The Hedgerow of Lies 1

My soul is provoked about something.

Teaching is a major element in my mission; it’s a major element in how I serve as elder. Were there no virtual parish at all here, I would still consider myself a teaching elder. It would be in the sense of a very gossamer fellowship of belief, mere associates in the realm of ideas. Thus, you need not be a disciple of mine to find any of my stuff useful. I’m far more concerned with helping you get free from bondage than I am with building a community. That a community has formed is most gratifying and I take seriously the sense of duty that comes with that, but I would be driven to write some of the same stuff either way.

A ceaseless care that provokes me is people in bondage to Satan. Just a quick review of what I mean by that — God portrays Himself as an eastern feudal lord, and Satan is His faithful Punisher. All of Creation is our Lord’s domain, and all within His dominion are subject to His will as Owner and Lord. He has revealed that will sufficient that we could obey and satisfy Him; there are no tricks or secret plots involved. Those under His dominion who reject His revelation are consigned as wards of His Punisher. We can’t possibly comprehend how it all works, but we can offer this parable to indicate something useful and actionable. Satan is in some way enriched by this punitive servitude, so he is motivated to make the most of it. It’s not enough that he holds a majority of humanity, but he zealously prosecutes in the Heavenly court every family member of God who falls short of divine will.

Satan’s mission is to deny us shalom, the privileges of God’s family. He’s no kind of threat at all to God; he is a faithful servant, rather like Potiphar serving Pharaoh. He is a serious problem for you and me. That’s a reflection of the holiness of our God, in that He demands we treat Him and His Word as holy. But another element of that holiness is His mercy and compassion on those who simply cannot rise to perfection. We are fallen creatures, after all. So He sent His Son to more clearly demonstrate our duties, and the Son now stands in that same court to defend those of us who love Him and He moderates Satan’s legal maneuvers.

Thus, following Christ means striving to reclaim the divine heritage as Children of the Father, adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus the Son. This is all clearly stated in terms of eastern feudalism, and we live in a world that rejects the whole image as God revealed it. If you were born in America, you have to struggle against a head full of false ideas — a whole orientation, a mental map contrary to what God revealed. This same problem is a reflection of a much broader failed mental map common across the whole of Western society. The Western mind fundamentally rejects the feudal nature of God’s revelation, which feudalism is the very nature of God’s entire Creation. You simply cannot comprehend reality until you embrace eastern feudalism (Ancient Near Eastern feudalism, to be precise).

So I teach about that feudalism and make it the basis for my Bible commentary, because this is one of the best ways I know to help people get free from Satan’s clutches. You cannot walk in the full power of our Creator in this world until you understand Him and His revelation. I don’t pretend to know all there is to know on this subject, but it’s a life-consuming work just to get human minds started down the path of truth. And just this little bit of knowledge is such a big leap for most folks that, without the Holy Spirit driving people to embrace it, I don’t think it’s possible to get anywhere at all.

But that same Holy Spirit often reminds me how He has to work through the mental associations already in the human mind to lead them from truth to truth until they begin to live a life reclaiming the promised blessings of God’s revelation. A critical element in that learning process is helping you to see what’s false, and how it is false. That means we have to understand the nature of the prevailing myths that bind people under Satan’s authority. So I wrote a couple of books tracing how the West was born and the long saga of how Western Civilization arose and ran pell-mell away from the revelation in Scripture. I strive to depict where and how Western thinking is false, a barrier to walking out of Satan’s clutches.

Again, that’s more complicated than any one man could handle alone. There are plenty of folks who know far more than I about all of this. I’m praying that some of them will join in this task and we can have a body of teaching that can serve this noble cause. Meanwhile, I’m doing what I can with my limited learning. One of the biggest problems I run into is helping people work from existing mental maps to build new associations in their minds that extend their mental reach back to the revelation of God. You see, I cannot avoid using those existing associations, despite knowing that there is a risk that they’ll never move from them. There’s a lot of good truth that has been woven into big lies. When I try to extract those truths, I often end up with people coming here and clamoring for me to keep that crap associated with those truths.

Satan cannot remove God’s truth from this world. What he has done is broken it up and scattered it around in fragments and bound the bits and pieces up with nonsense. All of God’s truth is out there, but pulled in different directions so that competing opposing groups each have their own bit of truth held captive with lies. This leaves me with pointing out the truth of things as best I can while also pointing out the lies wrapped around it. All I can do is trust the Spirit of God to confirm what I say for those of you called to His mission, while fending off the idiots sent by Satan to confuse things and keep it all covered up. It’s tiresome, but I can’t be silent.

I may hold off sharing some things until the time is right, but sooner or later I have to address the issues despite knowing it will provoke Satan’s willing minions.