Riding for Justice

Posted on July 25, 2015 by ehurst

Today’s journey wasn’t remarkable in terms of touring the countryside. With only one minor variation, it was the new Harrah Loop counterclockwise. The single variation was, after passing the SDA Academy and retirement village on NE 63rd, I turned north on Peebly. I wanted to see how the work on Wilshire’s washout was progressing between Peebly and Triple X Roads.

WishireRepair Apparently some washouts require far more substantial work. I suppose this area was already planned for some kind of work, but the spring flooding forced their hand. Wilshire Boulevard runs at an odd angle to the natural creek bed. On top of that, the drainage ditch on both sides at this spot have become the capture for quite a substantial runoff from farther uphill behind me. Thus, it required some fancy hydrology to keep all this working while preventing future washouts. This is no tin-horn crossing, but a concrete culvert, a splash wall and tributary routing. In the process, the responsible government agency simply did a complete re-landscaping job and put down all new asphalt for a couple hundred yards.

While I can assure you I’ve lived in places that would have seen a far better job done, in the broader context of things I feel certain this wasn’t bad at all. It comes closer to being consciously consistent with natural forces than previous generations would have done. Any particular brand of philosophical orthodoxy becomes pointless in the real world.

That was the reason for the approach I took in my open letter post yesterday. I noted that Yes Communities management used contract law to absolve themselves of any moral responsibility for the abuse. It’s a typical Western legalist approach to anything — blame the impersonal forces of law and legal precedent, but actual moral justice be damned. I didn’t appeal to their moral sense because I knew that was pointless. Rather, I simply offered a warning that nobody liked them and they should expect resident behavior to reflect that.

This was the primary focus of my meditations as I rode. The entire legacy of Western social mythology and false moral perception is rightly deserving of the coming days of God’s wrath. The pretense that something out there in human imagination can be objective, commonly accepted and legally binding pokes God in the eye. God says all human law must conform to His revealed character, in part because Creation itself is woven from the fabric of His moral character. Everything is personal in Creation. When you do things God’s way, nature works with you, even if you hardly comprehend what it’s doing.

A critical element in His moral law is accountability. Not so much to each other, but for each other. That is, we are accountable to God’s justice in how we treat others. In broad terms, those who have much are accountable to His justice for all of it. Neither the Western hyper-libertarian nor the damned communist approach, nor anything in between, has the proper grounding to comprehend this. When you own a lot of property, you have a lot of power, and you must seek a clear conscience before God in how you handle the property in reference to other humans.

You can’t possibly account for every human variation, particularly when it comes to the human creativity at being stupid. Thinking along the lines of tort liability is wholly contrary to divine justice. Rather, you must stand before God and seek a clear conscience. That doesn’t mean you can use the excuse that your heart is silenced and you don’t give a rat’s butt about anyone. You are accountable for activating a heart-led existence, always seeking a better communion with Creation and the Creator, and always looking for ways to glorify Him by kindness and risk acceptance.

So the folks at Yes Communities are damned in that sense. But because it rests on a long American tradition of flipping the bird at God, nobody is surprised. Instead of seeking to know His demands, they make demands on Him. If you aren’t willing to take a financial loss for the sake of divine justice, then everything you touch is accursed. That’s not my decision; I’m not a holy gunslinger firing curses at Yes management. I’m simply announcing the obvious. They are responsible for cultivating the demonic presence in their dealings. If I’m wrong, at least I didn’t fail to obey the command to speak His truth as best I understand it. I am accountable to Him for my own conduct.

I can’t decide for you what you must do to keep a clear conscience before God, but if you own property, I can assure you that the Law Covenants present a pretty strong example from which God demands that we extrapolate into our own context. It’s not that hard to understand, and if I cry out to God when my sense of justice points out abuse, you can be sure He takes note. That deadened hearts cannot sense the immediacy of His wrath does not mean there is no wrath.

Even when I’m just pedaling across the countryside, I am accountable to God for His brand of justice.

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Open Letter to Yes Communities Management

Posted on July 24, 2015 by ehurst

I publish this letter here because I know there’s not a snowball’s chance in Hell you would ever listen, anyway. Conversation is pointless because you’ll just lie, same as always. What follows is not based on formal surveys and polling, just a very strong sense of community outrage among my neighbors. We are utterly certain you hate us.

So we are returning the favor. Yeah, we hate you. You aren’t a part of us and you’ve made it abundantly clear you despise us for not being just like you. It does no good to discuss morals and ethics because you aren’t even on the same planet as us ordinary trailer park trash.

Your recent hate mail postcard simply proves the point. No basketball goals, trampolines or bouncy houses at children’s birthday parties? No wading pools? Don’t tell me why you feel that’s appropriate because it doesn’t matter; we receive as egregiously spiteful malice.

