Fukushima: Not Much You Can Do

Posted on June 25, 2015 by ehurst

If you bother to read this blog, one of the basic concepts you have to tolerate is the biblical doctrine of the Fall. Not so much the traditional Western Christian view of it, but you have to understand that our current reality is permanently broken. This world cannot be fixed. The whole point of Christ on the Cross starts with the idea that you intend to end up somewhere else. We are leaving this world for a better existence and we are working on the issue of preparation for that journey. This whole business of holiness in the here-and-now is to work on modifications of your self, not your world.

I’ll do all I can to help you understand this, but it is not a matter for debate.

That doesn’t mean we don’t care about things in this life. Christian Mysticism as we teach it here is by far more pragmatic than anything else I’ve seen so far, and I’ve gone out of my way to examine all sorts of wide and varying viewpoints on reality. Learning how to live in eternity means learning how to handle things here according to God’s revelation. You get better acquainted with God by seeking His character in His Laws. It’s all about the Person of God. We live as best we can in a manifestation of that character. We take seriously the implications of His Laws regarding how we interact with Creation.

You can find a really nice review of the Fukushima situation here. There are other summaries, but I like this one for balancing between we-got-issues and scared-shitless. This thing is uncharted territory in the broad human experience. Nobody knows exactly what’s coming next, but we do have some projections that take into account what little we do know.

Whatever is going on in those three little stinking craters on the coast of Japan is self-sustaining for a long time to come. It’s the concept of Critical Mass. Basic nuclear physics says that as long as a certain critical minimum mass of stable isotope molecules remain in close proximity, this mass of stuff will remain incredibly hot in temperature and highly radioactive. It’s a question of the type of material and how much is one place. Break it down into smaller pieces that are not so close together and it cools off and the radiation will reduce to some lower level inherent in the material itself. Eventually this stuff will burn itself out, but not during any human lifetime. As noted in the article, our best estimate of burn-out time puts it centuries in the future.

Unless you live in or near Japan, the biggest issue is the radioactive pollution of the Pacific Ocean, and the secondary pollution of the air and soil that comes into contact with this nasty water. Alaska is already affected, as is some portion of the North American West Coast. The rest of the Pacific area will get it soon enough. What they get, we hardly know at this point. Given the nature of the oceanic water exchange on this planet, as well as atmospheric mixing, this thing will spread globally and be diluted at the same time. God alone knows how that will affect you and me, but it will affect us.

My point here is, even if it turns out there is no practical measure for avoiding the effects, awareness of it means you can make an informed response to the call of God to act according to His Word. We still teach here that you need to live in your heart, not in your head. You still need that sweet provision God granted the human race to commune with His Creation directly through the higher awareness of your heart. You need to commune with your whole body, with attention to the “brain” near the bottom of your spine. That’s not some weird Asian thing, but is discussed openly in Scripture. We miss it because of our Western intellectual biases; it’s in the Bible. You have to let your heart read the communion of your spirit with the Holy Spirit, because your intellect is incapable of it. All of that still applies here, but we do want the brain properly informed so it knows what to make of things the heart has to tell it.

Only then can we understand God’s priorities in the midst of all this nasty stuff we see.

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On Being Your Own God

Posted on June 24, 2015 by ehurst

Let’s get one thing out of the way: I am by no means a gamer. I am somewhat of a computer geek, but it’s just a tool for something much more important. If the Internet and computers all died tomorrow, I’d simply find another tool for the job. This one happens to be the best available right now. Further, I don’t particularly care for most of the gamers I’ve encountered. They tend to be arrogant little shits who have a poor grasp of reality, who dig so deeply into virtual worlds because they have trouble with the real world.

But so do most other humans, just in different ways. The average Joe and Jane Sixpack prefer to chase their false reality passively through TV and other forms of entertainment. Gamers end up being closer to reality because the rest of the world refuses to get involved in the first place. The fake world of gaming comes closer to the truth for that reason, and gamers deserve at least that little bit of respect.

Let me lay a proper foundation for this discussion. A critical element in the Fall Narrative is this:

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

Some of this is translated poorly by tradition, and in part because the subtle nuances of Hebrew contextual and symbolic logic are alien to Westerners. The business of “knowing good and evil” carries the idea of having the authority to decide. Satan makes a subtle accusation that God is hogging all the best toys of life for Himself when He’s no better than anyone else. Who made Him God? Anyone from that ancient culture would immediately recognize how utterly preposterous Satan’s comment is.

Yet this is the very same accusation so commonly used by people seeking an excuse to reject revelation. This serves to emphasize the vast difference between our modern world with its common assumptions against those of Ancient Near East (ANE). Without bothering to walk through the entire thought process, Satan jumps right down into a raft of unspoken assumptions, including the notion that there is some objective standard out there somewhere against which we can compare God. Further, Satan implies that if they reject God’s revelation and assert the authority to use their own powers of reasoning to discern this objective truth (the meaning of the symbol “Forbidden Fruit”), they can tell God where to get off.

It won’t matter what brand of logic and reasoning you choose, asserting that as your standard to which God must appeal, the standard itself is a false god. It’s idolizing your own reason and all the failings built into it. It’s an internal attempt to tell God that He isn’t really God. Were He as angry and implacable as most Westerners assume without thinking, everyone making that error would immediately go to Hell. God’s patience is misread as inability to act, or lack of concern. In essence, it provides a false cover, a pretense of holding forth reason when the real issue is one’s personal petty wishes. This is a lie we tell ourselves in Western thinking — and at that, it’s only when we are at our best. Western heritage offers a plethora of even worse logic and self-centered thinking.

