Law of Moses — Exodus 22:1-15

Posted on November 23, 2019 by ehurst

We should keep in mind that this summary of case law is not meant to be a compendium, but a sample of rulings that would indicate something of how God as sovereign views justice. These rulings indicate the moral character of God. Thus, a wise heart could extrapolate a great deal from this sampling of decisions. This is how God expects His people to treat each other. These rulings assume that the people involved are kinfolks.

If someone steals livestock, and it can be proved, the thief owes the original owner four sheep for one, or five oxen for one. How he pays that is another matter; he owes it. Thieves typically broke in by digging through a wall, either of clay and lath, or of mud over stones. Doing so at night, the thief is fair game if he is killed by the panicked residents defending themselves in darkness. However, being caught in daylight, it’s more reasonable to expect folks to wrestle and take him into custody. If they fail, they should have at least a good chance of identifying him. Once caught, he has to repay whatever the value of what was taken. If he is poor, he can be sold on a servant bond to repay the debt.

If what he stole was an animal, and it is found alive in his custody, he shall repay double. This is rather like our modern “grand theft” in that animals were typically the most valuable things people owned in that day and time, in terms of how it useful it was in keeping them alive. We get the image that it’s only slightly less valuable than a human. They weren’t as accountable as humans, but still pretty valuable. So anyone who fails to control his livestock, so that they graze someone else’s crops, shall repay with the best of his own crops. This implies that the victim gets to choose what pleases him in like amount, one for one value.

It was common in those days to burn the stubble of a harvested field. Most fields were separated from each other by piled stones pulled from the fields, in which thorns and other things grew wild. Since harvest was a dry season, this weed patch would also be dry, and might catch fire and spread to someone else’s field. If the adjacent field still had unharvested crops, or the harvest is still stacked in the field, it could be a disaster for the neighbor. Whomever started this fire without keeping it under control is liable for the loss.

There were no safe deposit boxes in those days. It was a common courtesy to accept your neighbor’s valuables for safe keeping when the owner had to be away from home for a while. Anyone paying attention to the affairs of their neighbors, as cousins typically did, would know about such deposits. It might tempt a thief to try stealing it, since it’s all neatly packed. If caught, the thief has to pay double, on the principle that his act was predatory, not just a crime of opportunity. If the thief isn’t caught, the two shall appear before the local judge, who will try to make sure whether the trustee had any involvement in the crime. For example, did he make it easy for the thief by pretending he knew nothing about it?

For something like this involving trust and fraud, the standard ruling was to repay double. Again, it was a predatory crime. However, property with feet to move on its own was a different story. Domestic animals can wander off, get eaten, or frightened and run away. In such cases, the trustee can make an oath before God of his innocence. This is essentially calling a conditional curse down upon oneself. With such an oath, the victim of loss is restricted from seeking any further redress. That kind of stuff could have happened while the animal was still in his own custody.

But if this animal was actually stolen, implying that there is some evidence the trustee didn’t take reasonable care to guard against such theft, then he has to repay the value of the animal. If he can prove the animal was killed by a natural predator (dogs, lions and bears did roam Palestine)then the trustee was not accountable. The victim would have to “blame” God in that case.

Borrowing an animal, typically for plowing or bearing some other load, made the borrower liable for the animal’s health and safety. If the owner of the animal came along, this implies the owner was being paid for it. Any losses for a hired animal were the owner’s problem, but he also need not come up with another animal to fulfill the contract.

All of this makes good sense for kinfolks dealing with each other. It all assumes that these people care about each other’s welfare, and aren’t looking for an excuse to exploit each other. It also deals with the reality that your own blood kin may not be the finest people in this fallen world.

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Implementation Is the Issue

Posted on November 20, 2019 by ehurst

Under Biblical Law, the issue is not changing people’s hearts. That is something God alone can do. Nor are we particularly interested in changing their minds, since that really gets nowhere in particular. We don’t care about someone’s policy agenda; we want to stop the implementation of things that violate God’s dominion in our lives.

