No Cookie Cutter

Posted on January 18, 2015 by ehurst

There’s nothing wrong with adding some entertainment value to your worship. However, when entertainment is the only thing happening, we have a problem. This is was my primary complaint with Life Church and a few other religious institutions I’ve experienced. The emotion and entertainment factor was the whole thing; Jesus was just a paint job on the outside.

In our home worship this morning, we decided to use our tablets for Bible display. We were using the YouVersion app from Life Church. Picture this: Using a tablet and talking about the text, you have to touch the screen periodically to keep the tablet from going to sleep on you. That’s how they work. There is virtually no place on the screen you can touch it while that Bible application is running, without the display morphing. It jumps to another chapter, opens some function that obscures the text, or does some other crazy shit — anything except simply display the text of Scripture for simple reading. That’s how Life Church is about religion altogether. It’s not about Christ and His Word, but keeping you too busy to notice what He really says.

In any given church you can attend today, the majority will simply sit still until you script some kind of movement. You can get them to stand and sing, even raise their hands and shout a little. You cannot really get them involved, judging by the lament of most church leaders. What they don’t tell you is that the activity they want from the folks is rather constrained. Pastor Craig at Life Church is nothing like those other church leaders. He plays to the crowd in this respect. His script takes advantage of this TV generation culture of indolence. The last thing he wants is for any of the members trying to actually do religion. They are supposed to absorb the stream of religion he pours out on them, along with his hand-picked staff, but God forbid that anyone rise up from the membership and actually try to express their gifts of the Spirit. He can’t script for that, so he simply structures things to prevent it. His anointed leaders spend a significant amount of time and effort squelching independence.

And Pastor Craig is simply the best at doing this, but he’s far from alone in striving to operate that way. This is the new wave of mega-church growth. The people are there to be conditioned and herded, but not allowed to actually be individuals. Don’t ever let them depart from the script. If that’s not bad enough, such leadership as he offers is a form of herding that is utterly foreign to Scripture. It’s passive faith with just enough enthusiasm to play cheerleader.

Here’s what your pastor here at Kiln of the Soul wants: Take your own lead. Don’t hand me the reins. Let me tell you a little about what I’ve experienced with Christ, then you get your own experience and do things as only you and He can decide.

Maybe it doesn’t bleed over in the verbiage I splash out on this page, but I am so excited about what God has revealed to me about the future of our meat-space mission that I can hardly contain myself. Two or three times every day I go out and stroll where I can talk out loud to God and not creep folks out. One of the things I keep praying is that we bring back to this world a powerful influence for spiritual and moral freedom. No human is more free than when he/she stands in the power of the Lord. No human is more powerful than one who embraces His moral character and lives His glory. That’s what it means to rule and reign on His behalf.

No other religious organization I know is doing this. So far, none of them even make room for it in their work. So we are starting something fresh, something that departs from the predictable flavors you might know. We aren’t selling something “better than the rest,” but we are surely doing something different, very different. We have found a path that is just too sweet to keep a secret. We want everyone to experience it, but we know better than to think it has to be on our terms. So I want you to experience the power yourself and run off in whatever direction it leads you. I don’t care about numbers, facilities and money; tell me about the power of the Spirit to remake your life. Tell me how He works through you in your own daily ministry, because if you don’t have a ministry, you don’t have the Spirit.

Now that doesn’t mean you have to create a tax-free foundation and program of outreach. It means you have your own way of living His power for others to see, something in which your heart connects as a sensory organ back into the rest of His Creation. Don’t tell me how well you mimic what I do. Tell me how God works in your life differently. We use His power to influence people and break them free from constraints, not trade one set of controls for another.

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Psalm 33

Posted on January 17, 2015 by ehurst

The glory and greatness of Our Creator is self-manifest. He needs no praise and honor. Worshiping God is simply in our own best interest. His glory is, but He allows us to enter into that glory as the place where all the good that we can have in this life is found.