This is the fundamental flaw in the whole range of Western assertions of authority. We raise the pretense of some objective standard, but it’s a standard loaded with a million loopholes so folks can grant themselves extra privileges because it’s just part of the job of being boss, a basic necessity for getting the job done. It becomes the excuse for shitting on a lot of other folks who might think differently about what that standard should be. And a whole world of people who simply want to be left alone, people who are unwilling to force their will on others, are treated as hideously evil because they won’t kiss the ass of someone who takes themselves too seriously.

You see it in politics, naturally. It’s prevalent in business, too. And if you don’t see it as part of organized religion, it’s because you refuse to see it. Why should we be surprised when people read their personal god-hood back into every institution that organizes human activity? It’s so ubiquitous that we forget it’s not right. If the people using this trick can get enough others to buy into the system, they will try to make you feel guilty for following your instinct to get away from this game.

And this is what’s behind the Gamergate thing. Wikipedia outright lies about the matter, taking the side of the godlings who demand people kiss their asses. The real story behind it is closer to this. We see that irresistible urge to play god and assert what is good or evil for others. Major businesses that consider their websites the arbiters of what digital games are and should be are now losing money because they weren’t as subtle as Satan in the Garden of Eden. The self-appointed gatekeepers of information about digital games wanted to have their cake and eat it, too, but failed to be the least bit subtle and polished. It was naked, visceral hatred for the people who make the gaming industry possible. Not just consumers, but the folks who design and write the software were vilified.

You’ll find precisely the same behavior in every human endeavor. Wherever you see this thing rear its ugly head, where the ostensible servants (game review business) attempt to assert mastery over those they serve (gamers), it’s a batch of godlings taking themselves too seriously. If there’s one thing so utterly typical of the West, and so utterly shocking to Ancient Near Eastern sensibilities, this is it. This is what sets apart our civilization from all the others. Jesus was the essential Hebrew man who would find our culture stomach-turning. This is why Westerners get so much of the Bible wrong. Organizations claiming to promote the message of Christ blatantly play the same games as you see in Gamergate.

Don’t tell me you are a Christian if you reject the most fundamental assumption of what Jesus taught. Keep your eye on this one thing, in the mirror and in the world around you. Expect it; take it for granted, but never lose sight of what is the fundamental error. One of the few really good things about the Internet is that it makes resistance possible, and the gamers have won this round, but you wouldn’t know that if you keep buying into the mainstream propaganda.

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Photo Log 8: Double Header in OKC

Posted on June 23, 2015 by ehurst

Today is a rather long trek over two different official bike trails. But it’s about ten miles just getting to the starting line of the first one. If this works out, I’ll ride straight west on SE 29th to the Tinker Diagonal and generally follow some varied surfaces that will take us all the way up to Reno Avenue and around onto Grand Boulevard. The Grand River Trail this all the way across town, up a few miles north and into the Oklahoma River Trail. We follow the south bank as far as we can go, given that the far end is still under some development. The final trail is mapped and named Eagle Lake Trail, but we’ll have to wait and see if it’s open for our passage. If so, we can get right back to the start of the Grand Boulevard Trail where I can retrace my route home again. In all it should be around 40 miles of fairly flat riding, over half on purpose-built cycling routes.

I’m torn about starting way early in the morning when it’s cooler, because the traffic will be heavy. By leaving closer to 8AM, it’s already down, but it means facing more of the mid-day heat. I chose the latter option.

I won’t recount all the details of the first few miles westbound. Once I got to the big shopping center outside the main gate of Tinker AFB, I followed the service roads for I-40. Starting from that gate, the interstate follows a near-straight diagonal path across a three-by-two mile rectangle where it intersects with I-35 — a section officially called the Tinker Diagonal. That western end is also very close to where I need to go for the Grand Boulevard Trail, so I stay on the north side road all the way up to SE 15th. I’m not sure anyone can explain why the service road forces you onto the interstate at that point, but I simply turned left on SE 15th until I got the Del City Library.

On the other hand, I have heard through academic channels that somewhere along this section of Crutcho Creek, construction crews stumbled into a minor cache of Native American artifacts. The area is in or near Ray Trent Park. That was probably back in the 1960s and politics have changed a lot since then. So while no one has the money to do a proper archaeological dig, the place is quietly protected from any further construction digging. Any development plans are restricted to the top foot or so of soil.I40-Crutcho

So once I pass under the highway at Crutcho Creek, it’s just a short run across a bit of grass to get back onto the service road and ride all the way to Reno Avenue. Less than a quarter mile along Reno is the turn onto the old Grand Boulevard heading south. We take a jog around the historic Townley’s Dairy plant and follow the twisting Grand to the far eastern end of the Grand Boulevard Trail. I recommend you not park here to ride the trail unless you leave a guard. Transients of highly varying morals like to camp near here.GrandTrlStart

Grand Boulevard Trail from the east

About a century ago the OKC management planned Grand Boulevard to circle the city somewhat near the boundary lines. It was a big curving loop. Since then, several sections have disappeared under highways and then later highways on top of those. What’s left has served to confuse the heck out of people unfamiliar with the city layout, because long sections are scattered all over town and the labeling follows no obvious pattern any more, unless you can make out the quadrants of NW, NE, SE and SW. This southern section remains mostly intact and curves nicely from around the eastern end of the complex junction between I-40 and I-35, down and across some decent neighborhoods at roughly SE 36th, turning into SW 36th, then heading north up along I-44. We won’t trace Grand any farther, leaving it for the path along the Canadian River.

