Radix Fidem Booklet 1

Posted on August 15, 2017 by ehurst

It’s time; I need to publish the booklet. Since having my readers do the work didn’t work, I’ll ask you to comment. Keep in mind that my purpose is to summarize in a few paragraphs what each of the seven points mean. It’s designed to raise questions, not to settle anything. It’s planting the seed of faith so folks can grow their own religion; it’s meta-religion. Give me some feedback, since I want to reflect something bigger than me.

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Radix Fidem is Latin for “root of faith.” We take the position that religion is a human response to spiritual stirring. Thus, Radix Fidem is not a religion, per se, but an approach to growing a religion in the soil of your own life. The only valid reason for taking religion seriously is because you can’t avoid it; something inside of you demands an answer to a call from something much bigger than the yourself.

Our approach is based on seven fundamental assumptions.

1. Consciously and emphatically non-Western. This means we exclude the fundamental materialism and rationalism that makes man the measure of all things. We go out of our way to understand what distinguishes Western Civilization so that we can discern how it’s mythology has ruined historic Christian religion.

There is good reason for taking such a path. If we profess that our religion arises from divine revelation as recorded in the Bible, then we must ensure we understand what the Bible says. Simply translating the words does no good if we cannot understand the culture that used those words. It’s not enough to know what it says in our context; we have to know what it meant to those people in their context. If that record of revelation means anything, it is abundantly clear that God didn’t just choose the Hebrew people, but built them up from scratch to create a proper context for revealing Himself to the world.

We have a considerable amount of scholarly research into that Hebrew cultural and intellectual context. It is radically different from ours today. If you insist on inserting your cultural and intellectual assumptions back into the text of Scripture, you will come up with a false understanding, a false revelation, and a false god. Indeed, the same level of scholarly research applied to our Post-modern Western society shows just how completely different our assumptions are about reality itself, and that our current assumptions come from outside the Bible. Our culture is frankly pagan, the confluence of Greco-Roman pagan culture and Germanic heathen culture.

And that same scholarship shows how the established Christian religion drifted far, far from its Hebraic approach into something those first followers of Jesus would not recognize. If we truly understands the scholarship, we can see clearly how the succeeding generations of Christian leadership embraced the pagan thoughts and assumptions of the dying Greco-Roman Civilization, and then further embraced the Germanic tribal mythology, twisting the message of Christ into something Jesus would disown. So it was with the Hebrew people before them. Embracing the prevailing Hellenism that came with Alexander’s conquest, they left behind their ancient Hebrew religion until it hardly resembled the religion of Abraham, Moses, and quite obviously of Jesus. Still using the same Scripture, the approach went from mystical and symbolic to legalistic and literal. So it has been with organized Christian religion up to this day.

The Bible is an Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) document, Jesus taught an ANE religion, and His Father was an ANE God. That hasn’t changed; only the common organized religion that claims Him has moved away from that ancient root of faith.

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Mythology of Fear

Posted on August 14, 2017 by ehurst

This won’t take long.

Let’s assume that you, dear Reader, buy into some of my wild mystical blather here. The one thing you are going to run into again and again is the Straw Man attack. Our society fears mysticism, and says that we simply must cling to rationalism. That’s because, without the safety barrier or concrete logic, all those nasty horrible things that we see in TV and movies will break loose.

Once again, it’s the false dichotomy: If we don’t have straight up, hard objective reality, then we will have horrors and nightmares stalking the streets. Stay inside the gray walls of logic, boys and girls, or the zombies will eat your brains!

Of course, that’s all just an extension of the dark and dreary world of Beowulf. It’s the Grimm’s Brothers fairy tales to keep you in your place. It’s the Devil’s way of keeping you from your divine heritage. As long as you can keep all of that in mind, the bogus mythology inherent in Western entertainment cannot seduce you.

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Walking Covenant Tablets

Posted on August 13, 2017 by ehurst

First, the foundation:

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12 NKJV)

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15 NKJV)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1 NKJV)

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20) Amen.

His Word is His revelation, His divine moral character, His glory. To be like Jesus is to be the Word, the character and revelation of God. We seek to absorb His character into ourselves. With the sharp clarity of commitment and calling, we approach everything that presents itself to us, and we discern what is valuable in our mission versus what isn’t our problem.