If, for example, we sense the need for a violent response to protect something God has commanded us to guard, we do so not to attack the person or their thoughts, but to stop the violation of dominion. Once they back off, we could care less what they have in their heads and hearts, in that sense. If they keep their hands off our mission, we don’t care what they think. That is, we become aware of how they think only in the sense of tracking reasonable expectations of how they will act.

This is why we don’t engage in activism of the usual sort. We can’t change policy; the system is invariably tilted against us. The ruling elite may well listen to their own kind, but there are severe boundaries to what their minds will entertain. It invariably excludes Biblical Law.

So Antifa (“anti-fascists”) is an example of totally idiotic activism. It attacks a mindset and has very little to do with how that mindset drives action. Indeed, Antifa flatly lies about that question in the first place. They allege “fascism” in everything that isn’t what they already want. It’s all just an excuse to cause trouble because they don’t have actual control over people’s minds, yet they demand that control.

Under Biblical Law, it’s not merely that we face people with bad ideas. We also face the prophetic warning that we cannot change those ideas. We have zero hope that Biblical Law can possibly spread across the human race. God’s Law is the ultimate truth of human existence, but nobody cares, nor can they be made to care. It will spread as God touches lives, but He promised it would be rather rare. We are warned repeatedly that we will always be a persecuted minority in this world.

If we ever felt the need to gather for concerted action of any kind, it will always be aimed at blocking the implementation of whatever it is that threatens our calling and mission. Keep your eye on that issue.

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Change of Heart

Posted on November 19, 2019 by ehurst

I’m including a couple of shots from Miracle Hill out at Draper Lake, just for fun.

One of my readers told me a relative got a heart transplant. How does that affect my teaching about the heart-led way, and about the heart as a sensory organ? My answers aren’t authoritative, but they are mine.

It was two questions, and rightly so. Scripture uses the heart as a metaphor for the will, the sense of conviction and commitment. Your spiritual “heart” does not have a physical locus, just as your conscious “mind” isn’t restricted to your brain. If your flesh dies, those things continue on in a non-flesh presence somewhere else.

The heart as a sensory organ is based on having an organ that works. As long as your body doesn’t reject the heart, it should work the same as before. That includes the sensory functions, and the means to process the sensory input. It’s all inherent in God’s design.

By the same token, there is a high probability that the recipient of a replacement heart will pick up on some elements of the donor’s experiences. Some of the donor’s bonds of commitment may live on in a recipient who is sensitive to such things. Some elements of how we experience commitment do reside the neurons, somewhat as a beaten path. This whole thing has fuzzy edges, so don’t be surprised when people who receive heart transplants have a change in their outlook on life.

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Reprise: Exodus 21:12-27

Posted on November 17, 2019 by ehurst

I wanted to save for a separate lesson the implications of what God says about parents under this section of law. It’s about respect for God and His choices for us. God chooses the parents to whom we are born.

Respect has never been slavish obedience. That false concept arises from our Western heritage, something unique to the Germanic tribal culture. It was only a pretense even then, but shows up strongly in the absolutist doctrine of obeying the State. In Hebrew culture, respect was simply showing honor to someone.

Thus, the Hebrew term for “curse” in verse 17 is based on the idea of diminishing something. It’s making light of it, mocking, tearing it down. There are other words translated as “curse” in English, but this one is pretty specific to ripping down God’s glory.

We can respect anyone on many different grounds. It’s what we call “civility” — the habit of seeking to keep society stable and reducing unnecessary conflict. While this does manifest in peculiar ways in our Western history, it’s not all that different in concept to what held in the Ancient Near East (ANE). It shows reverence to God to give others a chance to rise to their best self.

This not about rules that can get you into trouble, demanding you drop all your wariness in social situations. You can remain fully alert and capable of defending yourself. And you can rely on God to protect you when someone has prepared an ambush. That’s also part of holiness. But our preference should be to let people be who they are and give them a due measure of respect. It will probably never be what some people demand, but that’s another matter.

With your parents, it’s not giving them everything they demand, either. It’s giving them due respect as God defines it.

