Teachings of Jesus — Luke 12:49-53

Posted on December 8, 2018 by ehurst

In a fallen world, divine revelation is divisive. The substance of the Fall was turning away from the heart-led way of obedience to God, and choosing to trust in human capabilities to discern truth. Thus, the whole world is born without the leadership of the heart in matters of morality. It was the choice to become one’s own god. To then hear the calling of our Creator and turn back to the heart-led way of living makes you a target of the wrath of those convinced you have betrayed human dignity, among other things.

Jesus was divine revelation personified. His teachings called for a return to living by the convictions the Father burns into our hearts. He called for training the mind to surrender and obey the truth from the heart. This was a return to something Jewish leaders had long rejected, so it constituted a revolution, a radical restoration of the ancient Hebrew ways that de-emphasize trusting human reason as a source of truth.

His teaching was a fiery and divisive gospel message. It was the purpose of His life. The image of fire represented the Holy Spirit, to be sure. However, it also represented the fire of persecution that comes from listening to the Holy Spirit speak in your heart. It would set fire to your life in both ways. Jesus was eager to get on with the mission, wishing that the fire had already been kindled.

But there was one more intervening step before He could send that fire. He referred to it as a baptism, a common figure of speech for a hellish testing. But instead of hesitating, He felt driven hard to make it happen. He was actually eager for His trial and crucifixion. It was the whole reason He lived, and this was how His Messianic Kingdom would be born.

The conflict was necessary. Did anyone imagine the Messiah would somehow bring peace to fallen mankind? By no means! This was not the end of the fallen world, but the opening of a spiritual kingdom not of this world. Their hearts would be conquered first, long before this world was finished. Otherwise, no one could enter. And the hearts would fall to Him one at a time, individually, based on nothing that humans could understand. Thus, human family households would be divided.

All the old human loyalties of the past would no longer matter. The new kingdom would transcend such things, resting entirely on a changed heart.

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Church Is Not an Open Square

Posted on December 8, 2018 by ehurst

The church was meant to be a private family gathering. It was modeled on the synagogue; the public could attend, but the proceedings were aimed at the family members. The focus was to improve family life and strengthen the covenant.

In the New Testament, we see public preaching in the open square, where all such communication took place. It was necessarily evangelistic, since the preacher was appealing to outsiders only. Turning the church house into an open meeting crusade is a huge mistake. Insisting that every sermon in the church must include the logical steps of entering the Covenant of Christ is denying the family their needed encouragement within that covenant.

If the only thing you accomplish in a sermon is recounting the doctrine everyone already agrees to, don’t be surprised when spiritual growth doesn’t happen. We should be investing a lot more energy helping people tease out the implications of Biblical Law in the context of their daily lives.

The other issue we see going wrong is treating the phrase “the blood of Jesus” as if it were magic. Words do not have power; only the Holy Spirit does. Your particular points of theology are merely your logical outline of truth, not the substance of truth. Divine revelation transcends words. There is no such thing as “propositional truth” — the Hebrew prophets would sneer at such a concept. And don’t be a fool thinking they wouldn’t know what it means. They understood reason and logic; they didn’t trust the fallen mind to come to truth that way.

The vast majority of preaching in churches today wholly misses the point. The point is to take the Living Law of God — the divine moral character of Christ — and bring it to life in your context. That is not achieved by giving emphasis to the words of Scripture like some Jewish Scribe. Jesus said that was wrong. The Law of Moses wasn’t legislation with precise wording. It was an expression, a verbal manifestation of God’s divine moral character within a limited context. If the context changes, so do the words. The truth is not bound up in the words, but in a direct encounter with God on the spiritual plane.

Preaching to the congregation must assume this encounter as fundamental to moving forward in life. The preaching, like the parables of Jesus, should be virtually inexplicable without that mystical communion with the Holy Spirit. Divine revelation should be polarizing; it should divide family households when any of them are not walking the heart-led way of conviction. Thus, preaching inside the church house should raise demands that are inexplicable to outsiders. They are then challenged and this is when the Spirit draws or drives away.

We do not decide who is a good candidate for the covenant. That’s the job of the Holy Spirit. He will draw them through the impossible demands of revelation.