This discernment business is the hardest part. All of my chatter about a fungible reality, how each of us experiences a different world, is aimed at helping you shake the false mythology of “objective reality.” It’s not that you can simply have what you wish; it ain’t that kind of magic and fantasy. You must struggle to shed all the garbage so that you can see what’s truly in your heart of conviction. You can have the blind deception, or you can have all the things God designed for you, and you for them.

It’s written in your soul. It’s more than mere DNA, though it includes that. It’s something fundamental to your existence, all inclusive and organic. It requires taking into account your current context as well as everything you’re born with and have been through. This “thing” we all seek to discern is uniquely individual with each person. But rather than something you can “know,” it’s something you can decide. It’s not a question of absolute right or wrong, but is relational between God, Creation and you. It’s the next step closer to Jesus Christ.

There’s always one more step, no matter where you are.

Jesus is the answer regardless of the question. We want all of Creation to see Him clearly, and the only way we can show Him is in ourselves. This is in the best interest of all Creation. That humans are fallen and blind means Creation suffers under the perverting influence of sin. It can’t act like it did in the Garden, but it can act better when you and I show up and interact with it according to God’s character. And fallen people can see that — some of them, at least.

We can’t fix the brokenness in the world. We can’t run out and use human means to make everyone see with clarity. It only works if they voluntarily come to it for themselves. You and I are the living portals of truth. Jesus said, “Go into all the world” — there’s no place forbidden us. This is why I pray for more and more infiltrators, not to take over the system, but to show people how to belong to a different realm through the heart of conviction. The worldly system in which we live is just the background against which we breathe life into the image of Christ, shining the light of glory.

Any day now, that crisis will strike and things are gonna get rough. I can be all prayed up for myself, but I can’t do it for you. Honestly, if you don’t see it coming, I can’t paint the picture clear enough. All I can do is challenge what mythology you may have learned so you can cut away the junk and keep what really matters. That’s what those verses quoted above tell you.

Reality has been programmed to meet you at the point of obedience; it recognizes God’s character in you. It is empowered by your desire for holiness. Reality will step up and offer assistance and be your friend. Each moment of time is the entryway to yet another parallel reality waiting just for you. Keep faith; stay true to your divine calling. This is your true nature, the Word of God for you, your part in the eternal mission of revealing Him and shining His glory.

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Psalms 144

Posted on August 12, 2017 by ehurst

This is one of David’s battle hymns with quotations from several other psalms. It draws the image of someone fully confident in a God who has already shown His great power against enemies of the Covenant. David never forgets that the only value of Israel as a nation is how their covenant life reveals Jehovah.

David begins with lavish praise for Jehovah from a warrior’s point of view. Indeed, the only reason David goes to war is because it is his divine calling. Were it not for the Lord’s anointing, David would have no competence at all in battle. But He is much more than a mere war deity, for He teaches David compassion and protection, how to be a refuge and deliverer, a shield and fortress. God has been these things to David first. Without God, David would hardly be king of anything; no one would follow him.

Indeed, there is nothing in mankind the merits any notice from God, much less the vast measureless blessings He offers under the Covenant. The whole thing rests firmly in God’s own character and purpose to reveal Himself.

So David boldly requests that Jehovah Himself come and lead them into battle. Where God is, the earth is afire with His glory. David notes how God’s Presence has the effect of long-range weapons used to whittle the enemy forces down before the actual melee begins. But His arrows are more like lightning strikes. And should things still get difficult, David asks that the Lord deliver him personally. Even should the enemy come on like a flood, David is confident he will prevail under God’s command. These enemies fail because they do not know Jehovah, and thus their whole existence is one big lie against Him.

And after the victory is won, David’s first act is not gathering plunder, but sitting down to compose a new worship song to the Lord. This is the One who decides which kings and nations survive human warfare. David’s trust is fully warranted.

Indeed, it is God’s revealed nature to bring down those who ignore His revelation and attack Israel. He does this as part of His Covenant promises. It’s the same promises that protects and prospers each new generation: sons who grow stout like trees and daughters who are as solid and supportive as cornerstones of palaces. This is the God who pours out prosperity and plenty, with abundant food and trade goods. This is Jehovah who protects from plundering raiders, whose nation will never be refugees in flight. Their streets are peaceful. This is why David is willing to go to war.

