We Are Open Source

Posted on March 8, 2017 by ehurst

If there’s one thing we affirm and embrace from the nascent Networked Civilization, it is the ethics of Open Source.

I’ve already stated quite bluntly that I don’t support the legal concept of copyright and intellectual property because I’m convinced God hates it. The legal doctrine could come only from a materialistic culture. It’s part and parcel of the miserable lie in evangelical theology known as “propositional truth.” If you can put it into a verbal proposition, it ain’t the truth. This obsession with literalism is a direct result of Jewish legalism. This legalism was the result of mixing Hellenism and Aristotelian logic into the mystical Hebrew Torah.

Let’s review it again: The Original Sin in the Garden of Eden was turning away from revelation and enthroning human reason in the soul. It usurps the lordship of God by making an idol of human intellect. This rests on the urge to control. “We don’t need God; we can handle this ourselves. Are we not divine?” You can see that in the message of Satan:

You shall not surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. (Genesis 3:4-5 MKJV)

In that context, the Hebrew word that translates as “knowing” (yada) takes on the connotation of deciding and appointing, as in choosing for yourself what is morally good and evil. The only way you can do that is to close off your mind to your sense of conviction. Instead of discerning moral truth by a direct sensing of faith, you would be testing things by senses and abstract logic. It cuts out a whole range of perception possible only with those higher faculties the Bible associates with the heart.

So it asserts an arrogant ownership of truth, the authority to control things that we don’t even understand. This easily extends itself into the notion of controlling reality. If we can just study it long enough with the proper tools, we can understand the nature of the mechanics and replicate everything to suit us. It appears to work that way, but only because what the mind really wants is simply an excuse for pride, along with some good entertainment and fulfilling the conscious appetites — Boastful Pride of Life, Lust of the Eyes and Lust of the Flesh, in that order (the Trinity of Temptations in 1 John 2:14-17). In other words, objective reasoning simply is not possible, since reason is always suckered into seeking what reasonably meets those lusts. If things were objective, there would never be any debate.

What Plato imagined was possible in his Allegory of the Cave was never possible. It was a myth from the start. That’s because concrete reality is not stable and consistent in itself. It’s just a shadow. The only hope for something we can all share and agree on without debate is moral truth. Moral Truth is the Person of God Himself; it does not exist apart from Him. In biblical terms, your “heart” (symbolism, folks) is the only part of you that can perceive reality as God actually created it. What this heart discerns is the moral reality, which in turn is the personal character of God woven into Creation. Concrete perception of concrete reality misses the point; you cannot reason your way to the moral significance of things. But your heart can perceive it directly as it is.

We are wide open about this. The only thing that hides the truth from people is their truculent and fearful clinging to their concrete perception and logic, a logic that masks their own clear perception of their emotional fears of threat to those three lusts. We gladly reveal this whole approach to anyone who listens. The whole thing is personal between God and each of us individually. Each of us has to have his/her own moral treasure.

And because of our faith and trust in that living relationship, which the senses and logic cannot handle, we fear no loss from sharing openly our worldly treasures. Granted, our mission from God imparts a certain dominion in this world, but our grasp of the things of this world remains loose. We can afford to offer a much weaker legal standard of copyright because the real treasure here is not some conceptual property right, but the people who share it with us. The whole point of that moral dominion is to gain souls for the Kingdom, not to exclude people from access until they make our pockets jingle.

Our Christian Culture is not communist; that’s just another brand of materialism. Our culture is eastern feudalism; God is the ultimate owner of all things. While we do hold material things in stewardship as a grant from God, those things do not hold us. We aren’t gate keepers to God’s truth; the whole point in having Keys to the Kingdom is to recognize God when He shows up and grant Him access to His domain. That’s what a Hebrew key steward did (Matthew 16:17-20). We are the ones who bear the moral burden of making a way for God to shine His glory among those who share this physical realm with us. Put that key in the lock and turn it, so that folks will meet with their Creator.

