add to your ruminations the option of going down fighting. Not simply some pitiful clawing of the floor as they taser you into submission, but develop a tactical awareness of how these things work. Develop a fighter’s instinct for what they won’t expect.
Never betray the intent before you need it. Edginess is not your friend. The mystic is placid and serene in the face of pain and death. We expect sorrow to come and our cynical humor about it can serve well in all sorts of confrontations. All the same, in one corner of your mind, never forget that the whole world is under a very nasty evil spell. It’s not simply taking advantage of you to steal your stuff. These people have already trained and equipped themselves to torture you and will not hesitate to push you over the brink into a slobbering moron far less than human. I’m sure you are familiar with the phrase, “a fate worse than death.” The ugliest secret about the CIA and Abu Ghraib is that they’ve brought this home; your local police department is slowly being infected with that same unspeakable sickness.
In the Old Testament, we often find the ethic stated in terms of, “Be men and fight to the death. Would you prefer to live as slaves of demons?” Israel wasn’t the only nation with that moral commitment.
The invasive moral disease won’t be everywhere at the same time, but it’s been here in parts of the US for quite some years. It may not be to the same degree where you live, but that’s only because they haven’t faced real resistance. Or maybe you simply don’t know. Nothing in this is about winning some battle against darkness, as if we could gain any hope of fixing this broken world. It’s not about spite against the foul oppressors, as if making them pay will serve any noble cause. We don’t expect anything to change until it simply runs out of gas on its own. It will; these people will eventually turn on each other. That won’t be soon. Before that comes, it has to be unleashed against us who aren’t part of that system. We have a divine mission to shine the light regardless of the darkness, but that light must point into the darkest corners to serve its purpose. We don’t resist people; we resist the Darkness that uses people.
When the Lord is ready to extinguish your lamp, be aware it can come in all different shapes and sizes. You won’t get out this world alive, so consider the manner of your death. God may demand I go through some modern version of crucifixion. He hasn’t told me and I suspect He won’t give me much advance notice. What I do have is permission from Him to consider all the possibilities. I also have a mandate to share it with my readers. If the option presents itself, don’t be taken alive when oppression decides you are the next victim.