Song of Solomon 4

Posted on September 5, 2014 by ehurst

This is the one day in a woman’s life when she is queen of all who gaze upon her, the day of her wedding. This chapter describes the ornate garments and jewelry which bear little resemblance to Western brides. Should we see such a bride, we would still appreciate her splendor, but the elements of her wardrobe would be exotic at the least. The reader is encouraged to ride along with the narrative and not ask too many questions.

If you’ve ever seen the dark colored Middle Eastern goats, you would recognize the reference to dark waves rippling down the hillsides of Gilead, the perfect terrain for such creatures. Of this image her long wavy hair reminds him, with all the vast wealth they might mean.

An adult woman with flawless dentistry was quite rare in that culture. It represents her high noble status, rather like the obsessive reaction Western men have to gorgeous celebrities of our day. She’s almost too much for him. The wedding veil cannot really hide her stunning beauty. The image of a pomegranate is the food of the wealthy, who can afford to dawdle over it picking at the juicy red pearls. We don’t know much about the Tower of David, but in Solomon’s time we know it was regarded as the finest in Eastern architecture, a grand landmark visible from afar. It was decorated with rows of polished shields, conjuring the image of imposing power and wealth.

What man does not celebrate an indescribable thrill at fondling a lover’s breasts? Solomon luxuriates here with common images of justified lust, including references to the most expensive heady perfumes. Finally he runs out of superlatives. Unwrapping the ultimate wedding gift is too much for words.

The cultural image of coming down into Palestine from Lebanon is difficult to translate. In ancient times, Lebanon was a famous tourist destination for those seeking natural beauty. It’s not too shabby today, but it was even grander in ancient times. So you pass through the most refreshing sights and days of sweet smelling trees and a sense of very ancient spiritual richness. Coming down from this lofty garden of the Creator, you enter this rich land where some of the finest agricultural production was offered to the rest of the world, a land flowing with milk and honey. It pulls in at least two well-known stories of exotic brides brought back for leading men of Israel, Isaac’s Rebekah and Jacob’s Rachel. It includes a far wider range of rich imagery about all the wonderful good things God gave to His servants, traveling down from the heights of Lebanon.

So in his mind this bride is his private garden, reserved for him alone. Again, it’s a cultural image hard to fully appreciate from this great distance of time and space. The literal meaning is obvious: She disrobes for no other man. Exclusive access to such a fine specimen of human flesh for a righteous pleasure is indescribable.

So the bride agrees, calling on God’s creation to witness to the moral uprightness of all of this, and to bless this wedding night with the full power of God’s divine character.

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The Pastor and His Religion

Posted on September 4, 2014 by ehurst

What have we here?

The whole idea behind using parables is that there is some overlap between the concrete, literal meaning of the words and something beyond words indicated by the terminology. This blog is the ephemeral touch point for my virtual parish. So long as your Internet connection works and the DNS resolves so that your computer can fetch the contents of this webpage and display it in your browser, for that long you are a member of my parish.

That’s the full extent of what parish membership requires of you. On my part, it bears a much higher liability. I’m opening myself up to your interaction, regardless whether you take advantage of it. Like any parish pastor, I’m here to serve everyone who can find me, not just those who get involved and provide any kind of support. I’ve been wide open from the start and anyone who supports this work knows where that support goes, regardless what shape the support takes — not just actual money, but comments, moral support, feedback, etc.

In other words, it’s a little bit like the so-called “click-wrap” license on some software. If you read the notice, you have already agreed to it. Except, in this case, if you read the agreement, I have already agreed to be your pastor. The act of reading is your end of the bargain, as it were.

As noted before, a lot of folks might be comfortable pointing to this blog and telling others, “This is my pastor.” They might not be so comfortable saying, “And his religion is my religion.” You are under no such obligation. That’s no different from what you should expect from a mainstream parish pastor in meat space.

I may not have a clue what your religion is or whether you even have one, but you’ll have to tolerate mine in order to read this stuff. Instead of the religious soup kitchen and the “ear beating” the clients have to accept before the soup is served, you take a small “eye beating” when you read this blog and maybe get some soup for your soul.

