Covenant Changes Everything

Posted on February 19, 2018 by ehurst

There are endless debates about what is in the best interest of the people, the country, what is just, etc. Let’s get one thing straight: Unless a divine covenant is involved, none of it matters. It’s all lies without a covenant. As long as this country is not a covenant nation, nothing we think, say or do is good or right. Nothing.

For example, don’t talk to me about the moral justice of letting poor oppressed immigrants come to this country so they can find a better life. Nor should you talk to me about defending the borders from invaders who are determined to destroy the materialistic culture that makes our prosperity so inviting. Neither position holds water without that covenant. The one and only thing we can talk about is promoting the applicable Law Covenant for the US — Noah’s Law in this case. Every other conversation is pointless.

Because we know already that no one in America is willing to hear that message, the only thing left to discuss is how America is doomed under God’s wrath. Here we do have some profit in discussing the various mechanisms and problems that will naturally contribute to the destruction of the American way of of life. There’s nothing frivolous about observing how it will all come to an end; that’s how we can be alerted to opportunities to infiltrate on behalf of that covenant law and shine the light of God’s glory and truth.

Don’t talk to me about patriotism and justice on any other terms. The one and only thing in anyone’s best interest is Biblical Law. We recognize Noah’s Covenant as a particular expression of Biblical Law. Noah is the practical application of Biblical Law that God granted to nations and countries until the End of Time. Only Israel has a unique covenant different from other nations, and you can plainly see she’s not interested in her covenant, either. Still, that such law covenants seem impractical serves only to point out just how far away from truth the world has drifted. By and large the human race refuses to bow the knee to Our Creator.

Of course, this means churches are no better. There may well be individual congregations in this world doing it right, or doing it well enough to provide a safe harbor for your earthly existence. For myself, I’ve yet to find one that will tolerate the doctrine of covenants, which means they don’t tolerate me. You can be sure I’ve tried every way I know, but right now there’s no place to rest my weary soul. I’m not hostile; they are. I’m quite willing to work with any group that will let me stay and operate by the faith and conviction that burns in my heart.

So this blog was started with the purpose of fulfilling my duty to that divine fire. A few of you have expressed a desire to join me “outside the camp,” here at the foot of the Cross. We have established a fresh covenant as the basis for our shared faith, a basis for cooperation. On the grounds of our Radix Fidem covenant, we will reclaim the vast bounty of shalom our God has poured out upon this earth.

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Feeding a Need: Teachings of Jesus

Posted on February 18, 2018 by ehurst

I’ve gotten some feedback on the Sermon the Mount series, though not much. What little I have gotten suggests it’s feeding a need. So for now, I’m going to continue marching through the teachings of Jesus as recorded in Matthew. My aim is to keep it fresh; I’m running more off inspiration. I don’t ignore scholarship, but I’m trying to breathe life into the presentation. I want you to feel like you were there in the narrative itself.

So for now, this will be the Saturday lesson notes that I publish here in preparation for my Sunday home worship. I’m not that much into polished oratory; I know how to do it but there’s too much manipulation involved. It would be better if there was interaction; that was permitted in the Old Testament synagogues. I try to write in a style that reflects a more informal presentation.

There’s a certain moral power in teaching the revelation. We are striving to break down the false expectations of the intellect so the heart can speak loud and clear. It makes no difference at all if the Scripture passage at hand addresses some specific current issue. The removal of the barriers means you are open to the truth in your own context. You’ll know what to do because of that living connection between heart and mind.

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Sermon on the Mount 20

Posted on February 17, 2018 by ehurst

Jesus uses another common parable from the Talmud. It was widely known in that part of the world that during rainy season, it could fall in torrents, rinsing the rocky places bare and flooding the wadis. Jesus could have easily cited the place where He sat teaching for this parable. Keep in mind that, while we cannot be sure of the exact location of this sermon, there are few steep craggy places near the northern Sea of Galilee where He had been ministering. Most of the likely sites were gently sloping hills composed of stone, left standing above the surrounding terrain because neither wind nor rain could remove them. They frequently had buildings on them, or ruins from past structures.