We need to keep in mind that David is not mindless about referring to his nation as always good and right. Rather, the people of God are people of good morals, regardless of their national identity. However, the people of Israel have no excuse for being moral fools. David knew he was surrounded by shysters and manipulators, schemers of every sort. In some of these psalms, he calls to people to just give it a try, give the Lord honest praise. Never mind how you feel, do the right thing. Giving praise and honor to Jehovah is the right thing for its own sake. Shout, sing, play that music. If you aren’t happy with the tired hold hymns of the past, do what David does and write a new song to fit the occasion.

You can detect a hint of something with which most of humanity has struggled since the Garden of Eden: There is no standard by which to evaluate God. He exceeds everything because He made it all; He is the standard Himself. How do you dispute with the One who made all things? He reads your heart even if you have no clue what’s in it. Give Him a chance and He can renovate it into something worthy beyond words.

Yes, you can see an army and it’s power. You can ride a horse into battle, feel that massive power under you, and see the enemy run to escape. You cannot see God. But He made the horse and no army can touch Him. Just because you personally didn’t witness His deliverance at the sea crossing in Egypt, or any of the mighty miracles that destroyed nations and armies before Israel since that defining moment, doesn’t mean He isn’t watching your every move, every thought, and your dreams in the night. He doesn’t operate on your scale until you open the door to Him. Don’t wait for a crisis. Don’t invite trouble; turn to Him and worship Him when things are going well because they are going well.

Let’s stand with David who regards himself but a lowly attendant in the courts of God.

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Tribulation Reminder

Posted on January 17, 2015 by ehurst

From time to time, I try to remind myself and my readers that we are in a tribulation period. I use the term “tribulation” to refer to general suffering that most of us can feel directly, and which is clearly connected to God’s hand of moral justice bringing wrath on sin. This seems to match the biblical image of tribulation.

The problem we run into is that most folks grasp on some level that tribulation is a call for purity, but they have a big problem understanding purity. Replacing the false image of purity built into our Western society is a major element of this blog. Most people tend to think of Spartan discipline and living in fear and readiness for fight-or-flight. That’s not what the Apostle John counseled. When you read between the lines, what he said was that we should simplify our lives.

That is, instead of digging into “prepper” mode, we step back and reassess to make sure we are on the right path at the fundamental level of existence. Are we focused on glorifying the Father? Do we understand the power of moral consciousness and how that is the primary expression of His glory in our lives? Can we remember that nothing in Creation is more precious than His revelation of moral character? Yes, we batten the hatches, but when the ship starts to pitch and sway, we should learn to dance on the heaving deck, not strap ourselves in a cage to hide from imaginary shifting cargo. It’s a call to be more competent morally.

Show the world some grace; don’t be lazy. Tribulation is the time to be ready for a little extra sacrifice and patience with panicky sheep or children. Both children and sheep have a tendency to be distracted until the last moment when it’s probably too late to take action against threats. Don’t spook them and make it worse, but calmly begin moving in the right direction and hope they follow. You can still be calm and playful the whole way, because we live in celebration of Our Lord’s goodness. Our celebration has a purpose other than getting stoned.

Don’t ignore what’s really going on, but don’t listen to lies about it. For example, I consider Paul Roberts closer to the facts than most other commentators you might encounter. No, I’m not a fan of his; I don’t care for him at all, but this time he has a fair grasp of the facts that matter. As long as he doesn’t yak it up about political remedies, his assessments aren’t too bad. (Okay, I’ll tell you that the webmaster on his site is a flaming asshole, proving that Roberts doesn’t understand everything.) But my point is that the modern world has painted itself into a corner and the corner is on fire. This is tribulation.

I’ll also tell you that the Internet isn’t going anywhere. It will change, assuredly, but it tends to be like fire in effect, at least as far as TPTB are concerned. The oligarchs cannot operate without it. Unfortunately for them, it’s also not fully in their control, nor will it ever be. The people who make the Internet possible will not be ruled completely. No matter what the oligarchs demand, no one can stop the hackers from putting in their own back doors to retain access on their own terms. Hackers are rather like fire in this respect: You gotta have it but you can’t just make it do what you want. You have to take what it gives and keep your arrogance in check. They can’t be bought off because they serve the gods of computation.