The first three miles or so cross either fallow terrain or pass by some very old industrial facilities, mostly related to petroleum drilling or construction. It’s actually rather quiet and desolate on the trail itself, despite crossing some busy thoroughfares along the way. Just short of SE 29th, we are shoved over to the other side of Grand just as we pass the biggest OKC Animal Shelter. Across SE 29th we begin curving back westward around the backside of Trosper Park. The place is a little rough around the edges because this park is a favorite haunt for those dealing in illegal vices of various sorts, mostly the kind without victims. It remains pretty quiet until we get around to I-35, which is pretty much an artificial canyon below the natural terrain level. Once across that, it’s much more parklike for the next few miles. This is where the old Grand Boulevard remains divided by a narrow greenbelt of sorts.GrandTrlI35

The city fathers have been spending money along this route to remove what folks call “blight,” but it’s mostly about rousting gangs. It was about this point I realized I probably looked a lot like OKC Police Bike Patrols, with my black long-legged shorts and pale gray t-shirt, and black cycling helmet. I thought the locals were acting a little odd until I realized what they must have thought they were seeing. At any rate, a mile west the trail runs out because that section of Grand was never widened. You can take the sidewalk on the south side, but the street is a designated bikeway and faded white stencils on the pavement are still just visible. The route widens again about a half-mile later on the other side of the ever-busy Shields Boulevard, right about the time we hit Lightening Creek.

During rain storms this place gets a lot of mention. So much of it runs through concrete canyons that, as you might expect, kids play in it and think all the extra water is so much fun on a hot summer day. But this last few storms was enough to washout even the bike path. A large section of asphalt was floated out its bed and pushed aside.BTrlWashout

Farther along, I suppose the city planners couldn’t find an easy way to cross Western Avenue, which is the single busiest north-south artery out here on Southside. Thus, whether you dismount or not, you are forced to use pedestrian accommodations to get across. On the other side the original extra-wide concrete sidewalk from way-back-when obviates the need for a separate bike path. It runs like that for a mile or so. Eventually the newer asphalt trail shows up again and takes us all the way across May Avenue and into yet another decent spot, Woodson Park. The city began revamping and renewing these facilities a while back, so it’s not too bad. The trail runs around the backside next to I-44, then abruptly turns left and up a very steep overpass.I44-Xover

Hit the brakes coming down because it’s a sharp right on the other side. We pick up the bike path more or less on the old Grand route, cutting back across SW 29th and chasing another wide sidewalk back onto a street actually named Grand. Take advantage of the hill and don’t slow down; at the bottom is a genuine rough neighborhood. Not everyone is a thug, but there are a greater density of troublesome folks here than in most places. When a sidewalk reappears on the right, grab that ramp because this saves us a big detour at SW 15th. You have to yield, but it’s a straight shot down a nice bike path while viewing the splendor of Dell’s OKC Campus on your left. Their computers suck less than most others, so I tend to prefer them. This campus is a customer phone support center and that’s where they suck. I run Linux on my Dells. In the picture you can see where the far western end of the Grand Boulevard Trail ends at the OK River Trail.DellOKCCampus

Oklahoma River Trail

OKRiverTrlThe OK River project goes like this: The North Canadian River was tamed, widened and given heavy rip-rap sides. It now consists of a pair of very long navigable lakes right downtown OKC. There is a sort of dam at the west end near where I got on the trail — a trail that is mostly mirrored on the north bank. There is another dam about half-way down. This first section is for motorized boats mostly. The second section is all about that human-powered boating stuff. You’ll ride quite a ways east before you see it, following a few bends in the river. Down on the right side is a picture of the Devon Boathouse; it quickly became a major rowing competition site and they aren’t through with it, yet.MidLocksOKRiver

Staying along the south bank, you will encounter a number of spotter’s towers for the races. Before this was all fancied up, the trail ended right about the 1000 meter mark. You could roll down a dirt road a short distance under I-35 and find a locked gate on the other side. However, I’m told riders have found the gate open rather often, now that maintenance crews have to access the spotters towers farther down. That’s how I found it today and rode the dirt road all around behind the as-yet unfinished American Indian Cultural Center and Museum (often referred to unofficially as the Heritage Center). This is pretty much what you might see because not much has been done in two years.OKCRegatta

Eagle Lake Trail

This dirt road runs right into the new Eagle Lake Trail, so we get a free bonus. It drops under Eastern Avenue and stays relatively close to the south bank of the North Canadian. Near the lake you get to run a large loop under a bridge and around to cross it over the substantial Crooked Oak Creek. If you look at the maps, you’ll see it’s just a couple of miles along the trail to Eagle Lake, a very old oxbow lake that officials reinforced with a huge dike for recreational use. It’s in the far northwest corner of Del City, and pretty ordinary as lakes go.

This was reasonably close, just a half-mile, from where I started the Grand Boulevard Trail, so it was a nice clean finish to the exploratory portion of the ride. The main entrance to Eagle Lake is on Reno right near Scott Street where I could easily drop back down to the Tinker Diagonal. Aside from taking a slightly different route avoiding the main thoroughfares, it looked to be a pretty boring and hot ten miles home, but I was waylaid for a birthday luncheon at the Chili’s in that huge shopping area outside Tinker. It provided a good rest and respite for the final six miles home.

In all, about five hours riding time to cover a little over 40 miles.

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Compsec: Proof of What We Suspected

Posted on June 23, 2015 by ehurst

Maybe I was a little slow, but at some point I realized that digital security never was, for the most part.

We who work or play in the field of computer security (CompSec) have been trading stories of government intrusion into everything digital. While there is plenty of legend and silly speculation, it’s not paranoia if you see actual evidence. For example, while repairing a used computer someone got third hand, my friend and I encountered a section of wire with a chip inline that he recognized as a short-range transmitter. He showed me the reference numbers on the chip compared against a list of standard electronics parts numbers to prove he was justified in being so animated about this discovery. It had no legitimate computing function. What do you tell the owner? If they believe your report, you gain respect and trust. If not, you become marginalized as a kook. Then again maybe it’s a trap for you, the repairman.