Yes, your sarcasm detector should have gone off by now, because I don’t take myself that seriously. I do take seriously the mission to help all those folks who somehow didn’t get all they needed from mainstream religion. Mainstream religion failed me, but I’m not taking it out on the people or organizations involved. My bad experiences only empowered this drive to offer an alternative. Feel free to consider me an additional source even as you remain well within any religious organization that makes you comfortable with God. That includes those who don’t believe in my God or any god at all.

I use the phrase “virtual parish” for a reason, because I don’t want to be seen founding a new religion with an attendant organization. Rather, I’m offering my religion as an example of what you can do. Religion here is defined as a human response to a spiritual impulse. Some part of you senses a calling from another plane of existence and you try to answer that call. Religion is your effort to meet the demands of that voice. A critical element in my religion is reminding you that mine is mine, and yours is yours. We can collaborate and agree on a great deal, but in the end, you stand before God individually.

So it’s almost impossible to think of this as an organized religion in the sense of folks gathering over common belief and practice. Rather, we are a spiritual community almost entirely without organization. It’s more of a movement than a religion. There is a fundamental assumption about human nature, intellectual processes and the meaning of religion itself. I reject the mainstream Western view of reality, and this is easily the foundation of what sets my religion apart from the others that claim Jesus Christ as Lord.

If you grasp any part of that, you realize that you really can’t have my religion. You can’t read my stuff without getting a heavy dose of it, but I am utterly certain you didn’t get it if you come away in full agreement with every detail. Any attempt to clone my religion for yourself means you are already outside of it. Even my wife of 36 years is not that tightly bound under my personal dominion. It would violate my religion to make it obligatory on others.

But you can surely join the movement, as it were. That is, you can choose to operate on that Hebrew epistemology and propagate this alternative approach to things, and in that sense be a very close part of this virtual parish. In actuality, the intellectual part is nothing more than a means to organize and implement a response to God’s moral character as impressed on your soul.

Make it your own. Restate it in your own way, using your own brand of expression. Let God’s glory shine through you as you work it out with Him. If I can recognize it as being something that accomplishes the same mission, I’ll include you and make reference to your work. Anyone, even those who think they are enemies, can use mine as they see fit, so don’t be bashful. Include yourself under the umbrella of this movement to whatever degree it suits your sense of taste and calling. At some point I might even ask you to assume an explicit connection. Take what you want and give back what you can. The voluntary nature of this offer is fundamental to my religion.

Sure, there are ways you can get yourself excluded, but it’s pretty hard to reach that point. Beyond what I’ve stated in the “Readers Note” page linked at the top of this blog page, the easiest way to get kicked out of this virtual parish is by demanding too much dominion over others. When you attempt to eliminate the spiritual and moral freedom of someone else, you make yourself a heretic.

You are already “in” — just decide how much you want me or anyone else to know, and how much you want to participate.

Addenda: Yeah, this parish has a name: Kiln of the Soul.

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Christian Un-politics

Posted on September 3, 2014 by ehurst

Sometimes you just have to back off and see the forest for the trees.

Before the Harlot Church, there was the Harlot Israel (see the prophet Hosea). She rode the Beast of Rome. Rome was the patsy in crucifying Christ. It is the way of the Talmud to manipulate others to do your dirty work.

I traced the corruption of Old Testament religion until it was displaced by Judaism and won’t repeat that work here. The Old Testament itself traces the long slide of Hebrew intellectual and moral compromise, but it began with the typical human insistence on living as if mankind is not fallen, and therefore need not depend on God for guidance in His world.

There is nothing to gain by picking on today’s Jews as “Christ Killers” deserving some special hatred. While the conflict is all their doing, we don’t have to get involved. We need to see that Talmudic religion compels them to provoke everyone as lesser beings. It’s not a question of what they deserve because God is working that out on terms He explained long ago. We simply need to guard ourselves against the Synagogue of Satan and the ongoing project of the Judaizers. They never really intended to convert Christians back to Judaism, but to use Talmudic corruption to enslave the whole world.

Stop and see the whole picture. The Talmudic religion of Judaism is inherently racist and arrogant. Starting with the prophets, we can see the pattern so clearly. Every time they got into trouble with their neighbors, it was because of spiteful arrogance. When God took away their land and kingdom and dispersed their nation across the planet, they continued provoking their neighbors. When things got rough because those neighbors responded to the provocations, Jews whined about the injustice. To those who live by the Talmud, “injustice” means Gentiles refusing to kiss their collective ass.