Yes, we understand the practical implications of human laws about copyright and “intellectual property.” We also understand that God snickers at the whole idea. This is part of why His wrath is falling on our society. We embrace the radical Open Source approach to all human knowledge as a symbol of our opening the doors of moral truth. We dare not hinder God by playing restricting access.

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And We Ain’t

Posted on March 7, 2017 by ehurst

Israel was taken into exile because of idolatry. Granted, part of the problem was how very similar the rituals of Temple worship were to those for the various Baals. In the mind of too many Israelis, it was a case of Jehovah being just another Baal. Monotheism was so radical of a notion that they never did absorb it until the Exile.

What many don’t realize today is that Western Civilization rests firmly on polytheistic assumptions, too. We don’t struggle with the intellectual concept of monotheism, but we still offer way too much devotion to things that are not God. It’s polytheism-in-effect. The problem in our case is a culture with a total absence of anything above the intellect. We have no clue how to claim the promise that our people should see visions and dream dreams from God. Westerners cannot taste the good gifts of the Age to Come (Hebrews 6:1-8). The West’s fundamentally heathen approach to reality itself has brought us to that moment of Exile again; it keeps crucifying Christ afresh.

Westerners have no trouble believing in a Devil with red skin, horns and a trident. Despite all the rhetoric, that’s still what people see in their minds. Look at all the popular “Christian” cultural art depicting Satan. Those images bear no resemblance to what the Bible says. But what difference does it make what scholarship tells us? We don’t listen; we cling to our cultural images based on primitive Germanic tribes. At the same time, we are relentlessly materialistic. Aside from a handful of heathen cultural images, we force everything into a sensory universe that simply must fit into our warped reasoning structure or it’s rejected.

If you want to follow Christ, you must consciously and conscientiously root out the entire range Western mythology. Our Christian Culture ain’t Western. The only reason I keep bringing this up is because I keep running into it among our parish members. Yes, even the man in the mirror needs a slap upside the head now and then. So I’m inserting this into the conversation one more time: If there’s one thing we must watch like a hawk, it’s that Serpent in the Garden being subtle with us again by sneaking his favorite lies into the picture. If there is any one thing Satan has ever accomplished, it is Western Civilization. It’s been very thoughtfully and artfully constructed to reinforce the Fall with a vengeance. The West is the pinnacle of trusting human reason over revelation. If you don’t learn to despise Western culture, you cannot escape the wrath of God.

Everything in the Bible — everything — requires a mystical approach to understand what God is trying to tell us. So you have to learn just what “Western” means and all the garbage that comes with it. I know we are stuck here in the middle of it, and America is easily the worst expression of it; the USA is the pinnacle of everything that’s wrong with Western Civilization. We can’t keep approaching the revelation of God from the ground of Western assumptions about reality.

It’s our good fortune that God has His bellyful of it, too. It’s on the way down. Granted, I’m not liking the looks of everything to come along behind it, but we still have to speak to the next culture rising from the Internet. We still have to take advantage of what usefulness we can find. Paul took serious advantage of the Roman road system and his Roman citizenship, even while despising how Rome was destroying the ancient Hebrew culture. John saw that destruction too, and wrote about in the Book of Revelation. And if you keep a Western orientation, you cannot possibly understand John’s apocalyptic vision. But it’s the key to what God is doing now and will keep doing every time something rises up to hinder Christ’s gospel message.

So one major feature of our Christian Culture is talking about the flaws of the Western approach to things. Our logic is not as their logic. As one brother says, it’s the Warped Civilization, so twisted and perverted that it’s hard to grasp. This is easily the one thing that’s going to distinguish us, because most Americans alive today idolize Western Civilization. They can have it. These are the folks already dragged off into exile, and they can’t come back to the Holy Land until they leave it behind. We are building a new Temple on holy ground, and Westerners can’t walk there.

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What We Are Not

Posted on March 6, 2017 by ehurst

Where are you? To what place on this earth has God called you to reside? What is your mission there? How does “humble” and “grateful” appear where God put you?

