Only What’s In Your Hands

Posted on June 19, 2016 by ehurst

I’m posting this late in the evening because I had to let it percolate into my soul all day before I knew what to say.

This is an issue of biblical justice, not doctrine. Indeed, the whole thing rests squarely on shalom and social stability. Has it ever occurred to you that the Bible seldom addresses what we would call “economics”? That’s because the whole concept of economics presumes a social structure contrary to Scripture. One more time: God hard-wired us to live in ANE feudalism. If the only place you can do that is in your church communion, at least you’ll do one thing right. However, this goes all the way back to the prerequisites for the Law of Noah, so it’s universal to all mankind as long as there are rainbows.

So whatever modern minds might make of biblical economics rests squarely on the assumption that most of your exchange of goods and services is within your extended family. The whole point of engaging in production of goods and services is feeding into social stability (AKA shalom). Do this and you will live in God’s promises, reaping His blessings. When you stand back and survey the larger scope of things, it is economically inefficient. But it’s morally righteous. You know your labor is first to God, and in obedience to His covenant expectations for us. That means we invest the labor and products of that labor back into the family/community. Don’t get lost here: Community was presumed to be kinfolks of varying consanguinity. Folks from within the covenant but outside the literal extended family, who felt led of God to join your community, would expect to take some time and effort to actually become family-in-effect.

And every community has at least one shepherd of souls who was the focus of leadership on practical matters of keeping that shalom. He was your local feudal “lord” so to speak, but likely a close relation. He would have some limited authority to direct how you dispose of the product of your labor. Not in the sense of devising plans for your stuff, but he would observe and help keep you on track consistent with the covenant. Context would vary but you were expected to keep your mind subjected to your heart and know what was morally essential. Your community social stability was more important than your personal material comfort and you knew that. Their welfare was your welfare.

Bogus cosmopolitan mythology about every-man-your-brother is a blasphemous rejection of God’s revelation. Without that covenant bond, you must not place others on par with our family. You should be kind to strangers, but you were not responsible for their long-term welfare unless your heart specifically put the burden on you. Whatever people call “social justice” is lie from Hell.

How many times did we see the phrase, “Do not lend to strangers” in Proverbs? While the warning seems related to losing your investment, there is another edge to that sword not obvious to Western minds. Your loss was a loss for the community, a loss of shalom and defiance against the Laws of God. So the idea that you can invest impersonally in some business based purely on some regulated system of venture loans and such is entirely evil. You are not permitted to invest money in business that isn’t run by a relative. There’s this thing about assuming control of what you personally own, what you can actually run by yourself or through a family proxy, so exercising authority over someone else’s business requires a covenant — a contract won’t do. Further, you must already be in covenant authority over the person who borrows. You must hold a shepherd’s moral duty for care and a readiness to take a loss on account of covenant love and mercy.

Take a moment to breathe here. Yes, all deposits are a loan to the bank. You putting money in the bank does technically transgress the principle behind the Law on that point, but God doesn’t put all of us in the place to fight that. There is this matter of government’s fraudulent claim on all wealth and persons, but backed by the full weight of violent government power. So if your heart tells you that your hands are tied, God’s wrath on your account rests on the people who tied your hands. Because if your government was closer to the Law of Noah, your hands would be free to keep your assets inside your family boundaries and you wouldn’t need a bank. The key here is being aware of what the Law requires, and then being aware of what your heart tells you is or isn’t worth fighting. Follow your faith. We can guess what the ideal might look like, but we do not worship some impersonal objective ideal. Plato was not a prophet of God.

However, stepping back a bit, you can begin to understand some of what makes the West so abominable to God. God’s wrath rests on America in particular for striving to lay an unjust claim to ownership of persons and property, and ruling in defiance of God. This is prophetic thinking. Governments that intrude on God’s authority are storing up wrath for themselves. And if there is one single moral flaw that truly marks the horrific satanic evil of America, this business of economics is it. The plutocrats have great plans for all this wealth, but God has other plans, so their folly will be revealed in due time.