So there will be outages of service in areas at various times, but I seriously doubt the network will ever simply go away. The same can be said for a lot of other life-support issues. The pragmatic answer to tribulation is reduce your footprint and be ready to travel light. You should already have a weak grip the things of this world. Be conscious how the things God has provided can be useful to His glory, but always be ready to find another way to do the same job. Don’t get locked into thinking everything you now have is utterly essential.

Otherwise, know that much of what you’ve been taught to believe about tribulation is wrong. A surprising number of folks around you will adapt out of self-preservation when things change suddenly. Most of the current infrastructure will still be there and humans have a reflex to keep doing what they were doing all along. The difference is that some of it won’t work because whatever they depended on stops coming. But it won’t be everything all at once. We don’t suddenly cease to be civilized.

Keep your eye on the mission of God’s glory. He always enables those who serve His glory.

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Prayer Request: A Sponsor

Posted on January 16, 2015 by ehurst

(This seems like a good time to test the new tablet keyboard; it makes using a tablet for blogging a sane operation.)

Your pastor has a more specific prayer request regarding the future of our mission here in meat space. As a reminder, we have been seeking the Lord’s face regarding how we might reach out to military folks. This has been the target audience to whom I have been called since earliest childhood memory. My mind wandered all over the place on ways this might happen because my heart had not yet settled on a particular path.

Over the past couple of days, the wandering has arrived at a place my mind can recognize. We are specifically praying for a sponsor of sorts, someone in the military or other government service who is driven to embrace our message and provide the entry into the broader military community.

My wife and I tend to believe this will bring with it a package of obvious changes but the biggest is our domicile. Granted, we live now just five miles from one of the largest air bases in the US (Tinker AFB). We need to be closer, so we are praying for the means to simply cede this mobile home to my son and his family. We are more than half way to paying it off, so it’s not an impossible dream.

We believe we will need to reside in a place large enough to host small worship gatherings, at least for a while. We will need the capability of entertaining seekers, and our current situation simply does not permit that.

There’s not much more we can pray about until we see some movement on these two issues. So in your prayer time, remember to ask for a sponsor and a change of residence appropriate for the mission.

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Ineffable, Inexplicable, Incomprehensible

Posted on January 16, 2015 by ehurst

Ineffable does not mean inexplicable.

Have you ever seen a cloud chamber? You create a sealed environment using a hardened glass cylinder and load the air inside with water or alcohol vapor to the point of super-saturation. It gets cloudy inside as the vapor is near the point of precipitation. Then, any source of energized particles near that chamber will cause visible tracks through the mist. However, random particles from nowhere will also zip through, often at very high velocity. It’s a great way of making folks aware that we are living in a world under constant bombardment of various energy particles that ionize and change our body chemistry. Thus, aging itself is partly a matter of long-term exposure to such ionizing particles. You would notice that on cloudy days there are fewer random particles, so it stands to reason folks who live in regions of the world that tend to be cloudy long and often would also tend to live longer with less aging effects.

That is, if you control for other factors in aging. We know that environmental pollutants can accelerate aging and cause a multitude of maladies arising from biochemical disturbances in your body. Particle physics is one thing, complicated enough when you recognize that something like quantum gravitational fluctuations can affect the results. Then there’s chemistry where isolating the elements and compounds under study can be hindered by any number of micro-contaminants. Washing your containers with the wrong stuff will destroy some tests. When you move to organic chemistry or biochemistry, where things are examined more or less in their natural state, the principle of isolating the inputs to an experiment is relative, at best. There are no instruments and testing procedures that can measure conclusively what mixture of pollutants cause what range of symptoms in the human body. Instead, we learn about influences and averages, etc. Medicine is mostly estimation based on amassing data that itself might be of questionable quality.

But the Western scientific community persists in assuming that they will one day probably get a handle on all the details. Think of Star Trek and the “tricorder” device that so precisely calculates all the variables down to the level of subatomic particles.