It’s not for anyone to write religious rules for another. However, you would have to expect that a fresh approach to a Christian Culture is little more than the observable features of a religion. But we don’t want something so narrowly defined that it doesn’t travel well. And we cannot forget that religion is simply the human teaching and activity in pursuit of the divine call to faith. Each individual must answer God’s personal call, yet we are expected to fellowship with others. You’ll have to draw your own boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, but for the sake of building a Christian Culture, they have to be pretty broad and soft.

Given all that I have taught on my two blogs, what would it look like if a significant number of people discovered an affinity for my religious expression? Aside from pointing you to Radix Fidem as the underlying approach, there has to be some effort to define some abstraction of the Law Covenants into our world today. It has to turn into customary conduct that people will recognize as unique and identifiable. That’s the whole point in having a witness; we profess a common faith through common external manifestations.

For now, let’s review some of the things we are not.

We don’t wear funny costumes. There is no religious uniform for Radix Fidem. There are plenty of general guidelines in the New Testament. For example, there should be an obvious difference between the sexes. We should avoid both worldly ostentation along with appearing as low-life scum. In other words, our manner of dress and coiffure should appear as nothing in particular. Ladies, you are neither a hooker nor a red-carpet prancing star. Guys, you aren’t thugs or billionaires in suits. Don’t be a sucker for the latest fashion trends, either. There’s nothing wrong with an artistic decoration here and there, but it needs to be your own artwork, or from someone close to you. And for Christ’s sake, do we have to talk about not showing too much skin?

We don’t talk about “getting saved” because the American brand of evangelical religion has hijacked that phrase. You probably know what Protestants are referring to with that phrase, but in the Mediterranean Basin during the First Century, that phrase referred to finding God’s favor. Yes, we do teach that spiritual birth happens and that you won’t get to see Jesus face to face without it. But we also teach that it’s not something you seek as if you could gain it on your level. Whatever part we humans have in that radical change, there is no formula for it. Instead, we talk about what it does to you; we point to what comes with it. We talk about a life consistent with God’s divine Presence through an overwhelming sense of conviction about things.

Thus, we speak often in terms of Noah’s Covenant because the Apostles recommended it (Acts 15). We talk about how the Law of Moses was a particular application of Noah to a certain people, in a certain time and place, but that it died with Christ. So if someone wanted to cling to their Jewish heritage, they’ll have to understand how Jesus taught Moses, not how the Talmud perverted Moses. But obviously we aren’t pro-Israel and we eschew Dispensational Theology. We aren’t particularly pro-Islam or pro-Palestinian, either. We are disengaged from politics.

We aren’t into building unique facilities for religious purposes. I’d even go so far as to suggest it’s a waste of resources. There’s nothing wrong with humans making wise use of God’s Creation, but we should be characterized as preferring natural settings. Don’t let human accomplishments get in the way of connecting with Creation in reverence for our Creator. Obviously, if you live in a harsh climate, you’ll need to use some kind of protective structure, but simplicity is the key, and simply occupying some appropriate space for the time of communal worship and fellowship is fine. We are otherworldly and not materialistic.

Nor are we not in the publishing business. There’s nothing inherently wrong with printing stuff on dead trees, but we are moving toward the Network Age and virtual everything. The Internet is our flower bed in which we sprouted. There are plenty of ways to get your favorite materials into a printed form. And for Christ’s sake, don’t get hung up on any one author, least of all yours truly. I don’t write Scripture, okay? Maybe my role is in some ways apostolic, but don’t you dare make me into a revered figure after I die. Don’t put my name on stuff; I’m just a footnote in historical records. My objective in writing so much is that each of you can grow enough to write your own version of everything.

We aren’t into professionalizing our leadership. Scholarship is good, generally necessary, but we flatly reject the Western epistemology behind typical academic institutions. Ours is a contemplative approach. We believe the starting point is a heart of conviction that can discern the living Truth directly. We teach the existence of a moral sphere that we can tap into, that we can sense our Lord’s character and personality without human intercessors. The value of education is not in building a great intellect, but to equip a mind that can organize and implement that ineffable and eternal moral truth in the context of our human existence. We aim to boost that capability in everyone, because it’s highly likely that we all shall be called upon to lead sooner or later.

