Within Reach

Posted on February 6, 2016 by ehurst

Spammers never learn. Every day in my blog comments here I get at least one spam comment for some facial serum sold on Amazon, sometimes two or three times. I also get at least once each week something telling me all about search engine optimization. Well, it’s too late for my ugly face and I get lots of people from search engine results, so I think I’ll skip the sales pitches.

Sometimes we think there is something in front of us that we simply cannot learn. Over the past two decades, I’ve read an awful lot about firewalling technology and it just never did sink in at the fundamental level. I was always so grateful for firewall software that come with instructions for dummies. “This is probably what you want, so click that and it will happen.” I love smart defaults. With the Red Hat gang (RHEL, CentOS, Scientific Linux, Stella/Nux and others) the default is okay. With anything based on Debian (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.) just install “ufw” and run two instructions with root credentials on the CLI:

ufw enable
ufw default deny

That covers most home and mobile device users. Even better is the massively complicated and brilliant “Firewall2” from SUSE, but I can’t stand running SUSE itself. However, if you want to learn about Linux networking, you really have to get the whole thing down starting with the fundamentals.

I won’t pretend to know all the ways the human mind learns something like that. Some folks pick it up on first exposure; most of us find it some kind of challenge. I suspect most of my readers are very challenged by it. So after two decades of fooling with Linux, I can no longer escape the task. It made a big difference that I first went back and read up on the basics of how computers communicate across the wires. Basic computer networking is pretty much learning to think in terms of packets of data. I never understood that very well, either. I found this tutorial and was amazed that I actually understood it for once. From there it wasn’t so hard to start understanding firewall technology.

I assure you there is some measure of divine assistance in learning something that I don’t find fascinating. Were it not for a sense of calling, I wouldn’t bother in the first place. However, there is a sense in which that drive to get it means I’ll persist. I’ll read some of it until it starts getting fuzzy. Then I’ll switch to another task or even walk away from the computer and perform some domestic chore. Then I’ll come back and reread and push ahead. I’ve been reading this chapter on firewalls off and on all morning. But for once, I think I’m getting it.

I do know from experience that this is the way it has been with computer technology stuff, particularly in Linux. If you are pretty sure you need it, and it doesn’t come easy, don’t get discouraged. Be patient with your own human weakness. You might need to do some research to find good teaching material, or at least tutorials that work for you, but most of it is within reach. Trust in the Lord and press ahead.

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Cycling: Antenna Farm

Posted on February 5, 2016 by ehurst

You are now entering Deep Fork hills.

You are now entering Deep Fork hills.

The Antenna Farm in OKC was once out in the boonies. Now it’s surrounded by multi-million dollar real estate.AntennaFarmOKC In a four-square-mile area there are over a dozen towers. This image (right) is just a few from one angle.

With a strong southerly breeze behind me as I rode up Midwest Boulevard, I hit Wilshire Boulevard PDQ. Turning left, there was just one hump and valley still feeding into the the North Canadian. After that it was a bit rougher in the Deep Fork watershed. On the way I passed some rather moderate nice homes, and one really slick gate with Mesopotamian art figures (below right).4936EWilshireOKC It was hilly all the way out to the Antenna Farm which starts well west of I-35.

KOKH-TVFox25 First up is the KOKH TV campus (left; shared with The CM 34 studios and KMGL FM radio) and a pretty tall tower over 1000 feet tall. This is a fairly new and aggressive broadcaster in our area, but I never see their reporter vehicles where I see the others. Just a half mile farther west where Wilshire crosses Kelley Avenue is vast acreage belonging to one of our oldest broadcasters. Formerly WKY, it is now KWTV (Channel 9). Back when digital broadcasting displaced the old analog signal, they took down what was then the tallest tower at nearly 1600 ft.KWTV9OKC All that’s left are massive anchor points. With digital broadcasting it was cheaper to lease a spot on someone else’s tower than to maintain that monster. Out behind their building is OETA public TV station, and off to one side is a couple of radio stations. This is the home of Griffin Communications.

OPUBCO-AnschutzBldgI decided not take the extra distance to see KFOR (Channel 4) and turned north on Kelley. As I passed along some really big church houses, I was able to see the old OPUBCO (Oklahoma Publishing Company, image left), a newspaper house. It was bought up by Anschutz Entertainment, an even richer and more partisan right-wing outfit. They still print The Daily Oklahoman and some other papers. For some crazy reason the mapping services label this building simply “ATM.”KOCO5OKC

Up and around the corner east on Britton Road is KOCO TV (Channel 5). Their website sucks but they currently offer the best storm broadcasts. You would notice there are a few older houses out in this area (stone house left), but most of them are newish.1301EWilshireOKC Some of these broadcasters hide among the odd mixture of homes and businesses now dotting the spaces between large subdivisions, so driving around out here you might not know because they simply don’t advertise. However, up on Britton Road is where you see the most expensive homes and it continues all the way back to Midwest Boulevard.

BrittonRdOpulence1 The two miles east of I-35 are really expensive real estate. I passed a massive place that was camera shy, hidden far back in the foliage, but the sign out front said “Vox Printing.” Their main claim to fame is all the paper packaging (including paper cups) used at McDonald’s. BrittonRdOpulence2 But then, just across the street from this obscenely expensive housing pictured on the left and right here was a stone front dugout that could easily date back to Land Run days (below right).LandRunHome This area did see a lot of settlement during that time, and there are plenty of signs that you can still find.