But nothing in our Western scientific approach allows for the biggest variable of all. Our Creator says unequivocally that He is in charge, and we will only discover what He wants us to know. Further, He said most firmly that He can remake things on-the-fly. But even more importantly, God has stated that there is a standing moral element in all such calculations. Human intelligence is unable to evaluate the full range of moral factors involved, and those moral factors have a greater effect than the sum total of mere mechanical factors that we can measure. That’s what the revelation of God says. If you leave out any consideration of moral factors, you will always have a serious failure rate when it comes to using whatever you imagine you learned through science.

Yes, I really see it that way. I’ve experienced it directly.

I can tell you about it, but unless you are open to such a different viewpoint of reality, it will be silly gibberish. However, such is the viewpoint of that vast majority of humanity over human history, and our brief flash of Western Civilization is the anomaly. You’d be shocked at the amount of information we Westerners have amassed on this subject, mostly because it’s contrary to the fundamental Western intellectual bias. It’s a major element in Western bias to deny that there is a bias, to assert that the Western bias is the human default.

When we preach the gospel message of Jesus Christ, and we ignore the Western bias, then we are preaching a gospel of demons. That’s because the gospel became perverted and polluted by Western assumptions about reality. The assumptions Jesus held in His human mind aren’t that hard to estimate, given what we already know about the times, people and their literature.

Do you understand what the Bible means by “perfection”? It’s not that God has some iron predetermined path based on immutable laws of quantum physics. He watches your heart as you move through your day, and interacts with you on a personal basis. That He does so outside of the intellectual capacity is what makes it difficult for us, because we kept expecting to “know” things about His will in the sense of factual details. That’s all wrong, horribly mistaken. His will is more flexible than that of any person you know. That doesn’t mean God is unpredictable; it means He is alive. He’s a Person, not some static body of objective truth with a human mask.

He reads your heart more than your mind. If your heart is constrained by Western biases, then it’s a pretty simple job to read it. If you embrace the ancient philosophical understanding of the sensory heart, then His response to you becomes far more complex.

While our minds notice a lag in God’s response most of the time, the heart does not measure in terms of time passing, but of currents and whether things are ripe. When something is complete in your soul, the door is closed and your heart turns to something else. If you aren’t used to such an approach, your mind will have no clue and His will — His interaction with you — is incomprehensible. If your mind makes room for moral factors, and you strive to understand revelation from that ancient Hebrew perspective, then you are far less troubled by changes in the flow of His will. The image of God’s will as some precise track visible only when you catch glimpses in a cloud chamber is all wrong, a perversion of the gospel message.

God is the One Person in your life who really knows you best. His will was never that precise in the first place. He is best understood as an Ancient Near Eastern feudal sheikh. You never know what He’s got in mind, but you know what He has said He wants from you. He operates according to His statements, not as propositions, but as personal notes on things you should be able to grasp in your heart, though less so in your mind. He’s ready for your variations, though clearly not as most of us tend to expect. Our social and cultural conditioning have really screwed us up when it comes to matters of faith. But God knows your heart even when you don’t, and that’s what He responds to.

Incomprehension is a state of mind, where the mind is determined to rule, instead of serve as God intended.

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Persistence

Posted on January 15, 2015 by ehurst

More clowning for you.

I’m not the sharpest guy. At least, not in the sense of being really quick. Sometimes my creativity will make it seem so, but I’m really not that fast. The honest truth is, if I haven’t rehearsed something in my head at least a couple of times, I can be caught off guard. I don’t learn really new stuff all that fast, but I do tend to learn well. Some things it takes me a while trying again and again.

So I am honestly not the fastest when it comes to figuring out this computer stuff. Most of my limited expertise is having done this stuff over and over and over. Sometimes it comes from getting burned a few times.

My bluetooth keyboard arrived. It won’t fit in the bag for my Android tablet, but it’s a real keyboard and I can touch-type on it without any trouble. If I expect to do any real work, I’ll drag that sucker around to make sure I can type with a measure of sanity. A writer has to write.

By the same token, I was very persistent in making the Android version of Vim work (“Vim Touch”). Once you’ve learned how to use Vim at all, you realize what a fine tool it was. I realize the keystrokes are bizarre, but they were chosen before the CUA Standards were formulated at IBM. Vim goes way back to the murky early Unix days. The version as it comes for Android is fine for coders, but for writers it takes some work, even if you already know how to use Vim.

