We Know

Posted on April 1, 2017 by ehurst

Aristotle’s ideas were based on the pagan mythology of his people. For him, if there were gods, they were no morally different from people. They were immortal and had extraordinary powers, but could be just as unreasonable as mortals. Thus, reason was superior to gods; men could reason and generally ignore them. There may well be divine revelation, but it was untrustworthy.

We see this in the Eden narrative as a lie, where Satan suggests that Jehovah wasn’t telling the whole truth about the Tree of Knowledge. In Aristotle’s universe, there was no room for a perfect god nor a perfect creation. Only reason could be perfect, and that was within reach of humans.

In Scripture, a term translated typically as “this world” or “this generation” refers to the fallen nature of humanity. That is, Creation is about as perfect as it can be, and only human nature is broken. But the effect of that brokenness forces nature into restrictions that aren’t what God intended. It would be impossible in human terms to describe what will change at the Final Revelation, but it doesn’t require anything more than removal of all those who remain unredeemed. Get rid of that and nature is free to be like Eden again. The whole earth can be the Garden of God.

Thus, we are encouraged to stay in this realm of existence but to escape the ravages of our fallen nature. We don’t cease to be fallen, but we do take on a layer of moral clarity that simply isn’t possible without spiritual birth. We are able to discern in our hearts that nature is alive, sentient and willful, from the whole down to the smallest element. And through this realization, we are able to sense the true living Personhood of God Himself. Christ becomes a someone we know, rather than a rarefied ideal.

But it remains our default to be stuck with the fallen nature. So we have to exercise the grace and mercy to keep our awareness outside the limitations of our minds. We have to choose by faith to credit revelation as a valid input and make our decisions based on things we could not prove via sensory data or reason. Unlike Aristotle’s universe, our God is morally perfect and not confined to our level of existence. Our best hope is not simply struggling for objectivity, which is impossible in the first place. Our best hope is the awakening of something in us far higher than reason and generally separate from our senses.

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02 Big Dig

Posted on April 1, 2017 by ehurst

Who are you?

Who did God intend for you to be? There are several parables for this. I rather like the image of God handing Moses two stone tablets. Try to wash from your mind the popular artwork depicting Moses slogging something as big and heavy as a tombstone. It would be more like a pair of thin slices of slate displaying a fairly small font size, and more likely a change in coloration than heavy cutting. It would be something a human craftsman could not replicate.

Contrast that with Jeremiah 31:31-34 — “I will write My Law on their hearts.” He says pointedly that it will not be the same as the Covenant of Moses. The writer of Hebrews in chapter 10 really brings this out, quoting that part of Jeremiah. The presence of the Holy Spirit changes everything.

This would have had an obvious meaning to the Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) cultures in general, and Hebrew culture in particular. To a people already well versed in mysticism as the norm, there was nothing new about keeping the focus of your conscious awareness inside your heart instead of your brain. They considered living in the brain as living by the flesh. You got that way because you made no room for God in your heart. Instead, your heart was closed off from God, filled with all kinds of other deities or just plain junk, lesser commitments.

We have a tough time reading the Bible from that point of view, but those people presumed it as the norm, something so obvious that it just didn’t require frequent comment. And they were used to the idea of having to stay focused and striving through many years of this powerful personal commitment to Jehovah before one could sense a living Presence in the soul. Precious few could manifest that kind of vivid commitment early in life. They would have regarded it as a form of genius, a moral precocity. It was also a mark of God’s favor. We should hope it meant you’d have everyone else’s favor, as well.

So when God promised to make that happen on a wider scale, it was viewed as a fine miracle, indeed. Consider the impact of Jeremiah 31:34:

“No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (NKJV)

Your community shalom wouldn’t depend so heavily on that constant battle of reminding folks to live by the heart and not by their heads. So on the one hand, every human at any given time could learn to live in their hearts, and could eventually get so accustomed to it that it was the same as having God Himself living in your soul. On the other hand, God was promising He would make it the norm to invade their souls before they had time to work that hard at it. They could all be precocious moral geniuses.

So instead of building a life like a fine mansion with those stone tablets displayed prominently on the wall, it would be a mansion built on those stone tablets in the first place. That Law of God would become much bigger than a mere tombstone; it would be the massive cornerstone set firmly into the hillside so that everything you build rests on it from the start. Indeed, that cornerstone would naturally be there in the first place, waiting for you to come and build.