Thus, those who studied the revelation of God and obeyed it were likened to those who built on such rocky hills, and the heavy rains had no effect. Those who studied but did not obey were like those who built down in the wadi. Not just a shack, but these two were building a whole house, a large building with two stories, an exterior wall and inner courtyard with rooms all around. By extension, this house represented his household, his family and the legacy of all his work. This was his very life in this world, everything that mattered in the minds of Ancient Near Eastern men.

It’s obviously more than mere individual existence that counts here. But it’s also far more than just one’s own immediate family; it’s a picture of one’s contribution to the covenant community. How will you be remembered? What will your descendants have to live with when you are gone? Did you build shalom and divine justice, or did you fritter away your existence simply playing by the rules? It’s not enough to know the revelation of God and take the path of least resistance. We are obliged to put work into it and strive against the human moral entropy we inevitably encounter in this fallen world.

The shalom is far more than just the product of wise social science. It is the power of God to ameliorate the Fall. It is the favor of God and Creation itself, finding us delightful because we truly believe that it matters. Give your heart to God. Commit yourself to His ways and His wishes. That word “faith” means a heart-led commitment to a person.

It’s critical here to notice the reaction of Jesus’ audience. They were used to rabbis quoting previous rabbinical teachers and lawyers. Jesus taught from the Living Law burning brightly in His soul. Yet the people recognized instinctively the inherent authority of someone who had become the very living expression of God’s revelation. His teaching called out to their hearts and they recognized the truth of what He said.

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Divine Wrath: The Big Picture

Posted on February 17, 2018 by ehurst

This year the US government will borrow more than a trillion dollars. This money isn’t borrowed the way you and I might borrow from a bank or other financier. Government debt has to sold in the form of bonds. That means people and agencies with money have to agree to purchase a bond today against future redemption with interest.

There are several factors at work here. The basic interest rate has been low for a very long time, so there would have to be some other good reason to buy a bond like that. The good reason has been that investing your money that way in government debt has been safer than a lot of other investments. And if you just hold your money, inflation would eat it, so it’s better to put that into some kind of investment if you don’t need it right away.

That worked for a while, but it’s not working too well now. The biggest bond buyers were countries like Japan and China, and they are actively reducing their US bond holdings. They used to have an excess of dollars to get rid of because we kept importing from them more than they bought back from us. But they are trying to get rid of those dollars other ways (like buying up real estate and facilities and businesses here in the US). Part of the problem is that every country in the world is already in deep debt themselves, just like the US (only they aren’t so profligate), plus they have too many dollars already. There are better ways to invest them. On top of that, the climate of US aggression abroad is making people look for ways to hurt us and slow down that aggression; dumping US bonds is part of that. Our pushy demand that everyone else trade in dollars was sucking up their economies and benefiting only ours.

So that means the US government has to offer those bonds at a higher rate of return to entice other investors. That means the basic interest rate on all debt in US dollars has to go up with it — the Fed has to raise the basic interest rate for all loans. We know from experience that means the stock market goes down when the interest rates go up. That’s because rising interest rates mean consumers and businesses are going to be more careful about using debt to buy stuff they need, and all the stuff we manufacture is less likely to be selling quite so fast. It slows the entire economy down and stocks are less profitable because the companies behind them will be less profitable.

Nobody can tell you when these things will be noticeable, but they will be, as sure as the earth keeps spinning in space.

I wish I could show you how this works with charts and so forth. I sincerely wish we had the time to sit down and talk about this stuff so you’ll understand it. This is what happens when there is political pressure on governments to borrow and spend more than they can grab as taxes. High taxes also crimp the economy. And you could ask any random person on the street; they could think of ways the government wastes money on things they don’t believe the government should be doing. It won’t matter whether you favor one agenda or another — the government absorbs way too much money. The lie is coming apart that stirring economic growth will cover the debt. That growth simply has not kept up with the massive over-spending.