If your local managers have any sense at all, they’re going to fail to enforce these new policies with anything approaching vigor. Sure, you know how to demand that the front gate looks pretty, and the office building gets renovated, but you can’t be bothered to patch the craters in our streets. You can’t be bothered to recognize economic realities that we cannot make do with two parking spots. People with jobs need cars and a place to live and we will simply park in the grass. We’ll hang our laundry outside where it’s not too obvious and leave the kids’ toys in the yard. Oh, and you can’t be bothered to deal with the young thugs who tear up or stuff. It’s funny how you quickly fired all the managers who knew how to keep that stuff under control and replaced them with idiots who don’t give a rat’s patootie about us.

Yep, we’re just a bunch of trailer park trash and you can pretend you’ll roust us out and replace us with prissy assholes like you, but it ain’t gonna happen. Most of us aren’t activists of any stripe, and virtually nobody will tell you, so I’m letting you know. This isn’t war or rebellion. Most of my neighbors are passive-aggressive and will simply do what they can to avoid hassles while taking the measures our lives demand of us. Most of us have no where else to go.

Meanwhile, we are convinced you hate us, so the bulk of those who pay the outrageous rates (for damned little in return) and make your fat-cat prosperity possible will probably not think good thoughts about you. And who knows? Maybe there will be some breaking point when it gets really ugly. I have no idea because I’m not like that; I’m just the messenger.

Update: As you might expect, the reply from Yes was the standard corporate crap, citing the most improbable excuses for clamping down on humans being human in a residential community. In other words, it’s all about investor profits, human nature be damned. Meanwhile, I did get a traffic boost from whomever passed it around in their offices. Somehow I don’t think it will be a blessing.

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Just a Dreamer?

Posted on July 23, 2015 by ehurst

I dream of the day when the Lord will send me to the fields white unto harvest. I dream of spending time among a people who seek a living faith that climbs above this world, even as they learn to live most morally within it.

There is no doubt that the world as we know it now is hardly ready for our faith. Radix Fidem would shock most of the Christians we might encounter. Oddly enough, we have less trouble with folks who don’t profess to follow Christ in that way.

You won’t catch me suggesting our way is the only right way. We believe it’s best for us, assuredly, but that doesn’t make us elites. There’s nothing smug about this. We recognize that only by some ineffable miracle of God do people take our teaching seriously.

Still, there has to be some folks out there somewhere who aren’t going to hear the message unless they first see it working in one of us. I dream of the day I can carry this word to the scattered souls whom God has prepared to receive this sweet word of comfort. Do you?

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God Blows the Whistle

Posted on July 23, 2015 by ehurst

This should be an easy doctrine to absorb: Be sure your sins will find you out.

This goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden when God characterized the unjust bloodshed of Abel as crying out to Him from the ground. We understand on a moral level that the very fabric of Creation is woven together from the threads of God’s own character. When people sin, reality itself will tell on you. A critical element in God’s glory, in His revelation of His character, is exposing our sins. He exposes them to us first, if we remain sensitive to His character, but to all the world when we choose to oppose Him in any way.

In Scripture we can also see that God is in the habit of revealing His wrath against sin when it piles up to some intolerable level that we could sense if we were in tune with moral reality. His followers have no excuse if this catches them by surprise. But a critical element in the wrath that falls from Heaven in the exposure of sins people thought were hidden.

As always, these things come about in this world as tendencies, not as legalistic discreet justice for every individual. God shines His glory on His Creation; what He deems fit for exposure on that basis is what will be uncovered in public.

Thus, no one should be surprised by a sudden rise in whistle blowing. What might move the different individuals is a question for a different level of consideration; on the broad moral scale of God’s reality, it’s the exposure itself that matters. For those of us capable of sensing these things from the heart, there is far more than might be obvious to those whose hearts sleep. For example, when some government official or other mouthpiece goes ballistic on something, you know there’s hidden sin being exposed in the life of those most offended. So keep your eyes peeled, because somebody somewhere is telling on them, and the folks exposed are trying to direct attention away from their sins.

People who take themselves too seriously are hiding something in the dungeons of their souls.

As one who is very much in favor of open information on the Net, I frankly rejoice at the recent exposures, the doxing and dumping of purloined data. As I’ve noted more than once, in terms of cosmic morality, if you digitize it, don’t pretend it can be kept secret. If someone else digitizes private matters without your permission, that’s another matter. As a general principle, all digital data is public sooner or later if the storage is connected to the Internet. That’s God’s Law.

Rejoice in His wrath on sin.

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Death Is Just a Circumstance

Posted on July 22, 2015 by ehurst

The title is a catchphrase I’ve been using for years.