I suppose the saddest sight was yet another “Ghost Bike” memorial. This time the victim was named Clyde Riggs, an older man hit from behind just a day after the one up on Midwest Boulevard near Memorial Road.ClydeRiggsGhostCycle

On the way home I noticed that all the activity at the North Canadian bridge was stopped, and very little equipment was left standing around. It doesn’t look finished, so I’m not sure what to make of it. At any rate, I took advantage of the lack of workers to go down and capture what they have done under the bridge (below right).Cdn-Mwblvd-diversion That row of stones as it now stands would just about divert the worst of any flooding down the far side, containing it until it passed under the bridge. The open area in the near ground will see less turbulence and it should spare the bank on which I stood any further carving. However, I’m waiting to see if they close up the equipment lanes they left cutting through some of this stone work (called “rip-rap”) farther upriver where all that equipment and the stone dump was all parked.

With that I’ll drop the last two pictures here. One is the Deep Fork looking south from Britton Road with that huge Vox Printing plant in the background. The other is a really fancy gateway to an expensive subdivision on the hillside above the river.
DeepForkBrittonRd 4400blkEBrittonRdOKC

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Net Future

Posted on February 5, 2016 by ehurst

Some of you, dear readers, grasp the heart-led awareness. If you do, then you are acutely aware that most of the world does not, will not, and perhaps cannot get it. The nature of heart-led compassion for the world that held Our Savior on the Cross keeps us from treating these others with contempt. Whatever it is we might do to help them cross over, it won’t be a dismissive arrogance. If you aren’t grateful and humble, then you don’t have it.

What good does it do us to focus our awareness in the heart-mind if we don’t use it to guide our expectations and decisions? The only reason you don’t know what your heart of conviction demands is because you don’t submit to it. The brain is taught by the heart; the heart is the only part of us that can read the moral fabric of God’s character woven into Creation. The heart alone knows what God intended and how reality actually works. And it knows before your brain dares to ask. The tough part is teaching your intellect to submit by reflex. Let’s use it.

Can you imagine the Internet without ad-supported content?

This is more complex than it seems on the surface. The vast majority of content is offered freely. It may be ad-supported only because the service itself requires it, not the content. But if there was some way to get hosting for content without ads, plenty of folks would be willing to keep putting their stuff out there. It’s something in human nature itself. Right now the bulk of Net surfer attention goes to ad-supported content, so there’s an awful lot of content seen by very few eyes. And our culture has become spoiled, seeking the entertainment factor first and foremost.

That is not heart-led surfing. Entertainment can be neutral and harmless, but good luck finding that. It requires some experience at discerning the difference between the harmless versus stuff backed by ulterior motives, all the more so with heart-mind awareness. With that experience you discern that most of the entertainment is leverage for pushing one lie or another. Do you imagine the major news outlets are actually just trying to inform you of the facts? All of it follows a particular manipulative agenda. About the only good reason for giving them any attention is simply to see what they are lying about today. They offer nothing for heart-led folks, and deny that we exist.

The advertising industry as we know it is dying. Much of the current ad-supported garbage will go away. By no means will it all simply cease, but the virtual landscape will change. You can bet that the tracking will not slow down; it will only get worse.

A point in passing: Two technology giants get almost all their money from advertising and tracking, selling folks like you and me to third parties — Google at around 85% and Facebook at 95%. Apple and Microsoft tracking is currently not sold, but kept in-house; the bulk of their income arises from actual sales of product. For example, if you have a Windows phone or iPhone, you need worry only about what Microsoft or Apple does with that snooping internally. Sometimes you can actually turn stuff off that you don’t like. With Android, you can’t imagine how profligate is the snooping and disclosure to third parties. And every time someone offers a tool to tone it down, Google comes up with a new and nastier trick that you cannot control at all. Facebook is even worse.

I’m curious to see how this plays out. Some very popular sites will disappear very soon. The institutional resistance to change will see a lot of stuff hanging on to the bitter end, then closing with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. A few visionaries will be more nimble, and a precious few will actually understand what’s going on. Look for some truly new stuff being born.

You can have economic growth without debt; it’s just that it would be slower. A business can grow without investors. There are other ways to run a business on the Internet and make a profit. By the same token, artists can make a living from their art if they learn the new way of Internet marketing. Some of the lavish waste in the entertainment industry will go away, but those who truly love their art can find a way by catching on to the new Indie style and ditching the middleman. People still love live performances, but the pool of those with money for high ticket prices is shrinking radically. Meanwhile, the pool of smaller venues is growing, as is the word-of-mouth booking system.

Is anyone really surprised that religion will take the same hits from economic freezing? Some religious institutions are almost blatant in offering religion as entertainment. It’s all about butts in the seats and dollars in the offering plate. Do you know that there are “houses of worship” that charge a minimum cover to get in the door? Look for monster church houses in your area to close down, because the institutional resistance to change is powerful in mainstream religion.

It doesn’t have to be like that. Yes, I have a vision, but whatever you want to call “success” is not measured in terms of dollars and membership. The biggest payback I get is the words of thanks, and even somewhat in the words of criticism. The most valuable thing in heart-led religion is your heart-led response. You are my treasure. For the Father’s glory, I’ll take some risks.

The FTP server is up and running. So far, one person far away from me has tested access and there was no trouble. I’ve got a small collection of books, articles and booklets and some music, stuff I’ve collected over the past few years. I’m putting that stuff in this open library. The powers that be might not like everything about this arrangement, but I’m not making it public and certainly not charging anything for it.

Some of it might be familiar to a few of you, but some of it you’ve never seen or heard. All of it is freely accessible on the Net, but you might not know where to look. I’m trying learn about finding that stuff. Most of you have no time for that, so I’m offering the fruits of my labor free to you in a virtual library. If you want something I don’t have, just ask. In order for this to work, we need to keep it private. That means you need to ask for the address and then you’ll need a login and password. If you have something you want to share, that’s a separate procedure. Most of you won’t have permission to upload unless I’ve had a chance to get to know you. Let’s see if we can make this work without getting the wrong kind of attention. Eventually such measures won’t be necessary, but we have to live with it for now.

Let me know if you are interested: jhurst18 at cox dot net.