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Law of Moses — Exodus 21:12-27

Posted on November 16, 2019 by ehurst

We need to review some historical context here. The ancient Hebrew people were tribal and feudal. Their social stratification bore little resemblance to that of Medieval Europe; this was not a feudalism of lands and titles, but of people and leadership. In general, each household would host at least a couple of men-at-arms, professional soldiers by the ancient Hebrew standard. It’s not that they didn’t do more common work, but they did hold a certain privilege regarding physical violence, because they were trained as to when it was proper. They had a code of honor of sorts, though nothing like Western chivalry.

Hebrew feudal order was more a matter of how many people for which a man was shepherd. Moses divided them up with a chief at households of ten men, fifty men, a hundred, and a thousand (Exodus 18). These numbers were flexible, of course, but the point is gaining some idea of how a chief might be over his own close household of ten, and he would be subject to an elder over fifty, who was in turn subject to an elder over one hundred, etc. Each of these men could call on their higher elder to handle something for which they doubted their own judgment. It was partly by birth, but also a matter of community consensus, and sometimes other factors who assumed the role of chief at various levels. However, in practice, the chief was typically the man best able to lead in battle, either directly or as a wise tactician. He was also considered wise enough to judge civil matters, or to appoint someone else to bear that load.

But his was the final authority over the people in his care who misbehaved. The point at which a man ranked high enough to carry out an execution appears to have varied over the history of the nation, but it was typically rather low on the chain for something obvious, where the penalty was not in doubt. Sometimes a crime committed by someone from a neighboring jurisdiction would warrant turning them over to the victim’s family to punish. In general, physical punishment was carried out by a social peer or superior, virtually always a man-at-arms who acted for his household/clan/tribe/etc. This man was the appointed “avenger.” If the criminal was a soldier himself, you would send a better soldier (higher ranking) with helpers.

Virtually every man was trained to fight some as a conscript. Sparring was a form of sport, and Hebrew unarmed fighting was mostly wrestling. Men who got into a fracas would typically resort to wrestling, not punching, kicking or using weapons. They were expected to understand by custom that trying to kill someone was generally forbidden. Just wear him down and make him surrender. That was usually the end of the matter.

Thus, this passage begins with a warning about using punches or convenient weapons. Once you take that path, the liability rises steeply — compensation for lost time or execution for killing. God makes a special point about the difference between winning a fight and starting one, particularly in terms of killing. Most fights arise from genuine disagreements, and if you happen to kill your opponent, you can flee to a City of Refuge away from the avenger, and wait for your case to make its way through the appeals system. But if you harbor hatred for your covenant brother or sister, you are already dead in your heart, so it’s likely your body will soon follow because you would act on that hatred and get into trouble. In that case, even the most extreme refuge of taking hold of the horns of an altar — normally sacred where violence of any kind is forbidden — cannot protect you. The avenger can drag you off the altar and execute you.

On the one hand, punitive beatings were justly performed with a rod, though typically not so heavy as a staff, but more like a long flexible stick or section of cane. On the other hand, it didn’t matter much of you fail to restrain yourself and kill your bond servant. In such a case, the servant’s kin can appoint an avenger to execute the master. If it takes the servant a while to die, then the bond servant’s family cannot appoint an avenger. The man loses his investment, though, and can’t reclaim the monetary loss from the servant’s kin.

If two men are tussling and accidentally cause the spontaneous premature birth of a pregnant bystander, the minimum penalty is whatever the father of the child demands, up to the amount agreed to between a pair of judges, one representing each of the two parties. For any actual harm, it’s the old Lex Talionis.

Beating a servant so that he/she loses an eye or tooth dissolves the bond. Eyes are obvious, but the issue with teeth is that there was no dentistry to speak of in those days. People would lose enough teeth all too soon in their lives simply from aging.

Obviously we see that it’s taken for granted people will fight some. The idea was to keep it within boundaries that would promote shalom (AKA social stability). There were rules in place to help guide, and if someone can’t learn to restrain themselves before they get involved, they are already a threat to shalom.