Vim Touch is cranky at best. After installing it, you’ll need the runtimes package to go with it. My primary reason for that was to activate the spell checking. But you see, Vim Touch is pretty stupid. It comes with a blank .vimrc and you have to make sure you pedantically tell it every thing, making sure each item is on a separate line:

set spell
set spelllang=en
set nojoinspaces
set shiftwidth=3
set tabstop=3
set backspace=indent,eol,start
set whichwrap+=<,>,h,l
set incsearch
syntax on
set showcmd
set wrap
set linebreak
set breakat=\ ^I!@*-+;:,./?\(\[\{
set textwidth=0
set display=lastline
colorscheme koehler

Oh, but that’s not all. It ignores the business about spell checking unless, upon opening the first file, you specifically do the ESC and type in those two lines. Somehow that wakes it up. BTW, don’t hit the ESC key itself, but use the button in the top of the window interface. Otherwise, the thing closes on you.

You also just about have to shut down your device and restart it for Vim Touch to actually start using your new .vimrc, particularly in getting the soft wrapping on words correctly. Yes, you have to type that all in on the device itself, because the file system is hidden and you can’t just copy it over. Vim Touch won’t tell you where $HOME is because you can’t do anything with it anyway. In fact, I’m not sure how to tell it where I would like to have my saved spell check words because I can’t get Vim Touch to tell me how it reads the normal file system that I can see. So you can’t add words to your “spelldict”. But I get everything else working, and with the new keyboard, I can actually write stuff.

And my laptop didn’t work as well as I could have wished. Debian Jessie doesn’t implement suspend and hibernate properly for this machine. Nor could I get it to talk to my tablet at all. So I ran back through my options and decided to try Kubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit. It seems to be working fine. Of course, I had to go back and manually enable hibernate, because the Canonical guys are superstitious about it (or just plain stupid). It’s just an annoyance, but it reminds you that everything about computers sucks, while some things suck less and are tolerable.

I assure you that none of this is meant to recommend that you do what I do, or run what I run on my equipment. This is simply my story.

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Taking Turns at Serenity

Posted on January 14, 2015 by ehurst

We have to stand in line. We can’t expect priority treatment, all the more so because we simply don’t have a nifty marketing brand. Our biggest draw is our power to live.

You and I understand that we obey cosmic moral truth for its own sake. That’s how we manifest His glory. It’s the only reason we bother sticking around on this plane of existence; nothing here is worth the agony. However, in order to draw the attention of other folks, we represent this as the core of sanity.

Broadly defined, sanity means having some connection to reality. Our problem is that most of the world using the term “sanity” doesn’t understand reality. They cling to the Western mythology and call it “sanity.” Ours is a wholly different thing, and we cannot be hesitant about saying so.

Yet it does little good to argue about it with mere words. We first must demonstrate it; we must gain the leverage of push aside the lies from the minds of those around us. Once we prove that our sense of things is closer to reality, that the suffering of this life doesn’t own us and that we are free to disassociate from the madness, then we can speak about it.

Our sales pitch is a powerful serenity that gives us a reason to keep living. From the rock of serenity we can reach out to a lot of other folks. We might not give them what they want, but we can give what we have and delight in the sheer power of giving. It’s going to look like madness at first.

But until they see the power and joy, they aren’t going to ask about it. So we live our serenity and await that moment to speak, when it’s our turn.

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Trail and Trial

Posted on January 14, 2015 by ehurst

You need a chuckle. If nothing else, I’ll clown for you so you can at least smile.

So I tried out the tablet life and it’s not alive for me. I can surf, but when there’s a minor issue with email not working, there’s nothing I can do to even guess what’s wrong. There are no tools for my networking skills to figure out why the connection didn’t work. I have reduced the fat-fingered issue, and can type a couple of paragraphs at a time without trouble. My style is unorthodox, pecking with the index finger of one hand while holding it with the other, but I can move along pretty well that way.