This is the picture of the nation that serves Jehovah.

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Playful Kitties are Better

Posted on August 12, 2017 by ehurst

The hard core gamer walk-throughs presented on YouTube are instructive.

Back in my youth, I was a serious fanatic of Science Fiction. I could get lost in novels and short story anthologies for days at a time. I bought a lot of paperbacks because they didn’t keep me busy that long. Of course, I also consumed some limited fantasy stuff, but that genre went bad by the time I was 30, suffering the first wave of Social Justice Warrior (SJW) politics. I also read a good bit of historical and military fiction, but I could handle them only in small doses because they seemed rather shallow, rather like Western novels.

During the difficult years when I was struggling with the call to serious moral development, I lost my taste for just about all of that kind of reading. At the time I could not have told you why, but some of my favorite authors became quite repugnant to me. The longer I studied what it meant to think like a Hebrew and developed a sensitivity to conviction, the more I despised my previous favorite entertainments.

It was the same recently when I explored the game walk-throughs. I’d get just so far and the story line betrayed something that turned me off. However, now I am fully conscious of why.

For example, Fallout 4 — it’s one of the few games with a serious karma component. However, the whole thing is structured around karma traps. The storyline authors betray a moral nihilism, in that there is a pretty clear underlying moral value system, but you cannot play the game through without betraying it. Unless you turn to the dark side, you cannot hope to experience much of the game. You might finish and get to the big finale, but you’ll miss at least half of the adventures.

So far, none of the games are any better. It’s bad enough that most of the YouTubers who offer these videos are typical gamer dweebs in the first place, the Gamma and Omega males who annoy everyone who isn’t like themselves. And boy, do they love to hear themselves chatter. Only a few are properly socialized and decent, friendly guys. They have their place and their audience, but I’m not part of it.

At any rate, I’ve completely lost interest in those videos. It was quite disappointing when I realized players were being channeled into some of the worst flavors of Western mythology. It’s the same reason I started writing my own fiction: Nobody else presented stories against a realistic moral background. Most published fiction is morally offensive, and I suspect most heart-led folks would feel about the same. So I wrote some stuff with a different moral reality just to see it available.

I’m not suggesting you have to be offended by the same stuff that makes me so uncomfortable. I am increasingly annoyed by the false morality and it’s gotten to the point I can barely tolerate much of anything that is offered as entertainment. Even a lot of documentaries are blatantly anti-Christian. They can’t just tell the story; they just can’t resist poking at faith. Some of it is bearable, but it’s getting harder and harder to find stuff I can tolerate.

I’m becoming a real fan of videos presenting funny animal antics.

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Open Line Friday

Posted on August 11, 2017 by ehurst

This is the place for your random questions. Just post something in the comments and I’ll respond appropriately.

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Virtual Battlefield

Posted on August 10, 2017 by ehurst

There is no objective reality. There is only human experience and perception. The path of sanity for individuals and humanity as a whole is for perception to account for experience. It’s not a question of total accuracy because humanity is permanently flawed, but it’s a matter of acquaintance and friendship because experience is alive.

Of course, it is inevitable that each of us will have a certain amount of shared experience with other humans. The context of our experience and perception may bring us great numbers for this sharing, or we may find ourselves highly isolated, but there is of necessity someone somewhere who shares a substantial amount of experience and perception with each of us. On the other hand, there must also inevitably be some barriers, which places on us the burden of duty to reach across the natural human divide. However, your reaching must remain within the boundaries of your own experience and perception, for that is your divine calling. Your calling is to touch others with your experience.

That requires a willingness to step out from behind perception and work with it as a person, too. Experience and perception are not you. Without awakening that faculty for detachment, we are doomed. There can be no sanity or inner peace unless you can detach your true self from perception and experience.

Let me share a perception with you. You can get to know it if it appeals to you on some level, but it’s more important that you learn that detached awareness that has no dog in the fight.

For longer than a decade, I’ve had a strong prophetic sense about the social pendulum swinging rightward. It’s not just a matter of politics on the street, but it affects politics in virtual space, as well. As you know, the establishment has long oppressed the right, making every effort to silence any dissent against the leftist social agenda. The left has hijacked many parts of government, which means law, which means businesses tend to cave in to the leftist social agenda. Most compliance is frankly mercenary in spirit. It’s how one gets ahead.

