Your heart understands, but your mind may not know what to make of that wisdom.
So the conservatives say they are all about that prosperity for everyone, but that’s just a lie to make sure you sucker up to being robbed by psychopaths. And progressives say they are all about giving you the freedom to make choices but only if your choices fit the orthodoxy de jour. Our hearts tell us that the outcomes are all wrong, but not a single one of those standard policy theories answers all the needs. Instead, our society allows one and then another political manipulator to try to even things up, only to discover they all keep doing the same thing: scraping off our hides to feed their personal wealth.
The question is not liberty or justice as defined by the babblers of our day. The question has nothing to do with wrapping ourselves too deeply in the political affairs of human cattle, as David calls people without a heart-sense in Psalm 68. Rather, the question is taking however much opportunity our Creator offers to seek His glory, because that defines justice in our world. That question is answered by letting your heart rule over your mind.
We don’t need to worry about discerning whether something is conservative or liberal. Both are wrong, as are all the other points on the Western political compass. You won’t get anywhere pushing in any direction defined by that. We have to push up to a higher level.
It’s pretty simple right now. Most activists imagine they can do something, but accomplish nothing that lasts. There are thousands of causes you can join, thousands of different ways to utterly miss the point. The activists aren’t evil, just lost in this lower realm of human mythology. The true divine focus is a matter of communicating through your human presence what you have seen of His glory. But our world is now divided between meat space and virtual space, so the application of that mission varies between the two at a fundamental level. It boils down to acting as just as you can in meat space and promoting free exchange on the Net.
The primary means of meat space evangelism is simply self control. Your heart is wired for that, so let it rule. What we need after that is a clear image of what God intended for this world as redemption, and that’s why all the blather here about the Laws of Noah as the starting point, the foundation on which we build our mental frame of reference for dealing with this world.
On the Net, it’s still the Laws of Noah, but adjusting our expectations to fit the different nature of the virtual world. It’s still a matter of self-control, but on the Net that means controlling the message (your virtual presence), making sure nothing subverts your message along the way. Yes, that means making sure you maintain as much control over the device as possible, but you must decide what that means. I run Debian on my computers because that provides the proper balance between calling and personal skills. I’ll help you run Debian on your computer, but that has nothing to do with some kind of sacred orthodoxy in computing. You have to want it on some level or you can’t use it. I’ll also help you understand as much as you need with the whole gamut of computer technology and networking so that you can make a good mental decision about what your heart demands.
In my own personal calling, there is a strong overlap between the two. My primary ministry outlet in meat space is helping folks with their computers. Where will that take me in the coming days as tribulation deepens? It will take me wherever God intends to use me. I submit to you that my personal vision of that will continue shifting and changing shape as I draw closer to it, and even as I pass through it. That’s because the only real problem is my fleshly expectations, and we rightly start from the assumption they probably don’t match reality. Right now, I tend to think this business of the Zionist backlash will push me often into the company of progressive activists because they will be the ones most likely to suffer from this change. There are precious few “conservative Christians” who don’t support Zionism. Progressives will be the ones more likely to know they need my help and more likely to be open to the gospel I bring in my human presence. Mixing with progressives is hardly a matter of taste, but of opportunity.
My heart must rule over my tastes. My heart has far better taste than my flesh.
Amen