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Omni This-n-That

Posted on December 7, 2018 by ehurst

Supposed attributes of God, omniscience, omnipotence, omni-benevolence — they are all mere logical terms. To apply them to God actually brings Him down because He transcends the categories. They aren’t that useful as theological statements because theology itself must of necessity be entirely personal.

All-knowing: We should understand that God knows more than any of us, and no created being comes close. The thing is, it’s not a question of what He knows, since He creates reality and knowledge. Does He know the future? Of course, but we can hardly wrap our minds around how that works.

All-powerful: See the previous statement about being Creator. Anything He can make, He can adjust to suit His whims. He can do it in multiple universes at the same time, if it comes to that. Don’t worry about what God can do.

All-loving: He cares or you’d already be dead and in Hell. That’s what we deserve. That you exist in the first place proves He cares. And He is compassionate because He keeps driving us to the one thing that does us the most good — His glory. He loves us enough to guide our wanting until it focuses on His glory. He grants an awful lot of things people want that can’t do them any good, so it’s obvious He is patient beyond comprehension.

Of course, we could go on and on, but those three are the obsession of those who trust in human logic as any kind of useful guide to truth. God is a real and living Person; that’s all you need to know about His attributes.

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The Human Need to Give

Posted on December 7, 2018 by ehurst

There is a sense in which this can’t be explained, but it surely needs to be declared: Every human desperately needs to sacrifice for others.

I’m not talking about our need for others to love us; that’s real but it’s beside my point. The issue here is that we cannot approach God’s favor and our design as humans without finding a desire to sacrifice something of ourselves. Without the impulse and at least the attempt to give, we cannot be fully human.

Granted, there is a lot that has to happen before most people can get there. Only a few people enter adulthood with a readiness to give and accept their own experience of deprivation without it being something perverse. It does show up as a self-destructive tendency all too often. What we are referring to is the heart-led impulse.

The ability to sacrifice for all the right reasons shows an inherent acceptance that this world is not worth taking seriously. It hints at a trust in God as our Provider (“Jehova Jireh”). But it’s not something you get only in the bonus round of holiness. It’s a very basic element in finding yourself.

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Neutral on Jordan Peterson

Posted on December 6, 2018 by ehurst

This is not aimed at anyone in particular; I’ve had a few hints and questions from several readers.

You don’t need me to tell you what to think about people like Jordan Peterson. All I can do is tell that he is very intelligent, but that his clarity of vision is limited to a few things he does well. Those things are manifestations of his profession as a psychologist. He’s very good at coaching people to adjust to the reality in which they live.

However, the quality of his work in that field is also limited by the context. He’s not good at ferreting out and explaining universal truth. He buys into all kinds of stuff that is very much against what Scripture says. The reason he gives those things credence is because they reflect the world in which we live today. He knows our world is pretty messed up, but he doesn’t believe in the Fall. He misses the point on how and why things are messed up, and his solutions are highly contextual. They will do you some good within the context. You may even feel prompted to keep exploring until you come to yet better answers, but he won’t take you there.

So I noted yesterday that he supports the globalist agenda because he isn’t aware that it’s not where we need to be. Most of his best work is limited to correcting a lot of the madness of those who work toward a globalist one-world culture. In other words, he’s very pragmatic about how globalism can work, but doesn’t examine the question of whether it should. So when he criticizes some aspects of globalist activism, he has exceptional clarity about what’s wrong with it. I agree with his criticisms of the extremists in the movement. I don’t agree with his fundamental orientation about what is real and what is in our best interests long term.

You can make up your own mind. I’m not going to crusade against his work; he is mostly irrelevant to what I’m doing. The only reason I mentioned him was because he was prominent in an article I cited, and that was in turn because he’s exceptionally popular right now. So in passing I noted where he was, and cited some source I don’t really like, because that source had one thing right: Peterson worked on a UN project that is devoted to globalist policy. What he did was help remove a lot of senseless junk from a report so that it stuck with the primary issues. But the primary issues were how best to achieve globalist goals.

Peterson is an example of someone who is heart-led, but committed to the wrong god. He doesn’t follow the teachings of Jesus, though he does seem to understand some parts of what Jesus taught better than most Westerners. His analysis is at times useful; feel free to watch his videos and read his books if you are so inclined. He’s a lot better than most of the range of commentators who vie for our attention every day. But I’m not a fan of his, nor his enemy.