It’s the kind of thing you say because you know that the words would never really capture the truth in the first place. Instead, you reach for a way to point out the window of eternity and ask folks to gaze through it. Nobody really expects the mind to comprehend, but we can indicate something about Eternity. Not by adding things to your mind, but we do it by removing blockages there. The whole point of parables (and parabolic language) is to break the mind’s habit of trying to command and control.

If you dig into my high volume of blather here on this blog and in my books, you’ll come across the idea that the various Law Covenants in the Bible express something about God’s character, and that His character is the fabric of Creation itself. The ultimate revelation of God’s character was Jesus Christ, His true Son and His Living Law. His Presence in our world was the final revelation, the ultimate expression of God’s character in a human form we can grasp.

He died on the Cross willingly. Among all the things we could say about that, and among the things He Himself said about it, was an assertion that He wasn’t afraid of death. Indeed, He kept trying to say that He had been on that Other Side, that He came from there, so going back was not a problem. Up to that time, folks who shared His cultural and intellectual background as a human never pretended to understand Eternity. They sensed it was beyond words and never pretended to describe it. They sensed it from afar. Jesus said He had come from there, so He had an obvious advantage talking about it as His home. The Cross was simply the doorway back home.

It’s a paradox for us that we must first gain a sense of the utter separation between here and there, but we do so by exploring the continuity between our existence here and our own citizenship there. Attempting to reduce that paradox destroys any hope of making sense of it. It’s not as if we could hope to put it in words, as if our minds could finally grasp it fully and usefully. Rather, our minds are granted just enough to make informed decisions without any hope of grasping the actual thing itself. We have to entertain the paradoxical nature of truth as our normal here.

Western Christian belief includes a ton of unconscious assumptions. First, there is this crazy assumption that the mind is able to formulate a reliable orthodoxy that applies to all. When you touch Eternity in any way, you are absolutely and entirely alone before Christ. The very notion of rational orthodoxy nails Him to the Cross again, tries to hold Him in place where we can dissect Him at the mind’s leisure. He’s not dead, so you can stop pretending to make rational sense of Him. If you can’t grasp Him on some other level, your mind is sure as Hell not going to help you.

And even if we can sit down and blather at length consciously about the various assumptions of Western Christian belief, it’s still just plain wrong. It’s wrong because of that first assumption that it must be forced into some frame of reference that can be confined and explained in detail once and for all so everyone can agree. This is why we have so many theologians making all manner of effort trying to share their reasoning, as if that would somehow make it so obvious no one could argue. Maybe they do have a clear grasp of what God’s character demands of them individually, and can organize it in some useful way in their minds, but it cannot possibly fit your existence in any substantial detail. Westerners only pretend that logic is universal because they buy into the mythology of the Greco-Roman philosophers who said it was. Those philosophers rejected revelation, so what in Hell would they know?

And yes, they are in Hell. Never mind causation, we know the correlation is firmly established: Rejecting the revelation of God means you don’t belong to Him. You might have a limited exposure to revelation, but you cannot reject however much you have of it and expect to join Jesus in Eternity. Historical footnote: Jewish scholars did travel to Athens and other places where philosophers hung out, so those ancient geniuses were exposed to revelation and yet we see nothing of it in their teachings. Instead, everything they say pointedly denies the power of revelation.

If you cannot understand how their teachings are contrary to revelation, you need to spend more time with the academic disciplines of Antiquities, Comparative Civilization and various explorations of Non-Western thought. To embrace Western intellectual traditions is de jure a rejection of revelation. God didn’t just randomly pick the Hebrew folks as His scribes; He created their culture and unique intellectual orientation as the one proper setting for His truth. If you can’t think like an ancient Hebrew, you cannot possibly understand the Bible. The Hebrew Mystical pattern of reasoning is God’s own chosen matrix for His Word. And no, it’s not the same as Judaism today — that’s just a highly corrupted Hellenized version of revelation. It’s documented, yet remains one of the greatest secrets of our time, that the Hebrew people abandoned their ancient Hebrew ways for Greek philosophical nonsense. It was Hellenized Judaism that rejected a very Hebraic Jesus and murdered Him for daring to call them back.

So the net result is that I spend a lot of time writing about how that biblical viewpoint differs from ours today. On the one hand, I emphasize how utterly different is the Eternal plane of existence from ours here. On the other hand, I emphasize the continuity, particularly in the Law Covenants of the Bible. Don’t get hung up on that phrase, “under grace, not under law.” It’s a Hebrew parabolic expression — in Christ we can gain the spiritual birth without having to pass through the Law first, as was required prior to the Cross. The grace of God doesn’t do away with the meaning of the Law Covenants; it fulfills them in their primary intention of making us to see God’s character.

