Teachings of Jesus — Luke 18:1-14

Posted on February 16, 2019 by ehurst

Luke pulls these two parables together, showing that the issues are related. There’s nothing remarkable about either one and both are among those parables most easily understood in almost any language.

There was a judge, mostly likely a Sadducee by the description of his character. The most powerless adults in that day were Jewish widows. The nation had long since drifted away from the tribal lifestyle, where clans often lived all in one area. In ancient times, a widow was protected by her local kinsmen. Ancient judges were warned by God to take special care for widows and orphans and not to take bribes. This particular judge care not at all what God commanded, and was quite likely to extort bribes from the unfortunate, and accept bribes from those who already had advantages.

So it’s likely someone was trying to seize her property on one pretext or another, something one would expect from the Pharisees and scribes who tried to keep secret the finer points of the Law from the peasants. So she came and pestered this unjust magistrate, but he turned her away. She didn’t give up. Using the one and only weapon left to a woman in that position, she nagged him without mercy. In the end, he gave her justice simply to get rid of her.

Even the unjust have a breaking point. Is God that difficult with us? If you come to Him as the Judge of all Creation and cry out about some injustice, do you suppose He will turn us away? Granted, it may seem that way when God seems to move at a different pace than us. Still, God is nothing like that unjust magistrate. If the nagging widow can persist with a godless man, why can’t we persist with God?

Someday soon the Messiah would declare His Kingdom, and such injustice will become quite rare. But then, the real question is this: When the Messiah comes to claim His Kingdom, will He find any folks with that kind of faith? You see, that woman had no faith in the magistrate, but she had faith in God. She rested entirely in divine hands; she had nowhere else to go. Her world was the world in which Jesus lived. He didn’t come across that kind of faith very often, yet it was precisely what He was seeking in His ministry.

Indeed, His next parable addresses those who helped to make things so unjust in the first place. Two men went to the Temple at the hour of prayer. The Pharisee smugly thanked God out loud for not making him like all those nasty sinners, to include that publican back in corner. How proud he was!

The publican stood at the back because he dared not come any closer. He cried out to God from a distance, as it were, though keeping his voice soft, seeking mercy for sins he knew all too well from his burning conscience. In other words, he was truly penitent. Jesus said the latter went his way more justified than the former. God pays little heed to the arrogant, but gives grace to the humble.

Do you not see how the faithful widow and the penitent publican are both the sort of people who will be welcomed into the Messiah’s Kingdom?

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MS Office Fails

Posted on February 16, 2019 by ehurst

I am not one of those elitists who considers MS Office too pedestrian, as if the sanctity of Perfect Office is so superior. The latter is better, but not for the reasons most aficionados offer. Nor is LibreOffice so cool simply because it’s Open Source. What makes LibreOffice better is that it works the way I do.

When I first learned about document structure and so forth, I was still using typewriters. My next step was actually into the realm of HTML. It was more about delivery of content than it was plastering things precisely on a page. It required that I learn how the human eyes and brain worked together to parse what was being presented on the screen. Maybe I didn’t learn it all that well, but it was how I learned to approach things. For example, it really is best if a line of text has between 50 and 80 characters, because that’s how the brain works with text.

And objects in the page aside from the text should have distinct anchor points. That’s a major focus of how things fall on the page, even when printed. I seldom print anything, but I do produce a lot of PDFs as a fairly universal form of electronic document storage. The HTML approach works fine. If pictures and so forth need to go on a page, just move the anchor point and have the text rewrap around it. No problem.

MS Office may be able to that to some degree, but not by default. I just spent a bit of time earlier trying it with Word 2003 and with the online version of Word. It offers no visible anchor reference point by default. Instead, it tries to decide for you where everything should go, and it’s typically wrong. It does the drag-n-drop thing with images very poorly, erasing all your options every time you touch it. LibreOffice and WordPerfect both have no trouble with this simple task, keeping your formatting as you move it about the page. Yes, there are plenty of things both of those do wrong, and a few things Word gets right, but it isn’t much.