Recently the oppression has gotten truly egregious. What most people don’t realize is that a truly progressive agenda kills economic activity. Up to a certain point, it makes no difference. But the political left has gone past that point and the rabble at the bottom have noticed. What the left cannot imagine is just how big the dissenting rabble is. And in the field of computer technology, the leftist leaders simply cannot imagine how big the resistance is. It’s not that this virtual rabble is truly right-wing, but it’s had way too much left-wing and is hitting back anywhere it hurts. It’s not a matter of political philosophy, but of countering senseless harassment and coercion.

Into this context comes the firing of James Damore from Google. Notice that he is rather mild about his dissent. He actually doesn’t qualify as a right-winger, just someone tired of the brutal left-fascist atmosphere at work. He’s had dozens of good job offers since being fired, so it’s not like he’s an actual threat to workplace cooperation.

And I’ve already noted on this blog the hypocrisy of Google and their bogus motto, “Don’t be evil.” This from a company started on CIA funding, whose search engine hides results they don’t want you to read, whose software intentionally ties the user’s hands and opens the door to aggressive advertising and snooping, etc. The hackers and geek rabble on the Net have long complained against Google’s rapacious behavior, so this public dispute with an employee will definitely fuel the fires of popular resistance.

But governments are no better than Google. Perhaps you read about the arrest of Marcus Hutchins recently. The linked BBC article notes just how flimsy is the evidence against him. I’m willing to bet Mr. Hutchins pissed off the wrong person and he was arrested for the sake vengeance. The government’s bureaucratic hive-mind is most certainly like that. It’s as if he were a proxy for Snowden, a victim of institutionalized visceral hatred for something the hive cannot control.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of white-hat hackers like Hutchins are pulling back from cooperation with government agencies out of fear they’ll be capriciously arrested simply because they know stuff. And those hackers already within government service are increasingly likely to leak for that very reason.

Keep your eye on the fiercely independent Open Source software folks. While many are some stripe of leftist, they are under siege and likely to fight back the only way they can. Already there are any number of tools and announced efforts to whack back at restrictions and anti-user policies. The harder the bigshots squeeze, the more this spreads the resistance. For example, with all the rhetoric about laws mandating backdoor access to encrypted communications, we see an explosion of folks voluntarily making more kinds of secure encryption that governments can’t break, and making it easier for ordinary folks to use, plus making it all free.

This is part of my prophetic vision about the rise of a Networked Civilization. This kind of oppression against those who hold the keys to the very existence of the Internet will cause a backlash that will help to destroy the decaying Western Civilization.

We need to find a way to exploit this conflict for the glory of God.

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Mozilla Only

Posted on August 9, 2017 by ehurst

This is sort of a last straw for me. I’ve been watching this build up over the past few years and decided it was time to just ditch anything based on Google’s Chrome browser engine, called Blink (WebKit on Mac). That includes Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Slimjet, Vivaldi and a bunch of other stuff based on WebKit and Blink.

Here’s the deal: Google’s development team is aggressively handing more and more control of your browser to advertisers. Right now there are tools you don’t get to see that allow websites to disable adblocking and force you to see the more nasty forms of advertising, for example. It just so happens that same kind of control means miscreants can more aggressively plant malware on your computer through these enforced vulnerabilities. In more blunt terms, Google’s browser is becoming more and more like malware itself. It’s a tool that deceptively works against your interests, granting to third parties control over your computer.

The latest increment of this campaign was revealed by someone who develops an adblocker, of course. It’s referenced in a discussion thread on a Mozilla forum. You can find further meaningful discussion on the Hacker News forum. And maybe you didn’t quite understand why the Tor Browser is still based only on Firefox? It’s because Blink browsers disable way too many user defenses.

If you worry that Firefox is slow, the upcoming release #57 this fall should fix that. Current beta testers for that release have affirmed it’s just as fast as Chrome.

Really, it’s your decision, but you should at least be aware of what it costs to ignore this issue. So I now recommend Firefox, Seamonkey and Pale Moon, along with the Tor Browser package.

Addenda: The Register offers this solid explanation of the battle behind the scenes. I want you to notice that The Register is ad-supported, yet reports rather objectively about the matter of user ad-blocking. It’s a fairly popular news source for techies.