It would up to you individually to first find the place God wanted you to build your life. Then you might have to remove some rubble and dirt to find that cornerstone. But eventually it would become clear as day with the building plans inscribed on it. So you would begin to follow those plans and build out, cutting a terrace for your life that would never collapse. Your life would become a shelter for many others, as well.

If you and I come into this promise from our Western heritage, it’s not just a building project, but a massive archeology dig. We have a lot more dirt and rubble to remove and it could easily be a never-ending project. It’s worth it, but that may not be obvious from the start, given how so few folks around us have any appreciation for such things. Worst of all, we will be treated like some kind of traitors for leaving behind the cerebral existence. They cannot comprehend a life lived by sheer conviction without first filtering it through reason.

Your reason is not who you are. It might be the core of your existence without the Holy Spirit, but that’s not what God intended. You cannot know yourself that way and make it mean anything. You have to know yourself in that other way, based on convictions that God wrote in your heart.

So the quest remains that of finding out who you were meant to be.

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Don’t Be Surprised

Posted on March 31, 2017 by ehurst

Paul had a secular skill as a tent maker. That term referred to a wide array of actual products made from heavy fabrics, leather and rope. As you might expect, he could also do sails and ship rigging. In some contexts it could include the likes of even making shoes and equestrian tackle.

His secular calling bore some analog to his mission calling. The idea of buying a tent was to free you from needing a regular building. You could carry a substantial shelter in a much smaller package, set it up as needed, and take it down all in just a short time. Paul was equipping souls to travel lightly in this world so they weren’t burdened with the normal load of secular care.

I’m the same way; my faith mission has a distinct secular analog. While the standard term for what I do is administrator, my secular calling is decentralizer. It covers a wide array of things, but the overall effect of what I do is reducing people’s dependence on centralized organization and controls. It’s how I do religion and is a direct result of my embrace of Noah’s Covenant.

The idea is to make people less dependent. So my advocacy of Open Source software is an example of breaking down centralized controls and making people independent from Big Technology. But it has an even greater obvious connection to how I do political analysis. It’s not just my mind, but my very heart radiates with a glow of depending on God, not man.

In Paul’s day, the Judean Kingdom was fading into insignificance. He was directly involved in breaking down it’s earthly authority. Meanwhile, Rome was still expanding and quite strong, so Paul made it a point to teach people how to live with that.

In my day, the US is dying. It’s part of the demise of the West in general. I’m prepared to directly engage that breakdown. A part of the breakdown is the rise of the Networked Civilization, so I’m trying to teach people how to live with that.

The difference is that my secular calling is more than an analog; it’s an obvious and direct extension of my mission calling. You should hardly be surprised that I keep calling for a rise in nationalism and an end to the tyranny of centralized control promoted by both globalists and imperialists. Every opportunity to get directly involved in weakening those two forces, I jump at it.

On top of that, I’d bring to the task a radically different value system. I wouldn’t fit too well into most political organizations because they are totally Western in nature. They would see some of my morals as immoral; I can assure you the feelings are mutual. I’m banking on God’s hand of wrath manifesting in ways that promote His revelation, and that would be the Laws of Noah. So I’m prepared to invest time and energy in pursuing that alternative moral frame of reference in society, politics, religious politics, the virtual world — in every way I do this one thing.

Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14 NKJV)

As far as I’m concerned, this is just obeying Christ.

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01 An Elder’s Moral Covering

Posted on March 31, 2017 by ehurst

I’m not a leader; I’m an elder. I don’t lead; I provide moral covering.

You’ll find plenty of biblical references to the symbol of “covering for sins.” It goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden and the Fall. In their innocence, Adam and Eve had no sin to cover. Once they ate of the Forbidden Fruit, their sins were apparent to themselves and they came up with a form of covering that might be okay in the Garden, but would serve no useful purpose once they were driven out. They needed a covering that God provided, and it came at the price of blood.

The symbolism is what we are after here. It rested on symbols common throughout the Ancient Near East (ANE). Somebody has to sacrifice, to shed blood so that we can reclaim the available measure of Edenic living that God allows. It takes sacrificing whatever we think we have in this life to reclaim what we could and should have under God’s covering. Returning to Eden means facing the Flaming Sword of revelation.

He revealed that His covering includes a certain amount of sacrifice by people appointed for the role. It’s a burden that requires a strength only God can provide. For an elder, it’s not a choice. It’s a role chosen by God, though it is rather predictable. It follows established protocols.