The real issue I hope you understand is the Bible teaches that in our fallen state, it is utterly impossible to unite mankind on this earth. We can have “peace on earth” — a reference to shalom — by obeying Biblical Law. No depth or amount of human reasoning can come up with a better answer. The Tower of Babel narrative makes it clear that God will not bless our efforts if we seek global unity on any terms. Instead, Biblical Law describes a world where humanity is clustered in thousands of very tiny nations in feudal tribal covenants. Without that foundation, there can be no “peace on earth.” That’s the Word of God. Everyone chasing any other vision is fundamentally wrong.

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Kiln of the Soul: Discerning the Context

Posted on December 6, 2018 by ehurst

Israel was a covenant nation. Regardless of geographical borders, they were the same nation wherever they were. Nor was it a question of DNA. According to that covenant, anyone from any genetic heritage could embrace the covenant and become an Israeli with all the covenant blessings and rights accorded any Israeli.

The ancient Roman Empire was not a secular state; it was a pagan empire. Roman Law and government did have tendencies toward the modern secular state, but Roman identity was based on religion and culture. In theory, Paul as a Roman citizen could have been forced to engage in an act of worship of Cesar. Most Roman officials would have been reluctant to raise the issue, knowing how Jews were about such things.

As Rome spread across the ancient Mediterranean Basin, she recognized nations as distinct, with their own language and cultural identity. She recognized their religious heritages; she granted them freedom to exercise their legal traditions for the most part. Rome encountered Israel and realized the necessity of even more adjustments to Roman Law in order to rule over her. As far as Rome was concerned, for most things, a Jew was a subject of the nation of Judea, and therefore subject to Jewish law. In cases where the two legal systems conflicted, it required some kind of judge or magistrate to decide which way it fell, under one jurisdiction or another. Rome was sensitive to the nature of religion as a strong deciding factor in what constitutes a crime and what had to be done about it in any given context.

This was the way of things throughout history until The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. At that time, the principal of the secular state was made into international law. The intent was to recognize national identity, but a stake was driven through the heart of national identity as a matter of religion and culture. It became a matter of secular government authority, however that government came into being.

The US is a secular state empire. There is no national identity of any kind; the term “American” has no useful definition aside from “a US citizen.” It offers no other substantive meaning, despite various attributes commonly associated with it. There most certainly is no covenant involved.

The US is not a covenant nation. It does not inherit any of the blessings of any biblical law covenant. Further, the secular state government has usurped a great many prerogatives rightly belonging under a religious covenant. Aside from some limited tax exemptions, the secular government of the US recognizes no covenants. Ask any of the native nations conquered by the invading European colonists — there is only the smallest tokens of recognition for a preexisting national identity.

The existence of marriage, and the exercise of divorce, are inherently religious and cultural in nature. They are an artifact of the covenant community, and have no meaning outside of that. Marriage is a covenant in itself. The secular state sweeps aside all of that and makes it a simple question of financial obligations, a mere matter of contract. As someone ordained and licensed to conduct marriage ceremonies, I assure you there are two distinct domains at work here as a forthright matter of law.

Divorce is complicated by the intrusion of the state. The Bible does make allowance for declaring a covenant broken and dissolved for certain causes, chiefly infidelity and idolatry. Those two concepts are closely associated, often one indicated by the other. The secular state recognizes none of that, and demands control of the legal status on other grounds.

A secular contract of marriage does not meet the definition of the term used in the Bible. Nor does a secular legal divorce. The typical church insistence on equating to the two is a heresy. A church acting like a civil divorce somehow debilitates your identity as a follower of Christ or an officer of the congregation is downright evil. If the church pretends to be a covenant community, then it is under obligation to discern the matter of whether the marriage was a valid covenant in the first place. It must also judge whether the separation was justified under Biblical Law.

You’ll notice that 1 Corinthians 7:10-16 does not discuss divorce, but separation. He does cite a very tough command from God that a woman not remarry if she leaves her husband. Men and women are not interchangeable before the Lord; they are treated differently. Paul then advises how to handle mixed marriages where one of the pair has come to Christ after a pagan marriage. It’s not a question of validity, but of maintaining stability and spiritual influence (AKA, shalom).