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Excess Baggage

Posted on November 15, 2019 by ehurst

Experience told me I would need it if my prayers were to be answered.

It wasn’t very expensive; I found it a thrift store. I used something like it in the past, but this one was better. It was a tall stool with padding on the seat. When leading church music, I needed it because my right knee didn’t allow me to stand for long periods of time. And if I was ever going to preach, it would be essential to take the weight off. I tried out with several churches, driving long distances and carrying that stool in the vehicle.

But my prayers were not according to God’s plans. No church would have me; they’d rather do without. The stool had nothing to do with it. They didn’t like where I proposed to lead them. I believe most of them did do without for a long time; they were small and couldn’t pay much. I was willing to take low pay and make the most of the situation. I knew from experience I could make those churches grow. I had done it too many times elsewhere.

But slowly, be degrees over the years, I realized that no church was ever going to hire me. I had no business trying that route. I kept hoping, but it wasn’t going to happen.

So today I finally got rid of that stool. I never gave it much thought, only reflexively hanging onto it. In the last 15 years or so I lugged that thing along on every move, but not any more. You see, even if I now should find myself in the shepherd’s role here in meat space, it’s wholly unlikely to require that stool. Not that I won’t sing or teach, but that ditching the stool symbolizes how very different the context would have to be.

At this point I’m not even willing to entertain a call to pastor a traditional church. I’d be willing to volunteer to work with one that knew up front what comes with the package. But to actually hire me as pastor would see me very quickly leading them away from the traditional pattern of doing things, or they would run me off.

The real excess baggage is all the structure and activities I learned from attending and working in traditional churches. It’s not that it’s inherently wrong to do church that way; it’s wrong for me. Let someone else inherit my stool. I have a different calling for the rest of my life.

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Moses’ Law — Exodus 21:1-11

Posted on November 9, 2019 by ehurst

Right off the bat, God begins stating His judgments. These are things decided already by the Divine Judge. This passage is the precedent for handling bond-servants from among your Covenant nation, as opposed to outright slaves. There is a different code for Gentile slaves, as we shall see later. So far as we know, no other national code or covenant offered such strong rights for any kind of slaves.

It was a common practice in the Ancient Near East to sell oneself into bondage to pay back a large debt, or for some other need of a large sum of money, or simply as a means to dealing with abject poverty. The term of service (the bond) for bond-servants was tied to the sabbatical cycle. They worked for six years and then became free.

His marital status returned to his former life upon release. Thus, a slave married before is still married. If he brought his family into the bond, he took them with him at the end of it. A single slave returns to the single life. Should his master offer, and he accept a slave wife (most likely a Gentile woman), she remains the property of the master, as do any children. He can always choose to stay with his slave family in service. In that case, a judge or priest is called to witness the ritual of permanent service: his earlobe (symbol of obedient listening) is “nailed” to the doorpost of the house he serves. He becomes a possession of the owner of that house, though still a covenant brother.

But a woman cannot sell herself into bondage. She can be sold by her father/guardian only, and then she has the legal status of a concubine. If her master actually takes her into his bed, and then regrets it for any reason, she can be sold back to her family or some other Hebrew household so that she remains protected by the Covenant. It’s rather like a divorce. He can’t just kick her out on the street, and he absolutely cannot sell her to a Gentile buyer. God will not permit Hebrew men to become sexual predators on poor girls.

If he buys a girl for his son, he has to treat her as he would a standard daughter-in-law. If any man takes an additional wife beside his concubine, she might not have full social standing as wife, but he cannot reduce her position in the household. She must retain the same food, clothing, and the same favorable treatment in daily living. In other words, her master cannot suddenly demote her to mere slavery.

Again, this is far better than the treatment bond-servants typically saw in other nations.

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Deaconesses

Posted on November 8, 2019 by ehurst

On the one hand, this is largely theoretical for us under Radix Fidem, since we have little use for most New Testament church offices as a virtual community. On the other hand, it’s probably a good idea to be sure we understand how this should work.

I’m not going to catalog all the passages that might address this; it’s not that kind of discussion. Rather, I will rely on your having read most of the New Testament in the first place. We need a bigger picture, not just proof-texts.