We are at the beginning of that time. Here’s a prophetic word of advice for you: Invest in social stability. In more concrete terms, that’s likely to mean that you purchase the means to pursue your calling with the bogus fiat currency and with your labor. For some, that means hording precious metals for exchange when things break. Beware how easily it can be taken, and how likely the government is watching your habit of buying such things. Trust in God. For many of us with less wealth, that means buying the things we know we’ll use to bless others in our calling. You’ll be the one to know what you can use when things get tough. For example, I keep a few hand tools that I know how to use, some that my neighbors can’t imagine I have because the need has not yet arisen. If all goes well, I’ll have my bike back and maybe some kind of personal boat someday soon. I’ll be able to get around on just human power. Don’t read into that some kind of movie or TV “Armageddon” image. Just make sure you have what you are likely to need in serving God when you can no longer access whatever the bank holds in your name. Besides, we all know that skills and heart-led living is the only real treasure we have on this earth.

The idea is to focus on things God has said belong in your hands. That’s the “domain” doctrine I mention from time to time. He grants to each of us, His children, a feudal domain to exercise on His behalf. He takes it back on His whims — that’s a little of the Hebrew hyperbole designed to break up false mental images. You don’t have to understand why if He allows things to destroy your plans and someone plunders your domain. You just have to be faithful and be ready for whatever He shows you as His plan.

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Psalm 105

Posted on June 18, 2016 by ehurst

This is the first of two historical songs. This one celebrates what God has done to establish Israel as a nation. These are the defining miracles that provide the core of Israel’s identity as God’s own people. This psalm offers parallels to David’s psalm recorded in 1 Chronicles 16.

Most Westerners misread the point of celebrating in conjunction with so much death and destruction on other nations. There’s nothing here about Israel going out of her way to look for trouble. Again, the focus is on God and His limitless power. It was God who stirred up enemies against them simply for the purpose of demonstrating His authority over all Creation. The deities of these other nations could not protect them from the God of Israel.

So this song opens with a call to praise and worship. Indeed, the words stir up the image of losing oneself in worship with unrestrained enthusiasm. In the Hebrew mind, such extravagant devotion simply is not possible without the divine Presence. One does not simply enter an ecstatic state, but is drawn to a higher moral plane of awareness. It’s the same Holy Spirit that makes genuine faith possible in war or peace, with actions appropriate to each. And in these celebrations, the worshiper is encouraged to describe what great things He has done on their behalf.

The story for Israel begins with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob-Israel. God never failed to honor the covenant He offered the other Patriarchs in the name of Abraham. People might lose track of things, but God does not forget His covenant and law because they arise from His own divine character. This is the very nature of Creation itself. So the promise of possessing Canaan Land was by faith, not by physical occupation for several generations yet, but He delivered on His promised blessings.

So they prospered but remained only a small extended family household. They wandered in lands held by other nations, all the way down to Egypt. God never permitted anyone to oppress them until it was a necessary part of His plan. We note in passing that the warning against oppressing His anointed and His prophets (v. 15) both refer to Israel, which presumes her identity is tied up in that calling and mission to manifest His character as a living message.

Came the famine in Palestine and God prepared the salvation of His people through Joseph. Again and again, the message is that God does some things that aren’t pleasant to the flesh, but in the long run are truly in Israel’s best interest because that interest is wrapped up in the interests of His glory. Thus, Joseph went from slave to viceroy of Egypt. Pharaoh could just about retire and let Joseph run things for him, so wise and effective he proved to be.

And it was Joseph’s advancement that spared his kin in Egypt from the famine ravaging all that region of the world. But eventually things turned sour when the Hyksos invaded and cared nothing for the memory of Joseph. The Lord chose this new ruling class to harden for His glory, and they oppressed Israel. But at the right time, He then sent Moses to deliver them with such power and waves of destruction on Egypt that she went into a serious decline for a long time after.

Israel plundered Egypt, and the people were glad to see them go at any price. And Israel was a rich nation throughout that long journey, with manna, quail and water aplenty when they bothered to ask God according to His promises.

And so it went, plundering other nations to enrich His own. Why? He did it so that this nation could glorify His name as the One True God of Creation. Who could be silent at such a long history of glory?

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Rattling My Own Cage

Posted on June 18, 2016 by ehurst

Sometimes I feel like I’m in a cage.