We note that Old Testament Law doesn’t say much about a woman who finds herself married to an idolater, but it does say a lot about men putting away their pagan concubines. The status of a woman who has been ejected from a man’s bedroom makes her used goods, just one step away from a prostitute. If she goes back to her original family household, she’s safe but has no further prospects. In colloquial terms, the man who breaches her hymen is her master in effect for life. That’s a tough call in today’s cultural climate where few men living have standing to exercise such authority under any covenant.

How far does the compassion of Christ go in rehabilitating a woman who has lost her virginity? Joseph received a direct command from God to go through with marriage to Mary despite the presumption of everyone that she lost her virginity to another man. We know the background story in that case. Shall we presume that God is going to limit Himself to our legalistic assumptions about such things? At what point should we say she is a widow-in-effect and probably should marry again to avoid temptation?

The Bible is an Eastern mystical document recording an Eastern mystical revelation to an Eastern mystical people. Legalism has always been a heresy. The whole idea of Moses’ Law was not to bind people but to set them free from failed human reasoning to find the heart of God. You can judge as you see fit, but it only applies to your domain. You are not God, and cannot judge for another believer except in terms of whether they can operate in your earthly domain. You cannot send them to Hell, only eject them from your community.

As the ruling elder of Kiln of the Soul, I tremble before God Almighty and decide such things on case by case.

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The US Is Terminal

Posted on December 5, 2018 by ehurst

Let’s be honest with ourselves: The US is a socialist country. We have been so for most of our country’s history. Keep in mind that Lincoln and Marx adored each other and were pen-pals. The US became socialist as soon as the idea was published.

The Civil War wasn’t about slavery itself, but slavery as an expression of relative economic freedom possible under decentralized government authority. It wasn’t tactical genius that won the war, but economic suffocation. The North was willing to slaughter civilians and destroy civilian infrastructure. Lincoln led the war primarily to cement centralized control so as to implement socialism. It’s just that we refuse to call it that, so we don’t get down to the serious business of figuring out how to do it right.

The two political parties we have today were previously regional in nature, the continuation of the Civil War. But the constituency and vested interests have mostly changed. So instead of rehashing elements of the Civil War, we are now fighting over which type of business interests will benefit from economic control. If you track which party each company donates to, you can figure out who benefits from which party policy. You don’t need to know anything else to understand our country’s politics. It’s all about the economics.

Trump is not even a real Republican. He chose that party rather recently in his career, having long previously huddled with Democrats consistently. He’s just a businessman and all his decisions are based on his business practices. It’s a mixture of opportunistic deal-making and a very robust and resilient egocentric personality. He is very intelligent. He has no genuine moral virtue, just quirks and some compromised interests. He could see that the Republicans didn’t have a strong candidate when he decided to run, so it was easy to trounce them in the primaries. The mixture of compromises this called for were a calculated choice, and subject to renegotiation. Everything is subject to renegotiation with him.

The Democrats suffer serious internal chaos. Their recent gains in the House are partly local political battles, in that personal loyalties were duking it out regardless of party affiliation. However, there is a fresh and broad appeal in how some candidates were for once honestly promoting socialism as an ideal. Socialism as an ideal has gained ephemeral gravity because Trump’s conservatism has turned out to be fake. His lack of principle and resolve has left many disappointed.

I reiterate that Q and the Q-anon army is just a big PsyOp. It gives the appearance of deeply sagacious planning that doesn’t actually exist. There is no coherent plan or strategy other than Trump doing what he does as he goes along, juggling conflicting commitments. Everything is spun with personal reverence and awe for Trump. The wild and creative imagination of participants reinterpreting snippets of news and rumor is encouraged any time it seems to generate a fresh excuse to revere the “God Emperor.” Think of Q as a talented cheerleader. This rabid group of sycophants is quite influential, but small in relative terms.

Meanwhile, most voters are fickle. They long desperately for a political juggernaut, someone to assert a strong identity and force it down their throats. That’s what a real ruler would do, and we all subconsciously hunger for it. Only a very thin slice of the population really thinks about such things, and even fewer would actually do anything to oppose one side or the other. Thus, we see that Antifa (along with Black Lives Matter) is noisy and has lots of financial backing, but it’s a tiny group. The right-wing opposition is the same.

However, the potential for a right-wing uprising being decisively violent is much larger. There is no large core of genuine armed communist revolutionaries here; only the unarmed Greens come close. But the right-wing is saddled with a very substantial residue of entropy. It will take a significant provocation to energize them into a wide spread violent backlash. That provocation is building up, but it’s not going to happen right away. It waits for a significant economic crunch to create enough tension to make folks act.