But almost everyone I’ve sent any documents whines that everything has to be in MS Word format. For simple stuff, that’s okay, but if it includes any other added features like graphics or tables, they get PDFs. I’m not taking the risk of having something destroyed by the incompetence of Microsoft. I really don’t care what the rest of the world considers the standard. I’m about as anti-mainstream as it gets for the a great many things. Almost everything I try to communicate assumes a departure from the mainstream; the mainstream is wrong on just about everything.

So just be aware that this is how I operate. I am praying for a new tower and it will run Win10 for at least a while. During that time, I will not waste money on Office 365. I’ll keep using LibreOffice and also see if I can get my copy of PerfectOffice to run, since it does PDFs better than even Adobe does.

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Listen and Give

Posted on February 15, 2019 by ehurst

You have supported this; it wouldn’t be possible without you folks.

In the past year ending in this coming March, I will have shipped or handed over six computer systems to people who needed them: three desktops complete, two laptops and a tablet with keyboard and mouse. This figures large in my mission. The Internet is our Roman Road. We can’t afford to have messengers running all over the world the way the Apostles did in the Roman Empire, but we have the Net. Our outreach over the Internet has created from scratch a substantial covenant community of faith.

So far, we haven’t been able to send anyone on mission, but that my happen soon enough. The tablet I just shipped went to support someone with a mission calling. Granted, I do have a lot of hardware coming and going via my meat-space connections, too, but it’s all the same mission work and I’m nothing more than a clearing house for it.

There’s no budget, no board of directors, no tax exemption and the attendant moral compromise. We are family, a covenant household. Nobody is going to tell you how to dispose of your resources. If you don’t understand the radical, unspeakable blessing that comes from giving to your family members, I can’t make it any more attractive to you. Everything that comes into my possession is just more resources for the Kingdom, but specifically for our faith family. I’m frugal with what I get so I’ll have more to share. Your support for me does more than you’ll ever know.

The idea here is for you to understand that you don’t have to work through me. Sure, ask my advice if you like, but don’t depend on my limited perception. If you become aware of a need — something you can discover by participating in our forum — reach out on your own. Check out the prayer requests. There’s nothing wrong with giving and receiving between you folks privately. I don’t even have to know, but it really blesses the family when you report what great things God has done for you.

Your heart knows; listen and give.

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Draper Bikeway 15

Posted on February 14, 2019 by ehurst

It was a blessed ride; I met with the Lord’s Presence in several places. There hasn’t been a lot of progress since the last bikeway review here. We’ve had a lot of really cold and wet weather that kept me off the bike. Our first shot is the current end of the pavement at SE 104th on the east shore of Draper Lake. Where the route goes off up the hill is quite sandy and I can’t ride that.

Here on the eastern shore are some good sized hills; this is one of several steep climbs I encountered. This is on the backside, headed south. The valley between this and the previous ridge is quite a bit deeper and steeper than this side.

This was one of the sweet spots. The view was lovely, the waves lapping the shore at my feet and out of the wind for the most part. The water level is extra high today, covering whole areas normally dry. Last year I pushed and rode my bike along the shore, which was about 3 or 4 feet (about 1m) below the water where I’m standing here.

This winter has been one of the roughest in terms of hindering riding. I was quite tired when I got home because I haven’t been able to get out much and keep my conditioning up. Still, it was a sweet ride and I’m grateful for the chance before yet another cold wave comes in this afternoon.

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False Division between Sacred and Secular

Posted on February 13, 2019 by ehurst

By no means would I pretend to tell you how to vote in any election. In fact, I generally discourage folks from voting. God controls the outcome, and nothing any human does will change His plans. But feel free to vote as you wish. Vote your convictions regardless of the outcomes. Should the Lord reveal to me who/what is going to win in any election, I’ll be glad to pass that on. It doesn’t happen very often.

In fact, not much of any human political activity matters that much from our position in following Christ. I invested some effort in talking about Trump because he had a specific mission, but he has failed and made himself irrelevant. So I reiterate what I said before: Keep your eyes on the economics and on what the Zionists are doing (not what they say). They are now the effective ruling party of the US.