My last visit to the cardiology clinic was a little unpleasant. The doctor was not my kind of guy at all, fussing about my preference for natural supplements and my resistance to taking allopathic medications. So it felt almost like punishment when he ordered a 30-day heart monitor after giving me very sketchy information about what he already knew. And it turns out the VA had switched to a new supplier for the Holter monitors, so I’m wearing a rig with a black box about the size of a smartphone but twice as thick, with four leads to sensors scattered across my torso, and then a Verizon wifi hotspot unit to go with it (with no more than a 5-hour battery at best).

It came in a big kit with batteries for the monitor and extra sensor pads. The way it works out is that the monitor batteries die in about 2-3 days. I get a shower and replace the pads which are not exactly waterproof. That way I get to move them around to different spots on my skin. Meanwhile, there’s nothing I can do with the wires hanging out from under my shirt. It records the data with sufficient memory, but also transmits live when possible through the hotspot. I think the real reason is that the monitor has a hot-button in case I experience some of kind symptomatic event. The vendor calls me if I push the button, as I found out when it happened by accident.

And while my knee is slowly improving, I still can’t drive safely because of the limited range of motion. It hurts less and I can walk farther, but a good walk approaching a kilometer means resting most of the next day. Still, recovery is moving along in tiny daily increments. I’m hesitant to commit to a rowing machine right now because I might need the money to replace a seatbelt in my car that won’t retract properly. The other thing is that I’m really very much torn between a rowing machine and strong wish I could get involved in kayaking, since biking is way off in the distance. Then again, I’d have to tie up someone else to help me get to the boat to the water and back home.

That’s the real issue. Not only am I tied to these EMF-producing devices, but I can’t drive and can’t walk far enough to get out in the open spaces. Given our current high heat warnings, it would have to be something where I’m moving in the wind, not sitting somewhere in the open. It’s really hard to find mind-space for the heart to speak loudly sitting around this apartment. Maybe it doesn’t seem to hinder some of my writing, but it’s hindering my own sense of peace.

For example, I’m struggling to digest the prophetic element of current events. It really does take some of that quiet, wordless freedom of the wild to still my flesh enough to really process this stuff. Nor is this the kind of thing where I have a burning need to tell all of you some of what I believe I see already. I don’t get enough feedback to know if anyone is paying much attention to my comments on what’s happening right now, but it’s something that looms large in my own sense of prophetic connection in the Spirit. I need it for me.

Here’s an example — you need to read the whole thing down to the bottom to get the picture (author comments and updates). It’s not that I endorse everything in that linked article, but none of it surprises me in the least. It’s all fully consistent with my own direct experience with the Feds hushing up stuff. I’ve been hammered for telling the truth, and what I disclosed was most certainly not national security because I knew all the details; it was just covering some big-shot’s butt. More to the point, it was covering up how the bureaucratic hive-mind works. It’s perfectly fine with me if you’d rather not give attention to these things; I’m just pursuing my own calling as you should be doing.

Still, I can’t shake the sense that something has been uncorked and won’t go back into the bottle. Our economy is has long been dead, but all the banking and financier plutocrats are trying to hide it until the last moment of plunder. What’s new is the level of violence. I’m convinced it’s going to get bigger and more frequent. I keep wondering when we’ll start seeing car bombs or worse. And I’m utterly certain the bulk of it is false flag stuff, events staged by some government agency/agencies. Somebody very much wants to see chaos. Meanwhile, God is at work in His wrath and natural disasters will increase.

The saints of God will tribulate, and I’m going to keep rattling my cage.

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FYI: Halfway Home

Posted on June 17, 2016 by ehurst

Don’t dance just yet, because it’s not a “done deal” as we say. I just wanted you to give thanks for what we have so far and pray it goes the rest of the way without trouble.

The City attorney has passed my claim forward recommending full payment. The City Council meets 21 June and my claim will be on their agenda, among all sorts of other things. I have no idea whether the Council tends to debate these things much, but it can’t hurt that the attorney’s office recommends it.

What may not be obvious to most of you is that virtually no one employed by the City can talk to me about much of anything until this claim is settled, due to the way tort laws work. Whatever doors of opportunity may be opened will not be revealed before that decision is final.