The primary reason for having any kind of female leadership in the church is that the Hebrew people had fairly strict rules about men and women in social settings. Those rules were based on ancient custom arising in a tribal context. Men and women who were not relatives generally avoided any kind of social contact with each other. It’s not that all contact was forbidden, but there had to be a compelling reason to cross that boundary.

There was also a sliding scale. For those residing in the same extended family household, the contact was not that restricted. As the metaphorical distance increased, the barriers got larger. The idea was to protect the honor of both sides, and reduce temptation. People were more likely to poach among strangers, because it was easier to keep it secret.

So we see that the early church was virtually a mirror for the synagogue. The sexes were segregated in worship. Frankly, the women preferred to sit behind the men, because it allowed them to whisper amongst themselves while the men were carrying on their discussions down front. Some portion of a synagogue service was preaching and some parts were discussion; men tended to formality, while women were more chatty. This was frankly quite practical and folks were generally happy with it.

For the New Testament church, it became more a matter of being very careful to uphold a high standard. This was to fend off some persecutory accusations of immorality. For example, men would not touch women in baptism rituals, some of which were fairly private due to the facilities available. Thus, deaconesses would baptize women.

Initially, deaconesses were widows, spinsters or young virgins. They didn’t have the burden of caring for a family, and their devotion to work wouldn’t deprive anyone else. As the churches sprouted in more Gentile communities, the social realities softened that rule a bit, as more women had jobs in Gentile societies. But in the church, leadership in particular benefited from women past menopause. While there was little commentary on such things in the Bible, the oral traditions point out that menopause changed how a woman viewed her world, and made her much stronger in many ways. She’s still a woman, but on average a whole lot tougher than younger ones.

We already know that no woman was allowed to teach men, but the Hebrew people still carried a firm reverence for wise women and their discernment. A feminine voice was critical in shepherding the body. Solomon’s choice to place a throne for his aging mother in the royal court didn’t surprise anyone; it was consistent with cultural biases. He would take her advice on a range of things that might surprise us, though.

Our society today is a very long way from that ancient world, in part because we are saddled with a lot of silly myths that they didn’t suffer. But in actual churches that arise from the Radix Fidem covenant, we should see some deaconesses.

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Revisiting the Definition of “Game”

Posted on November 7, 2019 by ehurst

Jack and I have been conversing about this some more. Maybe this will clarify: Game is roughly equivalent to charisma. You can abuse your charms or you can use them help people listen to your message. You are born with a certain amount of charisma, and you can enhance that inheritance. Some people mistake the word “Game” for “gaming someone” in the sense of manipulation. In the wider manhood community of blogging, the word “game” appears in both senses and it’s confusing.

As I use the term “game” in this context, it arises from the concept of “game theory.” Game theory is a mindset, an approach gamer geeks use to beat gaming software (AKA RPGs = role playing games). The various games offer virtual worlds and there is a more or less scientific approach to learning how that virtual world is designed. Once you understand it, you can go back through the game and play proficiently and collect the various rewards. You can game the game by using game theory. Do you sense we need more words here to distinguish the various meanings of “game”?

There is a very influential fellow out there who used to work in the game software business, someone very intelligent who just happened to have a very strong social instinct. He goes by the name Vox Day and you can look him up in any search engine. Be aware that Google and friends, under the guidance of the SJW agenda, will try to keep you away from Vox himself, and likely offer links only to stuff that criticizes Vox. SJWs hate Vox, and he returns the favor quite vocally.

Vox explored dating from a gamer’s viewpoint of testing how women reacted, as if they were features of a virtual world in a game. Not a very nice view of women, some say, but it had the effect of reducing the crazy cultural mythology to a manageable level of testing and verification of what was written into the game code, as it were. Some games will play games with your head, you see. He discovered that the women he encountered seldom reacted as they themselves claimed. Women were quite unaware of their own motives and desires, as he saw it. Sadly, a great many men in society are also deceived by the same batch of lies. Treating dating as an RPG, he realized there was a whole lot of mythology that ensnared both men and women.