If you observe that my life is blessed and seems like a taste of Eden, then you can grab a share of my blessing by coming under my covering. The purpose is not to boost my domain, but to justify having one in the first place. The whole purpose of moral dominion is to provide incubation for other folks who should become elders themselves. I’m propagating my blessing. I’m providing the covering you need long enough and strong enough for you to grow into that role on your own terms before the Lord.

So it’s not a permanent arrangement. And while literal progeny don’t have a lot of choice in who their first elder is, they are always free to run out from under his moral covering and face things on their own. Of course, if they simply stick around and refuse to obey, they will be punished as a means to awakening the awareness of sin’s costs. An elder cannot allow anyone to threaten the covering. Elders were empowered under the Covenant of Noah to execute those who pushed too far, too long, in threatening the covering and refusing to take their sin outside the household.

That’s a symbol of how the church was supposed to operate. It was your moral family household, never mind physical DNA. But here at Kiln of the Soul, we have to reinterpret that for the virtual world. We can’t hug, for example. And we really can’t get to know each other that well personally, though some of you have caught on how to make the most of what’s possible. So there are some of you who cling to my moral covering with a strong kinship despite the geographical distance.

It’s not possible on a purely psychological level. It only works when we share communion on a higher plane. We are trans-dimensional people. We don’t cease being humans, but we have an added component that trumps everything else about us. This alone is capable of making a virtual parish work. Without this higher faculty, there is almost nothing I can do to provide covering. But if you can tolerate what comes with embracing me as elder, then it’s a sure thing you’ll be covered under my shalom of divine moral blessings.

So I’m not here on this blog giving directions. I do set limits, but that’s the definition of covering. You can wander off as you see fit. God knows: What works for me may not work for you. Still, you’ll have to find your own dominion or suffer the loss of some of my blessings. And as long as you stay close, you’ll always be liable to suffer my sorrows, because none of us is perfect. Still, I’m hoping to see you take to your own wings sooner or later. You can keep on bringing your strength back to this virtual parish, but it means sacrificing some things in order to keep things under my covering.

In that sense, perhaps we can redefine the meaning of “leader” and “leading,” but because of the cultural baggage, I would still avoid those terms.

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Not Giving Up 02

Posted on March 30, 2017 by ehurst

This is a rough day for me with pretty harsh symptoms from a cold virus. I’ve been careful and proactive because of my personal history with such things, so I’m not feeling dead or wishing I were. Still, I’m dozing off more than usual and lacking my typical energy level. So I’ll stick with something simple. I’ve covered it before but it fits right in with recent posts.

One of the most blasphemous things Western Christians do is treat the US Constitution as sacred. It’s a twisted idea that it was written on biblical principles. The Bible is an Eastern document written by Eastern minds. Jesus Christ was an Eastern man and Christianity is an Eastern religion. “Eastern” here means inherently mystical in approach. The US Constitution is, at best, a rationalist Enlightenment document resting on a radically different assumptions about reality. Further, I contend that the Constitution was designed to fail, but that’s another story. The point is that the whole concept of “rule of law” arises from heathen mythology. Don’t try to force this crap back into the Bible.

So when we look at Romans 13, you’ll get a lot of crap from American Christians about our moral duties to bow the knee to secular law. Not every specific law, of course, but the system on which current civil law rests. And it’s no surprise the government officials soberly insist that it is our “Christian duty” to obey them in every detail. Again: It’s blasphemy.

Put it back into its proper context; read the whole chapter.

Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. (Romans 13:7-8 NKJV)

We might debate just what Paul means by “the law” at the end of verse 8, but in the context it seems to point to civil law. Paul was known to defy Roman edicts that were contrary to the command of God. He did so because of his commitment to the agape in his soul by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. He was willing to face the legal consequences for it, as well, because of that same overwhelming commitment to compassion. He never whined about jails and whipping except to use that same Roman law as leverage against someone who didn’t understand what Paul was doing in the first place (Acts 16:35-40, 22:25-27). Further, he used pagan Roman law against his own nation’s law (Acts 25:9-12).

Do you believe assassination is immoral? You would be wrong — see Judges 3. Ehud broke the law, but acted morally correct. Granted, it seems to our Westernized minds a rather murky legal situation compared to ours today, but it remains that Ehud defied those in authority over him and led a rebellion that God blessed. It was preceded by humility, confession and prayer. The whole scene would not have been necessary had Israel obeyed the applicable covenant. Eglon’s reign rested on a legal system much closer to Israel’s than anything in existence today. My point is that we have even more reason to disobey today.