Further, the Law Covenants cover far more of life than mere conduct and ritual. It demands the kind of fundamental intellectual shift that subjects the mind to the higher faculties that awaken when God touches a human soul. It means you suddenly have the ability to commune with all Creation as a living thing. We say such things not as some factual note, but as the best explanation for something beyond words. Whatever it is you should make of the Law when “rightly dividing the Scripture,” it should include a dynamic and living link to all Creation around you. Creation operates on the character of God, and the Law tells you how to live here consistently with His character. It tells you how to emulate His Person in your own body so that your actions and thoughts are far more consistent with the fundamental nature of reality. That’s the meaning of “Christlike.”

Thus, you live daily here in this world with the thrill of communion with all of Creation itself as a living thing, an ally in your service of God. And when this life ends, you face it with the assurance that you already know something of what to expect. You’ve spent your whole life working to drag your fallen nature back to the Cross, back to the Person of Christ, and into a moral communion with God. You strive to conform, not to some collection of static ideas, but to a real Person who lives eternally.

At least two people in the Bible didn’t have to die, because they were already too close to what was beyond death. They had completely shed the influence of the Fall over their human existence, such that they were but a step from the threshold. That’s our model and it’s documented as possible.

Death is just a circumstance of your eternal life.

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Cabin Fever Tuesday

Posted on July 21, 2015 by ehurst

Two things came to mind as I mounted my bicycle for today’s ride. One is the miraculous protection of God. Okies can be ornery, but most tend to be friendly. Whether I’ve encountered many of jerks on my rides is hard to tell, because the Bible says God will grant us favor in the sight of most people when we cling to His justice. While plenty of folks ignore the three-foot clearance rule in passing, I’ve never felt threatened.

Two: The primary reason I ride is for the adventure. Frankly I’m quite frustrated with the lack of opportunities for adventure in my life. The military was something like an adventure, enough so that I was willing to enlist twice even knowing what a load of bullshit was involved. Being a school teacher was mildly entertaining for a few years but the bureaucratic idiocy kept sliding deeper into the cesspool and it just got old. It wasn’t as stupid as military idiocy, but it was also not at all adventurous, so it simply wasn’t worth the hassles. Since then, I’ve been bored to tears and being able to ride the roads is the one way I can get a little release.

Indeed, I’ve often been moved to volunteer for disaster clean-up only to discover some agency like FEMA was involved. If you’ve never experienced FEMA, it’s all the worst bureaucratic idiocy of the military amplified by a complete lack of even a pretense of mission. They only understand one thing: control. That’s the whole mission; not control for any particular purpose, but for its own sake. It becomes impossible to volunteer because you have to submit a fifty-page document with the most demonic intrusive questions about anything and everything you would never dream of asking yourself. And if you don’t submit, they treat you like a terrorist. I’ve helped folks during that initial period before the likes of FEMA shows up, and then I leave.

Today’s ride didn’t even count as a photolog. It was just an attempt to escape and have a little adventure. I’m not training for anything on these rides. I do hope to increase my comfort with longer distances, but that’s still just more adventure. On top of that, today I was dodging two rain bands sweeping through the area. I didn’t have time for a really good, long ride.

It was a pretty simple box — south on Choctaw Road to SE 104th, east to Harrah Road, north to SE 44th and then home.

I stayed on Henney Road down to SE 59th and took that brutal hill eastward to Choctaw Road. While we had a good rain overnight and into the morning hours, it was not enough to cause flooding out here. As I dropped down into the upper Hog Creek Valley, there was no sign of high water where it crosses SE 59th near Henney. However, where 1-40 crosses Choctaw Road (which goes under the interstate), the bottom is one of the first places to fill with water and the last to dry out. The fellow in the big pickup behind me was quite the gentleman, allowing me to pedal through the shallow water before he drove into it. While it’s technically illegal for drivers to splash water on cyclists and pedestrians, this was just basic human decency at work, as he waved and smiled.

But apparently the storm did plenty of damage to the power lines, because a crew was working the wires on Choctaw Road just south of the truck stop. Where Hog Creek comes along almost parallel to Choctaw, just south of the truck stop is a very large and expensive development on that slope for a half-mile along. It appeared they were without power.

Farther down where that huge yellow storm-proof mansion sits on the corner with SE 89th, a tributary of Hog Creek crosses and joins out on the south end of the horse pastures, after flowing through a very expansive pond system. Upstream on that tributary is where the century-old dam broke a few weeks ago over near SE 74th and Indian Meridian. It didn’t really do that much damage to where it crosses SE 89th, but it tore up one of the berms that contain the pond nearest Hog Creek itself. The owner had already repaired the damage, in contrast to the many washouts the county hasn’t begun to fix from even several months ago.