When government inserts itself into the economy, by becoming a major conduit for spending, it distorts the natural economic activity. Worse, the government is by far the most inefficient handler of money. No collection of private or corporate entities, nor even criminal enterprise, is as wasteful as government bureaucracy. The government absorbs outright more than it passes on to others as healthy spending. It sucks down vast quantities of economic activity without putting anything back into the system. It freezes assets that can never be used for any profitable purpose.

But try to reduce government spending and the political unrest will be impossible to contain. There are too many vested interests unwilling to see the greater common good. So it’s going to break, and the really smart people figure it’s coming this year. To be more precise, it’s already broken, but the ways that we measure such things don’t yet register as broken. It’s a huge system and it won’t explode, but crumble — the millions of little breaking points won’t break all at once. By the time it’s obvious, it will be too late. Stuff has already begun to break and it will take easily the next few years for all the other parts to break down. The mass of our national political will is to play it by ear and look for the best chance to plunder. Nobody is thinking about how to actually do something in the national interest — nobody with any real power to act, that is.

We can discard “national interest” as a factor in our reckoning here. There’s no saving this country. There are plenty of helpful things we can do on a smaller scale, so if you feel called in that direction, focus on state and local. Try to rescue what you can reach. Of course, with Radix Fidem, our focus is divine justice in the first place, which in turn encourages a local focus. This is what we do by moral instinct.

We who understand Biblical Law can see how US government violates everything God intended for us. We see how reality itself is sorely abused and violated by our system of government. So reality isn’t going to tolerate this much longer; it will turn around and destroy things. This is the wrath of God justly falling on a morally degrading force too large to ignore. And if you understand how this is all wholly justified, then you are ready to see with your hearts how to pass through this time of tribulation by seizing opportunities to reveal His divine justice in how we respond to injustice and wrath.

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It’s a Networked World

Posted on February 16, 2018 by ehurst

The core of the geek community is rabidly hostile to anything that smacks of censorship, and militantly favors radical free expression. Their influence is not always recognized by the broader consumer public. These two groups overlap some, but it’s hard to measure. What we see on the Net is a thin veneer of mindless consumerism hiding a very dark and powerful faction that could and would readily destroy the whole thing.

Big Technology is fully aware of this tension. They have to walk a tightrope, but there are too many bigshots who forget or imagine they have the power to ignore the geeks. But it turns out that the geeks have a very real power to ignore the windbags among tech titans and proceed with whatever the hell they please. Companies that tried to push the geeks out, or who tried to cherry pick the ones they wanted, tried to tame them with corporate culture, are the ones we remember vaguely, now gone from the scene. The core of entrepreneurial vitality makes room for the antisocial geeks, even in what passes for their boardrooms.

This is the new wave of activism; this is the real deal. It’s not so much they are right-wing, but an odd mixture of libertarian and liberal influences that defy easy characterization. To the mainstream, the geeks seem often juvenile, pushing the social boundaries for the sheer fun of shocking the mainstream. It’s a mistake to imagine they’ll grow out of it. One man’s puerile is another man’s moral responsibility. The geek is whole new thing previously not possible before the Internet.

The one thing they will not tolerate is the social justice warrior (SJW) movement. It’s not just lampooning, but open spite and persecution of the SJW snowflakes. They have driven executives out of their high-paid positions by merciless harassment. They pick their battles rather well. Quite often they are content to wound their targets without trying to finish them off. Still, their true power has yet to be seen.

Despite the geeks animosity toward SJWs, that is mere entertainment compared to the very real threat of corporate censorship. I note in passing that geeks would not hesitate to read something on an openly socialist website; their actual politics are eclectic. It’s much more useful to understand their moral philosophy, and to keep a very cynical eye toward established political institutions. Unilever is seeking to use their economic leverage to oppress and silence free expression, a cardinal sin in the eyes of the geek community.

This is all part of our proper understanding of the coming tribulation as the West crumbles and the Networked Civilization rises to take its place. The geeks reflect the core values of a networked society. A significant portion of Big Technology companies are still too much a part of the dying Western materialist world. Their recalcitrance is what will make it so painful for all of us. And you can be sure the geeks are watching them. To the degree Unilever adheres to this evil plan, they will face serious push-back from the geeks.