And yet we generally play by the rules because that’s what Romans 13 was all about in the first place. We aren’t lawless, but hold to a much higher law of God. That law rests on agape, a Greek word meant to convey that overwhelming warmth and communion with all Creation that comes from living in your heart, not in your head. We aren’t looking for an excuse to cause trouble just because we live under horrendous heathen laws. We look for ways to exploit loopholes to manifest God’s glory. In this, we have fulfilled our whole duty to human civil law — “Love works no ill to its neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10). Standing accused by human civil authority does not mean you have disobeyed God.

And only in the heathen moral blindness of Western thinking does that kind of love exclude the use of physical force. If I love my family, I’ll attack and kill anyone who threatens them. If I love my fellow believer, I’ll do the same for them. And I will have to leave room in my mind for helping someone evade arrest if such assistance is demanded by moral conscience (1 Samuel 20; Acts 9:23-25). Unlikely, but I have to give it room. By the same token, given my background and skills, I can’t promise you that there won’t come a time I might kill or assassinate someone because it seems God is behind it. Nor can I exclude any number of things ostensibly illegal when I know that the laws are contrary to God’s revelation. However, those would have to extraordinary situations, and I will stand ready to face the consequences.

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Some Prophetic Insight

Posted on March 29, 2017 by ehurst

See the bigger picture.

Consider Romans 9:14-24 and Jeremiah 18. God is the Potter; His plans and motives are inscrutable to us. But His moral character is fully revealed. If we see that a country is not obeying the Covenant of Noah, then we know it is doomed. We can analyze that country in detail and see why it is doomed, and can usually discern how the doom will come. That is, we know that God typically allows nations enough rope to hang themselves; their doom will be consistent with their sin.

From our perspective, it doesn’t matter much how a particular country came into being. God grants them all a certain space for repentance. At what point has the US ever turned to God? At what point did America repent according to Biblical Law and strive to obey? I’ve seen no evidence of it, either.

So the Lord has called me to prophecy to America of her sins and to warn of the coming doom. I will contend that what I see is not unique to me; whatever wisdom and vision I have is hardly special. All of it could and should be obvious to anyone who seeks a genuine heart of faith and conviction. Granted, an awful lot of believers are blinded by a Western bias about faith and revelation, but the remedy for that is easily found. All that I’ve written against Western intellectual assumptions can be found in other works by better writers who knew more than me. I’m hardly the only Christian scholar who knows this stuff.

On top of that, there are a great many very intelligent minds who can see that doom from an entirely secular approach. All you have to remember is their secular motives that color how they address the topic. Most of them are trying to sell something, so it’s not a matter of prophets but profits.

There is no sin in trying to profit from America’s demise. However, keeping it clean before the Lord means keeping track of how He does things. If you obey Biblical Law, then part of the shalom He has promised includes a measure of prosperity. If you are living according to His calling on your life, then by all means, exploit this situation for His glory, for therein is much profit, both moral and material.

By no means should you resist what God is doing. Try to understand what’s happening and pray accordingly. God’s wrath is upon America and she will not return to her former power and glory. Never mind what Trump says about “make America great again” — it ain’t on God’s agenda. But there are some other things God has in mind for Trump to do as a vessel for wrath. At a minimum, his election has provoked the end game. I can’t suggest to you any kind of time table, but there is no turning back. Something in this conflict between his supporters and his foes will forever destroy the system.

If you understand Noah’s Covenant, then you probably understand that centralizing government control is inherently evil. Biblical Law rests on protocols and layers of dominion. The US as it currently exists even within her own borders qualifies as an empire. In the Bible, emperors are not permitted to make laws that dig too deeply into the daily life of subjects. We see from examples on the Old Testament that a good emperor can demand tribute and some amount of direct service, to include a military draft. If he has any sense, he stops at around ten percent. In return, the emperor must provide protection from both external and internal enemies. But he cannot set detailed policy for daily life. He deals only with the existing leadership of the people — ideally kings and tribal leaders.