But Hog Creek itself wasn’t up high, and I rode on up the hill to SE 104th and turned back east. It’s been so long since I rode that direction I don’t even remember what it looked like. As Hog Creek wanders toward Thunderbird Lake, I had to cross it again. There are several homes there in the bottom that nearly flooded when that dam broke and dumped thousands of gallons into Hog Creek in just an hour. Today all I saw were beautiful homes in an even more beautiful valley — Hog Creek rarely disappoints the eyes, no matter where you cross it.

However, it’s also one of the deepest valleys in the area, with matching steep sides and brutal hills to climb. SE 104th was still a beautiful ride heading east, and after a couple of miles the hills flattened out a good bit. It was just so peaceful and lovely, despite the scudding clouds and thunder just a bit north of there.

This is the view of Harrah Road from SE 104th, where the latter dead ends. HarrahSE104thTurning north on Harrah Road I realized this was a very familiar stretch. Back when I first started this blog (now 6+ years) I was still working with Mr. Brooks. By then he had sold his lake house, but when I first started helping him out, a primary duty was driving him out to the place on the west shore of the Shawnee Twin Lakes. The path he preferred often took us down Harrah Road to Stella Road SE 119th, which runs all the way to the twin dams, and his lake house was just a quarter mile off SE 119th (AKA Horner Road). As noted on a previous ride, this whole area between the south edge of Watkins Reservoir, north of Thunderbird and east to the Twin Lakes is called Deer Run, though the official labels vary. (Double checked and corrected a false memory there.)

Farther north and back under the interstate again, we start seeing the outlying properties associated with Newalla, a tiny village centered on the intersection of SE 59th and Harrah Road. In the old days it was “Harrah-Newalla Road” but you won’t hear that often today. Newalla has been in decline, with a lot properties now vacant around the town, and perhaps a few in the actual village itself.

HarrahRdWideningBut from there, Harrah Road is undergoing widening. That means drainage, curbs and paved driveway aprons. The picture show it’s about halfway done with the final surface work. While squeezing past the somewhat heavy traffic for that mile, I actually caught some light rain. Just a few sprinkles, but I was already quite wet from perspiration. It was a bit cooler because of the clouds and rain, but still warm and very damp air.

While SE 44th eastward toward Watkins Lake was still barricaded, westbound was clear. Given the rate things are going, there will be some washouts still untouched by repair crews when winter comes. I’ve traversed SE 44th between Harrah and home quite a few times, and it seems the water courses were properly done in those seven miles. In fact, one of the few wooden bridges still stands along this route. Most of those have been replaced with the tin-horn style long ago, but only because the older wooden ones washed out or collapsed under heavy load. So here between Luther and Peebly one remains, only a few feet wide, but the wood is in good shape and the creek has never washed it out.

As always, the hills got tougher as I approached home, but at only 25 miles, I had plenty of energy to attack them with vigor.

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Alien Citizens

Posted on July 20, 2015 by ehurst

Let me suggest a couple of contrarian links for the day, if you are so inclined: a little on John McCain and Donald Trump.

Regular readers will know I’m not all that interested in politics. Rather, I’m interested in how things play out on a very high level — not an intellectual level, but the higher moral realm where the heart alone is capable of reasoning through reality. So I’m not prognosticating about the process itself, but warning prophetically what seems likely based on my limited grasp. This is not a prophecy in the sense of foretelling the future, but prophetic in the sense of warning how things go based on my admittedly limited grasp of His revealed character.

Some years ago I offered a warning to a few friends who were inclined to liberal politics. Because of my intimate exposure to the full range of conservative political activism, I sensed where things were headed from a prophetic moral aspect. My concern for my liberal friends is that they were at risk of blowback. That is, by making liberal noises, they marked themselves as targets for the future. While lefties love to unleash herds of badged and armed lackeys, righties carry their own guns.

Then as now, I am utterly convinced that America will descend farther into her own peculiar brand of fascism. While it matters little which major political party holds the official positions, it will be some flavor of fascism either way. There is some slim chance the Democrats will retain power, since they’ve been trying so hard to decimate their opposition through overt power grabbing and a vast unreported sea of trickery. It’s not that Republicans aren’t deceptive, but their tricks are of a different nature. Each side pretends their own brand of morality is the norm. However, I tend to think the next campaign will see a Republican administration.

It’s the typical propaganda game. While one side decries the very real crimes of the other, once in power, nobody has time to correct the criminal policies or hunt down the perpetrators. There are often very noisy investigations, but the result is whitewashing one way or another. The real emphasis is divvying up the loot they expect to gain later. So the Republicans will not roll back much of any bad policy that really matters, only the facade will change.

But because the atmosphere of doom and threat is rising geometrically, the very real threat to life, liberty and property for us plebes is serious. Ostensibly, those who run to embrace the flag-waving civic virtues will demand the threats be vanquished and traitors punished. Not the real traitors, but the ordinary lefty folks who seem to support the treason. There is nothing more oppressive than a propagandized fascist who wraps his Bible in the American flag.