But there are simply no good editors. That is, nothing that combines the features I feel I have to have in order to do much. I’ll still be glad to have a real keyboard when it gets here because it makes searching for stuff a great deal easier. Still, the most useful thing about the tablet is the GPS. For a guy with major land navigation training, this is a wonderful tool. The next best thing about it is reading books and listening to my worship tunes. It’s just okay for surfing news sites and it’s tolerable for blog operations other than posting. However, without the diagnostic tools and feedback, I can’t trust the tablet much for email and so forth. Generic messages aren’t enough for a guy who knows how to fix this kind of stuff.

I haven’t lost the interest in putting files in the cloud. It’s the easiest way to stash the books in my preferred formats, because Smashwords does rotten PDFs and HTML files. My own are better, so I’ll be keeping them available in various places for my own purposes.

After a week of Win7 on the laptop, it slowed to a crawl. After yesterday’s “Patch Tuesday” update it didn’t even want to reboot. It was like those cartoons where someone piles a box-car load on some tiny donkey. This poor thing didn’t want to run that with that much crap. So I searched around and decided to give Debian Jessie 64-bit a try, that being the only thing I haven’t run on it yet among the options I can tolerate. At least it’s not crawling.

Meanwhile, the trail now runs all the way down on the south edge of the south woods, and up past various obstacles out onto the long sidewalk the developers built when they first began working the parcel. That sidewalk runs around the north side and back down to the starting point on the southeast corner. It runs alongside the divided boulevard wandering across the middle of the development parcel. The other half that I call the north woods already has some decent trails, but they need to be linked back to the main road. In all, once I finish, I’ll have roughly two miles of loops and laps running around out here. Given the pattern of development and current pace of lot sales, it will be a few more years before any of it disappears under housing foundations.

In the image here, I included enough to show where our mobile home park is on the east side. Some of the routes may be obvious in the image, but what you cannot see is how some parts are so very hilly.

Satellite view of the area where I'm cutting trails.

Satellite view of the area where I’m cutting trails.

The thing that surprised me most as I kept at this project was that simple bypass limb-loppers are sufficient for 95% of the work because I’m basically weaving between trees, cutting only undergrowth and vines, and trimming back smaller limbs. I need to get a before-and-after pair to show that you can use such a tool and method to cut through almost anything out there.

I’m still praying I can blaze a trail into the US military community again. From my earliest memories I’ve always wanted to take the gospel message to them. My first shot was weak, but surprisingly effective nonetheless. The second time through the system I made a serious mark on people’s lives. I don’t think I’m finished with that, and the message has only gotten stronger. Pray with me about this.

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StT: Matthew 11:10

Posted on January 13, 2015 by ehurst

Another episode selected from the series “Gospel Red Herring: Spiritualizing the Text”.

Jesus is discussing His cousin, John the Baptist, and quotes Malachi 3:1. There’s not much controversy here over what that means. Malachi has been hammering the Jewish leadership for straying from the intent of the Law of Moses. They did so while talking endlessly about the Messiah coming to set things aright, and restoring their importance in the world as in the days of King David. So Malachi begins chapter 3 by quoting God, with a warning there would be a messenger who would prepare the way. Jesus said that was the reference to John the Baptist.

That being the case, Jesus obviously refers to Himself as the Messiah for whom the Messenger came to prepare the path. John called for repentance. Jesus preached the same message: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” In the minds of most people, that meant the long sought restoration of the House of David. Jesus fulfilled that little part about being of the House of David, but He offered none of the earthly political changes the Jews were seeking since before Malachi. Thus, Malachi mentions the ultimate and final Messenger of the Covenant, the Messiah, whom they were so longing to see. Jesus was saying that was Himself.

Then Malachi goes on to warn the Jews they were not ready for Him, so it was rather odd they should claim to desire it. But He would purify the nation, as it were, and how painful it would be! Jesus did make things painful, in that He pointed out how utterly mistaken the Jewish leaders were about the Law. His teaching was a correction of their false, Hellenized and literalist interpretation, and the heretical Talmudic extensions. As they missed the point in Malachi’s day, so they were far worse in Jesus’ day. Malachi notes that if they were to embrace the teaching of this Messenger of the Covenant, they would be able to offer sacrifices God would accept. Was it God who moved away from the ancient covenant? No, it was the Jews.