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Just Over the Horizon

Posted on August 9, 2017 by ehurst

I’ve been exposing myself to a mixture of entertaining fiction via computer game walk-throughs. It was provocative in a way.

Let me first get the junk out of the way: Some of the adventure stuff is hopelessly stupid. The context is portraying a world of espionage adventure. Some major figure in the storyline is morally idealistic and can’t simply follow deeply cynical orders, but takes the mission personally. It’s like a personal vendetta. People like that get killed, of course, and destroy things worse than if they had followed orders.

Those people exist, but they never get selected for espionage work. Part of the vetting scheme used by spy agencies is making sure you are cynical enough to not take it personally when the mission suddenly changes drastically in the middle, or when you realize that you weren’t told everything. I hate it when fiction refuses to recognize that, as if the people playing the game wouldn’t be willing to invest their time and energy unless there was some hokey altruistic hero element. The people who write the story lines for these games are imbeciles. I’ve seen reviews that back my contention on this.

Once in a while you stumble across a story line that reaches above that juvenile level. There’s still plenty of shoot-em-up, but the underlying plot keeps an eye on something in human nature itself. It realizes that we need a driving force, something bigger than ourselves so that we can exercise some hope and commitment. Here’s the thing: We can turn into lower creatures who simply become really good cynical spies and carry out the mission simply for the sake of adventure. But even that is merely a mask for some kind of deep commitment, which works out to personal excellence. There’s a place for those folks. In fact, they outnumber the dreamer kind, and they always will.

And then there are some of us God grants a vision that makes us some of both. On the one hand, I do have visions and dreams, but God showed me that the myth of great human accomplishment is a dead end. On the other hand, since I realize that, I’m perfectly willing to enjoy the adventure of following someone else’s dreams of human achievement as the best place to work to bring my own dreams to reality. That’s because my dreams no longer have anything to do with the common myth of Utopian struggles.

My visions ignore all that stuff. I have a vision of people who discover the power of the heart-led way. Not just the few of us scattered over the face of the earth, connecting only online. I dream of the day when each of us can find ourselves in a small community of people who have discovered this amazing gift and can fellowship face to face. You and I are the pathfinders for this kind of faith community stuff; we are the missionaries. For reasons God alone can understand, we are chosen as the vanguard. We were pushed through the necessary dramatic changes so that we could embrace this thing before it makes sense to anyone else. And as we pass into a global crisis period, our ability to operate on a heart-led conviction of divine moral truth is like a net that can catch a few of those who will be blown out of their old reality and will be tumbling into the abyss.

Tribulation is nothing to fear unless you don’t know why it’s there. Tribulation is the place where our light shines brightest. It’s where we find ourselves when we are closest to our Creator.

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Mission and Means

Posted on August 8, 2017 by ehurst

The nature of truth is that is must be lived or it means nothing. This is revelation we are talking about here. It’s not that we are responsible for making sure anyone receives it, but that we are responsible for revealing it. Just as Christ Himself was the incarnation of God’s Word, so we are to incarnate Christ in our own bodies (Galatians 2:20).

In this world, all we have is each other to bolster our sense of calling. Sharing faith is not merely evangelism, but it’s fellowship with like believers. For whatever reason, this latter day renewal of the heart-led way sees us widely scattered across the globe. Few of my regular readers have personal contact with each other. About the only way we can fellowship is via the Internet or the global cellphone network.

It’s not just this blog, but all the ways we can share our adventures in revelation using the global communications protocols. Most of you have your own blogs and I wish I had more time to visit with you individually. I promise to make a renewed effort, but the we are up to 800+ subscribers. Still, I confess that it’s hard to know who is paying attention here if you don’t hit the “like” button or make a comment. What matters most is that you aren’t waiting on me, but you are reaching out to others on your own.

Otherwise that faith means nothing.

I’m praying that all of you are taking the time to protect the means of connection, too. In the virtual world, CompSec (computer security) is the same as learning how to walk and talk. It’s the language and means of travel. Don’t rely on my piddling notices here; learn how to take care of your own system, whatever it is you feel called to use. Things are getting rougher, so it’s going to consume more time and resources; there’s nothing any of us can do to change that. All we can do is meet the challenge head on.

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