But that will happen sooner or later. Instead of someone seizing the reins to take us there, it will come as the inevitable response of armed folks who can’t take any more. These folks are an incoherent mass with vaguely similar principles. Their direction will be more instinctive than resolute. This is what will destroy the US government. There remains a possibility of someone rising to lead this revolt, but the revolt is inevitable with or without a focus. The US will fracture, in effect if not in name.

You would do well to invest the time to read this very sharp analysis from a thinking lefty named Camille Paglia. She is a very aware globalist, though suffering the same blind spots of any idolater. You need to understand that secular atheism is still a religion in effect, idolizing human reason. This, in turn, works out to be worship of self, since genuine objectivity is utterly impossible. All imaginary objectivity in reason is simply the arrogance of conceiving one’s unconscious motivations as universal. Please note her warm regard for Jordan Peterson as a fellow traveler. Don’t forget that Peterson worked hard on a UN globalist governing committee and is a globalist idolater, too. (Note: RedIce.TV is not a good source of info, but almost nobody but the alt-right conspiracy nuts are reporting much on Peterson’s work with the UN.)

We can learn much from the counselors of our enemies. These people understand deeply their commitment to resurrecting Babylon. They clearly understand the mechanics of what it takes. Their laser vision cuts through the same fog that envelopes us, as well, but their perverse moral desires embrace things the Bible says are evil. The difference is the God we serve. Socialism is the key to globalism, and the current government of the US is socialist, so it must either eventually link up in that train or be destroyed. It can suffer either a globalist destruction by hijacking, neocon imperialist hijacking to a different Babylon, or nationalist destruction by armed revolt. By no means can it be saved in any sense.

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We Are Pioneers

Posted on December 5, 2018 by ehurst

Let’s be clear: In the Bible, Law is Law. The proper approach to Law is the Hebrew mystical traditions of seeing through the particulars as limited expressions of something deeper and more substantive. The whole idea is to inspire awe at the moral divine character of the Lawgiver and Creator.

Now, the particular Law Covenant of Moses was for that people in that time and place. The same goes for what comes across as Law in the New Testament. It’s still just a limited expression. If Israel needed judges to mediate particulars of the Covenant in pursuit of divine justice when the specifics didn’t quite fit the context, we also need judges under Christ. We need heart-led elders in Christ who will understand how to shape peculiar and confusing situations to match the character of our Lord. What was written in the New Testament as commands were expressions of His character in a context far different from ours.

Christ said divorce was not really a part of God’s original plan (Matthew 19:3-12; Mark 10:2-12). Paul echoes this teaching (1 Corinthians 7:10-16) in a different context, stating it somewhat differently so it would fit. We ought to respect that teaching, but we don’t need to allow New Testament Pharisees to shake their fists at us in legalistic demands.

Legalism was not inherent in Hebrew culture, but was the result of a deeply perverting influence we call today Hellenism. The ancient Hebrew mystical approach was anything but legalistic.

We don’t travel to cities and preach in the public square any more. That doesn’t fit the modern context, and it’s illegal in a lot of places now. We don’t teach about avoiding food offered to idols. We aren’t even in a position to know whether meat came from strangled animals for the most part. Those were applications of divine character for that time and place.

Most of Jesus’ teachings stand in the context of the Jewish life, where at least most of the trappings of Moses were obeyed. What He told the Twelve about divorce was in the context of Jews more or less under the Covenant. Paul says something different because his audience was mostly pagans who committed to Christ from within a deeply paganized culture. We live today in a secularized culture based on long forgotten pagan traditions, and the laws are quite different from those of the Roman Empire. We need to fit our understanding of Biblical Law to match the context of today.

The issue of divorce is a matter of tactical choices within this context. Secular law and judicial precedent have really perverted everything about it, twisting and tearing the moral fabric of Creation. Divorce is still a hideous thing, but sometimes the lesser of evils. We need to be very careful about it. Nobody in this virtual parish is going to shake a fist at you and shame you if you are convinced that’s where the Father is leading you, but you should be ready to explain how that choice shines with the glory of God.