We don’t pretend to be egalitarian, and deny that it’s possible. No two of us has the same gifts and calling. Leadership isn’t a privilege earned; it’s a burden conferred when the time comes. So we also avoid strict hierarchies in favor of roles defined locally. Each group uses whomever shows up and does only what those people can do. But at the same time, we recognize that somebody has to play elder and someone has to act as priest. It saves time if those roles are assigned, but it’s not inherently necessary. We seek to build moral conviction and a sense of certainty in everyone, but we know that God’s blessings require a structure that promotes stability.

That’s enough for now. Questions?

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Perception Reborn

Posted on March 6, 2017 by ehurst

What would we need to say about building a Christian culture?

First and foremost, our only reason for living on this earth is to bring glory to God, specifically to the name of Jesus Christ. To put a finer point on it, our purpose in living is to let His glory shine through us. He will glorify Himself one way or another, but we are invited to participate in the process.

A primary means of making His glory visible is our laying claim to the divine heritage of shalom — to live a life that harvests His promised blessings. When we stand in the place where His mercy rains down on us, people are going to notice. They may not understand what they are seeing, but the Holy Spirit will draw their attention to our blessed lives.

Those blessings were promised as a condition for living according to revelation. That brings us to our second point: the otherworldly orientation. We know that revelation comes from Heaven into a fallen world. It’s not that Creation is fallen, but we are. We are born under a veil of moral darkness and cannot see reality, only what our fallen human capabilities tell us is real. Revelation teaches us not to trust what our human perceptions tell us, but to place our faith in what God says is real.

Through revelation we discover that Creation is alive, sentient and serving its designed purpose. We learn to displace our human perception with faith and commune with Creation directly because we commune directly with the Creator. He breathes His Holy Spirit into our dead spirits and we come to Life. We awaken to a far higher awareness that calls us to a Home we’ve never seen. We know we have a mission here to point the way out of the darkness, and when that mission is done, we go to be with Him directly. We find ourselves no longer a part of the shadowy existence into which people are born.

So the third point is that we are overwhelmed with gratitude. The overwhelming sense that we are unworthy, yet declared worthy on grounds we could never comprehend, leads us to humility. At the same time, we have the unshakable confidence of His divine favor. But instead of thinking so highly of our favorable position, we live with a deep sadness that so few in this world seek His favor. They know nothing of our joyful Life. It makes us sober about giddy the same time — sober about human frailty and blindness, but giddy about what we have found in Christ.

It would be easy to get lost in our paradoxes, but we have a vast heritage of what this paradoxical existence should look like in seeking His glory. We are told to examine the record of God’s testimony in Scripture and let His Spirit guide us in breathing life into that ancient record. Granted, it’s no small task to discard everything our world values in its arrogant rejection of God’s truth, but we have the assurance that such effort is rewarded.

I testify to you today that it can be done. We can examine the record of God’s people and see with spiritual eyes what it demands of us today.

We can build a Christian Culture.

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Christian Culture

Posted on March 5, 2017 by ehurst

A covenant with God breeds a culture.

There’s nothing wrong with the idea of a Christian Culture, something that is uniquely representative of following Christ. Our problem here in America is that it’s more American than Christian.

The First Century churches did pursue a Christian Culture, a lifestyle based on the Covenant of Christ. Jesus warned that the existing Jewish culture of His day was wrong, having long departed from the Hebrew culture of ancient times. While His teaching didn’t exactly resurrect those ancient Hebrew ways, it did pull from them a significant cultural orientation, a way of looking at life which led to a unique expression of faith in His message and His redemption.