So the real question in Republican politics is who can best marshal the voters, whose collected rhetorical noise best resonates with the plebes. And just who is in the lead right now in polling? The jockeying will continue apace and we shall see who wins eventually, but in broader terms, it matters little. Given the mood of the times, those most likely to win will unleash a wave of domestic terror, either overtly or by simply refusing to restrain the popular anger. Indeed, the campaign will be won on fear and anger. And it’ a fearful and angry bunch of gun owners we are talking about. It’s not that Democrats don’t have them, too, but the common run of people you encounter daily means the bulk of “progressives” are anti-gun and the other side is an armed camp.

On top of this, I reiterate my contention that racial conflict is critical to the game. Despite the noise you might hear from the press, the real game is pitting blacks against Latinos — “Let’s you and them fight.” However, the actual ethnicity is immaterial. It just so happens we have a lot of blacks and even more Latinos on hand for this diversion. Whatever their sense of identity, it has to include a sense of being oppressed, so the propaganda seeks to instill divisive fears and anger. Once any two groups are turned on each other, it gives the rest a good reason to shoot at both sides.

There’s something to offend everyone.

No, I don’t expect a massive civil war, but the background incidence of bloodshed will surely rise. It will be made to seem like civil war when that serves a purpose, and smoothed over when something else takes center stage. It’s not so much that righties will start shooting lefties, but will find some way of threatening it. Just enough of them will actually do it to create the fear. This will set things up for the next pendulum swing, should the system hold together long enough.

Brothers and sisters, we are not a part of this system. It’s all around us, but we are not of this world. Our enemy is the fallen nature we see in the mirror every day. Our mission is to see however much truth God can knock into our hard heads, while we make a concerted effort to subject those hardened heads to a true leadership of the heart. The only peace you can possibly have is inside. Take back America? It was never ours; Satan built this as another diversion. The only thing we can say we actually had at any point was a false dream about something that would keep us from seeing the moral fabric of reality. Let it go. Keep your eyes on the City whose citizens will never die.

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Proverbs 15 (Part 2)

Posted on July 19, 2015 by ehurst

18. A wrathful man stirs up fighting, but one slow to anger calms fighting. Don’t give someone else control over your feelings, unless you are capable of killing all your new enemies and living with the consequences. Obviously this defies God’s command for social stability.

19. The way of the lazy one is like a hedge of thorns, but the way of the righteous is made plain. As usual, this emphasizes moral discernment. You can be altogether industrious to no good purpose, so the point here is to exercise your heart’s discernment first. The image contrasts a thorny hedge as a fence against a wide open highway of moral clarity.

20. A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish man despises his mother. We’ve seen this one twice before and it will come around a few more times before the book ends. In this context, it simply echoes the previous verse in different terms. If God commands that we honor our parents, then it’s just one more reason to invest in your heart’s mastery in moral discernment.

21. Folly is joy to him who is without any wisdom, but a man of understanding walks uprightly. Lacking wisdom is a valid translation of the Hebrew phrase “void of heart,” but may still be misleading. Someone who ignores their heart-mind will take delight in moral silliness. This person is easily distracted from morally important tasks, while a heart-led man can be trusted.

22. Without wisdom, purposes are defeated, but by many wise men they are established. In this verse, lack of wisdom is the image of having no wise counselors. The whole idea is that someone with less skin in the game than you might have a better view of the big picture. Hebrew men of action generally kept at least one advisor around. In this case, the more you can afford, the better.

23. A man has joy by the answer of his mouth; and a word in due season, how good it is! This one requires a proper context; it is otherwise a bit subtle. It’s fun for everyone involved if one can say the right thing at the right time. A talent for it is priceless.

24. The way of life is above to the wise, so that he may turn away from hell below. This simply defines the imagery commonly used in such proverbs. Moral wisdom is life on a higher plane of awareness and keeps you from suffering, both now and eternally.

25. The LORD will destroy the house of the proud, but He will set up the border of the widow. We have here a subtle contrast with the previous proverb. The paradox of walking in the higher realms is that it makes you humble. Thus, by definition that arrogant are lacking moral truth and their dominion in life will be morally empty, much as a man who loses his entire inheritance. A widow is a common Hebrew image of someone who has lost everything, including all social standing and material support, and wouldn’t dare pretend arrogance. God defends the humble.

26. The thoughts of the wicked are very hateful to the LORD, but the words of the pure are pleasant words. This is both a restatement of the previous, and phrasing we’ve seen before in Proverbs. God might delay mortal wrath, but withholds His moral peace until a man wants it enough to embrace revelation.

27. He who is greedy for gain troubles his own house, but he who hates bribes shall live. Again, the standard is a higher moral peace. Within a covenant community, you would expect a more literal application. The real wealth in this world has always been moral purity.