Thus, policy is limited to keeping trade peaceful and fair between vassals. Translate that into our context today. There is justification for education policy at all, and no justification for any kind of inheritance tax or physical property tax. There is no justification for corporations as persons to limit individual liability. There can be no impersonal shareholders, no stocks and bonds. There can be no government bureaucracy making rules and regulations, only executing them. Everything must be personal; all property must be owned under the name of an individual. And we haven’t even mentioned the issue of respect for Creation. Those are just a few examples; do you begin to see how it deals with greed and lack of accountability?

So it stands to reason that our screwed up evil system is what will implode. That’s how God’s wrath works: Whatever characterizes an evil empire as peculiar sins is what will eat it alive, and it’s what God’s wrath will correct. Thus, we should expect that there will be a catastrophic decentralization of US political power. And because the US has done so very much evil to other countries, there will be further complications too numerous to mention here.

If you understand what draws God’s ire, you can estimate where His wrath falls. There are people and agendas that will fight tooth and nail to keep the evil centralizing going, trying to make it even worse. Those will suffer. So for example, Trump’s presidency will open the path for the destruction of both the globalists and imperialists. Within your calling and mission from God, if you see a chance to exploit and profit from that situation, jump right in. Otherwise, try not to stand too close to any of it when it implodes.

I reiterate my personal conviction that we need not fear an apocalypse. The national system can break down without destroying everything you know. It will be rough in some ways — it has to be. But there’s no reason to think life support will come to a screeching halt. Your local and state governments will vary widely in their response to the way stuff changes, so you’ll have to stay nimble. Make certain in your own heart that you are already where God wants you, then pray and keep your eyes open for what comes.

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Go Big or Go Home

Posted on March 29, 2017 by ehurst

The question is always the same whether it’s politics or war: Cui bono?

If your dream is to destroy a moral evil on the earth, take away the profit. I hear activists talking about the need to stop this or that evil movement, and it comes with the discussion of how to form a countering movement. That’s not how it works. Making lots of propaganda noise can be a useful tactic, but moral evil is actually pretty mundane. There’s always the thrill of conquest, expressed in numerous forms, but in the end, it’s the money. It’s not the people with the vision, or the folks whose charisma provokes the masses; it’s the money that makes it happen.

When the money stops flowing, the evil movement will wither and die.

The vast majority of humanity doesn’t truly believe in anything at all. Destroy the false sense of team identity and the game is over. The methods vary with the context. Sometimes it’s just a matter of disrupting the means of passing that money. It costs money to move money; make it too expensive. Cause the system to skim too much, to hemorrhage until it’s just not worth the trouble. That could mean nothing more than attacking the security of the transfer, or simply sowing distrust between the various parties touching the funds.

Sometimes it means just threatening the courier. At what price will the courier bail out? No man in power is so altruistic as to be without skeletons in his closet. Hack and crack; snoop and gather information — expose what he hides and threaten what he protects. Find the weakness and exploit it.

Ignore the figure heads. Let them posture and spout unless they have real influence over public opinion. Just make sure they are fed some bullshit and you can nullify their power. Figure out how to inject something bogus but plausible into their sources. Then disprove it; make it a debacle.

Meanwhile, mask yourself in anonymity. If this is truly worth doing, then it’s worth letting someone else take the glory. That’s the ultimate question, though: Is this really worth doing?

Is this thing so essential to your being that you would die for it? Is this something that drives you beyond this life? Are you provoked from a deep moral conviction? Otherwise it’s not worth the trouble. You can rest assured that your enemy will counter-attack. Shed your vulnerabilities; divest yourself of as many interests as possible. That doesn’t mean throw down all your tools and weapons, but to ensure that you aren’t dependent on anything in particular.

The only way to beat an enemy is to be stronger where they are weakest. Everyone has one frailty or another, so find that weakness and keep the battle there.

Finally, there are no rules. There are convictions and lines you cannot cross, but don’t make them into rules, or you will cheapen their value. Don’t lose your soul, but do take the time to reevaluate every step of the way what is and isn’t part of your soul. You can bet that just starting such a war will change who you think you are, and you need to recognize that early skirmishes will strip away things you previously thought were essential. But don’t surrender to the darkness; keep your eyes on what drove you into this in the first place. When you can’t see it any more, stop and do some soul searching.

That’s because you need a reason bigger than the thing you first thought was the prize. When it comes to the nasty business of politics, the one thing that never changes is how nasty it is. Don’t pretend you can clean up anything. You don’t have to let that seep into your soul and subvert who you are; the only real reason anyone does this stuff is because of who they are. It has to rest on the necessity of being your true self, because everything else in your world is subject to change. The war will never end. Don’t make your goals your gods. Don’t pretend you are going to save anything for the future.