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Accurately Handling the Truth

Posted on February 5, 2016 by ehurst

Let’s review. I’ve published several books aimed at helping people see the difference between Western moral assumptions and reasoning versus what God revealed through Scripture. Recently I’ve been writing about how Western self-deception has run its course and the moral fabric of Creation is now crushing this gigantic shadowy lie. This is fully consistent with what I wrote about the most ancient standards of morality in business and government. All the way back to my earliest prophetic blathering I’ve warned that this was coming and quite specifically what we could do better. I’d like to refresh some of that, not to say, “I told you so,” but to show that faith carries its own logical consistency in the heart.

That consistency is visible only from the moral plane and requires the faculty of your heart. Your intellect won’t take you there, though it can function well enough as a servant along for the ride.

In one sense, the single greatest sin of Western Civilization has been dehumanizing people. This is the fundamental flaw in materialism. It seeks to trump individual significance by reducing our uniqueness against broad generalities. It’s not that generalities are inherently wrong, but that Western thinking has made them the excuse for ignoring moral imperatives. It requires monumental arrogance to imagine that the endless variation of humanity can be ignored by imposing a ruthless conformity to whatever it is the ruling minds are willing to consider.

Once more we should remind ourselves: The Curse of the Fall is the doctrine that our human minds are sufficient to answer all the questions. We imagine that we can appeal to rules of logic and reason to arrive at some objective reality, but however much we might agree on those rules, no two of us ends up with quite the same “objective reality.” That’s because this pretense to objective reason is a lie; it’s a cover for a very human lust for power. Not just blunt power, but a driving lust to control all the factors and inputs to our daily existence to arrive at some impossible Utopia of happiness. “Who could reasonably want anything different from what I want?” Utopia is never quite the same between any two people because it’s just a word for the common human sin of arrogance. Reason is the cheap robe we use to hide that, sometimes hiding it from ourselves. We all agree to this mythology, fiercely defending it as the shortest path to quenching our lusts.

So this pursuit of faux learned discussion about what is good and right that relies on some imaginary objective reason is so very thrilling because it panders to human lust. Falling on our faces before God — who made all things and explained quite lavishly how it all works — requires pulling our reason off the throne of moral decision. It requires subjecting our intellect to some higher faculty that God controls. That faculty is the heart-mind, and it has totally different answers to moral decisions because it alone is capable of reading the design of Creation.

The chore left for me is doing my best to tell the story of what I’ve seen with the eyes of my heart. What I’ve seen consistently since decades ago is that God calls us to share what we have as a unique individual. We are under no obligation to man’s reason about what is profitable and worthy of pursuit. We are obliged to build our lives within the boundaries of divine truth, not because it will crush us forthwith — it’s not that simple. We are obliged to remain sensitive and practice a moral self-restraint that cooperates with Creation and the moral fabric of the cosmos as a living thing. It will always have a few surprises no matter how much we manage to grasp, so we are obliged to keep paying attention. We can’t afford to chisel our broader general perceptions into stone as immutable law, but regard them instead as personality traits of someone we have to follow and obey.

This business of a debt-frozen global economy is the result of serving Mammon, Jesus’ nickname for materialism. He never said material wealth was dirty or evil, but that it was a pretty sorry excuse for a deity. Materialism is not a character trait of our Creator. Human social stability is. Not some harsh lock-down under tight controls, but He promotes stability as the result of a broad freedom that He was at pains to define in detail for us in multiple Law Covenants. It’s not in the precise legalistic copying of details, but the whole point was to read how those things portrayed His moral character in various contexts. His character is the point, not the manifestations. It is not consistent with His character that we should pursue material wealth by the shortest logical path, but that we harvest material goods as a benefit of serving His glory.

Don’t reduce human need down to some algorithm of the market. That’s dehumanizing. It serves to excuse compelling folks to take what you feel like offering. Your human logic will propose a solution that just happens to answer precisely your peculiar combination hedonistic desires (Lust of the Flesh, Lust of the Eyes and Boastful Pride of Life). Instead, back up and see with your heart so that you simply offer what you have with as much tolerance for variation as you can muster, all the while keeping a firm grip on humility. The goal is not profit, but serving a moral social stability, participating in making God’s shalom a reality. If you can’t see the difference between these two approaches, nothing I write will help you.

By extension, you cannot stamp out with a cookie cutter some mass franchising plan that you push into every corner of the world. Nor can you govern that way as person with political authority. Nothing in the Bible condemns building empires if you do it in keeping with God’s moral character. This has nothing to do with imposing some imaginary reading of Moses’ Covenant on everyone. Exactly the opposite, notice how that Covenant was so very highly individualized for this one particular context — that people, that time in that place.

Why do you suppose Daniel would tell Nebuchadnezzar that the Babylonian Empire represented the golden head of that statue in the Emperor’s dream? What was so “golden” about Babylon? We know that the prophets castigated the policy of brutal conquest and mass displacement. Yet there was something about how Babylon ruled her empire that was nonetheless godly in Daniel’s eyes. If you can read between the lines, I submit that it was a collection of things Western minds would never notice. For example, the Emperor was largely hands off with the minor details of administration in daily routine life of the many little kingdoms he ruled. He didn’t stick his nose into their religions or customs; he had a powerful sense of limits as to what was justly his business. He did have administrative satraps over different regions, but it wasn’t a bureaucracy as we think of it. What the satraps kept eyes on was social stability and paying tribute — the former enabled the latter. The satraps were specialists in understanding the tributary kingdoms and keeping a realistic expectation. I assure you that the basic level of tribute was generally tolerable. The satraps passed along the bulk while keeping enough to fund their operations. It was feudalism at it’s finest, an emphasis on people as the means to wealth.

You’ll notice that the moral fabric makes little distinction between commerce and government in that respect. This shapes our critique of both in this current context. It also shapes our response to this ongoing collapse, as we seek to drag our context into submission before the God who calls us.

