Humble Silence

We stand silent before the wonder of God’s glory.
In God’s Presence, silence is mandated because we have no answer but to praise Him. But we are unworthy, so it requires His permit for even that. Among humanity, our mandate is to tell what we have experienced in God’s Presence. Urging another to seek His Presence is treading on the knife edge of Truth. We are unworthy to judge another; all we really know is what we have seen at His hand. We echo His judgment on sins but we do not judge another. That is, until we have been granted that divine permit.
The permit comes only within a covenant. Without that free consent to covenant, there is no leverage to address. There are a thousand kinds of covenant; most among humans are implied, not stated. Standard social faux pas is assuming too much, because it seems everyone has their own idea of where to draw the lines without bothering to discuss it. Arrogance shows its ugly face in assuming yours are the only boundaries others should be allowed to hold. We do have broad customs of civility in the West, but they are more honored in breach than in observance. That is something also written into Western culture. Still, we have these boundaries and in the Presence of God, it requires a strong reason for crossing them. Our duty is learning to listen to the Spirit, not imagining we can develop some perfection of rule-making that fits all situations. Our duty is to learn God’s system, which includes a wide range of flexibility, always leaving that other person a free exit from any covenant, presumed or formal.
What remains is our duty to guard the boundaries mandated by our calling from God. We examine the Laws of God to seek an understanding of those boundaries we must draw, and a humble readiness of a silent spirit standing before God in the certainty we will get it wrong. We are always prepared to make adjustments. Still, some things in God’s Laws are so painfully obvious, we are all obliged to give notice when some human authority transgresses God’s boundaries. Each of us finds our own way to give that notice, but we are in a certain sense all prophets of His Justice. We are required to know, and required to react, when men violate God’s Laws.
One of the fundamentals of Divine Justice is that this entire realm of existence is broken. We are often taken with the joy of discovering our powers of reasoning, and it’s too easy to trust them against God’s revelation. That’s what the Fall was all about, placing human reason on the throne of decision instead of humbling resting in God’s imperatives. But our fallen nature thrills to the godlike power, so we build vast kingdoms, both real and virtual, from our reasoning. We are utterly certain we can come up with a system that always works and brings about a justice that reduces mistakes to near zero. This is a vast and hideous lie, the very heart of the Fall.
We stand before God knowing our hands cannot bring His Justice. Yet we are commanded to reach for that justice, to love it so much we’ll sacrifice our resources and lives for it. We accept in advance that the results will not be stellar. The very first Law Covenant that we know about is Noah, and it stands on the foundation of justice derived from the eldership exercising that mandate against the inertia of the flesh. It’s work; no fun at all. We can’t pawn it off to someone else. We must rule our own households with however much iron is necessary to restrain the sinful impulses we all suffer. It’s not that elders are so pure, but somebody has to do it or God will destroy us all. Under no circumstances is the elder permitted to farm out this duty of enforcement. It is the elder’s divine imperative to assay the impossible.
Modern civil government with civil police forces is an abomination to God. Whatever flaws there may be in the family household justice system, it can only get worse by doing something else. Sadly, this is where we are right now. We are obliged to apply His Justice in situ. The Western assumptions about human rights and democratic justice are all very wrong, but better than nothing. The mandate from the Throne of Heaven does not stop at pointing out the fundamental failures of having a badly broken system in the first place, but we must also point out every detail of the failure.
A primary example is the current drift toward removing the right of silence. This is happening all over the West. While it does exemplify a fundamental weakness of Western Civilization, because it relies on men and their infinite variability against some imaginary “Rule of Law,” we have to point out why this example is evil in its own right.
The police are demanding others do their work for them. They demand the privilege of standing in the place of God, commanding everyone to always reveal the deepest thoughts of their souls. This arises from the whole range of demonic reasoning that anyone can create an anchor point of divine perfection in this broken realm. It goes to the very root of the Fall itself, the idea man can take the place of God for any purpose in Creation. This evil human system of justice demands the power to bare soul of a human for examination, demanding we all submit to something so utterly invasive and so completely from the pits of Hell, you have to wonder how any human can desire it, much less demand it. This is the same evil that gives rise to torture. It is damned humanity demanding the power of God to see all things and judge it by some mythical standard.
God’s Justice recognizes human government is no more inherently good and noble than any single individual. Human government has a mandate, but that mandate is highly limited. It will inevitably get things wrong, and some will die unjustly. That’s how it is. To even things up a bit, God has also restricted the power of human government by keeping it small and close. A rebellious household member can leave. If they stay around and make trouble, that’s when you bring out the sword. Meanwhile, a refugee has no protection, and pays the price of having to make their case for protection by some other household. They seek a covenant. Anyone not seeking a better home is automatically a threat, a target for zealous guards, which is the argument made by Cain against God’s Justice over killing Abel. But providing no place to run is a direct slap at God. In the words of a famous American comedian, “Give him a sporting chance!” In terms of absolute justice, God alone knows. Trust Him to deliver those wrongly accused and to crush those who flee genuine justice.
Limitations on civil police investigation is fundamental to justice. All police agencies across the West have been demanding ever more invasive powers, denying they could possibly do wrong by it. The system at the same time is with all speed removing the mechanism for accountability. Nothing happens to any policeman who gets it wrong. Meanwhile, the damage done in this rapacious rummaging through the lives of the innocent is flatly denied.
If you cannot see the necessity of calling for restraint in this headlong rush to brutality and heedless criminal oppression, you are helping Satan.
Addenda: In response to an offline comment — The fundamental failure here arises from Western epistemology. The West labors under a mythology of objective truth, including the notion that law enforcement is all about achieving some objective standard. That’s a lie from Satan. The fundamental purpose in the Covenant of Noah, and all the rest of Scripture regarding human behavior, is social stability. Some failure is expected. The eyes of human justice must be turned to stability and peace within the context, not some imaginary standard that applies to all people in all contexts at all time. That was never possible, and the current pretense is actually damned nonsense because we can all see it does not apply equally to certain elites. Most painfully obvious is how it does not apply to policemen and other agents of government authority. Even by Western standards this whole thing is a damned lie, Satan’s version of reality. We should demand an acceptable failure rate of police investigation, and the imaginary threshold is currently asinine.