But if you truly cannot stay out of this fight, then own it and screw the rules imposed by others. Negotiate when you need more numbers, but never take it seriously. Never trust anyone, not even yourself. Still, if you can’t do this for the sheer joy of being alive, don’t get involved or it will kill you.

Addenda: In response to an offline comment…

We who walk by the heart, we who embrace the moral values of God as revealed in the history of Covenants, do not hold to Western values. This is not a question of “saving civilization” if you mean “saving Western Civilization.” God has revealed a way of being civilized that long predates the West, and His brand of civilization doesn’t rest on the heathen mythology of the West. The trick here in getting involved in politics is to follow your heart and bring glory to God; Western values do not glorify God. If after all I’ve written about the failure of Western values you still can’t see that, then you cannot possibly grasp what was behind the above post.

Scripture makes it plain that the macro and micro are two different things. What is moral on the personal level doesn’t completely apply to the family household level. What works for the family household won’t work for the entire tribe/nation. What works for the tribe will not work for the empire. When it’s your job to make the decisions, your dominion of the various levels differs in the exercise. It’s a question of context and protocol, not hard rules.

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Faith Does Not Compute

Posted on March 28, 2017 by ehurst

Here we take a short tour through the history of Western Christian theology. Our attention is focused on the business of fallen nature and human reason.

First, we have to understand that Hebrew Scriptures assume a wholly different anthropology from what is common in the West. On the one hand, both use figures of speech, but use them differently. In ancient Hebrew culture, human nature is divided up differently and associated with different parts of the body as mere symbolism. When it comes to understanding human behavior, it really didn’t matter whether the mind was literally rooted in the brain — there were too many other factors in human nature that affected how the brain worked. In other words, Hebrew culture downplayed the importance of intellect compared to the Western image of it.

Second, there was a radical difference in cosmology, too. While the particulars varied among the multiple Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) civilizations, of which Hebrew is one, there was a common thread of belief in a distinct and separate spirit realm that was invisible to the senses. We cannot overemphasize how radically different this is from the Western assumption that this universe is all there is. The Greeks had no trouble with the idea that deities and demons were invisible, but such beings were still confined to this universe. Greeks honestly believed that it was possible to find a physical entrance to both the homes of the gods and the abode of the dead.

So deeply does this stain Western thought that you can discern the influence in Western Christianity. Early in Church history we find the official church teaching that human reason is not fallen.

Let’s see how the ANE viewpoint is expressed in Jeremiah 17. Starting in verse 5 God is castigating Judah for departing from the Covenant (the Northern Kingdom was already long gone at this point). In particular, He refers to the “heart” as the center of one’s will, the seat of commitment or faith. There is a specific reference to the kidneys as the seat of human motives, and it’s often translated in English as “reins” or “mind.” His point comes right up front: cursed is the man who trusts in human capabilities alone. Blessed is the man who humbly trusts in God for moral truth. Without redemption, the heart of commitment is wicked. In that state, no one can subject their lesser faculties to the higher faculty that should be in the heart. There is no sense of conviction, so the heart is effectively just as fallen and broken as the rest of such a man.

This is echoed in Romans 3, particularly in verses 9-18. Paul indicates that a covenant identity never kept Jews from being just as wicked and sinful as the worst of heathens. Paul goes on to assert that without redemption, there is nothing good possible arising from human capabilities. It was always a matter of divine grace. Western Christians are completely mistaken in thinking Jesus introduced a new concept in John 3 when He spoke of spiritual birth. We can find references to that symbolism throughout ANE religious writings. Without “a spirit of the gods” within us, we are doomed. Nicodemas as so Hellenized that he had completely forgotten the mystical roots of Hebrew culture. For him, there was no separate realm of the Spirit; everything was confined to his universe. Redemption was merely to earthly Jewish identity.

Even when we find Western church teachings about spiritual birth, we find that the net effect it is merely a changed mind. Somehow being more spiritual means nothing more than a different cerebral track. It’s a conversion of mind only, in the sense that religious leaders are looking for symptoms of orthodoxy. We find them saying in effect that “Jesus in your heart” equals “right belief and practice.” And that right religion always seems to look like the one that the present leadership espouses. “If you don’t believe and act like me, you ain’t born-again.” For non-evangelical traditions, it’s more like, “We are the arbiters or what God says, so if you don’t agree with us, you haven’t heard from God.”