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Networked Christianity Aborning

Posted on February 4, 2016 by ehurst

I strive to practice what I preach (see the previous linked post). I believe God will keep the Internet alive and that He has called me to engage computer security (CompSec) and networking security (NetSec) in particular.

This is behind my efforts to read and understand networking technology as much as possible. The mission to which I’m called requires that working knowledge. As more and more human interaction moves into the virtual realm, with it comes all the same mixture of good and bad impulses. One of the most viable and profitable criminal industries right now is preying on human weakness through the Internet. There is a lot of moral psychology at work in correcting human tendencies to match this rising reality, and I’ve been working on that for years already. But there is a significant portion of this battle that is purely a matter of technology.

So long as this stuff is a blend of human reactions with bits and bytes, there will always be options and choices you have to make. I’ll tell you about mine and some of the reasoning. You can decide how useful that might be for you. My pastoral ministry can be divided up into any mapping you like because I’ll gladly share whatever it is you’ll take from me. I’m not insulted by your selectivity; what you do in the end is between you and the God we all serve. It’s more important that you absorb my experience in terms of assurance that it can and will work out if you really want it.

But I feel I’m standing on pretty firm ground when I warn you that networking is already tougher than most folks imagine, and it’s going to get tougher, even as it becomes more vital to human existence. The business of CompSec and NetSec will take up a growing portion of everything we do. At the same time, the things you can and should do with technology will also grow as it becomes one of the few ways left for humans to interact. Like it or not, this is where things are headed. We who seek the Father’s glory will be hard pressed to find any other route than to engage technology more extensively and expansively.

I will mention in passing that a major prayer item will be seeking however much armor God will offer to keep you sane and heart-led against the rising level of electromagnetic pollution. It does affect you, but God is Our Healer. We pray that technology gets smarter about this so that it does more with less. You can always theorize a better reality, but our calling from God is to take what He places in our hands until the Final Day of Redemption comes.

Meanwhile, we are facing a transition between the dying Western Civilization and the rising Networked Civilization. As always, the old passes many things on into the new, but that they are fundamentally different cannot be denied. This new one will have its own unique sins. Apostle John saw it when the last vestige of the Ancient Near East was dying under the steamroller of the West, and tried to offer a vision of what God had to say about things in general. He couldn’t see all the ugly details of Western Civilization, but had some idea of its fundamental flaws and how it would seek to crush true faith. I’m hardly in the same league as John, but I’m trying to learn from his legacy as I watch how we go from one bad atmosphere to another.

I’m hoping to grasp ways to exploit the differences for Our Father’s glory. This is not a time to get lost in imaginary apocalyptic visions of things that arise from misreading John’s Revelation. If this is the Final End, we aren’t supposed to know that. Rather, let us be found faithful in the midst of the daily business of serving His glory. God has come to visit, but this is not the final disposition of all things, just a matter of auditing along the way. I realize that such a message is not popular, particularly among the ever-frantic mainstream evangelical Christians who keep hyping their particular image of “The Day of the Lord.” I believe they learned their false sense of persecution from the Pharisaical Judaizers, always expecting some kind of grand trauma. It’s just so much cheap entertainment to keep the masses hypnotized. I’m expecting to meet some resistance for daring to say so, but I can’t predict what form or how much it will bring. It’s not a big focus, just something to keep an eye on as I have bigger fish to fry.

So with all this home server, fancy routers, FTP and SSH servers, and the new webhosting and the second blog — a part of what I’m doing is creating a faith accommodation, and just securing the obvious entry points that I can’t remove while guarding the ones I have to put in place on purpose. Outright persecution is unlikely because there just aren’t that many people who notice my ministry in the first place. I’m not trying to reach everyone, just those who are prepared to hear and that’s not a very big slice of humanity. Indeed, I’d be shocked if this thing exploded, and I’d be quick to hand it off to those better prepared. That’s not what God has called me to do — at least not yet. What God has placed in my care is a pretty small flock with peculiar needs. Feel free to unload on me whatever sorrows you face, but don’t expect earthquakes and signs in the sky. This is a quiet and patient work aiming for long-term changes in just those few whom the Lord brings to this ministry, a ministry aimed at working through the virtual social connections.

On the other hand, I’m pretty confident that what we do here is preparation for something that will eventually be grander than we could possibly imagine. There is a sense in which we are building a new reality. It’s the self-deprecating humor that suggests we’ve horsed around long enough with idiocy, so now it’s time to invest in lunacy. It’s not as if Western Christianity was a complete failure, but it’s time has passed. Let’s see if we can influence Networked Christianity is it takes shape. We have room to set a lot of precedents.

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Moral Economics

Posted on February 4, 2016 by ehurst

I rather like the boating metaphor in explaining economics. Your economic existence is rather like traveling on water. What do you have to have with you to do what you do? More stuff means a bigger boat. Your investments and borrowings are part of your cargo; some are fixed to the boat and some are easily moved. Either way, you have to keep that sucker afloat. Your cash flow is how much buoyancy you have to float it. The water level reflects how much liquidity exists in the economic system. It works the same for individuals and for any aggregate, like a business, that shares an economic reality. Get the picture?

Gross economic debt freezes liquidity; it lowers the liquid water level. The debts others hold most certainly affect you, just like shipping and navigation in an icy area. In global economic terms, we are passing through an ice age. Most available economic resources are frozen. There’s not much left so you need a shallow draft and good buoyancy. Your actions in economic terms would mean a preference for paying off debt and liquidating fixtures you don’t use. If at all possible, detach your primary economic activity from bigger ships, because you will grind to a halt when they do.