You have to be a little nutty to get involved in computer stuff in the first place. But enough of us faced various forms of harassment from various levels of government that we never trusted anyone without a long informal probation of sorts. The same goes for too many companies involved in computer manufacture, but we reserved our greatest distrust for anyone making money from software. Not in the sense of malicious intent — such as we might expect from government agents — but because the profit motive made folks sloppy. We did place a little hope in security software makers, but no real trust.

While none of us are surprised by reports like this, we are entertained by the back-n-forth verbal shots between spokesmen for government and security software vendors. You learn to suspect that government espionage is like that, but it’s almost worth crowing over such specific revelations as this article offers. Granted, I still believe The Intercept is hiding something themselves, but that’s another story. The point is, this much is documented and we have no reason to doubt what they chose to reveal.

Thus, the recent announcement from Kaspersky about Duqu 2.0 found on their servers is just another exchange of virtual gunfire. It’s hardly new, just another incident in the long term war, and you can be sure we aren’t getting the whole story. At the very least, we learn that you are really very lucky if you can just keep using your own computer for your limited purposes.

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Laugh or Not?

Posted on June 22, 2015 by ehurst

It’s blasphemy.

Having a sense of humor is a universal human trait, but so is shame. Thus, what we find funny may be highly influenced by culture, but it will always be moderated through our individual personality. Most of us fail to notice that human personality is contextual in itself, so that humor of the moment tends to vary. However, the last thing you want to do is try to squelch someone else’s sense of humor. It can be godly to help someone who falls under your dominion, to help people be more conscious about internal processes, but there is precious little you can do in shaping the outcomes without violating morality itself.

Go ahead and laugh. While it’s obvious Maher attempts to counteract a very ugly, intolerant social trend, his own choice is intolerant in a different sense. Quite literally, wars get started over much lesser concerns than that. That Maher feels a need to engage the issue shows we have a major cultural flaw, but the flaw lurks in the dialog itself. We can’t even call it feminism or Victorian sensibilities, but those influences are present in the problem. This video clip is one nanny scolding another. You can laugh at his presentation within the context, but if you actually belong to any part of this, that’s very sad.

The whole thing is an artifact of a dying, demonic and damned culture that just happens to rule over most of humanity right now. This thing has been pushed upon humanity with a bloodthirsty arrogance that is hard to grasp. The level of absorption varies across the globe, but it’s presence is undeniable. You cannot stand within this tradition and pretend to judge the results of it. You cannot pretend your particular version is the proper human default. Yet the jokes Maher uses themselves reflect that kind of arrogance.

And it’s okay, in that sense. The sin is not in finding this funny, but in belonging to the context itself. To follow Christ means withdrawing from this very worldly frame of reference, not arguing with it. This is highly contextual and culturally based humor. What makes us laugh is fundamentally contextual, because humor itself is nearly impossible to define. It’s a human response to a context. Step into that world just far enough to laugh, but realize it’s not your home. Don’t be confined by it.

Rather, try to understand how this video clip represents a very thin slice, a highly contextual manifestation of something much bigger. Those of us comfortable with being human, who are somewhat aware of our foibles and willing to live with it, are the ones most likely to have the freedom to laugh about some things in life, at least. It’s people who don’t laugh that are sick, twisted and perverted.

Within this broader expectation, we do find that most people who have the internal freedom to laugh will tend to exhibit a signature, a fairly consistent character to what they find funny. The one real immorality here is when people are offended at the expressed humor of another. Apparently that internal freedom is highly conditional in most of humanity, because the impulse to take offense at things others find funny, and in particular offense that they find it funny, reflects the internal mechanism of idolatry. It’s an attempt to demand control of things God placed under no human authority.

In that sense, taking offense at the laughter of another is blasphemy.

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Moral Clarity Cannot Be Objective

Posted on June 21, 2015 by ehurst

If you can understand the Ancient Near Eastern intellectual context of the Bible, then you easily realize that the Scripture aims to present God’s moral character. That it may also reveal a little about history and other types of data that humans tend to consider far more important is accidental. The Bible is not about facts and history. It is about the character of God, in the packaging God chose to reveal Himself.

A critical element in this revelation is the packaging. We are obliged to approach Him on His terms. He demands that we take the time to shed our intellectual and cultural biases. Not so we can pretend we are objective about this, but He demands that we embrace the cultural and intellectual background He designed for the purpose. Not every detail of that cultural and historical packaging, but we are commanded to make some effort to discern what matters. I assure you most humans today are not taking this challenge seriously. There is a pernicious tendency to assume our current cultural packaging is good, right, essential. We suffer a complete lack of comprehension that ours is unfit for understanding God’s moral character. The cultural context in which we live militantly denies such a possibility, so we end up with people insisting God has to meet them on their terms.

Sometimes we have to stop and point this out. Not just in my writing, but in my meat-space conversations, one of my favorite shock lines to get things out in the open is something like this: No on on this earth has any business ruling your life unless they are first related to you by blood or marriage. This is little more than a restatement of God’s moral laws. Most people can’t even imagine a world like that, and keep reading such a social and political context out of Scripture by reading their own secular Nation-State context back into it. Folks, the Treaty of Westphalia did not come from the Bible. That historical document represents the fundamental end of allowing people to obey God on this point. The treaty was not about self-determination of people, but asserted as orthodoxy the right of various plutocrat authorities to ignore tribal family government outside of their own ruling families.