Unilever names their co-conspirators. You’ll notice that Facebook has wavered a great deal. Zuckerberg wants the mainstream money, but his geek roots won’t let him forget where he came from without paying a very high price. So FB has lost a significant portion of its audience in the past year because of this very real defiance of the geeks’ unlimited free expression. Google has been walking a tightrope and is wobbling. Twitter is on the verge of collapse, though it may not be obvious.

The old advertisement based model of funding is dying quickly. Get used to the idea of micro-payments and other forms of support. Get used to a wide array of small independent operations, and quite a few more who look for ways to participate with the likes of Amazon and remain mostly free. We live in a time when all it takes is a few missteps alienating the geeks and a massive corporation can simply die, replaced with something else, maybe a lot somethings.

Unilever has just painted a huge target on themselves.

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Individualism and Commitments

Posted on February 15, 2018 by ehurst

Under the covenant of Radix Fidem, we know that we cannot simply rebuild the ancient ways in our current society. Rather, we seek to reawaken the heart of what was behind the ancient biblical religion. We aren’t the Hebrew people, but we are inheritors of their commitment to God’s truth. We want the ancient faith expressed in our own context.

This is what was behind 2 Timothy 2:15, for in the day Paul wrote that letter to his young assistant, the “word of truth” was the Old Testament, the only Scriptures they had at that time. The idea was to search the Covenant of Moses in light of Christ’s teachings to discern what was of the essence versus what was merely contextual expression. We find the mainstream Western churches have cut away even the bones of faith, and we have no desire to perpetuate their errors. We seek to understand the Old Testament, not from our own cultural basis, but from the intellectual traditions of the people who wrote it.

It’s a lot of work. One does not easily walk away from everything they’ve ever known and journey to a world that many have tried to bury even deeper in the sands of time. It’s not merely a few things we shift, but a radical removal of everything, pulling up the roots and planting them in a different soil. Thus, “Radix Fidem” translates from Latin into English as “root of faith.”

One of the biggest issues for people seeking to embrace this different worldview is forsaking the individualism of our world. It’s not as if we demand a hive-mind of thinking alike; it’s a false dichotomy to suggest that’s the only alternative to individualism. We aren’t communists; we are family. It’s a question of your commitments.

The Western mind is committed to itself. There may be any number of self-deceptive masks for this. The favorite is the ideal of objective fact. We know from our studies in biblical thinking that this is the big lie of Western society. Logic is just a set of tools designed to exclude convictions of the heart. But logic is not a starting point; it’s just a method, an approach to ultimate answers. It is wholly self-deceptive, because it pretends that one could simply use the rules properly to arrive at some desirable conclusion.

The finest, most austere use of logic has to start somewhere; it always presumes that one thing or another is good and right. Without that basic assumption, logic has no where to go. There has to be an a priori value system in place, a set of assumptions by which we judge the validity of our logic. In reality, logic starts from whatever it is the fallen nature desires. The intellect is part of the fallen nature, and deceives itself in a pretense of objectivity.

In biblical mystical logic (yes, it is a type of self-consistent logic), we openly admit to our presumptions of value — a value system revealed by God. The individual is not simply nothing, but we recognize that the individual is not where God intended without a family, either blood kin or covenant kin (or both). And the individual is meant to find life and meaning inside the family, not as just an individual on his own. An individual without a family has nothing, no matter how much property he can claim. A biblical individual is committed to the family first.

This is why the political philosophy of democracy is an abomination. It pulls the individual out of the family setting, and does not permit that kind of loyalty that God demands. In Western thinking, one is obliged to commit to any number of inadequate replacements for the family. Thus, there are many bogus claims on the individual aimed at robbing the family and destroying covenants.

FYI: There have been a lot of hits on my post about our emphasis on Biblical Law. It seems to have touched on something and it looks like the link is being shared.