There are limits to the metaphor, but it’s pretty good at helping you focus on real-world results of your decisions made for non-economic reasons. In other words, don’t get trapped into thinking economic logic is the whole story, but be aware of the economic implications of your choices. Here’s one dirty secret: Things are all iced up because we have all bought into a common global system already without knowing it, and conceptual debt in one country tends to be honored in another. Any country that plays too independently will be isolated and caged like a predator. Much of what you are told is political is actually mere economic dispute. The global banking lords would rather you didn’t think about that.

I’m guessing when I suggest this economic ice age will eventually pass without destroying everything. It’s based on a couple of factors. One: I’m utterly convinced the Internet (in one form or another) will continue to exist into the foreseeable future. It’s the one thing that hardest to freeze in part because the most expensive part of it is controlled by folks who are likely to keep it alive at all other costs. If the whole thing became government property it would be a different story, but the nature of this thing means the backbone remains in private hands, and those hands would rather die than let it fall apart. The banking lords can’t afford to change it’s fundamental design and can’t afford to let it fail.

Two: Global mass shipping has almost stopped already, but there remains a very high traffic in small shipments and individual packages. Most economic chatter on the Net tends to ignore that factor. Everywhere you look this business continues, but I’ve yet to see any comprehensive analysis that takes it into account. In that sense it shares a lot with the black market; it’s hard to get accurate statistics on something that isn’t organized through any single choke-points. All the attention is on the big stuff that’s easy to track, but commerce isn’t dead just because nobody is chartering gigantic loads.

So, back to that metaphor, the current market reality is that whatever growth is possible will come in the area of smaller boats that turn and meet the tide more nimbly. The day of industrial giants is gone, unless they can learn to disperse operations over a number of smaller and responsive units. To the degree possible, find your market niche and work it hard. If you manage a big operation, be ready to ditch the old management philosophy.

I say this not because I’m some kind of genius management guru, but because I know how God operates in this world. He is forcing the world to return to His moral principles woven into reality itself. The capitalist-socialist paradigm was a big lie all along, but it was kept moving by sheer momentum and mass hypnosis. But Creation itself as cosmic moral principle has brought it to halt. The gollum was dead all along. What we see in terms of a global reset is not economic entropy, but God’s own nature at work prospering things as they come closer to His revealed moral character. The moral fabric of reality has the final say.

If you spend some time learning His Law Covenants, you can see through those details to His heart and you can begin to please Him by cooperating and conforming to Creation’s design. Pray and discern how that character should manifest in your context. Keep His Presence alive in your responsive obedience, always adjusting and trimming things to meet the moment. Take ownership of things He places in your hands and let Him control everything else.

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Proverbs 28

Posted on February 3, 2016 by ehurst

What you believe you see and experience is just shadow; ultimate reality is the moral truth behind it all. This chapter is full of short epigrams all getting at the same basic idea. They are not doctrinaire assertions of wishful thinking that we know aren’t always the way it turns out. Rather, they are assertions of moral truth teaching men of power how things should turn out under their reign. This collection warns the rulers: Let these things characterize your rule. See with the heart, not with the senses, and know the truth of God’s character.

1. The wicked flee when no man pursues; but the righteous are bold as a lion. This is more than a mere matter of clear conscience, though it includes that. Rather, those who know what God intended are willing to suffer when the whole world perverts His intent because they are driven by His Spirit. What can threaten a lion? Whatever threat we face from human perversion is simply not important.

2. Because of the transgression of a land, many are its rulers; but it is prolonged by a man of discernment who knows right. This is subtle and speaks on different levels. On the one hand, God has a tendency to provoke a frequent turnover on the throne of an evil nation. By the same token, an evil society surrenders itself to all kinds of petty masters and demonic forces. But the main point is for the ruler in training to realize that his best hope for a long and prosperous reign from God’s hand is to be morally discerning and never stop learning.

3. A poor man who crushes the poor is like a sweeping rain which leaves no food. A sense of moral wealth changes your attitude. Will you rule like a poor man, someone who is never satisfied? The second word for “poor” here a different term meaning “dependent.” A greedy king is like a torrential downpour, not just knocking down the crops in the field, but washing away the seed for future crops. It’s too easy to forget that your greatest asset is your people.

4. Those who forsake the law praise the wicked; but those who keep the law plead against them. In moral terms, this echoes the previous verse. If you stop paying attention to the Covenant Law, you will end up promoting some awful people because, in your lust for power, you can’t recognize moral depravity. A king who takes the Covenant seriously will tend to push back against folks who try to manipulate the throne.

5. Evil men do not understand judgment; but those who seek the LORD understand all things. One of the oldest forms of manipulation is appealing to concrete results based on mere human logic. These worldly-wise folks could be found even in the most mystical of cultures. You shall know them by their fruits. If you sincerely desire Jehovah’s favor, you will tend to see all things in terms of His divine justice. It makes it easy to spot evil men because they will emphasize some imaginary professional expertise.

6. Better is the poor who walks in his uprightness than he who is perverse in his ways, though he is rich. Don’t be fooled by apparent material wealth. If it requires perversion to be rich, then you can’t afford to be wealthy. Be a blessing to those who prefer moral purity at whatever material cost.

7. Whoever keeps the law is a wise son, but a companion of gluttons shames his father. Not the best translation, this proverb refers to establishing an early track record of high morals, contrary to the worldly wisdom of “sowing your wild oats.” We might better translate “gluttons” as “riotous fellows.” Hanging out with them is a good way to be passed over as heir to the throne. Passing note: In Hebrew the term “wise son” sounds like “bean bane” when spoken, the kind of thing that becomes a common expression.

8. He who increases his wealth by interest and unjust gain, he shall gather it for him who will pity the poor. The word for “interest” here is usury, illegal under Moses. Your fellow Israelis are family. It’s the image of someone amassing a large estate with the excuse of passing it to his direct heirs, but he does it by preying on his other relatives. This kind of thing was all too common, despite being a scandalous violation of ancient tribal custom. A just king will encourage a proper distribution of wealth across a man’s extended family, the stated reason why God blesses some with wealth.