This is precisely the fatal flaw in Judaism, and it goes all the way back to Jeremiah’s prophecy. Judah was at that time facing Babylon’s rampaging conquest. The Judean leadership insisted that, since the Temple inside the walls was God’s House, they were safe. Would God allow heathens to dirty His carpet? Was not this Hebrew nation God’s Chosen? Jeremiah was telling them that it didn’t matter where the Temple stood. It also didn’t matter their proximity to it; the nation had moved too far away from God’s protection in their hearts. Their faith, their feudal loyalty, was in something other than Jehovah.

In Hebrew thinking, spiritual birth does not change what you are, but who you are. It opens the door for a personal communion with our Creator so that His power can mitigate the Fall. Thus, spiritual birth is not some magic that changes the ideas in your head; it changes your heart — it registers as a sense of identity and commitment. You aren’t buying into a different package of human identity, but leaving all of that behind for an identity rooted in the Spirit Realm. Christ said His kingdom is not of this world. There can be no earthly kingdom of Christ; there can be no Christian nation. In this world there can be only provisional associations of fellow believers, acting like family in an eastern feudal setting. We as Christians are brothers and sisters with no earthly father. We are away from Home working together in a foreign realm. We don’t colonize; we offer adoptions out of this world.

Meanwhile, the only people who actually understand this world are those who belong outside of it. The only people who hold a valid assessment of human nature are those who denounce and renounce it. Only when we are linked to the Spirit Realm do we find communion with the rest of Creation. We still face the same natural world, but now are friends with it, not alienated from it in some god-forsaken mythology of something must be defeated, tamed and enslaved to our will.

Reason cannot be reformed. It can be properly subjected to faith, but you won’t see that often in organized Christian religion. Instead, we see the whole matter of “faith” as better belief and action, and “spirituality” as mere education and training. Theology is data; faith is much more.

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Mystical Predictive Analysis

Posted on March 28, 2017 by ehurst

As I’ve often noted, Christian Mysticism isn’t a matter of content, but a way of approaching the question of religion. I dare say most of the Christian Mystics I’ve read do not at all believe in the doctrine of the Fall as I do. While I share their approach, particularly in making religion essentially personal, I don’t share their philosophical assumptions about human nature.

Along my personal journey, one of the influences that helped to shape my assumptions was Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. While I’m ambivalent about the business of the Fourth Turning on which the linked article is based, I have to agree with some of Jim Quinn’s assessment of human nature at large. The primary reason I differ with him is that his analysis betrays his assumptions: that he is still a devoted fan of Western epistemology.

While it is variously labeled in the studies of Comparative Civilization, one of the key elements in how a civilization fares is the relative presence of altruism, particularly whether it extends outside the family, and how far it extends. It’s the interplay of pushy versus considerate. It’s not a question of being polite or even compassionate, but whether, and on what grounds, you’ll make room for people who are pushy. How pushy do we expect people to be and on what grounds? Where are the boundaries?

It shows up in all kinds of ways. For example, Americans and northern Europeans share a certain set of assumptions about driving automobiles. We make a big deal out of the recent rise in “road rage,” but in places like Russia, there has always been road rage. It’s not that Russians don’t show compassion to the victims of crashes; you’ll always see uninvolved people clustering around a wreck trying to help. But it’s the basic assumptions about what constitutes proper behavior while driving that causes them to have a higher rate of traffic collisions in the first place: They aren’t very forgiving and take umbrage much more quickly against very normal human mistakes.

Americans are often shocked at videos of how Russians drive. We share with northern Europeans this sense of good order in social conduct that generally extends to our driving habits. We have a different set of assumptions about what is normal for civilized behavior. Most Westerners further assume their assumptions are, or should be, the human default. Most critically, they assume it is rightly rule-based and universal, instead of protocol-based and contextual. The Bible assumes the latter. Quinn’s approach to the question of predicting human behavior at large assumes the former.

My brand of mysticism says that we are hard-wired for eastern feudalism, that it’s the form of social control God designed us for and what His revelation designed for us. Biblical social constraints rest entirely on that eastern feudal sense of what ought to be; it assumes an inescapable fallen nature. The whole system arises from God’s revelation of human instincts. The only solution offered begins with reaching outside this world, to the Maker and Master of all things. Any social structure that starts elsewhere inevitably fails. It assumes that all Creation is inherently personal in nature, that the universe is not the net result of impersonal forces.