The apostolic leaders in Acts 15 made it plain that whatever this culture should be, it couldn’t be Talmudic-Jewish culture. It could be the more ancient Mosaic culture, but that was not appropriate for Gentiles. So they decided it could include a broader Noahic culture. There was no real conflict between Moses and Noah. These apostles essentially ordered the Jewish Christians to change the boundaries to include the rest of the world, pretty much on the same terms Israel would have included the Gentile nations as allies and fellow worshipers of Jehovah. By the same token, Gentile believers were required to make allowances for the stricter rules Jewish believers preferred.

Thus, the boundaries were made flexible, but they were still there. In the New Testament we see repeatedly a command to examine the written records of the two Law Covenants and understand how they can clarify what faith demands. Law demonstrates faith. Certainly not all the rituals of ancient times would fit into this new Christian culture. One major element was that Christ was the one and only sacrifice, so no more flames on the altar. Instead, the business of supporting the priestly ritual leadership and shared worship facilities, always a part of the Law in the past, became the focus of offerings. That’s because the fundamental issue of being God’s People, a living offering for His use, was still written into this lifestyle.

We know that it wasn’t long before the Judaizers corrupted the early churches, seducing Christians into making the same error as Israel — adopting legalism as the proper approach to religion. Thus, not long after the First Century closed, Christian religion began to lose the mystic fervor of faith and was reduced to empty formalism. By the 300s AD the churches were further seduced into surrendering to government control. And when the Germanic Tribes swept into Europe, the institutional church further compromised their doctrine to embrace the Germanic cultural viewpoint. Another few centuries and the formal church hierarchy was part of the government itself.

Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world. He reigns in the hearts of people who do not cling to this world. The institutional church in the West was wholly a creature of the world around them.

From that time forward, organized Christian religion in the West has always been some reflection of the ambient political and cultural orientation. Today we have no valid Christian Culture, though that term is used for something that is just another flavor of the culture outside the church. There are no uniquely Christian values at work any more, just legalistic misrepresentations of New Testament teaching. American Christian culture is just a New Testament Talmud.

We have a unique opportunity here. America as it once was is dead; even now the whole thing is passing away. Granted, most people aren’t going to notice, but it’s not hard to see. Something else is rising to take its place. While it’s impossible that we should somehow hijack this thing, we can certainly take advantage of the turmoil to pull back and start fresh. No, we cannot recreate everything we know about those First Century churches, but we can learn from how they abstracted the model of culture from the Law Covenants, and carry out that mission again.

Let’s allow this fake American Christian Culture to die, and leave it in the ashes of history where it belongs.

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Psalm 121

Posted on March 4, 2017 by ehurst

No petition here, this is a responsive hymn celebrating the protection of Jehovah. Palestine is a hilly land, and any route toward Zion meant looking at ridges and mountains until you saw the Temple itself, visible from quite a distance in most directions. But the symbol of the first line is someone who is clearly in a valley of trouble. Looking for help meant scanning the high horizon. From which direction is rescue coming? It comes from the Lord who made heaven above and all of the earth below. Indeed, it’s a hard to escape Him.

Our Lord gives us a solid, firm path to follow. There’s no slipping on the road to Zion because God wants to see us. And He’s never asleep; His truly God who does not rest. How else could He protect Israel all these centuries? He never takes a break.

Have you ever been exposed to a merciless sun in dry terrain? Then you’ll understand what a relief it is to come under a cool shade. That’s our God; He makes life worth living. Not just the sun, but He prevents us being moonstruck as well. Because He never closes His eyes, we can handle whatever comes our way.

And He is a shield against all afflictions, showing His clear intent to keep us alive and healthy for His glory. The business of “going out and coming in” is a Hebrew phrase that covers just about everything we do as humans. It doesn’t matter what life demands of us, He’s there making it happen. He stands watch over us beyond the end of this life, too.

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Draper Trails: Delightful Ride

Posted on March 4, 2017 by ehurst

01roughroadThis time I started where I left off from the last ride, and resumed following the shore road. While it was still muddy from the previous rains, some heavy vehicles really stirred things up. Then it dried. Hard. I had find a track along the margin of this “road” and headed south.