How easily everyone forgets to read between the lines. What was the fundamental mission God had for Israel in choosing them for the Covenant? Not to physically conquer the world and force them to obey Moses, but to morally conquer the world by possessing and being possessed by the one clear revelation of God’s moral character. The business of the Conquest of Canaan was merely a contextual application, a cleansing of the land from unspeakable moral evil (investigate the worship of Molech for a sample). Israel had the Word of God, edited by His own hand. The people of Israel bore this privilege on the condition that they use it to change their lives so that all humanity could see what God intended for everyone.

The same record of revelation plainly shows how they forgot that mission. So deep and inflamed was their pride at being the Chosen, they completely trashed the reason for being chosen. God sent His Son as the one last chance to restore that fundamental mission, but they nailed their covenant to the Cross. They had invested far too much in their own corrupt version of things to accept any correction from God. They no longer had any idea who God was.

Here’s the reality: If Modern Israel wants to claim the legacy of His Chosen, they must first drop their insane mixture of secular messianic arrogance and return to Moses. The Palestinian people are not Canaanites and don’t worship moral filth. Islam is not comparable to Canaanite religious practices. Israel must drop the Talmud; Christ said they must return to the Hebrew Mystical heritage without the Aristotelian philosophical assumptions. They must obey Moses as taught by Moses the Hebrew Mystic and as explained by God’s Son. Otherwise, the political entity called “Israel” cannot claim one shred of the blessings of God. Without fully embracing Israel the Mission, they cannot be Israel the Nation.

Don’t let them choose the field of battle. Don’t let them control the dialog. Refuse to engage the false dichotomy that we either must support their claims or be counted among their oppressors. They ceased being God’s people long ago; that label is reserved for those who serve His Son. Modern Israel is not blessed by God, but she has bought an awful lot of political support from fools. How many pieces of silver have they offered you to sell out your Savior? They gave Judas the price of a slave. Do not sell yourself and your Savior so cheaply.

With the quiet resolve of Our Lord facing the Cross, we must keep the truth alive. There’s nothing to gain by provoking the Zionists; they offer enough provocation for everyone. We could ignore their claims were they not so insistent on their divine right to crush all humanity under their boots. Exposing their false claims and offering a more accurate explanation is just a small part of the larger mission of God’s glory. We need not obsess over them, but we do need to answer their lies with God’s truth. Punishing them is God’s business, His way, His time and His plan. When He tires of their game, Modern Israel will be destroyed and it won’t necessarily be the end of the world.

Don’t surrender to their manipulations. That gives them a home field advantage, the battle ground of their choosing. We war against the lies of Satan, not against the silly people who surrender themselves to Satan’s hands. We are neither Zionist tools nor anti-Zionist fools. Let Modern Israel have as much land and slaughter as God permits, because He is the ultimate Master of human history. Our whole mission is living by His truth, which includes pointing out sin as sinful. Dying on the Cross was Christ’s loudest declaration against the power of sin; we are free in Him.

We are followers of Christ, preparing to leave this world as soon as He is ready to call us Home.

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Threat Assessment 4

Posted on September 2, 2014 by ehurst

Our primary advantage as non-activists is that we don’t touch anyone’s paycheck. If you don’t threaten the gravy train, you are background noise to most of them. That should surprise no one.

We don’t promote de-funding, boycotting or divestment, much less attacking Modern Israel. We don’t engage the political battles regarding laws and social policies on abortion and gays, nor much of anything else. We don’t talk about destroying or even reforming mainstream churches. For the most part, we’ll attract a little ire for being different, but everyone knows that pulling away vast numbers of their donors is wholly unlikely. In the materialistic Western mind, our lack of interest in money, influence and power makes it hard to justify attacking us. We are aware of the horrible things they could do to us, but aware also that the nature of the battle makes us mostly invisible. To the degree we address ourselves to sensitive issues at all, it is simply a matter of noting the biblical otherworldly view of things.