Just chasing your own personal fulfillment is not sufficient justification for divorce. Granted, we are in one whale of a messed up situation, and staying celibate after separation is quite a challenge. It’s a tall order. But put in context: We are starting a new work entirely, something which is virtually impossible to base in the existing mainstream religious structures. Indeed, we are rejecting the entire Western Civilization; this is no small decision. What we do here in this first generation will be very costly, demanding great sacrifice. This is what it takes to give birth to something the world has not seen in two millennia or more. This requires a very long view across multiple generations.

We are the pioneers and our position requires investing in the future by suffering through problems the succeeding generations shouldn’t face. This does not make us more noble; it’s simply what God has called us to do. He’ll make heavy demands of the next generation, and the next, and so forth, each with their own characteristic sacrifices. Ours is dealing with the shocking disjuncture between our world and the one we seek to restore. Frankly, this is all the more difficult in that we aren’t eclipsing the existing society or changing it, but building a whole new parallel society while still maintaining our ability to cooperate with the fallen one in which we live.

Divorce is just one issue; everything we do as humans is subject to a complete renovation under Biblical Law. We are mystics, not legalists, something utterly foreign to our world. The heart-led way is revolution, a secret rejection of how everyone else lives. We have an awful lot of work to do breathing fresh life in the ancient ruins long neglected. Building a Secret Kingdom from the ruins will be a massive chore, but future generations will bless our memories if we truly seek the fullness of the Lord’s favor today.

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Marriage: Covenant within Covenant

Posted on December 4, 2018 by ehurst

First, allow me to list some Bible references for this: Genesis 2:24, 31:19; Deuteronomy 7:1-4; Ruth 1:16-18; Esther 1:10-22; Ezra 9:1-2, 10:1-14.

In the Ancient Near East (ANE), there was a particular recurring problem that was addressed by the Covenant of Moses and in Persian Law. In the ANE, most royal and noble marriages were diplomatic unions, where marriage was a means of establishing peaceful relations between the ruling dynasties of vassals and allies. These women often brought their own private staff and some property, and typically had their own quarters where they conducted affairs in her home language, different from her husband’s language. As time wore on, this semi-independence became much more pronounced.

This became a particular problem in the Book of Esther where Queen Vashti in her own quarters had set up a parallel domain of her own, with her own politics and so forth. She dared to defy her husband, the emperor, when ordered to appear for a grand imperial feast. The imperial decree he eventually issued in essence made this common practice illegal because of the precedent it set. A woman must leave her world and became fully integrated into her husband’s world, lest her continued separation from it fracture the marriage and the whole empire.

It was the same issue in Israel’s covenant, but with a nuance we typically miss in our English translations: the “foreign” wives were so defined because they were not joining the Covenant. There was nothing wrong with marrying a foreign woman who converted and joined the nation by coming under the Covenant (like Ruth). It was when the woman in question retained her own deities that it was unlawful. This is what kind of women Ezra ordered the Returnees to divorce. In essence, these were not legitimate marriage covenants; the women were classed as concubines.

Thus, when Solomon collected a massive harem, some were wives who converted, but too many were concubines who remained idolatrous. Solomon’s practice seemed worldly wisdom, but destroyed his faith. This was a threat to the Covenant and the blessings of shalom.

Granted, Paul wrote a lot about how to deal with complications of people coming to Christ after already being married. This shows the growing pains of trying to build a covenant community of faith from scratch in a heathen society, but it’s just about the same with a secular society. Worst of all, we are faced with a Western brand of “Christianity” that remains deeply mired in a heathen culture while pretending otherwise.

We need to commit now to raising up a new covenant society, with an eye to the multi-generational effects of doing it right from the start. This is a massive undertaking, even if the society stays small, because it means a broad-based resistance to the prevailing secular culture in defining a lifestyle that is self-consistent and heart-led.

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Heart-led Analysis of Living

Posted on December 3, 2018 by ehurst

It should seem obvious that, in order to read the Old Testament, one must read back into it the unstated assumptions the writers considered obvious. So we study the history of the Ancient Near East and do our best to reassemble the every day life of the Hebrew nation. Not just the actions and expectations, but the very assumptions that arose from their intellectual traditions.