But somehow, most evangelicals want to jump from John the Baptist directly to Jesus in His Second Coming. That does violence to Malachi’s message. There is nothing in Malachi’s words to justify that, nor in the words of Jesus as He explained that the passage was all about the Jewish nation of His day. When Jesus taught the Law, it was the Law as God had given it. That’s not part of some eventual Second Coming, but it was His ministry during those three years on earth back around 30 AD. Does anybody want the blessings of the Covenant? They are available only in Jesus Christ, in particular His teaching of the Law — love God and respect your neighbor. Do that and you’ll have, as Malachi promised in his eleventh verse, God rebuking whatever on earth devours the provisions and blessings He promised so very long ago. Indeed, Jesus would have called to mind the whole passage from Malachi 3 and 4. It prophesied what He did that very day.

Evangelicals exert all their efforts in denying the moral necessity behind the Law Covenants. That’s in part because it demands far more work than simply basking in their current cultural mythology. The Law of God makes severe demands on us to completely move outside our Western culture. Pushing all this into the Second Coming excuses them from the real work of the gospel message. Doesn’t it look like the evangelicals are spiritualizing the text here?

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Driven Out

Posted on January 12, 2015 by ehurst

Now in those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan River. And just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens splitting apart and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my one dear Son; in you I take great delight.” The Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, enduring temptations from Satan. He was with wild animals, and angels were ministering to his needs. (Mark 1:9-13 NET)

Yet Jesus himself frequently withdrew to the wilderness and prayed. (Luke 5:16 NET)

Then Jesus went out and made his way, as he customarily did, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. When he came to the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” He went away from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed. (Luke 22:39-41 NET)

From the beginning, throughout His career, and right up to the very end, Jesus went out away from people, into a more natural setting to be with His Father. More than once, He led His disciples out on an extended retreat to get away from the hubbub of the Temple. While there is no doubt He used the symbolism of things in the Temple, He knew that it had long since ceased to be His Father’s house. So He met His Father often in nature.

Lately I’ve felt myself driven outside. I used to keep a prayer journal. At one time it was paper and pencil. Once I got my first computer, I found the keyboard was the way to go. Only rarely have I ever read back in those journals, searching for the date of something I did or experienced. Mostly it was a simple matter of writing something every day. My heart knew writing would become a critical part of my ministry.

The use of computers, and years delving into Linux, Unix, Mac and Windows technology and networking — it was all just a tool. Now I’m at the point where it really won’t matter much what I use, so long as it offers a chance to do the necessary work of ministry communications. So I ordered a real keyboard for my tablet because I want to be in the place where the device itself is far less important, in an effort to commoditize computer use. I probably won’t give away my laptop until I get a much better tablet, but the die has been cast. It was always just a tool. Writing with pen and paper was never really wired into my head, but the keyboard is. It really doesn’t matter what the keyboard connects to, so long as it allows me to write what God says I must write.

My tablet is not a gaming or entertainment device. The music on it is entirely for worship. All the applications I’ve installed are aimed it enabling the things I have to do for the ministry. The laptop is still somewhat laden with stuff that’s about computer use itself, but the tablet is very trim and sparsely equipped. The former is still useful in the computer ministry, but the latter is for only communicating the gospel and keeping that mission organized. Yes, that includes access to news, but it’s more a matter of having a library in my pocket because I can’t possibly memorize everything I need to know.

I’m learning how to push all my documents into the cloud. The stuff that really matters will never be private, so it’s more a question of availability, not controlling access.

But the prayer journal has been replaced by prayer walks. I try to spend time at least morning and evening outside where I can talk aloud to God. If I am off in the woods working on the trail, I’m talking out loud to God. I’m trying to make sure the weather is no hindrance, relearning how to operate in all contexts, the way the military taught me. Instead of collecting computer hardware and software, I’m starting to gather outdoor clothing again. It’s been pretty cold for Oklahoma lately, so the prayer walks have been a challenge, because I don’t have the good military-grade stuff any more.

I don’t need another computer; I need winter coveralls.

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