The real danger is almost purely random, but in that sense, it is hard to imagine. It’s hard enough simply to recognize that this world is entirely deceptive in its very nature, but our modern Western world struggles to make the deception more real. It’s almost as if they bludgeon you for daring to have an independent thought. They aren’t just lying, but demanding forcefully that we echo those lies and act as if they are all true.

But the victims vastly outnumber the psychopaths, so the workload is massive. The competence of their willing servants is variable at the best of times. Nonetheless, should you find yourself in the path of their movements, it is hard to describe the depth of contempt and hatred they hold for us. Nobody wants to believe their fellow humans can be so cruel, but there is a sense in which those who serve governments, officially or in effect, are seriously damaged and operating under a harshly enforced schizophrenia. It is hardly unanimous, but so pervasive that you should be surprised when you discover someone in such service who treats you humanely.

As such, they are part of the sadness of the illusion. Their decency is frequently overwhelmed by the fundamental evil of the system. Our biggest problem is how subtle that evil is. Very few of those in positions of power and authority are consciously evil, but they are committed to something so utterly perverted, yet so utterly common, it hardly matters what they actually think about it.

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against demons that use flesh and blood. Resentment against the tools serves no purpose, and hinders our mission. God is able to change the game in our favor at His whim, and often does so in the most unexpected ways.

To recapitulate: As Christian Mystics, we are mostly likely to face resistance on a low level from other religious folks. That resistance will be generally low level and episodic, unless our message brings us to their attention too often. In general terms, our biggest problem is when the Enemy provokes some religious fool to obsess about any of us. No other human threat can match the destructiveness of the crusader. This is our greatest threat, and such will eventually act in ways no different from secular threats.

However, the purely secular threats will be more devastating while more random. Your biggest computer security problem is the random attacks based on attempts to take control of every system for any number of nefarious purposes. Because of the methods used by the likes of NSA, FBI, etc., there is no difference between them and admitted criminal hackers in terms of their attacks. The difference is in their particular aims. For the crooks, control is just a means to profit. Please notice that the distance between lawful business and criminal enterprise is narrowing daily, particularly in terms of seeking control over our computers. The government criminals pretty much have the money they want for their activities, but aim more directly at control for its own sake. In general, the defenses we use are the same for all threats.

I’ve written probably too much about computer security elsewhere, so we won’t discuss that here. Pray and make the most sensible choice in your given context, then pile on as much security as you can bear without hindering your mission. Be savvy as the crooks in your choices.

But then, what really is at risk here? This world doesn’t own us, and we dare not forget that Jesus considered the unconscionable crucifixion as His greatest success. Be wise as a serpent, but don’t expect to change anything yourself. This is God’s show and He is the star.

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Threat Assessment 3

Posted on September 1, 2014 by ehurst

The existence and effects of networked communication requires us to use that medium. It remains our primary tool of communication, even when the people on the other end are geographically close. This is how people do things in our world and we have to be involved or the gospel has no effect. There are plenty of religions that offer suspicion or even hatred of networked communications in their teachings and rules, but there is no compelling moral reason for avoiding them.

Paul didn’t avoid the Roman roads simply because they were built by slave labor.He was not involved in the slavery and his use didn’t somehow serve to justify the slavery. When you operate from the Spirit Realm, human reasoning about morality is just a silly preoccupation. Our alignment with the Domain of the Spirit changes things. We may well dislike how the Shadowlands reality came to be, but we know that it remains outside of our mission to commit resources to changing what, in essence, Our Father says is His business alone. We are engaged in the business of souls, not politics. We use all things in Creation as mere tools, where we find them and how we find them, as provisions from Our Lord for however much of His business He commits into our hands.

We could easily allow perverted Westernized moral reasoning on all sorts of things keep us from the mission. We could easily invest way too much attention in things that don’t matter and forget things that do. Even if I show you how video, for example, carries moral risks, that’s the not the same thing as making rules against it. It does mean that it’s a very dangerous tool and requires extra care, and my ranting simply reflects how totally careless most people are. Study and pray and make your own decision, but drop the prissy moral pretense and get to work.