In effect, all persons residing within the borders of some arbitrary territory became slaves of the ruling clique. The pretense was some idealized objective rule of law, but laws have to be enforced by people, and the people who have the power are the ones who decide what the law means and how it should be enforced. The residents were no long members of a family, but were subject to the interfering whims of some wholly unrelated and hostile bunch of folks who could not and would not suffer any accountability to God on the matter. They simply cut through all the inconveniences God designed to frustrate oppression. This is part of what the Tower of Babel was all about; God broke up centralized authority by making it nearly impossible for that context. It was a signal, which signal mankind has consistently rejected ever since. (We are headed for another round of God teaching the lesson, another experience of “Babylon is fallen!”)

You’ll notice how everything you read universally excoriates as wholly and utterly immoral the natural human instinct to cling to our mutually unintelligible languages and customs. Yet such “parochialism” is precisely what God commanded of the human race. Try telling that one in your next church gathering.

This is the background for understanding what God says is good, right and just in this fallen world. Not that we become political activists to demand our “right” to live in tribal communities, but that we develop so much of that as the context allows by creating a virtual clan in forming our churches. A church is fundamentally a household bound by covenant, by a shared spiritual DNA in Christ’s blood. In the Bible, covenant commitments took precedence over literal blood ties, though ideally they would coincide. On this earth we are bound first and foremost to our covenant with Christ, then with those who share that commitment. Yes, we vary our cooperation based on a thousand human factors, because the issue is not control in the first place, but communion and seeking God’s calling. We fully expect our world to be hostile. Worse, we also have a vast ocean of those who somehow still claim Christ while rejecting just about everything He taught.

It’s complex. Now let me recommend, if you have time for a relatively long read, a speech by Paul Craig Roberts. You would have to know this man does not share much of what I wrote above. Still, he offers some useful insights from within his own context. Being a fallen human, same as the rest of us, he carries a load of bias for which he will answer to God in due time. We recognize the very fact of bias itself and go into reading anything like this with a measure of cynical distrust. I suppose he would understand that on some level himself, but this is what caught my attention from the article:

Paul Wolfowitz, a leading neoconservative, penned the Wolfowitz Doctrine… Notice that Washington’s “first objective” is not peace, not prosperity, not human rights, not democracy, not justice. Washington’s “first objective” is world hegemony….

Washington’s position is not negotiable. Washington has no interest in compromising with Russia or China. Washington has no interest in any facts. Washington’s deal is this: “You can be part of our world order as our vassals, but not otherwise.”

Perhaps the statement is not so shocking in itself but it’s how Roberts brings us to that bottom line, offering documentation that bluntly states this as the truth. So you can ignore all the sweet sounding junk that newsreaders and loyal journalists tell you about US national goals in this world. It’s bullshit. Roberts goes on to show how the bankers find this policy consistent with their own dreams of global domination.

He also tries to whip on liberals and slings the neocon label around, but don’t be fooled. A lot of other labels would fit just as well. The plutocrats at the top are people and they are people who want money and power, and the issue is not their identity but their identifiable plans and goals. Calling this or that person a neocon is not a matter of some personal devotion to the philosophy, but the net result of their actions. Put them under pressure and few of them would cling to anything except their own personal interests.

This is, of course, the fundamental lie behind claims of objective reasoning as the driving force. Objective Truth is the false god of the Western world, a world that vehemently denies there is anything beyond this realm of existence. Because our loyalty is outside the human realm, we will find ourselves accused of the same moral weakness and lack of commitment to principle because most of the world presumes that morality is a matter of objective truth. As is frequently stated here, that is the single biggest lie that binds humanity today.

Morality is the Person of God Himself, dynamic and personal in nature.

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Psalm 55

Posted on June 20, 2015 by ehurst

Echoing similar thoughts to Psalm 41 and regardless of the specific context in David’s mind, this psalm best fits the betrayal of Ahitophel, David’s trusted adviser, during Absalom’s Revolt. Even in this, we should not read Western cultural meaning back into this song. David is not whining about some mere personal misfortune or political upset. He was always willing to surrender his throne at God’s command, and was fully aware when certain situations were the result of his own sin. Such had no bearing on the nature of this complaint.

Given the broader context of what we know of Ahitophel, we could suggest he was playing David for a sucker the whole time. He pretended to be a man after the king’s own heart, but it seems likely he was secretly advising Absalom, too. The moral implication is not that Ahitophel merely hedged his bets, but David makes him out the kind of man who preyed on him by deceit, doing his best to get David to spill his guts. Thus, few men could better estimate what David might do.

The opening is a grandly eloquent protocol of calling upon one’s feudal lord. While it was common enough for hucksters in the Ancient Near East to pour it on thick for trifles, they were typically obvious to anyone. There is nothing fake or routine here. Under the Lord’s jurisdiction, one is besieging another unjustly, and only the sovereign can understand the heart of the matter well enough to act.

David asks if the Lord would rather get him out of the way for awhile. He’s quite willing to leave behind everything and go back to his simple life on the run during the reign of Saul. When he asks God to frustrate the evil plot against him, this was consistent with what is recorded in David’s prayer regarding Ahitophel’s betrayal in 2 Samuel 15:31. He notes the violence in Jerusalem that followed, a vengeful and senseless slaughter that no man could justify before a living God.

Then he describes the alleged violator. God was a witness; all of this took place in the Presence of God Almighty, David reminds his Lord. Do not such people belong to Hell in the first place? So David requests God render them to the domain of Satan, the Eternal Jailer. But David insists that he will trust in God, not human talents or political maneuvering. God had never failed him in all his life. David lies prostrate before God, but men like Ahitophel never reverenced Him in the first place.

Then David lays out the details of his case against the traitor. Ahitophel enticed him to vulnerability, acting as a friend David willingly embraced and trusted. What a contrast to Jehovah! Don’t trust in men, but save your heart for God. He alone knows what is just and how to discern the hearts of men.

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Crack That Whip!

Posted on June 19, 2015 by ehurst

Ever read that part in the Gospels about Jesus Cleansing the Temple?