He organized his thinking about this and published it as his “Game Theory of Human Socio-sexual Response.” He wasn’t alone in his analysis, but his presentation of what he learned got a lot more attention than other men with similar knowledge. That’s because he was already deeply involved in publishing his thoughts on a lot of other things. I already noted he was involved in gaming software, and had published a lot of reviews in commercial publications. He got paid for it. He also wrote a lot about politics and economics, which is related to his graduate degree, and he garnered much fame on that stuff. And naturally some of what he wrote was commentary on culture and social trends.

So when he started revealing his research into Game Theory of Human Socio-sexual Response, it got the same level of attention. The reaction was very strong, as you might expect, because he consistently says that women suffer from a lot of socially enforced mythology. In my assessment, most of what he says about such things overlaps with what the Bible says, in that the feminist agenda is a lie of the Devil.

But other men have written on the subject, and Vox has promoted or disputed with them publicly, and there arose a very large community of men discussing this whole thing. The debate itself brought the whole topic into some prominence on the Internet. Some of these men cared only for sating their degraded lusts, but at least their assumptions about feminine nature was accurate, against the social mythology of feminism. These men scored well in their flesh game because they ignored the propaganda. They had a strong “game.” But there are even more men interested in making their marriages better, and the marriages of others. They used this lore to build a strong open communication between men and women. Quite a few women have absorbed this lore and write their own blogs about gaming men, or more often, making their marriages better.

As confusing as all this use and abuse of the word “game” can be, I doubt I can simply use the term “charisma” as a blanket replacement. Way too many people have funny ideas about the meaning that word, too. The best I can do is make a reasonable effort to put them both in a useful context and try to explain what I see as the hand of God working in our lives. I don’t mind taking the time to explain my approach, and I won’t hesitate to shut down people who offer silly arguments over semantics. You believe what you want, but I know what my God demands of me, and that’s what I write about.

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Random Photos for Early November 2019

Posted on November 6, 2019 by ehurst

Here’s another look at the OKC skyline over some trees. I was standing near the middle dam on the Oklahoma River project. Off to the right is the Scissortail sculpture, marking the southern end of Scissortail Park.

Midwest City is pretty active still with their bike trails planning. A couple of weeks ago they opened a new trail that runs northward along Soldier Creek after it passed through the Barnes Park system. The trail runs up to something called Mid-America Park. It’s a small spot along Soldier Creek with virtually no place to park. It was meant as a strictly local neighborhood park back when families owned fewer cars and walked more.

Plans for the trail system indicate it will extend farther along Soldier Creek until it joins another proposed trail along Crutcho Creek, into which Soldier Creek empties. This shot is the last corner of the park where you can look in the direction the creek flows away.

This field used to be mowed for hay, but it hasn’t been cut in a couple of years. The field stands behind a row of houses; you reach it by following a path through an empty lot that never saw a house. Nothing was built because the developers had to leave access for whomever owned that field. Anyway, the path cuts across one end of this field.

From that last view, pivot to your right just about 90° and you’ll see this railroad bridge where Soldier Creek turns back north. That path runs under the left side of the bridge, and it’s almost rideable on my bike. Midwest City’s plan calls for a path to run along the bank from the park and under this bridge, which is just a hundred yards from the park. I followed the existing ad hoc path and it took me to the SCIP Trails I used to ride once in a while. The path I took runs right into the last third of the Blue Loop.

Once I left the SCIP Trails park, I went east to Midwest Boulevard and headed north to one of my favorite prayer chapels on the North Canadian River. I haven’t been there in quite a while. The river was way down and there happened to be a substantial sandbar just below my chapel at the mouth of Crutcho Creek. I clambered down and took this shot at river level, looking downstream.

Later today a huge rain system should move in, dropping some 2 inches of rain in the next 24 hours or so. The river bank near my chapel shows signs of cutting during high water a month or so back. If it continues, my chapel could disappear and the Crutcho could get a new mouth, because that cutting is right where the creek and river nearly converge before the creek snakes away again.

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