28. The heart of the righteous studies to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things. This is the typical Hebrew affinity for letting the heart answer first, then engaging the mind and mouth. It implies seeking the wisdom of the Spirit for answers the mind cannot comprehend, but that the heart can translate as moral imperative. Otherwise, the content makes no difference. It is foul belching simply because it was not taken before the Lord first, as it were.

29. The LORD is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayer of the righteous. Almost the same words as in verse 8 above, the context emphasizes righteousness as taking the time to consider things from the higher moral standpoint. A higher moral consciousness brings you closer to God, while a silenced heart keeps you remote from Him.

30. The light of the eyes rejoices the heart; a good report makes the bones fat. The lyrical phrasing is subtle and ambiguous. We have a parallel of eyes that see by the light of the sun with ears that hear a good moral teaching. The other parallel is a heart that rejoices and a healthy body. The imagery makes sense if you understand the concept of reality itself defined by God’s moral character. When your perception is attuned to seeing the glory of God in Creation, it’s no different from reading a good word of divine revelation. A heart that is full of divine joy tends to make your body, and by extension your entire human existence, strong and healthy.

31. The ear that hears the reproof of life shall remain among the wise. This extends the metaphor of Creation resounding with the moral character of God. If cultivate an awareness of how your experiences in life speak to you of moral reality, then God will treat you like a VIP in His court.

32. He who refuses instruction despises his own soul, but he who hears reproof gets understanding. As before, the translation equates the Hebrew term for “heart” as wisdom. If you are willing to entertain something offered as correction or reproof, even if you can’t use it, that willingness indicates your heart is alive and active on the moral plane of awareness.

33. The fear of the LORD is the instruction of wisdom, and before honor is humility. Reverence for God is equated with a high status in His divine court. It requires a certain level of awareness to sense the divine Presence in the first place, but with that sense comes the inevitable overwhelming burden of guilt and shame our fallen nature. Without that ground of understanding, there is no hope of hearing from God how He intends for us to live in this world. If your awareness of His holiness teaches you penitence, then you are ready to hear that revelation. Embracing His revelation honors Him, and in turn shines the light of His glory into your life. In a more literal translation, that last phrase is “humility is the face of honor.”

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Psalm 59

Posted on July 18, 2015 by ehurst

The third in a row resting on the tune of “Do Not Destroy,” this psalm reflects events described in 1 Samuel 19. David went home after one of Saul’s outbursts that began a more concerted effort to eliminate him. Saul sent soldiers to wait overnight outside the gate of David’s house. This is David’s cry to God for deliverance.

Saul’s court had descended into criminal corruption, men eager and willing to ingratiate themselves to a madman. Saul’s consistently wicked choices opened the door for demonic torment. The depth of depravity and petty self-interest was simply not possible with people who were morally upright, whose hearts were actively engaged with God’s moral character. This explains how Jonathan was excluded from his own father’s counsel as things spiraled out of control for David. Every righteous man was the enemy of Saul, and Saul was the enemy of everyone who clung to the Covenant. If anything, David tends to understate just how bad it was, calling the ambush troops “workers of iniquity” and “bloodthirsty.” These were Saul’s best professional soldiers.

David correctly notes his clear conscience; the sin lies with Saul and his men. Thus, as God arises on behalf of Israel to punish other nations when she is just, so he calls on the Lord to defend him on the same terms. We remind ourselves that there were no friendly dogs in that ancient land; such dogs as hung around Jerusalem were feral, repulsive and quite dangerous. In common chatter, Israelis referred to hostile Gentiles as dogs for their foul religious sexual practices. Even if this was hyperbole, the soldiers lying in wait were no friends of God.

David celebrates his confidence in God, having seen that firm hand of deliverance so often before. The only reason David warranted such a heavy ambush was because God had made him a mighty warrior, and God would not fail him now. Still, David pleads with God not to simply kill them, but to rout them from the field of battle, make them flee in shame so the nation would know and fear God. He wanted them humiliated in the one thing for which they were most arrogant. Let their lives fritter away in sorrow.

The imagery of dogs serves as a refrain. Let them howl in frustration! But the only noise David will make is singing the praises of God. When the morning dawns the ambush will come up empty-handed. So the song ends with David’s celebration that he belongs to Jehovah. He was nothing without God.

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Proverbs 15 (Part 1)

Posted on July 18, 2015 by ehurst

(Divided into two parts because the chapter is long.)

Proverbs 15

Facts are not on the same level as truth. We are obliged to recognize the moral primacy of social stability under God’s revelation. How we handle criticism, justified or otherwise, says a lot about our moral discernment.

1. A soft answer turns away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger. A popular proverb in many different modern languages today, the emphasis here is tone of voice and choice of words. As a critical part of the Hebrew mindset, even the king needs to consider the context and act justly. Only rarely does divine justice demand a harsh response.