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A Ready Answer

Posted on February 14, 2018 by ehurst

We aren’t secretive; we are ignored. Radix Fidem doesn’t register on the radar screen. Perhaps you understand that the only way we could change that is to compromise on the very nature of what we do.

Still, we struggle with this, because we have an instinct to share, to wish that everyone could experience what we do every day. How many people in this world can hear the songs of Creation? We literally talk to the flora and fauna and hear their voices. Our instincts tell us people should know about this, that there is some awful injustice in having it kept from them. It burns in our hearts.

The rest of the world can’t handle that right now. What they can handle is how we live in the joy of shalom; they can see that, even if not consciously. Something inside of them cries out to have a piece of that shalom. There are a lot ways that cry is suppressed and smothered, but it’s there. That something inside them recognizes when they see it in us.

Here’s a word of prophetic warning: We are going to suffer exposure, a form of attention we don’t want. It’s coming. All of my blather about how to put into words what drives us is meant to prepare you all. I want you to be ready to handle the social pressure. Maybe not so much that we can shut down criticism, but that we have a ready answer for the faith that is in us.

We can characterize it in various ways, but “characterize” is exactly what we do. It’s not something we can tell that easily. Even if we could, it requires such a huge leap of faith that most outside folks can’t do it. So we have to use parables and indicators that point to the real answer so they can move closer.

One of the things I’ve done in the past when faced with someone who is very argumentative is tell them that they are clinging to presumptions that don’t apply to me. In other words, they are pressing a priori arguments that I don’t accept. I’m very fortunate to have the kind of education that makes it possible to speak that language, along with dumbed down versions of it. If I don’t buy into Western epistemology, then any debates will have to take that into account.

At other times, I just disarm hostility by owning up to something they can’t dispute. For example, I’ve told several people to just mark me as a nut-case, some alien creature from outer space. I have no use for mainstream respect in the first place, so by moving directly to the margins and plastering simplistic labels on my forehead, I can deflate a lot hostility. Let them call me whatever they like, because disputing such labels is a waste of time and effort, hindering any chance of doing them some good.

So I encourage you to find ways to answer directly when you can, and deflect any disputes when answering is pointless. The time is coming when the best answer is to live in the power of divine justice by the heart. They are going to start noticing us soon, so be ready.

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Draper Points 11 and 12

Posted on February 13, 2018 by ehurst

Just as a point of reference, these are the numbered points on the northern half of Draper Lake (image on the right). Today I visited Points 11 and 12. The morning started out frosty but began to warm about half-way to noon. It looked like it would hit 60°F (about 15C). I headed out just before noon and it was okay with lower 40s (6C) but just before I got down to Post and SE 74th, thick clouds rolled in and the temperature stopped rising. It didn’t get any colder, but it also didn’t get much warmer the rest of the day.

Point 11 is very near to the main road, just a short ride up to the parking circle. The path down to the shore wasn’t quite ridable for me, so I dismounted. This point is way up in the pocket and sees less traffic than others. However, it was nice enough. Most of the shore is a drop-off about a meter above the current waterline. This first image from the point (above left) shows the one thin slice of dirt slope. This next shot shows the southernmost tip of the point, painted brightly by a bombing inland seagull.

From there I took the shore trail around the eastern side, which has seen a lot of foot traffic. It brought me back to the old road, now just a bare dirt and gravel section that goes nowhere. At the opening to the trail for Point 12, a sign indicated this was a recovering preserve and no wheels allowed, only feet, hooves and paws. That meant I had to climb on up to the main road and ride the asphalt out onto the point. All the points visible to me today had been cleared of underbrush, but it was only a half-assed job (above left). There were lots of stumps left poking out of the ground, and some of the cuttings had not been hauled off. Even prison labor usually does a better job than that.

On my last adventure, I shot a picture of Point 12 from across the water, and the bluff was visible. This next image (above right) shows the bluff on the western side of the point is sloped out on the end, but if you could walk farther back up the shore, it would become quite steep. I didn’t want to walk too far away from my bike because there were other folks out and about on this point today, and the trail was too narrow to push my bike (again, riding wasn’t permitted). But out on the point itself, the shore is virtually all rock. On the left here is the western edge of the point.