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Divine Amplification

Posted on June 17, 2016 by ehurst

We can never accurately predict actual outcomes.

I am acquainted with the Social Sciences and the reasons they exist. It’s an attempt to analyze human behavior at large and quantify what goes in and what comes out. There is a broadly recognized imprecision, with constant effort to account for data that might have been missed. Meanwhile, we are acutely aware that some data is forever lost. These days, most of the effort is wasted on chasing new models to structure existing data. It symbolizes the frantic band-aids attempting to save the rotting structure of Western Civilization.

Fans of the classical Enlightenment view of Western Civilization — the true believers — lament the current trendy hostility to Western culture. You can find endless examples of people frankly agitating to kill it. For example, we see all the defiant political leaders forcing their subjects to absorb culturally hostile immigrants. It constitutes an invasion in effect. While those who promote this de facto invasion blather endlessly about diversity and enriching human culture, some of them know for a fact that’s a lie. Some of the folks pressing this trend have confessed that peaceful coexistence is not important in the long run. They’ll pay any price to destroy what they can’t control and reshape to their satisfaction.

You don’t have to be a member of the choir here at Kiln of the Soul parish to understand the moral blindness behind all of this crap. I’m hardly the only writer who presses the biblical teaching that we humans are hard-wired for tribal existence. Cosmopolitan is okay in the marketplace, but God Himself has warned us not to bring it home. We say that, not because we believe that there is one pure tribal culture, but because humans are inherently tribal regardless of the which flavor of culture you embrace. Pick one, but if you want to harvest God’s shalom, you must create a rather closed social enclave or you’ll waste time with all sorts of things that you cannot and should not pursue.

Nobody said you can’t mix diverse folk into a genuine covenant household of faith, but they do have to unify like a family. They do have to become their own unique social enclave; this must be the core your moral existence in this world. You can’t afford any competing claims on your loyalty. It’s a lie of Satan that clannish social barriers always result in hostility. The lie (in America, at least) arises from having only the one culture — Anglo-Saxon — as the model for tribal existence. Isn’t it funny how the agitators are buying into the same fundamental lie, presuming that Anglo-Saxon mythology is the sole/best inherent model of humanity? They keep designing solutions that presume the myth is true.

We could characterize something very fundamental to our faith: Arguing with God is the definition of sin. Granted, there can be problems with that if you rely on English Bible translations too much as accurate representations of God’s revelation. Rejecting a bad translation is not arguing with God. We will never completely understand the Bible. That’s not to say it’s an impossible task, but that we can never rest; we can thorough if not complete. The most important factor is not your intellectual acumen on the Scripture, but whether the Word within the words of Scripture holds your attention. God chose this means to reveal Himself in support of the long history of humans who knew Him and passed His truth one-on-one. The objective of Scripture isn’t factual knowledge, but personal acquaintance.

In my Bible study notes on Jeremiah, I wrote in reference to 1:11-12:

Two things were important for Jeremiah’s service. First was to understand the power of God’s Word as something alive, which the Lord stood behind and made it happen. So he gave Jeremiah a vision of an almond sapling (shaqed) to symbolize how God kept track of things. That God stood guard over His word (shoqed) was a play on words, but also we note the almond was the first plant to betray spring, by sprouting before any other.

Jesus taught His disciples a paradox of divine logic that is directly connected to this:

Also He said to them, “Is a lamp brought to be put under a basket or under a bed? Is it not to be set on a lampstand? For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Then He said to them, “Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given. For whoever has, to him more will be given; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.” (Mark 4:21-25 NKJV)

If you can listen to your heart and embrace His revelation, He will draw you closer to Himself for a stronger commitment. Your best viewpoint on Creation is standing as close to God as you can get. If you reject His Word, you will be driven out of His Presence. If you walk in His moral character, He will amplify the effects to pour out His blessings on you, to the point you are overwhelmed. If you pull away from His divine justice, He will pile up the curses to ensure you get more than you asked for.

