From time to time I still get various communications that presume to encourage support or advocacy for various efforts to protect or recover “our rights.” I’ve warned often that neither the language nor ideas based on “rights” are from Scripture. They are based on Western mythology.
If you dig into the background of Western Civilization in terms of literature and oral lore as the foundation of moral reasoning, you’ll find that the whole business of rights as a concept arises entirely from Greek Philosophy (Hellenism) blended with various myths of the Germanic tribes that invaded and brought down the Roman Empire. Here in the US, it is easily traced almost wholly to the Anglo-Saxon myths and resulting moral assumptions.
Nothing like that can be found in the Ancient Near East (ANE) in general, nor Hebrew intellectual traditions in specific — the roots of the Bible. The Bible is founded on ANE assumptions about reality, because the ANE intellectual foundations as a whole are very close to what God wanted humans to think. The ANE traditions reflect God’s direct immediate revelation to mankind as the nature of life, the universe and everything. God Himself built Hebrew language and intellectual culture as the proper means to understand Him. I’ve already discussed at length elsewhere what those labels mean, so lets move on from there.
Obvious corollaries:
1. Western Civilization as a whole is morally confused and generally hostile to God’s revelation. You cannot blend those two. If you accept Western assumptions, you must exclude God and His revelation. I cannot take you seriously if you pretend they are compatible.
2. The Western secular state is inherently evil. There might be some decent things possible under a secular state, but the foundation violates God’s moral Law. You cannot claim to follow Christ if you give whole-hearted support to the concept of the secular state.
3. US constitutional government is a culmination of Western mythology, and is not a reflection of Scripture. Any advocacy or effort to support the US Constitution is morally wrong. Measures to cynically tolerate the system and work within are morally proper, so long as you understand that God will eventually destroy it.
4. To suggest that God is judging the US for sin against some pure vision of the US Constitution is a lie from Hell. To suggest that He is judging America for sins identified by frustrated reactionary Anglo-Saxon moralists is a lie from Hell. To advocate for a return to some prior time in American history when things were better, imagined or real, is actually a part of why God’s wrath is falling on the US.
5. God directs human political affairs in the much the same way as cowboys herding cattle. In the long term, it means slaughter. So long as humans come together to form a society and enhance their prospects for life and comfort, to the degree their choices reflect God’s revealed moral character for human life, He will directly protect it and guide it. To the degree they ignore or violate His revelation, He relegates their affairs to the background noise of fallen human behavior against which He reveals Himself afresh.
The only way you can hope to begin observing God’s divine revelation is by learning to read His character through the mind and moral logic of your heart, not that of your intellectual reason. It may well include the tactical necessity of activities that seem to promote things advocated by various political activist groups. However, our fundamental moral purpose is not even remotely related to the same thing those activists promote.
Having said all that, I want to share an observation based purely on my own experience within this moral frame of reference that I teach.
There is no way in Hell we can return the US government to constitutional constraints. The US Constitution is a dead letter and your rights are non-existent. Government officials will do what they damned will please with us and only their own human fears will restrain them. In my useless human reckoning, I would guess that the last point at which there was any hope of restraining federal violent abuses would have been at Waco and the siege on David Koresh and his friends. Nothing in the Branch Davidian behavior justified the extreme federal response. Certain powerful figures planned that as a test to see if they could get away with it. Since that time, surveillance and infiltration has gone to such lengths that no armed resistance is possible, insofar as what the activists suggest they want to accomplish.
I wasn’t the only one who predicted the recent events at that wildlife refuge in Oregon would turn out bad. I wasn’t the only one who predicted the folks who helped Cliven Bundy in Nevada would eventually be arrested. I seriously doubt there is anyone with the balls to do what it takes to stop this railroad and roll back federal abuses, because it will take a level of warfare and slaughter that the federal officials most certainly don’t mind using against them.
I could probably suggest ways resistance is possible, but I have zero interest in that. My focus is bringing glory to God by offering my best understanding of His moral character against the background of lies, violence and general human failure we all face every day. That means promoting a prophetic message that warns people against all Western governments, in the sense that you dare not trust them beyond that level of holy cynicism necessary to obey your convictions and calling. Infiltrate with the intent to see God’s glory, but never commit your heart to any human institution, least of all anything built on Western moral assumptions.
I have no real interest in human political activities beyond discerning what I must do to make my Savior smile. My Lord’s Kingdom is not of this world and no human political action can serve His glory. If you want covenant blessings on earth, all you have to do is adhere to the Covenant of Noah; fat chance of that happening in our intellectual climate today. A precious few of us will learn to read His revelation through heart-led logic and discern His divine will and harvest His blessings in whatever measure pleases Him. Our only hope is to discern His moral character in Creation. There is no system of human thought capable of encapsulating that.
Stop asking me to promote your cause; whatever god you might imagine is with you, it ain’t the God of the Bible.
Not really much of an adventure today, just out on NE 4th to the Katy Trail, then up to NE 50th. I realized that I hadn’t seen that stretch of road in some thirty or forty years. So when I got through the golf course and up near the Firefighter Museum, I turned right. It wasn’t that far past the Softball Hall of Fame and under Interstate 35. Just past a relatively new charter bus line (Village Tours) depot and up a steep hill was this fine old local stone house (above left).
While there were also some newer McMansion looking places, there was a bit of this older stone architecture scattered for a couple of miles along NE 50th like that. Out behind a neat little house this old stone barn was hidden in the trees. I had to get down in the foliage just to get a good look at it.
Past a few more McMansions and one beautiful place mostly obscured behind more trees, I encountered this lovely carpet of henbit next to a high-priced horse pen with high-priced horses roaming around inside. I’ll start seeing a lot of this carpeting in rural fields this time of year.
I stayed on NE 50th back down toward the river along a short section of Air Depot Boulevard. As I followed the road where it turned north, I was surprised by this aging house that fronts Air Depot at the driveway for Bridlewood Equestrian. More horse boarding, of course. It was a fairly quiet ride back home from there.