The point itself is a large sloping rock shelf (right). The advantage of overcast skies is that you don’t have to worry about where the sun is. This place has seen a lot of human traffic, with all kinds of graffiti carved into the soft red sandstone. You can see from this image on the left, taken from farther around the wide point, that the whole thing is rocky. Not so easy to see is several shallow rocky spots just off shore. Despite low wind speeds, it was a lovely noise of water splashing against the rocks.

This last shot is looking around the eastern side of the point. I did walk the trail just a short ways and it’s quite passable on foot. Maybe I’ll come back sometime with a vehicle I can lock safely and walk this are more. This excursion didn’t take too long, and I was on my way out in less than an hour after I got out to the lake area.

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A Scurrilous Political Rant

Posted on February 12, 2018 by ehurst

First, let me state my excuse for this post: People keep shoving political crap at me in the background. They ask me to use my forum here to promote something they are so sure is God’s will. It’s not. I figure that at a minimum, maybe I can stop their lying pressure by spoiling their hopes of hijacking my message. I want to come out with some commentary that makes it clear their preferred agenda will never show up on this blog.

So let’s paint the background first: America is doomed. She is under God’s wrath and it’s just getting started. We are going to see things that will shock the conscience, because the demons are going to be set loose on this country. Their mission will be to destroy the United States as a political entity and humble the insufferable arrogance against God’s revealed truth. There are no good guys. There are a few smart ones who could potentially make things work for awhile, but nobody with any significant influence on the direction of this country is working for righteousness. So the best you could get from anyone in politics is finding a feasible way to make things work as they are, and the demons will ensure no one listens to them.

The folks pushing on me behind the scenes are Trump fans. That man is not the evil his opponents suggest; he is an entirely different kind of evil. Everyone’s attention is on the wrong things regarding Trump. Back off and take a look: He’s unique among all the presidents in US history, because he says very publicly exactly what he thinks at the moment he thinks it. No one can muzzle him. And when he changes his mind later, no one notices that he actually starts to work toward that change in thinking. Why he might change his mind about things is easily explained by knowing who he is and how he operates. He is not a man of principle; he’s a man of profit and power. He’s a showman, the most preposterous and loud-mouthed showman we’ve ever had in the White House. The show must go on, and he is always the star. Keep that in mind and you’ll understand the inexplicable craziness of how his staff change so often.

Notice that I suggest nothing admirable about the man, only that he is not what most of his critics claim. The propaganda against him is cheap and goofy, and misses the point. The real problem is that he has no principles. Thus, he is the single biggest threat to his own supporters. So far, he has reneged on all of the most important promises he made during the election campaign. He could have done a whole lot better, but went into this totally ignorant of how it works, and ignorant of what he was up against — willfully ignorant. He’s too arrogant to have done it wisely, in the sense that it would have required a small army of domestic espionage agents to disembowel his opposition by attacking the things they value most — and they sure as Hell don’t value what they proclaim in public. So we end up with Trump trying to accommodate people who never wanted anything that got him elected, and now he’s just a tool of the neocons.

I said that he was God’s chosen vessel of destruction for America. Not God’s avenger, but a vessel of destruction. He’s not supposed to survive this in the political sense. There is a high probability he will be removed from office. Try to understand how this works: The Special Prosecutor is an independent arm of the FBI; Mueller is a former Director of the FBI. Trump should not talk to this man ever. Why? The FBI has never been about justice; there is no way you can talk things out with them. The FBI is a prosecutorial bureaucracy with a predatory hive-mind. It cannot do what’s right except by accident. No one in their right mind would trust the FBI; it’s a mindless beast of hatred and political persecution. When they have absolutely nothing on a victim, they simply have a conference with the individual and manipulate things so that they can charge them with lying to the FBI. This, while the FBI demands the authority to lie, even to judges, with impunity. Thus, an impeachment is almost a foregone conclusion, sooner or later. Even if it fails, the political wrangling will only get worse.