Having said that, we are still in a position to watch what is happening and understand the how and why of things. It won’t matter if Trump has a second term as president, but if he doesn’t work on that border wall, his voter base will collapse. If he does build the wall, it won’t make any difference in the problem of excessive immigration, but it will change the tactics. There are an awful lot of things public figures can do to keep the popular favor that make no real difference. In that sense, it’s wise for them to try doing things that aren’t going to work, if their position depends on public favor.

That doesn’t mean excessive immigration isn’t a problem, but the real solution is to severely punish anyone who helps illegal immigrants, and to violently defend the border from invasion, whether the invaders are armed or not. That’s just a matter of human nature; you can’t create policies based on principles that ignore reality and expect them to work. My point is that this is a part of why our economy is collapsing. The bottom line is that economics depends on non-economic factors. Population growth is good, but too many folks coming in who refuse to assimilate drains the economy. The US economy rests on cultural homogeneity, never mind what your racial/ethnic background may be.

So with the fading of that longstanding cultural unity that made the US so powerful, the empire can not but collapse. This country will split along cultural lines, never mind what else may appear to be the cause of friction. Yes, feminism destroys the economy, but so do a lot of other “isms.” Each is a departure from the foundation of how we got to the top of the dog-pile and became an imperial hegemon. The motivating force that made the US powerful is mostly gone, never mind whether you think that motivating force was good or bad.

Morally, what this country needs is breaking up and becoming a lot less rowdy. But if you understand that, you must also understand it means whatever “American greatness” is/was, it has to go. It means some other countries in this world will rise to displace the US and will dominate some of the conditions of our lives. Get used to it; learn Russian and/or Chinese. Good or bad, those two giants are doing what works to make them powerful. However, I’ll tell you that the Chinese are on the knife edge of their own economic collapse, so don’t invest too much in their continued rise. They have a hard lesson to learn first.

I realize how hard it is to let go of the idolatry of the American identity. This is one of the implications of my rant a few days ago (Leave It Behind) about the phony division between sacred and secular. For those of us who embrace the Radix Fidem covenant, sacredness is a matter of context and focus, not compartmentalization. Anything God calls you to do is an act of worship. And for sure, any attempt to separate something physical for dedication to divine purpose is purely symbolic. There is no way I can write down a set of rules and distinctions about what fulfills or what violates that supposed purpose. Any use that obeys your divine calling is glorious.

Instead of designating all the other stuff for mundane or secular purpose, how about dedicating your whole being to holiness 24/7? That way, everything you touch takes on a divine purpose for as long as you exercise dominion. Your devotion to His glory sanctifies everything within the range of your heart’s sensory reach. It’s not confined to 10-15 feet (3-4.5m). That’s just what scientists can measure; in practice it goes out to infinity, depending on your sensory reception. In other words, it depends on what God wants you to receive — and assert in His name — regardless of the physical distance.

Let your sense of diving calling rule your existence. It’s one thing to know that the world is going to hell, and to understand the particulars of that. But it’s a holy calling to see with moral eyes what God intended for us in His revelation. Our mission is to participate in that revelation by living it. At some point, that mission is done and we should be so thrilled that this life is over for us.

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Cranking with Windows

Posted on February 12, 2019 by ehurst

I was playing with Win8 on an older system. At one point I logged into my Outlook account. Suddenly the system itself changed my login and instituted a password without telling me what it was; it was an identity I had never used in conjunction with Microsoft services. Then it logged me out and wouldn’t let me back in, demanding I use the new password that I didn’t have. Another reason for castigating MS for making Win8 such a disaster.

On Linux I really like Links2, but it refuses to accept some normal settings on Windows. So I tested Dillo and it worked a whole lot better on Windows than it does on Linux. I can set the window size by adding geometry=WxH in the dillorc file it drops in my user folder under my name, the Windows equivalent of your “home” directory in Linux.

Dillo renders well enough most of the sites I visit, including a few that are blank in Links2. But like Links2 it doesn’t do JScript or cookies. This protects the system from most threats, particularly the ones that sometimes get slipped into advertising networks.

I still like using Cygwin on my Windows system to make available the tools I normally use on Linux, tools that have no good equivalent in actual Windows software. For example, it’s the easiest way to make WHOIS queries, and I can convert units of measurements with the units utility.