Another element in this is divine polarization (Matthew 10:34-39). Holiness is based on the image of separation from confusion and sin. What we see subjectively, and what others could see in our lives, will gain moral clarity by the sheer force of distance. God drives us one way or another, based on our choices.

If all you know about history is what men can report from the evidence they find, you know very little, indeed. Having already written much on it, I could write more books on what I understand intellectually about the current decline of Western Civilization. I could post an endless stream of articles explaining how the economic and social chaos, much of which is still not accurately reported (or reported at all) in the mainstream media, will progress in some specifics. Still, that kind of analysis won’t do you much good in preparing for the actual effects you might experience. Even the critical analysis of leaked information and connecting the dots of information already hidden in plain sight won’t provide the full picture on any specific tragic event. (For example, the FBI introduced the Orlando shooter to their paid informants who act as handlers for patsies; they told his ex-wife not to publicize his gay tendencies.)

The facts won’t matter without a proper moral discernment. If people wanted to walk away from the lies, God would lead them farther than they could ever dream. The truth is there in plain sight if folks will just catch a glimmer of revelation. Yes, it’s a ton of work that won’t be finished by the time God takes us Home, but it’s better to go Home to Him with something to offer to His glory. The doom on America (or any other country) is because some minimum tipping point of the folks here never accepted their divine call to take the path anyone can take out of their moral blindness. You’d be amazed at how small the portion would have to be for God to offer mercy (Genesis 18:22-33). It varies with the context, but God is no bean-counter. And what a poor representative Lot was of God’s revelation, yet the Lord saved him from the worst of the disaster.

He has a plan to deliver us, too, if we cling to His truth. That’s all we need to really know as the Western world crumbles.

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Anti-Activism

Posted on June 16, 2016 by ehurst

It’s a question of dominion. You and I are permitted to take assertive action only within the boundaries of covenant. When it comes to social and political issues, the prevailing applicable covenant is Noah’s. We could easily get lost hashing out the details of the Seven Noahic Laws, but those will not help us because there are prerequisites not stated. The primary issue is that God has wired us to live under Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) feudalism. Without that, you simply cannot have a valid covenant for human organization. Oh, and it requires you reject Western intellectual assumptions.

Inside a covenant community of faith, these changes are pretty easy. Noah’s Covenant isn’t that hard under a presumption of genuine faith. Granted, you could choose a simulacrum of Moses’ Law, so long as you realize that the ritual offerings are swept away by the Cross, aside from offerings given to support worship and leaders. However, it’s largely unnecessary to go that way and Noah is good enough. Instead, we use Moses to inform our understanding of Noah, as Moses has effectively ended, but Noah remains in force so long as there are rainbows. Still, God requires your church be organized like an ANE feudal household. Otherwise, it’s not really a covenant community. Mainstream Western churches are essentially corporations, not spiritual families. It can’t be both. You may well have the latter inside the former, but they aren’t the same body in moral terms because each stands in a different sphere, so you’ll satisfy the requirements for one or the other, but not both.

A covenant presumes voluntary submission. In the Old Testament, children were presumed under parental authority and not free to choose until passing through a collection of moral portals along the way. Parents held total life-n-death prerogatives over their own children. Sometime around age 9 began the transition to social engagement with adult life, culminating in the bar Mitzvah (“son of the Law”) which made them a citizen. (That business of thirty years old had to do with eligibility for community leadership.) At any point after bar-Mitzvah, they could opt out, but only at the price of being regarded socially “dead.” They left the covenant and became aliens, alienated from everyone inside the covenant. Their parents no longer treated them as family, no longer under the protective moral dominion.

In other words, humans must elect to join and actively keep the attachment, or they become nothing more than resident aliens. They still have to meet minimum standards to remain in the physical space of the community, but they don’t actually belong. They still have to recognize they are outsiders with no inherent rights, only a grant of privilege.

A critical element in Old Testament covenant dominion was the actual faith to assert Covenant Law effectively. That is, all covenants depend on the faithfulness of the members. If you don’t have effective control, something is missing inside the covenant community. Effective control presumes you use it in preserving divine justice, AKA shalom AKA social stability under covenant provisions.