02rockypoint-aToday it was a very stiff winds (20-30+ MPH) from the south. That made it a bit slow heading out to the lake on the Sooner Road corridor. What made it rather disappointing was the heavy cloud layer that rolled in while I was on my way out. There wasn’t supposed to be much chance of rain, but it meant the wind was very high and cooler. I was chilled, but I never got cold with 60° F.

03rockypoint-bThis ride is one of the best I’ve had out around Draper Lake. The shore road wasn’t that rough all the way around. But all the way I kept seeing these lovely rocky spots. On this one you can see where something caused the rocky layers to fold and bend. That’s all solid, not loose boulders. It’s a rare sight in this part of Oklahoma.

04rockypoint-cThis rocky point was almost inaccessible, particularly for an aging, arthritic man with old injuries. You would have had to come around from the left side through some thick brush; I’m standing on a bluff higher than the top of my head with no cut-outs or steps. I’m also standing on the edge of the road. I did run into a couple of mud ponds. The first was confined with wide margins and I was able to ride around it, but the second was churned up and still mucky wet all the way across the road — a bluff down on one side and bluff up on the other. However, most of the road bed featured exposed bedrock that had been carved by heavy equipment to make the road.

05island-aI stopped to have lunch where this little island stood just off shore. When the water level goes down, you can easily walk out because the bottom is a very shallow rocky ridge that runs out that way. I was sitting on a ledge and I could see the shallows arcing off to my left. While I was there, the wind changed to a dampish feel and the wind actually picked up with a few heavy gusts. While rain didn’t fall, I could see curtains of rain off to the south, too close for comfort. So I decided to make the road around the one biggest point of land and then take a shortcut out of there.

06island-bOn the way I spotted this rather larger island and couldn’t find it on the satellite view anywhere. I decided it had to be an orphaned point, but with the recent rise in water level, it was very much orphaned from one of the points I’ve explored in the past. From this angle it didn’t appear to be close to anything. That’s a pretty tight telephoto shot, and I had to rest the camera on my bicycle seat to get it steady.

So with this heavy stiff wind behind me on the way back, I made it back home in record time.

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Locking the Treasury

Posted on March 4, 2017 by ehurst

Something that I find deeply troubling is how most mainstream churches in the US still operate as entertainment — some more blatantly than others. When you watch the problems of their leadership, it’s loaded with all of the exact same pitfalls as we see with big named secular entertainers. What keeps them afloat is their power to entertain, not their personal moral power over sin.

There’s nothing wrong with charisma. Most of us could stand to learn how to exercise however much of it God has given. The problem is confusing it with the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s blasphemy. Entertainment is just Lust of the Eyes, and it stands on Human Pride, and diverts too much effort into satisfying the Lust of the Flesh (1 John 2:16). I remind you that Paul was annoyed by his lack of personal charisma, but it never kept God from using him to great effect.

Over the years of my volunteer work with churches of all types and sizes, the one thing that always hindered my efforts was this focus on entertaining: keeping butts in the seats and money in the offering plates. There was plenty of good concern for helping people overcome their moral weaknesses, but it was always diluted by some one or more people pushing for the entertainment value. It seemed that, no matter what wonderful things we might do in the lives of hurting people, we still couldn’t consider the organization worthy unless it competed for entertainment value that drew in the bodies.

I’m glad to see that we are nearly at 800 subscribers on this blog. I’m pretty sure WordPress doesn’t track for me when people unsubscribe, so we’ll never be too sure of that number. And I’d be really surprised if even half of those receiving the email notices were actually reading them. I don’t take myself that seriously, and I don’t take the numbers too seriously. What matters is when someone tells me, either in comments, email or some other form of communication, that I’ve been a part of their spiritual journey.

You can share your worldly wealth with me if you feel moved, but the real treasure here is you and your changed life. I want you to join me in breaking down the idols that keep us from God’s promises. Most current religious activity keeps those promises locked away, and keeps people from noticing, or even knowing about that heritage.