The political fallout from attempted impeachment is what will fracture the US. We are past the point of no return on that path. It’s not a question of who supports Trump, but who would rather burn the whole thing down than to allow the current opposition any chance of seizing power again. That prospect is so frightening to a certain population that it would mean an armed revolution. But it’s more likely to mean that certain officials in various offices of the federal government, people hitherto officially not supposed to use their leverage for political ends, will be forced to throw their weight behind one side or another in such a political fracas, and it will destroy the system. We could see the military committed to a partisan stance, for example. We already see the FBI committed to such a partisan stance, a stance against Trump. So keep your eye on how other agencies will be pushed into this battle.

As I said: There are no good guys in this battle, and America is doomed.

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Ain’t Happenin’ Here

Posted on February 12, 2018 by ehurst

Seven days without worship makes one weak.

That’s an old pun — week/weak. Let’s pretend for a moment that I wasn’t able to post on my blog for a week or so. Let’s pretend further you all knew why, so it wasn’t a mystery or a concern. Would it make a difference in your daily joy and peace?

It’s one thing to recognize that our human flesh needs reminding that Christ is Lord. It’s another thing to assume the joy of the Lord comes only through certain prescribed rituals overseen by duly appointed leaders. I hope you would miss my posts, but it’s not as if you really need me around to make religion work. That old pun above was actually written: “Seven days without the Lord makes one weak.” I first encountered it attached to an advertisement soliciting participation in a weekday chapel gathering during lunch break on a Baptist college campus. You need to go to church more than one day per week!

This was actively taught in ministry classes. It was presented with well worn arguments that it was in the congregation’s best interest. It was right up there with the constant harassment about tithing. Sure, we all knew that in the Bible, tithing was required of only the farmers and herders, that no one else was expected to give a tithe of their income. But we simply must preach tithing of all income because it’s good for the people as a measure of self-discipline. Or some such patronizing nonsense. It was all a part of the package that the congregation needs management or regulation of their religious life.

Why?

I can see that argument if we are in the context of a covenant nation where the majority of folks are doing religion in the flesh. The Bible makes it clear that you have to develop a cultural milieu that makes moral negligence difficult in such cases. If we presume that a congregation of fellow believers is a micro-nation under a covenant of faith, what happens to the voluntary nature of faith? In a voluntary parish community, we might presume there are some family members dragged to church by their parents, but there should be a presumption of a majority of faithful members, something we can’t have in a covenant nation. Yet I can tell you with all seriousness that mainstream Christian churches assume a majority of folks who show up for all kinds of reasons short of genuine faith. They all assume a social setting where church attendance serves other purposes than actual worship and teaching.

Let me caution you against slipping off into those assumptions when it comes to Radix Fidem. We associate in a parish because it’s obedience to Biblical Law, and also because we like it for the sheer joy of sharing faith. There will be nothing in this that offers any other social benefits. If you can’t go outside and joyfully worship in communion with the grass on your lawn, or the birds flitting about, or the wind breathing in your hair, then you really don’t belong in this parish. Nobody is going to ask you to leave, but you have positioned yourself here as an outsider. We aren’t closing you out; you simply haven’t come inside yet.

For Radix Fidem, the covenant assumes you are heart-led, that you have discovered the supremacy of the heart over the intellect, and have made that fateful choice to subject your brain to your convictions. Included in that is the utter necessity that you commune with the natural world as one living thing and a million living entities, all at the same time. If you do not sense reality itself as a person and friend, you need to work on your perception of things. That’s all presumed under the Radix Fidem covenant.

And with all of that, sharing in the reading of my posts, for example, is just icing on the cake. You don’t need me, though you may want to hear from me. And as much as it is possible to do so via the Internet, I love you, too. It would work better if I heard from you directly some way, but the compassion and favor is there waiting for you to claim. And my faith says I should presume the same of you.

So if you aren’t worshiping and celebrating your inclusion in the Kingdom of Heaven every day, it won’t do much good to gather together in any sense. The foundation of what holds us together is that divine fellowship; without that, ain’t nothing happening here.

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