I still use LibreOffice way more than I might any part of MS Office. I still prefer VLC over Windows Media Player. And while the mix of browsers is different, I still separate my online activity between different web browsers. A major element in online security is compartmentalization of your activities. Different browsers do different tasks better, and it’s wise to keep anything to do with money away from social media activities, and those away from general browsing. I keep all my Google stuff in one browser by itself, and MS stuff in their browser.

For now, MS’s own Security Essentials is about as good as any other antivirus. I still like Malwarebytes and Piform’s Cookie Cleaner to round it out (watch it; that link starts the download automatically). A great many threats to Windows will store themselves in the browser cache to launch later, so by keeping the cookies and cache cleaned out, you prevent a lot of that stuff. I always wipe that stuff between each website I visit. I’m cranky like that. (Edit: Malwarebytes in-app advertising has gotten to the point of being harassment.)

Perhaps in a few weeks I’ll get my hands on a Win10 system and report here what I’ve learned.

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Four Needs of Manhood

Posted on February 11, 2019 by ehurst

Hat tip to Jay for this one: The Four Kinds Of Male Loneliness. The article refers to loneliness men feel for:

1. feminine companionship
2. the brotherhood of other men
3. a lord, human and/or divine
4. the man he is supposed to be

In various ways, I’ve pointed out each of these as a basic human need for men on this blog. The article goes on to explain these in terms of how modern feminist society attempts to deny that men should aspire to meet these needs. And if you examine the biblical model of manhood, you’ll see that God made us to operate based on these four needs.

By the way, in a biblical model, following Christ means learning how to follow human leaders. Indeed, a shalom society will raise up male leaders as a dire necessity. You cannot obey Biblical Law without having some man rise to the shepherd role for the community of faith.

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Leave It Behind

Posted on February 10, 2019 by ehurst

The biggest mistake was turning faith into a crusade.

What’s the difference between enjoying entertainment and worshiping? Given how most churches operate, the difference is small. That in itself is not the problem. The problem is our habit of pushing faith into a compartment separate from the rest of life. In this, we accept the fundamental argument of secularists that faith is not critical, that it’s just a hobby and should be treated as such. It’s that thing we do that isn’t for everyone.

And then we have the rhetoric that it is for everyone but that embracing it forces changes that are too narrow, allowing religion to become something that squelches the very leading hand of the Spirit in people who are called outside the mainstream. The problem is the existence of a mainstream in the first place, but no one in religion seems to want to touch that.

We need to attack the whole concept of “mainstream.” This is the source of evil oppression. There should be so many different mainstreams that the term loses its meaning. The very notion of a mainstream comes from the ancient Tower of Babel episode.

Why is there such a thing as “Christian News”? Why does it make this brand of news that Switchfoot refuses to identify as a mainstream Christian band? Why is it news that Brian Welch has gone back to work with Korn? The whole business of a uniquely Christian identity is a massive problem. We should treat faith in Christ as the ultimate norm, but without making so much noise and poking a finger in the eye of those who don’t claim Christ.

It’s because we have bought into the epistemology of materialism that we have this discussion in the first place. We should start from the assumption that faith is normal, and embrace the implied epistemology that comes with it. We don’t restrict ourselves to the a priori acceptance of only what our senses and reason can tell us. Sure, we don’t forget Western society is like that, but we shouldn’t buy into that just so we can impress others and make a sales pitch.

Yes, worship music should have some unique lyrics calling on God. He’s special. And there’s nothing wrong with worship bands that don’t do other music. The Bible recognizes various forms of priesthood. And we recognize that a secular world is generally hostile to the whole idea of worship, but we should generally ignore their categories and do what we do in a healthy mix of music styles and song meanings that express how very “mainstream” faith is. Never mind whether you like their music, we need more Switchfoot and Brian Welch kind of musicians.

We don’t conquer the world with our brand; we strive to leave it behind.

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Teachings of Jesus — Luke 17:20-37

Posted on February 9, 2019 by ehurst

Jesus healed ten lepers and only the one Samaritan returned to worship and give thanks. Jesus confirmed how it was his faith that healed him. As the writer of Hebrews notes, faith is the assurance of things we cannot perceive with our senses. That is important to the teaching that follows.