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No Marketing

Posted on March 3, 2017 by ehurst

The proper religious term for what we do here is “Christian Mysticism.” In terms of philosophy, it’s “Ancient Near Eastern epistemology” (that should choke up a few folks). Within a rather small circle of people, like those who’ve read this blog for awhile, we can call it “heart-led living.” In more traditional religious vernacular, it involves the idea that “conviction trumps reason.” In biblical terms it’s simply “faith,” but we all know that most mainstream Christians invest that term with a lot of false baggage.

There can be no snappy marketing terms for what we do. The very nature of our approach militates against such a thing. While I gladly offer my approach to religion for your inspection, we aren’t building a religious organization with all the trappings of a typical denomination. You cannot market a personal communion with the Creator of all things when it rests entirely on His initiative. We don’t need a bunch of converts who buy into our brand because we aren’t the solution. There is no total package, no affiliates, partnerships — nothing. I’m asking you to move your the focus of your conscious awareness outside the constraints of your intellect so that you can sense reality directly in moral terms. I can’t put that in a neat package.

What we do offer is a chance to break down the barriers that keep you from seeking God’s face directly. If anything, you could probably characterize what I do here as the psychological demolition leading to a fresh building. Aside from showing you with my personal example what kind of faith you could have, I’m not building anything for others. The closest I come to concrete action is pointing out things you should dismantle in your own mind so that you can find your own foundation for building.

The foundation is already there; you have to find it. This is what certain pagan groups refer to as finding “your true will.” There’s no way we can strip down to nothing; the human mind has to work with some frame of reference. It’s a process of discarding things that are obviously not appropriate. There comes a turning point where you begin to recognize yourself with a sense of clarity that defies description. That’s where you begin to discover who God made you to be. There’s a certain mixture of givens, things He controls for you, and a lot choices where He’s waiting for you to make a move.

And the process never ends. The configuration that works for today may not fit tomorrow. This is how we begin to discern between tools and core nature. Some things about you will never change, but there’s plenty that you should treat as transient. As time goes on, you’ll be surprised at where that boundary line can be drawn.

Given the totality of what I see for myself right now, I think it’s time to work harder at Christian religion directly. In my world here in Central Oklahoma in the USA, that means trying to help mainstream Christians escape. Not so much that they flee from churches and various religious organizations, but to escape from the mental restrictions that define the American Christian religious landscape. It means I’ll be giving more space to discussion of how we can break down the restraints. It will be primarily in terms of pointing out to believers that they are wedded to a religion that grew from Enlightenment philosophy, and that the common Enlightenment approach to things does not reflect what Jesus taught.

Yes, I know that Catholics are more from the Scholastic period and Thomism, and a great many churches are from the Reformed traditions, but the overwhelming ambiance of modern American religion is shaped by Enlightenment assumptions about how we should actually do religion in our daily lives — if at all. America is still deeply inflicted with the kind of moral and rational approach to life that has never quite escaped the influence of the Enlightenment.

Religion is what humans do in response to some divine sense of necessity. Religion doesn’t fall down from Heaven; faith burning you heart is an internal sign of Heaven’s call. Jesus didn’t found your religion. He was a Hebrew guy who had to deal with Jewish religion. Religion doesn’t give you faith. Your religion is not your faith; religion is an expression, an earthly human manifestation of faith. If people are confused about the difference between religion and faith, then you can bet that their religion is not working for them. We have to push aside all the assumptions about religion and what it should be until we lay bare the sense of conviction that makes religion necessary.

Folks can stay in their current religious setting; if it’s wrong for them in God’s eyes, He can and will tell them. That’s His prerogative. My focus is helping them grasp that where they are is not where Jesus walked. And a lot of it has to do with redefining the terms they already use. It will sound like criticism only in that I’m hoping to point out that what they say doesn’t mean what they have been taught it means. It’s frankly less about theology and more about philosophical assumptions. I want people to stop trusting reason, human talents or human tradition to find God’s face. It’s more about moving to the place to which He calls you.