Wikipedia editors show their ignorance by leaving out the background stuff found in even the cheapest Bible commentaries. There was some ambiguity in the minds of the Temple officials on hand that day. Was this troublemaker pretending to be another tiresome prophetic reformer, was it a partisan political act, or did he have some warrant from a government authority? Even among the Jews there was a very complicated political wrangling at the best of times. On top of that, Rome, Herod and the Sanhedrin each exercised some overlapping legal power there, and it was possible on-duty officials hadn’t gotten the memo.

Their question to Jesus was pretty standard, with guards forming around Him in preparation for arrest if He said the wrong thing, along with various partisan activists ready to defend Him if He said the right thing. He had disturbed the concessions licensed by Annas. You probably know that Annas (AKA Ananias) was not a nice guy, but the Bible colors him as a greedy and hateful SOB. He was first and foremost a politician, and even the little we know of him is pretty complicated. A Roman official had appointed him High Priest around age 26; he was deposed a decade later, yet remained fully in power without the title. He’s still exercising that power more than a decade later when Jesus comes on the scene. The Temple concessions were very unpopular with its outrageously inflated prices, so Jesus was hardly the first fellow to do something like this.

Can you imagine? If you brought your offering from wherever you called home — wherever it was faithful Jewish folks had migrated — your sacrifice might not pass inspection. So you brought money, but you have to exchange it for the Temple currency. Well, guess who had the only big supply of that sacred Temple coinage? Exchanged at a premium, of course. And even if you did manage to bring your perfect offering intact, the inspecting priests were in on this deal, and would reject it because it wasn’t purchased in the Temple bazaar. Meanwhile, you might easily pay ten times what it lawfully cost otherwise.

But Jesus’ point was pretty simple: This bazaar took over the Court of Gentiles and there was no room for non-Jews to approach Jehovah during the holiest celebration of all. How do we explain what an abomination this was? It’s a long list of violations against the Covenant Law, not to mention a spiteful rejection of the underlying purpose for the Covenant in the first place. Israel the Nation existed solely to manifest Israel the Mission — to convey the revelation of God to all mankind. At this point, there was very little of Israel’s existence that was not blasphemous, especially things like this bazaar.

Use your heart logic to abstract the moral fabric here: A materialistic orientation is inherently evil. There is a lot of room for doing what’s right in God’s eyes outside the realm of ritual and worship. However, Westerners build on an assumption about reality that is fundamentally hostile to morality. Westerners vary widely on moral issues as they see them, but the entire discussion and debate starts on the grounds of rejecting everything God revealed. Western Civilization itself is inherently immoral because it is inherently materialistic. Westerners can’t even define the term “materialism” properly.

So I don’t expect anyone to understand my moral grousing so long as they remain within the Western realm of thinking. I fully expect my explanations to fall flat with them. Yet the Truth of God’s revelation calls to a few of them and they feel drawn on a level they refuse to admit to themselves even exists.

Let me offer an example: By now you probably understand that the most ethical and “moral” marketing folks are unspeakably repulsive. We have no calling to make war against them, but there comes a point where they are intruding on our dominion of authority from Heaven and we can crack the Jesus Whip. A critical part of my dominion covers discussion of computer technology and Internet surfing. I’m cracking the whip.

I’ve already warned you that Google is not your friend. Recently I learned that there is new module built into Google Chrome browser. Ostensibly they sell it as a convenience: You can use voice-activated Google Search. Isn’t that cool? You don’t have a choice; it’s there. The developers claim this module can be deactivated, but the source code is not available, and I’m pretty sure they’ve been ordered to lie about it. This module can turn on any existing microphone on the system so long as Chrome is running, and pick up any ambient noise. How often have other companies lied about how that stuff is used?

If that’s not bad enough, they slipped this module into the Open Source version of the browser called Chromium, very popular among us Linux users. Recently there were some ugly words between Linux folks and the Google developers because the latter had Chromium secretly download and install this module on Linux computers, too. Someone with technical savvy caught it and complained. Google developers had slipped this past everyone, and were miffed at the reaction when they got caught. It’s been fixed, but it’s just a new source of tension and everyone already has too many other things requiring strict attention.

Your biggest threat is not government snooping into your privacy. It’s a mighty struggle to avoid being snooped on all sides, including every two-bit operation that can make a dollar through advertising. On top of this is the doors it opens to genuine criminals. The marketers are psychopathic about it, utterly lacking in any sense of empathy for your feelings on the issue. They might well be aware and savvy about avoiding telling you, but if they claim to care, it’s a psychopath’s lie. On top of this, these same folks will not hesitate to sell any data they collect to any government that will pay, never mind warrants, etc. We are not dealing with ordinary folks here; they live in some alternate universe, utterly alien to you and me. In moral terms they are off the scale on the nasty side.

Crack the Jesus Whip and refuse to play along.

I won’t take up the space here to list and explain all the ways you can protect your privacy from such snooping. I’ve done that often enough in previous posts and in my books about computers. My point is that a lot of things you never bother to think about can actively interfere with our divine calling. Don’t grab hold of this out of fear, but out of righteous indignation that someone would dare to defy your God. Make sure you understand what He demands of you; search your heart in reference to these issues. Ask questions until you find peace with God.

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Serene to the End: Apostle John

Posted on June 18, 2015 by ehurst

Mainstream scholars are pretty sure John published the Apocalypse around 95 AD. Given what we know of the man, it’s a fair bet most of it was already burned into his awareness at least two decades before. Keep in mind, this fellow was the cousin of Jesus, perhaps 10 or even 15 years younger, and easily His closest and dearest friend on earth. If anyone knew the Mind of Christ, it was John.