The Pharisees asked Jesus when He would establish His Messianic Kingdom of Heaven. His answer was that it was the wrong question. That is, it’s the wrong approach to understanding Jesus and His teachings, and it was the based on a lot of false expectations about the Messiah. For the Pharisees, the whole subject of the Messiah was closed in their minds, so anything that didn’t match their catalog of assumptions was treated as false teaching.

Jesus sets them straight: The Messianic Kingdom would be a kingdom of hearts, not of men and political structures. They were asking for a concrete statement of time, and their next question would have been the place. But that was the wrong approach. The kingdom was going to be in the hearts of those who followed His teaching.

Then He turned to His disciples. Luke’s narrative skips over an issue that was obvious to him, but not to most Western readers. If this Kingdom of Heaven was going to be solely in the hearts of the Messiah’s followers, that means there will be no crushing conquest to destroy the current political mess in which they lived. Instead, they were supposed to live with a foot in each realm, one on earth and one in Heaven. The Kingdom was rooted in Heaven, not on this world. It was supposed to be invisible to human perception, but discernible to devoted hearts.

Thus, Jesus notes that there would be times when His subjects would long for a visitation from the Messiah to wash away the moral filth of this world, but such was not coming. There would be no “Day of the Lord” in that sense. Days of wrath, for sure, but nothing that would establish a Messianic kingdom in this world. There will be only one Day of the Lord, and that’s the Return of Christ.

It will not be a surprise or a secret from His followers. Nobody will come around and announce where and when to meet with Him somewhere in the midst of everyday life. No, when Christ returns, it will be as earth-shaking as lightening and thunder arcing across the whole sky, from one horizon to the other. You’ll know; you won’t miss it.

It won’t be soon, of course. There is still a lot of hard trials for Jesus, and the final rejection of Him by His own nation. This will set them up for the wrath of that Last Day. It will be like all those people who ignored Noah’s preaching, and suddenly the flood came and washed them away. It will be like it was for Sodom and Gomorrah, snickering at Lot’s warnings. But as soon as Lot was barely a safe distance away, fire and brimstone fell from the sky on those cities. The final, ultimate revelation of Christ to all humanity will come just like that.

Nobody will have time to pack up their stuff. Even if you could run, it wouldn’t do you any good. Don’t forget what happened to Lot’s wife. People who cling to this world will be destroyed with it. If you try to save this life, you will surely lose it, primarily because you tried to save it. If you live with a readiness to abandon this life, you’ll save something far more precious — eternal life.

Imagine how it will look. Two people sleeping in a bed and one is taken away for judgment, while the other is left to see the new day dawning. Or perhaps two will be grinding flour at the mill, and one is snatched away to face God’s wrath, while the other will be left alone. Two shall be out toiling in the field, and one is hauled off to face their sins. The other is left to see the end of sweaty labor.

The disciples ask where all the wretches will be taken. Jesus gives a very pungent answer: To find a rotting carcass, look for vultures. This is not meant in any literal sense. If they live to see that Day of the Lord, and are curious about what happened to those who rejected Christ as the ultimate revelation of God, it won’t be too hard to find out. Meanwhile, don’t worry about it. It’s the wrong kind of question.

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Damnation Justified

Posted on February 9, 2019 by ehurst

Just so you’ll understand: The sudden rise in pro-abortion laws and policies is not merely for the convenience of women. It’s portrayed that way, but the money behind this is all about harvesting tissue and organs. The really nasty item is the harvesting of blood for transfusions for older people who want to feel invigorated and live longer. This madness goes so far as to propose killing infants postpartum.

This is the standard Western idolatry of youth. It’s the same underlying mythology that guarantees we will never lack for pedophiles, the dread of aging and dying. It starts with the rejection of any revelation from God about how this life is supposed to suck and the next life can be so much better than we could ever imagine. But it requires accepting revelation about this ugly fallen existence.

So once again we have a lot of Boomers sacrificing future generations for their current hedonistic obsessions. They reject paradise with Christ in Heaven, so they’ll stand in His Presence condemned and have nowhere to flee for eternity.

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