So it should be obvious that America, for example, is not a covenant nation. Christians cannot simply assert that it is, or ought to be, or demand that it become so. American Christians generally have no clue what’s required and you can be sure they would reject ANE feudal organization. Even under the most superficial terms, they refuse to obey Noah’s Law. At a minimum, it requires a radical and painful shift from Western thinking to something closer to ANE thinking, and most of them would flatly refuse. They insist on enforcing something closer to the Talmud, with all the goofy legalistic assumptions about reality. Western Christianity is inherently Pharisaical.

Inside the covenant community of faith, we rightly make certain moral demands. Projecting those demands outward onto the secular society is sinful. It’s rather like trying to demand that God offer them His covenant protections without His moral dominion. And in case you missed that, our primary warning to sinners is that their choices are not in their own best interest. They are hurting themselves; it’s the wrong approach to think in terms of how we find things morally offensive. But any change in their choices must come from within. If they don’t accept the whole covenant, they can’t have any part of it. It has nothing to do with their strength to walk away from temptation, but we need to see a genuine desire to walk in divine justice. We all have our moral weaknesses, so humility remains our first impulse. Thus, agitating for piecemeal changes in secular law to more closely match Noah’s Law is evil. While there may be any number of posers pretending to stand for Christian moral values, it’s all or nothing in terms of validity. You can promote the whole package, or you can stop pretending.

And are you willing to make this look like the kind of thing ISIS does by imposing a strict regime by force?

The only valid approach is that a body of people come under conviction and appeal to God for a valid covenant of law. It has to be granted by God as the divine sovereign Lord, a sort of suzerain-vassal treaty. That’s the nature of Law Covenants. His offer stands, but if He has to take us by force, it’s too late. We are obliged to sue for peace before He comes in force. You can choose to enter into covenant individually, but a part of that is recognizing the limits of dominion. Your personal covenant with God is not binding on any other human.

You can be an activist in terms of gentle persuasion; the proper “sell” is telling folks Noah is in their best interest. It’s a loving call to repentance — stop the self-destruction. However, it doesn’t take much to turn that into political agitation and the wrong kind of activism. When we attempt to use any kind of human leverage to drive people into a non-faith decision about morals, they either have to be children under our personal dominion, or it’s the work of Satan. Human politics outside the covenant remain under Satan’s dominion.

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Guest Post: Jay DiNitto

Posted on June 16, 2016 by ehurst

This is Jay’s offering for the second chapter of our Radix Fidem booklet. We really would like some feedback. You shouldn’t imagine that Jay needs fake affirmations just to feel good, so give us an honest appraisal.

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2. Fundamentally super-rational, not cerebral (working above the intellect)

Faith, and how humans “come to” faith lies, ultimately. beyond human comprehension. The workings of the metaphysical domain are conducted on a level humanity is not able to fully understand — though, obviously, we are able to experience in some manner while living in our fallen condition, in our current, physical, domain. Much like how we react to an object of beauty or wonder, it’s perhaps best described as an experience (a continuum of experiences, really) and not a series of objects apprehended with our material reasoning toolkit.

With all of the technological advances in the last hundred years or so, it may seem that the idea that, eventually, we will arrive at a comprehensive view of the universe is a recent one. This idea was around long before modern times, in many different forms and degrees. Nowadays it has taken the form of “scientism,” where one places an undue burden on the process of scientific discovery as a means of discovering all things that are knowable. If so inclined, you can trace and find bits of the idea all throughout the various trends of thought in history, from the ancient Greeks, to the medieval era through the Francis Bacon and the Enlightenment, and into the modern technological age. Whatever form it takes, it involves a very important assumption: that all knowable things are within the reach of human intellect. This idea is incompatible with the internal workings of faith, since only God can implant faith, hence it doesn’t arrive to us, or is sensed, by material means. Scientism, since it fails to acknowledge God as a possibility through it’s very framework, falls under the rubric of “idolatry,” effectively removing God from the throne and putting something else in His place. In this case, it’s placing the scientific process as the ultimate source of something — knowledge — instead of God.