9. He who turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is a hateful thing. This is echoed all over the prophetic record. It’s the image of someone who can’t be bothered to even get to know his sovereign lord, but has the nerve to make requests contrary to stated policy. Among humans insulting, it’s blasphemous in dealing with God.

10. Whoever causes the righteous man to go astray in an evil way, he himself shall fall into his own pit; but the upright shall inherit good. This points directly at the ruler. The image is one of taking advantage of honest men who trust you. Do you think you are so slick? In the long run, you will be caught in your own trap. At the very least you will look like a complete ass while your victims will gain sympathy.

11. The rich man is wise in his own eyes; but the poor who has understanding searches him out. This is the essence of moral failure. Materialism was a significant problem even in ancient mystical cultures. If all you care about is your personal hedonistic comforts, then you won’t even notice when someone can see right through you. They live in two entirely different worlds.

12. When the righteous rejoice, there is great glory; but when the wicked rise, a man is hidden. This one is subtle: A king is discerned by how his righteous subjects act. If the men who walk proud and talk loud about how great is their nation are also the good guys, then your reign is probably just. If the good guys try to stay below the radar, you are a bad king. Look around king and see what you have wrought.

13. He who covers his sins shall not be blessed; but whoever confesses and leaves them shall have mercy. The people worth your time don’t expect perfection; they’ll give you room to make mistakes. Repay their mercy by your honesty and sincerity, and work to improve. Arrogance will darken your reign.

14. Blessed is the man dreading God, but he who hardens his heart shall fall into mischief. This is a close correlation to the previous verse. Humility before God wins His favor. Losing that favor is begging for trouble because it blinds you to the pure moral vision of your heart.

15. Like a roaring lion and a ranging bear, so is a wicked ruler over the helpless people. The animals are depicted in their predatory hunger. From our Western mythology this isn’t much discouragement from evil. In Hebrew culture, the predator was a bad guy and the shepherd was the essence of manhood. A good shepherd would handle lions and bears and keep them from the flock.

16. A ruler lacking understanding even adds oppressions; he who hates unjust gain shall prolong his days. This echoes the previous verse. It’s the image of a balance beam: Light on moral wisdom means heavy on oppression. By contrast, someone who has no use for plunder but prefers social stability is the kind of king who draws fearsome support from his people.

17-18. A man who is pressed down with the blood of a soul shall flee to the pit; do not let them uphold him. Whoever walks uprightly shall be saved; but he who is perverse in his ways shall fall at once. The imagery suffers in translation here. The Hebrew language is a little ambiguous, but it begins with the picture of someone who rushes though life seizing what they want without a moment’s consideration of what is good and morally just. They tend to violence along the way as they slide quickly into the moral swamps. There’s little you can do for such people so let them go. Contrast this with someone who keeps their feet on the solid paths. He has little in common with the guy who prefers frolicking around sinkholes.

19-20. He who tills his land shall have plenty of bread, but he pursuing vanities shall have poverty enough. A faithful man shall overflow with blessings, but he who makes haste to be rich shall not be innocent. The fundamental image is a feudal grant. If you stick with what God has placed in your hands, He will prosper you. Don’t envy what God gives others. Chasing your hedonistic fantasies will be “sated” with sorrow. What will you feed your household? What will your children inherit from you?

21-22. To have respect of persons is not good; yea, for a piece of bread a man will transgress. He who hastens to be rich has an evil eye, and does not know that poverty will come upon him. It’s an ancient figure of speech to be a sucker for pretense and appearances. Will you be a king cheaply bribed to save someone’s fake reputation? It’s not that such kings are blind, but that they see the world through a perverted lens (“evil eye”). He knows the value of nothing.

23. He who rebukes a man shall afterwards find more favor than he who flatters with the tongue. The word translated here as “rebuke” means specifically to stand up for what is just and right. Even if such defense of moral truth comes sharply spoken, it’s easier to accept that compared to the sorrows of flattering words that lead you astray.

24. Whoever robs his father or his mother and says, “It is no sin,” he shall be a companion to a destroyer. As always, the context is a tribal society; all your neighbors are likely to be relatives. One would politely call any community elder “father” or “mother.” The word for “rob” is not that specific; the Hebrew term implies snatching or plucking in any sense. Thus, it’s the image of someone who thinks it’s just a game to prey on older people in their own clan. It doesn’t matter if what you take doesn’t seem like much; it makes you an ally of anything that threatens social stability. Righteous kings won’t tolerate that kind of thing.

25-26. He who is of a proud heart stirs up fighting; but he who puts his trust in the LORD shall be made fat. He who trusts in his own heart is a fool; but whoever walks wisely, he shall be delivered. Translation loses the play on words here. The Hebrew image is a “fat heart” — someone committed to serving his own pride. Trusting in the lord conjures the image of humility, a “hungry heart” committed to penitence before the Lord. The penitent will have a fat soul, instead, well fed on God’s truth. The second sentence merely restates it in different words, but uses a figure of speech that we easily miss: Trusting in one’s own heart is equivalent to making yourself your own god.

27. He who gives to the poor shall not lack, but he who hides his eyes shall have many a curse. This is not a question of giving what someone asks or yielding to scolding demands made by professional charity operators. This is a matter of a king who is blind to human need. Even if the Law of Moses protects the king from being cursed by the people, refusing to acknowledge the suffering of those you rule will bring God’s disfavor.

28. When the wicked rise, a man hides himself, but when they perish, the righteous increase. This repeats verse 12 above, but in a slightly different context referring to the peasants. Who will weep, and who will rejoice, when you die, King?

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Status Report

Posted on February 3, 2016 by ehurst

Don’t get discouraged; silence means I’m working.