With a proper biblical moral awareness, use what’s available. Our primary means of communicating that moral awareness happens to be for most us the Internet. We commune via the Net to build up our moral strength and our meat space mission action. A major threat is the overwhelming presence of perverting influences seeking to hinder our communion in the virtual world. They’ll use every possible distraction to attach your attention to deception.

The very nature of the Internet and our mission prevents us from even considering the idea of suppressing lies. We can provide, at most, a consistent witness to counter them. Consider carefully your individual calling and how the Father intends for you to present your verbal witness on the Web. Consider carefully your talents and ability to face the hideous verbal onslaught from the demons of Hell who find ready tools among the human population of this world. What you communicate on the Net will certainly gain a response, though it will be in measure to the amount of attention or type of attention that you draw. (That’s worth a book on its own.)

The primary areas where you’ll face the worst abuse are discussions about Modern Israel in Bible Prophecy, abortion, and gay rights. The main problem is the militant insistence that if we do not take forceful action to demand some particular political and social solution somebody wants, we are worse than the folks they consider on the other side of the issue. At the very least we have to echo their particular call for action.

That’s problem enough. If you publish comments about those issues anywhere on the Net, you should expect the most unconscionably nasty responses. But if you dare to mention that we should not promote political support of Modern Israel, you may face meat space physical threats or assaults. Back when I served as staff in some Baptist churches, I witnessed fist fights and attended funerals where somebody was shot in petty arguments over church policies, but you haven’t seen anything until you start talking about Israel.

However, the Internet has made it all much easier without the need to get your hands dirty. I have met “Christian” computer technicians who were quite willing to hack your computer and plant juvenile pornography among your files, and then notifying any number of law enforcement agencies. At this point things bleed so quickly over into secular politics, there is essentially no difference. More than one fairly well-known activist has faced this very thing in the past couple of years. The Harlot rides the Beast.

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Threat Assessment 2

Posted on August 31, 2014 by ehurst

In the first century, it took significant funding for a handful of guys and gals to wander from town to town and present the gospel message. That was how you spread a new idea, by traveling to the next place and standing in the town square. That’s where people got their news and it was hardly more reliable than it is today. However, the entertainment effect was quite powerful because entertainment itself was very expensive.

Today we have a glut of entertainment and it buries the gospel. Too often the gospel is perverted to fit whatever prevails as entertainment, but even that is nearly drowned out in the noise of a whole world free to communicate with the rest of the world. So the gospel has never been easier and cheaper to share, and it has never been so hard to hear. The most powerful gospel message is the one you act on moment by moment, but we can’t take our entire life online for display. We have to allow the true message to seep through the tiny thin slice of ourselves that we can transmit through various computer devices.

I don’t think anyone foresaw this situation, but predators are typically more adaptive than the herds. We have failed Christ’s mandate to be wise as serpents. People keep forgetting that Paul was so very effective precisely because he knew how the predators thought and how they operated. The whole world would soon be subverted by the predators who made him what he was. There is a sense in which the world today is dominated by a particular predatory approach that was refined and honed by Judaizers. Their mindset and methods have set the pattern for what threatens us today. To a lesser agree, we still contend with their specific agenda, which itself has passed through many generations of adjustments and adaptations. It’s never so simple as we would like it, but complex and subtle. We have to be wise as the serpents, a symbolic way of saying we have to understand how Satan operates through those who serve him, knowingly and otherwise.

But we are harmless like a dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit. Our presence rests lightly and brightly. God uses us because that’s the whole purpose of redemption. He hardly needs us and has often acted without human aid, even in spite of it. Paul used the Roman highway system, which included the regulations on the ships that connected the roads across waters. We use the Internet. Paul used Roman Law to protect his mission; we use the Internet protocols. We sincerely hope our message results in a very rich change in meat space life, but we are so few and so thinly spread that genuine meat space fellowship is simply not available right now. The God who calls me has required me to operate in this way, so I embrace it until He provides another way. It’s just a tool. We who sense a calling to use this tool as our Roman roads still have to remain wise to the Devil’s tricks as they manifest in this environment.