Logic and reasoning are limited tools, for sure, but this idea isn’t limited to spiritually-minded folks–common sense bears it out. Humans operate mostly through non-logical means, being guided through most of our days via a mix of the senses, memory and routine, heuristics, reliable authority, and instinct, with limited instances of the two logic forms (inductive and deductive) to tackle things like unfamiliar situations. Pure reasoning is notoriously ineffective when dealing with things that aren’t immediately contextual and “bite-sized.” Take something that takes mountains of logic to accomplish, like any kind of large-scale engineering project. It requires lots of engineers, of differing expertise and strengths, to work on individual components of the device, plus another layer of lead engineers, quality assurance folks, and managers to make sure all those small parts work together. One man alone, even the smartest of us, would require a whole lifetime (or more) of calculating, building, and testing to come up with something of equal complexity. How, then, could one come to “know” a being infinitely more vast, such as God, if this were the case?

Forgetting the coldness of logic for a minute here… if we consider God to be a person, which He is, then material reasoning will come up wanting for the kind of knowledge God requires of us. We speak of “knowing” another person in ways that go well beyond a list of understanding some facts about them. We come to know and love, for instance, our friends or spouses through a incomprehensible webwork of epistemological inputs and a good dose of time and reflection. If we were to use this as an analog for approaching how we could understand God, as a personal being, our “sense” of God would be more properly aligned.

Jay DiNitto

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Psychology of Conviction

Posted on June 15, 2016 by ehurst

Most people recognize that one of the definitions of the word “conviction” refers to a solid assurance of something that withstands reasoned arguments. There are people who reject or simply don’t understand how it works, and they allege some kind of willful truculence. We can’t help such folks, and it’s immoral to try. People who are entertained by debate are free to engage, but nothing of moral significance is ever decided through debate. You can hold your opinions, but convictions hold you.

For example, my affinity for the biblical teaching on God’s sovereignty was not a matter of instruction. I knew God was sovereign by conviction before I understood intellectually what it was. At no point in my life did I ever doubt it; it was always there from birth. That doesn’t make it a universal truth. That makes is something I am unable to doubt and see no need to defend. It has nothing to do with people who might have some contrary conviction; that’s their problem. I have enough problems of my own (Romans 14:4).

No human agency can create convictions. I can’t help you get some, only help you discern them by teaching about the common psychological processes. Some people have no room in their psyche for them. That’s not to say they never will, because the Holy Spirit does the most amazing things. We get to see miracles when we give Him room to work in our lives, but the real issue is our perception of God’s hand in our lives. So we have to learn the boundaries of what we can do without getting in His way, and that typically means we don’t argue with people about what ought to be the contents of our convictions or theirs. Convictions create boundaries, but need not create enemies. Don’t read everything in life as a linear binary division between this-n-that. See it as a range of proximity and how it affects communion and fellowship in context.

It can take some time for folks to begin discerning the difference between firm belief, notions that have never been questioned, tribal-like traditions, and genuine conviction. The exercise begins with obeying your own conscience — conscience is the mental awareness of conviction, not conviction itself. When you begin to obey your conscience, you are quite likely to face a lot of harassment and suffer some internal turmoil and doubts. Still, the willful choice to face the storm and cling to the one piece of bedrock you can identify internally is the path to overcoming doubts and disputes. Know that your conscience will change it’s interpretation of your convictions. That’s because the matrix of awareness in your mind typically needs renovation.

A part of this is learning to see below the surface. Someone like Peter (prior to the Resurrection) was notorious for expressing conflicting commitments, highly variable in the sense of, “What’s his new hobby horse now?” He was so very confident and loquacious in laying out the reasons for his assertions, only to be equally confident and loquacious on a contrary assertion the next time you saw him. He must have been hard to bear with endless chatter on his new “thing” in social settings. Yet it remains possible to scrape away his fairy tales and see underneath a certain consistency that Jesus saw. That rock solid reliability was underneath, and anyone with moral discernment could see it with their hearts. The problem was not that Peter was unreliable, but that he was confused about what his mission in life was. He felt a dependency on external affirmation. He was a champion back-pedaler when embarrassed. He didn’t know himself, yet took himself too seriously. All of his bluster was aimed at helping others; he just went about it wrong. When he went through the trauma that exposed his fairy tales to his own sight, he was able to change his behavior. He was able to distrust his own fleshly mind and look deeper to the bedrock of his convictions. He became a pivotal leader far greater than he previously imagined he could be. (See Peter_Rehab for more.)