I’ve got the Bible History book reformatted through Part 4 (The Conquest). For the FTP site, the music is about half cataloged in a clear tabled format in an HTML document and the music files are tentatively linked. I won’t be able to test until I get the rest cataloged. Good news is that I got the library external drive yesterday; I looked for some kind of clearance deal and got a 1TB disk cheaply. The new router has a USB port and FTP server built into it, I just have to finish the cataloging and set it all up with passwords and so forth. I’m tracking the IP address that Cox gives me to get a feel for how long between changes; this is a dynamic IP line. Whenever it changes I’ll have to change the links in the FTP library catalog.

Part of the problem is that typing in all those HTML tags gets tiring and I start making mistakes if I push too long on the same task. To give myself a break this morning I’m going to run through another chapter of Proverbs.

Meanwhile, I’ve read and absorbed the Linux Networking lessons up through Chapter 11.

God bless you and keep praying.

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Implications of That Vision Thing

Posted on February 2, 2016 by ehurst

Sometimes when I look back and survey where my head has been on things, I wonder how God let me live and continued to use me. Our fallen nature ensures we will always get some things wrong when God speaks to us. God is still able and willing to use us. So long as you are wise enough to avoid insisting something you believe at the moment is some eternal divine truth of prophecy, and instead you simply share it as your impression of what His powerful Presence says in your soul, you leave words that you can eat without much indigestion.

For the longest time I confused the vision of what was possible with what God intended to do with me. While it remains possible that someday I will pastor a congregation of people who are actually within geographic proximity, it is not a significant probability right now. My mission and calling is to this virtual parish first. Even so, sometimes I struggle to find words to express where that mission is taking me. In an effort to remain accountable, I wanted to rehash and refresh a few expectations I’ve mentioned in the past.

Even if you aren’t heart-led, you could extrapolate what you see happening with consumer technology. If technology moves too fast, there is a predictable level of friction in broad consumer acceptance. There has to be a justification that lubricates the acceptance of radical changes, something that entices the consumer to go along with the plans. The landscape is littered with the ruins of superior consumer technology that failed because of crappy marketing that offered no incentive to keep the good or leave the bad. Today we labor under some truly awful technology that was the price for something everyone just had to have. Once the competition is beaten out of the market, only a failure to cover every nook and cranny of the market prevents monopoly. No one can do everything well.

But there are other factors at work, most notably a broad economic decline. This is a fight Microsoft cannot win. Consumers have less to spend even on the most basic utility technology of daily existence. Sure, folks pay less at the doorway these days, but in the long run that doesn’t change economic fundamentals. Trying to extract profit by moving your cash registers to a different place in the marketing process is not going to work. At some point the marketing enticement starts to feel like coercion and even robbery.

We aren’t talking about a total economic collapse so popular in nightmare fiction where liquidity evaporates into a desert, but this is a general reduction in the water level that means you need a smaller boat to keep from hitting the bottom. The big tech companies might well survive, but not without some major changes. Those changes entail huge risks and I sense that they have made massive errors here, because they’ve lost touch with human nature in the broader sense. They’ve been spoiled by high times and general high prosperity. All they know is that narrow thread of human nature under those limited conditions, and can’t understand the market when those conditions change.

Different individual users will respond in their own way, in their own time. However, the general level of pain from using Windows in any form will get worse. As I watch this business of forcing Windows 10 down consumers’ throats, the market share most certainly will decrease in some measure. The nearest competition is a long step away, but there is competition and it’s a whole lot cheaper in the one sense that matters: long term cash outflow.

I’m not making a sales pitch, just an observation. You’ll have to find your own solution. Most of you reading this will be up against that pain level sooner or later, and it will be long term. I honestly believe the marketroids at Microsoft are stupid enough to push harder and harder until refusing to accept Windows 10 means bricking your devices. The problem is that the technology is so poor that Windows 10 itself is now bricking devices. Perhaps not in the sense of permanently unusable, but the devices no longer work as intended, and certainly not for what they were purchased. All I can do is offer the few answers I use for myself and that may not be right for you.

But this is just a part of a much bigger picture. The same broad economic failure is going to shake up things all across the broader system of government and business. The folks who haven’t lost their minds realize that the future is in atomizing and spinning things off into smaller systems, not more aggregation. If it uses money, it needs to be smaller. But if you don’t know how to break up a big system and delegate to keep the connections alive across the bigger community, you will lose it all. If all you value is the material trappings, then you will soon have nothing. This is the age when you need to recognize the value of human relations against mere material possessions. Whatever hope we have in keeping something distinct alive through this time of tribulation will require a powerful investment in people, and a decentralizing delegation of all but the very most essential elements reflecting the nature of what gives your thing it’s identity.

I’ve taken my own medicine on this. Your virtual pastor has built the most ephemeral and gauzy fabric of connection possible. It’s all tentative; it rests on the context of whether my offerings here meet your needs. That’s the wave of the future, all the more so for we who live by the heart. When we share in our hearts, I’ll have more of everything else than I could ever use, and I suspect you’ll find it so in your own existence.

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Context and Separation

Posted on February 2, 2016 by ehurst

No other human has the authority to decide for you what is the will of God.

People do have the authority to exclude you from things He has placed in their hands, by whatever means necessary. The only question, then, is discerning the boundaries of dominion. We rightly reject the notions of justice and dominion that arise from traditional European and American custom as arising from a heathen background. All divine justice is rooted in Ancient Near Eastern feudal law and custom because that was God’s Law ever since the Garden of Eden. Once you understand that ancient system, it’s not hard to discern where your boundaries end and those of another person begin.

So long as you respect the boundaries as God revealed them, the worst someone can do is ostracize you. That ends up being the sum total of New Testament church discipline, as well. That’s because the earthly legal authority vested in the Covenant of Moses ended at the Cross. It was forever afterward a record of the peculiar expression of divine justice, a critical source in understanding God and what eventually made the Cross necessary. The Covenant was meant to fail in a certain sense, but it did embody a reflection of God’s moral character.