Further, I believe that the particular kinds of human failure are predicted by such assumptions about human behavior. By the same token, I assert that Biblical assumptions about human nature focus on a wholly different value system in terms of what really matters in the first place. It’s a different set of morals entirely.

So while I acknowledge the statistical accuracy of Fourth Turning analysis, I reject the moral assumptions behind it. We are up against two major issues here. First is the Western epistemology that demands we measure and evaluate the results of moral choices in material terms. This is why the mechanics of economics are an obsession with both left and right moral arguments. Second, Western Christianity assumes this is how God operates. Western intellectual assumptions offer no room for self-doubt; they compel the worship of one’s own reason. Despite lip-service to the contrary, genuine humility is a sin in Western morality. Western assumptions insist it must be impersonal.

This is why we have Asimov propounding his “psychohistory” — it is founded on the arrogance of Western epistemology. It remains fiction because it cannot do the job; it fails before it starts. It ignores very real moral elements of human nature because they are rooted outside the material universe. Western epistemology assumes the universe is the limit of reality. I have to agree with the idea that free will manifests on the individual level, but fades into insignificance when the numbers scale upward. And I do agree with how people in power resent the implication that they are actually powerless on a wider scale. However, I don’t agree with the idea that numbers alone can explain the wars, and I wholly reject that something like psychohistory could possibly predict human behavior.

The Bible predicted human behavior-at-large a long time ago. If you can embrace that other epistemology and understand the mystical outlook underlying the prophetic assessment of humanity’s future, nothing you see now would surprise you. Indeed, it’s hard to avoid a prophetic mindset once you really understand the Bible from the perspective of those who wrote it. You’re going to see a lot of things coming before they arrive.

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Natural Chaos

Posted on March 27, 2017 by ehurst

Reading the news, do you get the feeling nobody really knows what’s going on?

You’re right; they don’t know. God alone really understands and He’s not telling too many folks about His larger plans. However, in accordance with His divine promises, He is most certainly still telling His people what they need to do for His glory.

Consider that for a moment. God has never been silent. However, there are conditions attached to His revelation. We’re talking about the Creator here, folks. Don’t bother asking if you aren’t already committed to obeying Him. He’s always been downright eager to reveal Himself, but you have to remember that you aren’t in a position to put up filters. Instead, you are obliged to seek ways to remove those filters.

He further promised that if we would merely make a good faith effort, He would always make sure we got it. He has designed us to process revelation in ways that make us able to live in this world with shalom. He has always filled in the gaps for those who were clueless but committed, so that progress was always available until we are able to secure the fullness of His promises. In effect, desiring His wisdom is His wisdom.

Take a look at the Old Testament. When did the Covenant People find themselves in chaos? It was whenever they ceased to desire revelation. Even worse was whenever they presumed their version of wisdom was binding on God. That’s a sure recipe for living in chaos.

So here we are in a the US and just about everyone is utterly certain they have God figured out. It’s a lot like we read in the prophecy of Malachi: It’s all nailed down and run by rote. People are performing the rituals and can’t be bothered to hear when God says those rituals mean nothing. Do you not see how even the most charismatic worship services are following a script? It’s all down to a fine science, and if it’s not working, it’s your fault. Don’t you dare criticize the system.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s secular or religious, because it’s all the same system nailed down by exactly the same structural rules. There is this huge unspoken assumption that it has to organized by certain types of rules, so that the variations are quite shallow. That’s because nobody is listening; everybody is advising God what He’s supposed to do.

It’s not working. You can see it in the confused reporting of the news. Everything comes across like some kind of PsyOp (military term: “psychological operation”). It’s like some big lie painted on the surface and underneath is a yet another sting operation. And yet, the confusion and chaos is actually out there, but you can’t get an honest account from very many sources. I can tell you that, where I live, it seems a lot of folks come across as bewildered under the surface. The world is going nuts and the sense of composure is fraying on more than just the edges.

But God says He’ll tell your heart what really matters. Stay hungry for a better vision, a deeper revelation. Always assume you don’t quite have it, yet always be brave in going on what you have. You don’t have to know what’s going on, only that the chaos is the natural result of people not seeking to know God in their hearts. All you really have to know is what God requires of You; He’s got everything else in His hands.

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