One of the hardest things for us to grasp was the dramatic change in lifestyle God demanded of Abraham. He went from a highly civilized situation in Mesopotamia to a nomadic lifestyle in a largely unpopulated land. It’s not that Canaan had no people, but that they were restricted to areas where water was available year round. That means springs, wells and oases. The knowledge for finding and digging wells was not that common among those ancient Canaanites, so Abraham had an advantage living in the highlands with his advanced technology.

What we see is a highly educated and civilized man with a very long lifespan living as a nomad among other nomads with a shorter lifespan and far less education. In sum, God was demanding all sorts of changes, so as to build a nation like no other. We aren’t surprised to see Abraham stumbling from time to time in this task, as his civilized instincts and inappropriate expectations get him into trouble. And it all happened again, as the lessons were forgotten by the nation of Israel during Exodus, going from the sedentary plenty in Goshen and having to relearn the kind of lifestyle God required.

It’s the same thing for us today. We have taken civilization even farther than Abraham’s ancient home in Sumeria, and thus we are even more removed from the setting to which God called Abraham and his descendants. We don’t have the advantage of moving ourselves into an unsettled land as nomads. Instead, we have the advantage of a vast wealth of data about such a world, and we are still required to adopt as much as possible the assumptions of that lifestyle internally as they did in full. A critical element in learning the ways of Jehovah and His Son is embracing in spirit what we might otherwise discover first hand if we could be transported back to that setting.

We need to learn the austere expectations of a nomad who had little help from high technology, but could rely on the miraculous powers of obedience to the Creator. We have to limit our use of technology and human science when it conflicts with the dire necessities of moral change that fits us for returning to Eden. It’s very much a mystical art to discern where the things we take for granted in our world today interfere with what faith in Christ demands. The hardest thing of all for us today is learning to trust the heart over the head. It calls for a wealth of reeducating ourselves to use that higher faculty instead of trusting our own reason.

Some of the biggest changes come out in the lessons of Israeli history during the monarchy period. Once you become aware of how cultural assumptions work, you begin to see beyond the commands of the Law, and see the nature of why some things are forbidden. You can see how they conflict with the design of Creation, how they are inconsistent with reality as God made it. The narratives from the Old Testament begin to make sense in that fresh context of seeing the moral character of God versus the various ways His people sinned.

Probably the most obvious lesson we might learn is one that seems almost impossible by today’s standards — female decision-making has to be restricted. This should be painfully obvious in the Eden narrative, because Eve’s choice to eat the Forbidden Fruit was a decision not hers to make. That Adam allowed it only indicts him for refusing to stop her.

We know that women were allowed to govern more ways and places in Mesopotamia than they could among the nomadic tribes in Palestine. When Sarah attempted to solve the problem of childlessness by giving her maid to Abraham as a surrogate, there was trouble that we still live with today. Abraham was forced to send away Ishmael, without whom we would probably not have Islam. It was a hard decision Abraham could have avoided had he been more assertive in faith earlier. You cannot fulfill God’s promises by your own devices.

So it’s not that we blame women; we blame men for acting like Adam and refusing to take up the calling of God and asserting the moral boundaries we must have in this fallen world. We also blame men for not even doing what’s necessary to know those boundaries. If we as men provide insufficient boundaries, women will naturally fill in the empty space we have vacated. Not everything goes to Hell that way, but way too much does.

And we notice that it’s more common to see this bad situation in highly civilized societies, but not so much in the primitive nomadic societies of the Ancient Near East. On the one hand, Scripture granted women far more right to demand certain things than would have been acceptable in most nomadic nations in Palestine, but the Law placed distinct limits on other things. In the New Testament, Paul as the audacity to tell folks deeply soaked in Greek civilization to restrict women in ways no one in that world could imagine, and then linked it back to the Eden narrative.

Today this moral precept is virtually impossible. Even when the concept is taught, it’s inevitably done wrong according to a cultural background quite far removed from Scripture. And because it’s implemented falsely, the effects are also quite false. We see women pretending to be obedient while frankly governing the churches, exercising a veto power that simply does not match what God demanded of His people. Our churches are very Germanic instead of Hebraic in operation, where men are castrated in spirit.

It’s not that we need to go back and ape the particulars of Abraham’s lifestyle, nor the corrupt Jewish practices of today (Hellenism in disguise). We need to learn how to question all the fundamental assumptions in our culture and compare them with what we can know about the assumptions in ancient Hebrew society, and see with our hearts what it would mean where we live today.

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