Under the Law of Moses, the community could carry out various forms of punishment, up to and including capital penalties executed in various ways. But even then, the execution rested on the violator remaining in physical custody of the covenant community. Should the perpetrator flee the jurisdiction of that community, pursuit was generally prohibited. An awful lot of Mosaic penalties depended entirely on the violator trying to stay within the dominion of the covenant. A great many penalties consisted of withdrawing covenant covering, treating the violator as outside the covenant protections. It meant they were no longer regarded as family. The idea was the protect and promote the stability of the covenant community.

Very few violations were such a serious threat as to justify execution. It was not a question of some threat to “law and order” as the phrase is used today, but a threat to the fragile human unity of a tribal community. Everyone under the covenant was considered the same as blood kin in one degree or another. All covenant members were your covenant family, and the closer their kinship, the greater their liberties in your human existence. Close kin could make demands distant relatives could not. Someone who could hear you snore at night knew you better than someone who rarely saw you. They were more likely to be merciful where you needed it and strict when you crossed the line. Everyone understood this instinctively.

One of the biggest threats to a stable tribal society was adultery. The expectation of not having to share sexual intimacy outside the marriage partnership was powerful. It helped to create a level of trust wholly necessary for a stable society. In a close-knit tribal society, the greatest threat of sexual rivalry came from your nearest neighbors, who were your closest kin. The sense of betrayal would create an intolerable emotional pressure cooker. The Law of Moses granted the women some ownership over her husband’s sexual fidelity, something quite new in that part of the world. Either husband or wife as the wronged party could forgive and the community was required to abide by it; this was frankly the most common outcome. However, either wronged party could also demand stoning as the penalty for catching his/her spouse in the act. The difference depended on whether the spouse had worked much to develop that level of trust in the first place.

And what of divorce? Jesus said it was not really the way God intended things to be, but that Moses granted a man the power to divorce a wife who simply didn’t please him. However, the restrictions on divorce were pretty high, much higher than with surrounding nations. That’s because the context placed an awful lot of power in the husband’s hands. He gets rid of a woman and it means darned little, but for his ex-wife it could mean the end of her hopes for any kind of normal life. The man had to insure that she could at least survive and not simply toss her out on the street. Further, he had to give her a certificate of divorce that allowed her to remarry. She was a fellow member of the covenant.

And what of this other form of marital separation called “putting away” (Ezra 10)? This is simply the practice of separation, typically without a proper certificate. While a Hebrew man could elect to use this when his spouse was an adulteress, in Ezra it applied to women who had not converted, and thus remained “foreign.” These women were not protected by the Covenant. Try to remember that an awful lot of translation from Hebrew and Greek Scripture into English was guided by the Western church based on all kinds of non-biblical moral concepts. Western Christians try to assert their heathen legal traditions on a par with Moses. When God said in Malachi that He hated “divorce” it was actually the practice of removing a woman from her covenant privileges — a mere separation without that certificate of divorce. God cared about the fate of the woman.

While a legal divorce still wasn’t what God had in mind, it was better than what many other Ancient Near Eastern nations did. Our problem today is that we are utterly lacking in any of the context that goes with Jesus’ teaching and with Moses’ Law. We don’t have a cultural background that takes marriage anywhere near as seriously as did the Hebrew people. (Note in passing: Hebrew culture didn’t idolize virginity the way Western Christian culture seems to do.) What we have is a legalistic tradition that raises some imaginary objective standard to the place of God. It’s the same as idolatry, because it worships a god who doesn’t actually exist.

When Jesus referred to worshiping Mammon (such as in Matthew 6), it wasn’t just a throw-away line about greed. It was an established rabbinical reference from ancient times, well before the Hellenized perversion He faced every day. The ancient concept that comes to us under the name of Mammon is materialism, a much broader false philosophical orientation. It includes the kind of legalism that arises from materialistic assumptions. Thus, Jesus was using that ancient nickname for the very core of Pharisaical teaching that was little more than Aristotelian logic, a worldview that said if we can’t test it with our senses and our reason, it wasn’t important. Pharisaical legalism tried to make written Law into something that could be tested that way. Their teaching was the direct result of Moses’ Law perverted by non-Hebrew philosophical assumptions about reality. Hebrew intellectual traditions were inherently mystical; proof was written by the finger of God in the soul that heard His truth. Legalism about divorce is just as much a worship of Mammon as greed is.

Apostle Paul offered dire warnings about spreading your sexual favors around, too. If you have sex once, you are bound to that partner in some unique moral sense. Your life doesn’t end if you can’t carry through on all the moral implications of sexual union, but you have certainly lost something you can’t get back. He also advised his church members to allow a pagan spouse to leave or stay in the marriage, but it was not a legalistic ruling. He also knew that at some point, it could become impossible to continue in a really bad marriage, and that Ezra wasn’t just being a legalistic butthead, though English translations make it seem that way. Those foreign spouses who converted could stay. Paul was trusting God for the power of mercy to awaken pagan hearts. He also worried that this new Christian religion would become known for threatening social stability by breaking up marriages. How many different nasty rumors can you imagine starting from that sort of thing?

So if your spouse hinders your divine calling, how much distance is enough to please God? You are obliged to consider ways to tolerate some level of tension between what you know ought to be and what you can actually do. How many different ways can you disengage and still keep the social structure running along? If you aren’t already led by the heart, you cannot possibly know anything about any of it in the first place. You cannot know the will of God unless your heart rules over your life because God doesn’t speak to the intellect, only to the heart. You cannot defer to someone else’s judgment for what God requires when you stand before Him.

And if you obey the heart, no human on earth has any business telling you it’s not the voice of God.

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