2. The tongue of the wise uses knowledge rightly, but the mouth of fools pours out foolishness. This verse extends the previous. None of us is the Truth Police, and having accurate knowledge of the facts cannot justify using them as weapons. The question is not the facts themselves, but the moral importance of the facts and whether it serves justice to even speak them. The fool is described as “belching” a foul odor, facts notwithstanding.

3. The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. This is the sort of reminder that provides a contextual warning. Do you really want to take this path? Is this according to the moral justice that beats in your heart? God is paying close attention, never mind how He responds in the moment.

4. A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but crookedness in it is a break in the spirit. The Hebrew word for “wholesome” denotes a curative or redemptive effect. The implication is a vivid and joyful life. This is contrasted with distortion or perversity in speech, which fractures the spiritual nature like broken bones.

5. A fool despises his father’s instruction, but he who listens to correction is wise. We’ve seen this kind of proverb already, and it bears repeating in other forms, as we see later. This is not limited to a literal male parent; it denotes a type of moral dominion. One could rightly call many different male leaders “father” — king, any tribal leader, teacher, role models, etc. Thus, the primary issue is despising justified dominion attached to any particular social role.

6. In the house of the righteous is much treasure, but in the gain of the wicked is trouble. Another proverb that echoes at least one other we’ve seen before. The term “house” implies the broader personal dominion, everything that you control or in which you are involved in any way. By now it should be obvious that the treasure is moral in nature, though it may well be matched by material wealth, particularly in a covenant setting. The word “trouble” here offers the image of noisy, bubbling water that sheep won’t approach for drinking.

7. The lips of the righteous send forth knowledge, but the heart of the foolish is not so. This echoes the previous verse. A more literal rendering says the foolish heart simply cannot.

8. The sacrifice of the wicked is a hateful thing to the LORD, but the prayer of the upright is His delight. A strong contrast that reminds us we cannot purchase the Lord’s favor by mere ritual, but even the poorest with a pure heart can gain God’s ear.

9. The way of the wicked is hateful to the LORD, but He loves him who pursues righteousness. This clearly echoes the previous verse. The wording portrays wickedness as a well-worn path, but divine justice chases the Lord through the wilderness, if necessary. Thus, social custom is a good place to start, but tradition is not a good reason for anything when you begin to discern moral purity.

10. Correction is grievous to him who forsakes the way; he who hates reproof shall die. This proverb draws a contrast with the previous. One can also be too hasty in rejecting well-tested social customs. When you understand properly why a tradition stands, you are in a better position to question it. You will also be ready to handle objections, but people with no justification will dread having to face criticism. Moral discernment brings peace in all contexts.

11. Hell and destruction are before the LORD; even more the hearts of the sons of men? We note that sheol and abaddon are ambiguous symbolic terms, but the context makes them figurative for the abode of God’s wrath, whatever that might mean in the higher realms above our plane of existence. Thus, since God has no trouble inspecting those places beyond or understanding, as if they were just outside the door of His divine court, how could we on a far lower plane expect to hide our true commitments from Him? Nothing is beyond His awareness.

12. A scorner does not love one who corrects him, nor will he go to the wise. This echoes verse 10 above. A scoffer is anyone who disparages social stability (shalom) on God’s terms. We should hardly be surprised when he avoids those who accept the burden of social leadership with any measure of moral purity.

13. A merry heart makes a cheerful face, but by sorrow of heart the spirit is broken. Most Westerners miss the point here. Telling people to “cheer up” is often senseless and demeaning. The point of this proverb is the heart and its perception of justice. When justice prevails, your heart knows and it will seem like a relief from stress. Just so, the heart discerns when moral justice is oppressed and it makes one sad.

14. The heart of him who has understanding seeks knowledge, but the mouth of fools feeds on foolishness. A study in contrasts again, we have first the image of someone who values moral justice enough to invest resources in gaining discernment. This is choosing the heart over the rest of the self, a kind of self-denial. The fool is like a pig, hoovering up whatever answers to hunger of his fleshly desires. The wise seek to cultivate an appetite for moral justice.

15. All the days of the afflicted are evil, but gladness of heart is a continual a feast. This simply echoes verse 13 above, but includes the sentiment of the one between. To be afflicted in this context refers to that same sense of moral oppression, where nature itself cries out loudly in our ears for divine justice. Yet again, when social stability is honored, nature itself sings joyfully to us.

16. Better is a little with the fear of the LORD than great treasure and tumult with it. A contrast between the value of material versus moral treasures. Don’t trade moral purity for worldly profit.

17. Better is a dinner of vegetables where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred with it. This offers a more picturesque version of the previous proverb. An ox in the stall represents significant wealth.

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