They shared the boyhood home of Galilee. John’s family was involved in fishing the sea, while Jesus was raised some distance away because his earthly father appeared to have been employed on a major construction project some 15 miles west of the sea in Sepphoris. Coming back from Egypt, and being warned by God to avoid their old home in Bethlehem, it was probably the most obvious choice for Joseph at the time. Government proclamations no doubt advertised for skilled tradesmen on such big projects as renovating whole cities like Sepphoris. The project took decades and we can safely imagine Jesus worked there with Joseph. From what Jesus said as recorded in the Gospels, He knew more about stone-masonry than just about any other work. But it was obvious that both Jesus and John were familiar with fishing and construction, as well as many other common occupations among Judean peasants.

There is also no doubt both men had devoted considerable time to synagogue studies. Every Jewish boy had the option of pursuing more than was necessary for the Bar Mitzvah, and the rabbis would be holding advanced classes to attract bright minds. We have direct evidence Jesus pursued this (Luke 2:41-50). It’s hard to imagine he didn’t influence His cousin John in the same direction. And both would have been exposed to all the controversies commonly discussed in the rabbinical schools.

Surviving records indicate the various factions in Jewish scholarship included some who made it a point to reject the Hellenism which served as the foundation for Pharisaism. We don’t have a modern equivalent of the Sadducees; they were the remnant of heavy Persian and Babylonian influences producing a highly cynical, almost secularized version of Jewish religion. It was highly pragmatic in that Ancient Near Eastern sense that Westerners struggle to grasp. Oddly, they were almost entirely priests. But there were other, smaller and less organized schools of thought. Some were quite conservative in the sense of directly opposing Greek styled logical analysis. However, such opposition is somewhat less than obvious to us because they used their own ancient Hebrew approach in opposing it. If you had a good grasp of Ancient Near Eastern intellectual assumptions, you would more readily recognize the opposition and it’s forms of argument in the way Jesus debated with the Pharisees.

We could say that, in essence, Jesus was the last and best representative of that Hebraic opposition to Pharisaism. In human terms, He lost the war. They killed Him and drove His disciples underground, and their dominant brand long outlived their other competitors in Jewish leadership. What we today know of as Judaism is essentially Pharisaism, with not a trace of any of the other sects from those times.

We have no doubt John was right there in the thick of things intellectually. You can bet Jesus had to know some Greek and probably used it when necessary, but it is John who finds the need to actually write in it. His Greek is accurate, but he seems to have little of Paul’s native grasp of it, for example. Instead, John’s writing is often characterized as “good schoolboy Greek.” While the New Testament was published in Greek, it is loaded with ancient Hebrew thinking. John’s was the quintessential deep philosophical mind simply stated in easy grammar.

He stands alone in how he broaches the conflict with a typical range of Eastern strategies. It is a mixture that includes frequent sarcasm by using the same argument forms to say something different, even objectionable in Greek philosophy. In essence, he treats Hellenism as the smart-mouthed young punk who really doesn’t understand what he opposes, except purely in his own terms. John understood Hellenism, but Hellenists couldn’t understand him too well. He saw too clearly where this was going.

The first foreign missionary team included Paul, who was also in a unique position to understand this conflict because he started out as a devoted Pharisee, a rising star in leadership training. He got his PhD, as it were, before he even shows up on the radar. But once humbled on the Damascus Road, he then had to make up the years of time he missed by not following Jesus prior to the crucifixion. Eventually he understood the necessity of opposing Hellenism, and he did so as a former insider. His letters are filled with references to particular issues that represent that conflict. And we catch a whiff of the other Apostles involved in the same battles, along with other strong minds that came after them.

But John was the last man standing who knew Jesus, and of all humans, probably knew Him best in that sense. From what I’ve read of the scholars who knew John personally, it seems they lacked his full awareness of the cultural conflict inherent in following Christ. We know how Paul very early faced the Judaizers, among other problems. He knew exactly what to expect and still struggled to counteract their teachings. That’s in part because the ancient Hebrew way is based on voluntary recognition. That is, it assumes God alone turns a human heart to the truth, and that it was not a matter of convincing someone with arguments. Genuine faith is not cerebral, but comes from an awakened heart that must overrule the mind, removing the intellect from the throne of human decision.

Judean Christians were understandably reluctant to leave their homeland. But when historical events drove them out (as Jesus warned it would in Matthew 24-25), some gravitated to the existing large Christian population in Syrian Antioch. However, Ephesus became the other center, and John quickly became the central figure. His major problem was Gnosticism and related goofy heresies, like Nicolaitans. Oddly, these troubling teachings used the same tools as the Judaizers, trying to drag Christian religion down to a more cerebral level, then attacking the ideas with forms of logic that excluded the truth.

The Apocalypse sees this coming, and appearing to win in human terms. John describes a spooky vision of all humanity gathered against the Lord’s truth. At least three times this battle crescendos and God works the same sort of wrath in the same sequence in all three cycles. Only the flavor and extremity changes with each cycle. In terms of Hebrew symbolic logic, it’s repetition that says something in itself: Human opposition is of the same essence no matter what shape it takes, and God answers accordingly when it comes time to crush it. And you get the distinct sense that those who remain faithful never seem to number very high as a proportion, regardless how you interpret the numerical symbols.

That is, the human representation of the ancient Hebrew truth among followers of Christ won’t ever represent a political force, in part because they keep leaving this human plane of existence. Dying in faith is a critical part of the message God brings to the world to help a relative few cross over into faith in each generation.

John was entirely cynical about the extant church as a human institution. He calls it the Harlot at one point. Yet he knew the witness of true believers would never be silenced entirely. So it is the Harlot that insists the end represents a political battle because she wants to ride the Beast. You can see that Hebrew sarcastic smirk on John’s face as he sees the truth escaping her clutches time and time again. Nature itself refuses to let the message go silent.