Peter falls into a widely recognized personality type; there are other types, not to mention vast variations within each type. But we do know one universal: Those who seek God’s face cannot avoid coming to a sense of conviction sooner or later. Indeed, the one portal for all human souls is the conviction of our need for redemption, a sense of penitence. Nobody can demand we all manifest the same behaviors in passing through that singular portal to Christ, but we can learn to discern a genuine sense of conviction when we see it. It requires we have our own first.

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Kiln blog: One Big Happy Family

Posted on June 14, 2016 by ehurst

(While this was originally a duplicate of something from another blog, and that other blog was merged here, this post has been kept because of the huge amount of comment posted below.)

The Old Testament provides a wealth of imagery for describing our virtual congregation.

The background of the Bible presumes that humans are wired for ANE feudalism. Thus, this blog is a virtual feudal grant from God and I am the clan chief who leads a family. I am responsible to God for how I exercise dominion here.

Everyone is welcome. There is a covenant of faith in force here that guides what I write and what comments I permit through moderation. Aside from the obvious references to the Radix Fidem meta-religion outline posted here on our parish parlor blog (see the tab above), our covenant recognizes two primary marks of the Spirit’s Presence in your life: penitent humility and not disputing against Scripture. If we can see those two marks, we will assume you are brothers and sisters in this covenant of faith.

If you can’t embrace all that stuff, but still want to be friends, you will be regarded as resident aliens. You aren’t part of that family of faith covenant, but we offer another covenant of alliance, the one symbolized by sharing a meal in the Old Testament. I’m still your pastor/elder.

Enemies can post so long as it’s on-topic and seems to address something of substance. You’ll have to understand that I will seek to use hostile comments as opportunities to teach those who are not so hostile. It’s like a grant of safe passage for mutual benefit or maybe humanitarian reasons. I’ll pray for anybody.

I don’t take myself that seriously, so poking at me is not in itself a violation of protocol. I delete comments that serve no discernible purpose in what we do here, just like spam.

What’s different is that I don’t measure these things merely by intellect and reason. It’s not a question of rational categories. The boundaries aren’t precise and static, but alive. As with biblical language, I don’t define; I indicate. Context is everything in this world when bringing to bear the moral truth of God, which is rooted outside this world. I don’t mind trying to explain, but there are some things not open to debate.

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One Big Happy Family

Posted on June 14, 2016 by ehurst

The Old Testament provides a wealth of imagery for describing our virtual congregation.

The background of the Bible presumes that humans are wired for ANE feudalism. Thus, this blog is a virtual feudal grant from God and I am the clan chief who leads a family. I am responsible to God for how I exercise dominion here.

Everyone is welcome. There is a covenant of faith in force here that guides what I write and what comments I permit through moderation. Aside from the obvious references to the Radix Fidem meta-religion outline posted on our parish parlor blog, our covenant recognizes two primary marks of the Spirit’s Presence in your life: penitent humility and not disputing against Scripture. If we can see those two marks, we will assume you are brothers and sisters in this covenant of faith.

If you can’t embrace all that stuff, but still want to be friends, you will be regarded as resident aliens. You aren’t part of that family of faith covenant, but we offer another covenant of alliance, the one symbolized by sharing a meal in the Old Testament. I’m still your pastor/elder.

Enemies can post so long as it’s on-topic and seems to address something of substance. You’ll have to understand that I will seek to use hostile comments as opportunities to teach those who are not so hostile. It’s like a grant of safe passage for mutual benefit or maybe humanitarian reasons. I’ll pray for anybody.

I don’t take myself that seriously, so poking at me is not in itself a violation of protocol. I delete comments that serve no discernible purpose in what we do here, just like spam.

What’s different is that I don’t measure these things merely by intellect and reason. It’s not a question of rational categories. The boundaries aren’t precise and static, but alive. As with biblical language, I don’t define; I indicate. Context is everything in this world when bringing to bear the moral truth of God, which is rooted outside this world. I don’t mind trying to explain, but there are some things not open to debate.

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