Thus, while I’m still wide open to being pastor/elder to anyone at all, including pagans, agnostics, atheists and whatever, I’m going to spend less time addressing them directly and more time trying to reach mainstream American Christians, or anyone in the world deeply influenced by American Christianity. As before, I’m not interested in picking on churches and leaders so much as the underlying structure on which they stand. I have no expectation of changing anyone’s mind or fixing their problems in that sense. The Bible tells us God uses our conduct and conversation to touch whom He will; I’m just seeking to offer an honest expression of His calling on me.

So I’m guessing you’ll see more stuff about convictions and discerning what God made you to be. It seems to me the established psychology of tracing your conscience back to something more substantial, so that your conscience makes more sense, is more likely to help my audience than other approaches I might take.

To the degree you identify with what I’m doing here, I’d love to hear from you in terms of troublesome encounters. Not so much the drama of verbal conflict, but things you experience that strike you as somehow broken, not quite morally proper. Otherwise, I’ll just post about what catches my attention.

I started this blog some 8+ years ago because I can’t be silent about what God is doing in my life. You can’t have my religion; you have to build your own. Some of you do share a lot of my religion. More of you share the broader outline of my sense of faith. God alone knows, but I suppose most of you simply find this entertaining on some level. All well and good, but it’s important that you know what you’re getting here. I’m not selling anything, just obeying my own sense of conviction.

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What Would You Call It?

Posted on March 2, 2017 by ehurst

We would love to see the world embrace the full richness of God’s best offer. Christ Himself said most of the world would ignore His gift, so the next best thing is for them to embrace the Covenant of Noah. They won’t do that, either. At least, not as long as Western Civilization stands in the way. In fact, we have a very, very long way to go before anything like that is even possible.

We are left with one very important mission: We need to create an alternate culture, almost like a counter-culture, that centers on the heart-led way. We know that God alone can create faith by raising dead souls to life, but Scripture says everyone is accountable to Noah, and Noah requires the heart. Given what we can discover through studies in Ancient Near Eastern cultures, we know that the heart-led way was presumed the norm. While the Bible points out frequent failures of that norm, it was still the norm.

We cannot recreate the whole culture of those ancient times. We can resurrect the one key element that makes any culture worth preserving, and that’s the heart-mind as the standard. We also know that we would be fighting resistance the whole way as long as folks are still under a Western mind-set.

Some people are born with an active heart-mind and as soon as you tell them, they jump right into it. Others need more help. They have to go from cerebral Aristotelian to something stronger. Instead, of thinking in terms of stages, it’s best to see this as a continuum.

Early on, folks will learn to trust their intuition. That’s a form of pattern sensing that leaps over sequential steps in analysis. This is a critical departure from relying so heavily on abstract reason. It’s a shortcut just about anyone can learn to use, but it’s definitely sharper in some than in others. Next would be an awareness of the self all the way down to the core. It requires knowing how to spend time alone without craving distractions, able to be with just yourself. This is that moral look-in-the-mirror that scares a lot of people. Sorry; there’s no shortcut. Farther along, we enter the terrain of direct sensing moral truth.

The biggest hurdle is for people to recognize that there is no objective standard; moral vision is personal. Moral truth is God Himself, alive and variable because He relates to each of us individually. So there’s no problem if God tells you one thing and me another. The only issue is whether we can pursue our moral vision as a team or need some space, as well as when and how much.

I can’t help you come with a snappy name for this. While I call it “heart-led” most of the time on this blog, I doubt that term is going to help in all contexts. You can call it simply “mysticism” if you realize that the term is weighed down in our society with a burden of trash we don’t carry. You could refer to it as “a sense of conviction,” but that sounds religious to folks who may not have much initial interest in that. You have to realize that helping them to move their consciousness into their hearts is the prerequisite for a genuine conversion in the first place.

So this really isn’t news so much as clarification. While praying on my ride yesterday, I sensed a strong call to focus more directly on raising up a new culture of heart-centered consciousness. I won’t neglect evangelism in other forms, but this one thing is worthy of our strongest focus.

Care to join me?

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