Yes, a final End of Time is coming, but our part in this never changes. What we face today is Western Civilization, related to, but not exactly the same as John’s big problem of Hellenism. Both simply represent the vast, organized resistance to the Gospel truth of Jesus Christ. In the end, we win.

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Church of the CIA

Posted on June 18, 2015 by ehurst

Yep, it’s a nifty click-bait title. Actually it’s much more subtle than that, and I’ll do my best to explain what I see.

The folks who actually hold the effective reins of power in this world don’t care who wins the wars, so long as the wars continue. It won’t matter what we suppose the particular plans to be, because that isn’t likely to have much effect on what God wants from you and I. Rather, we can characterize the net result of what these plutocrats do. However, we can generalize plans and motives as the obvious lust for worldly wealth and power. These folks feel entitled to it, and have no problem with using us as toys and tools to get those things. It’s not too hard to understand the dehumanizing influence of self-indulgence; we see it daily on a much smaller scale.

So the recent trends in recorded history have taught these plutocrats that constant warfare is the single optimum plan for getting what they want. Whatever vision they pursue, whatever god they serve, it boils down to the keeping war alive and making sure they aren’t the ones having to fight and die.

Further, the religion taught here on this blog (Radix Fidem) assumes God is still the Master of Creation and all of this stuff is really His problem. He has not called a one of us to be directly involved, and if you try to understand how His Son did things from the proper context of God’s wider revelation, you realize His Son said it was not His concern, either. We don’t fix this world; we let it follow the course God has established and maintains for fools who reject His truth. Getting involved in political activism is a rejection of His calling on us. But the Son definitely warned us to pay attention and be aware as much as the Father allows us to see what’s going on — wise as serpents and harmless as doves is the symbolic image He used.

On my way to reaching this sense of understanding, I committed myself to lots of things that others had told me were the revelation of God. Among those things was serving in the US Army and striving to serve as pastor in any of a number of Southern Baptist churches (for the most part). I was exposed to a lot of stuff that served as both a filter and gateway to serving among the elite of each different context where I endeavored to serve. Seems folks who considered themselves the elite sometimes thought I was a good candidate for their imaginary elite-ness. However, there was always this same underlying theme blending together religion and warfare. I was supposed to have an unquestioned conviction that this was God’s will.

As I look back on those many influences trying to drive me into that folly, I see some interesting threads. Way back during the Cold War, when communism was still the Big Bogeyman of the day, there was already a thread at work to replace it, a new team forming in the locker room. The plutocrats could see that their construct — the “Communist Threat” — was already dying as far as their uses were concerned, and it was past time to come up with the new one. So among the most serious scholarly commentary among my co-religionists from those days came warnings that the next big serious threat to life, liberty and the gospel was Islam. While you can find that kind of ominous preaching going way back in Church History, this was something different. It was written as propaganda, some knowingly so. The upper ranks of church commentariat had been infiltrated by the CIA. Meanwhile, the rest of the CIA and friends were doing their best to turn latent Islamic fervor into something that could be manipulated for their ends.

Maybe you’ve read studies or watched videos that explained how the CIA trained and guided those who tortured serious Islamic scholars in various countries, for instance. Maybe you know that Islam has long been divided between two major partisan branches, with several rather substantial sub-branches and so forth. It’s not so much that I pretend the CIA simply created terrorist tendencies ex nihilo, but that they managed to steer some of the natural tendencies until we now have a fairly powerful treat from a particular kind of Islamic fervor. Whether that fervor is inherent in Islam is not the point; the CIA and various cooperating agencies are making sure that fervor is well armed and supplied with the means to cause trouble.

I could never tell this to my former associates among the Southern Baptists or US military. This is contrary to their orthodoxy. Why, who could imagine the US government’s own agents would try to kill our troops? Yes, Western intelligence operatives have been caught dressed in Arabic garb and car bombs headed toward Western military positions. Yes, lots of folks who escaped the system and had very interesting stories to tell managed to die or disappear in highly questionable circumstances. None of that is insider information; you can hunt it down among sources you may or may not trust.

I can’t begin to outline how many layers and types of useful idiots there are between us ordinary folks and the plutocrats, but it’s a really big problem that they keep blinding most of humanity. Instead, I’ll warn you not to take the bait and promote the idea the ISIS is anything but a Western intelligence psychological warfare operation writ large. Keep your eye out for threats from folks who claim Islam as the excuse for making trouble, but don’t buy the hype.

Nor is this really just a warning about the CIA. You can find servants of the various brands of plutocrat propaganda in just about every existing agency because they’ve worked so hard to infiltrate everything. If it’s organized enough to have a budget, it’s probably compromised. You do know, I suppose, that there is just as much controlled opposition on all sides of this noisy clamor? The peaceniks are corralled into pointless activism — pointless in the sense it could never possibly change anything the plutocrats do. It won’t matter how many true believers you have in each of the various activist groups and movements, because someone in the group will always make sure it stays on track.

This is a good enough reason to refuse organization as we know it, but that’s not the full reason Radix Fidem rejects it. First, all of this organization is every kind man can imagine, but none of it organizes as God intended, not as God wired us in Creation. Second, the only way to get moving in the right direction is to start from a radical individual redemption that pulls you totally out of what exists now. We don’t just reject some elements of Western religion; we reject the whole of Western Civilization. That’s a tall order. Even when you get far enough along to understand how to do it right, you’ll likely find yourself isolated — no one to organize but you. Maybe your own immediate family can move in that direction, and that’s truly a blessing, but finding others to extend that organic structure is quite rare.

This is not our time. Maybe soon God will move us that way, but not yet. Meanwhile, there’s a literal sense in which we could say: I’ll be damned if I join a church run by the CIA.

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