We still have to watch out for the presence and work of whomever has inherited and embraced the mission of the ancient Judaizers. We have to recognize them by what and how they communicate online, because they seldom wear any of the standard labels these days. On top of that, they have largely succeeded in taking over the system by now, something that the Apostles didn’t face, though at least John foresaw it coming. That’s what the Apocalypse was all about; we are living what his extended parabolic prophecy foretold. So we face the Beast in government and the Harlot in our religious organizations. It’s not so obvious that we can point to this or that religious institution and call it the Harlot, but that her influence can be felt in every organization to one degree or another. Don’t be simplistic, but know them by their fruit. None of us escapes at least some degree of slavery to those forces, but their chains cannot touch the Spirit or hinder the Kingdom of Heaven.

The fundamental nature of spiritual birth and moral awareness negates their power by moving operations completely beyond their reach. Satan was cast out of Heaven and isn’t allowed to operate on that level. His power is in blinding folks to that level. A critical element in Spirit-led moral awareness is shedding the Devil’s brand of morality, which happens to be anything except the one God revealed. This is where we plug in my anti-Western rants about Aristotelian epistemology and Anglo-Saxon mythology. See the book linked on the lower right side of this blog page if you don’t have a clue about that. The point is that you can’t rely on Western society to provide a proper frame of reference for what is moral. Western society, in effect if not in the particulars, is the general result of humanity and human institutions steered by the Devil’s servants. It wasn’t his creation, but something he hijacked and perverted to his use.

We can’t leave it, but we can surely disconnect and cling to an awareness far above this mess.

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Psalm 13

Posted on August 30, 2014 by ehurst

It’s not a question of whether the Psalmist is close to literal death, but that he faces an experience of death on a broader level. David could live without his crown, but was altogether worried that his situation signaled he had moved outside of God’s favor.

As noted previously, hyperbole is not deception. In Hebrew culture, the purpose of language to was to bring to life something the listener or reader did not personally experience. It was entirely appropriate and expected to address your superiors with dramatic exaggeration. Thus, David cries out to his God in deep exasperation. This amounts to a rhetorical question, asking how long the Lord would fail to respond to his cries.

Continuing in the same vein, he asks whether God has noticed that David languishes under the apparent victory of his enemies, with the obvious implication that these are also God’s enemies. Will the Lord allow these nasty people to get away with publicly tarnishing His name? David wails that it is just like dying for him to think God has no interest in His own reputation. David asks for a fresh moral vision of how God works in this fallen world.

Does God truly intend to let David end like this? Has David fought so hard and so long in the name of Jehovah only to fall at this critical moment? Will his enemies be the ones who celebrate their human power over God’s man?

Of course not. Despite the rhetoric, David does the right thing in calling out to God because it shows where he places his trust. It might be heart-pounding close, but David refuses to quit. God has never failed him. In a standard Hebrew parallelism, David asserts that he will praise God as God while he fights, and rejoice in God when he wins. He’s warming up the harp for that latter tune already.

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Threat Assessment 1

Posted on August 30, 2014 by ehurst

Two fundamental elements: (1) We are otherworldly in our focus and (2) we are determined to obey our calling regardless of the worldly results.

Like most things I write, I can tell when it’s bigger than a single post, but not much more than that. The Spirit moves and as an obedient servant, I am left guessing where things are going because I can’t pretend to know who needs this or how. What is obvious to me is the need for a pastoral voice pointing out the elements of sanity in a world of madness and delusion. Thus, we start with the contextual reminder that this world is not important nor are our lives. What is important is how our lives are used as tools to clarify God’s truth. His truth is rooted outside this universe, even outside of Creation as a whole. We use our presence in this world as the means to expose that truth in the way, and to the degree, we can discern.

God has revealed the proper way of human life, but we are surely aware that humanity instinctively rejects the entire premise. At the same time, there is something in human nature that draws them to our witness of God’s glorious truth. Not everyone at the same time and place, but the drawing is there and you can’t miss it. So an obvious first step is to embrace the complexity of what we are in our fallen state. The divine logic applicable to our situation includes a vast array of mutually contradictory impulses and threads of consciousness. We aren’t supposed grasp all the details and elements because it will never completely make sense to us. We can learn this logic, but it’s a monumental task, a long journey back towards God’s revelation. Our world has drifted so very far away from that revealed ideal.

Sanity means we don’t take ourselves seriously, nor anything else in this world, except for the mission to live that truth. The fancy word for that is “humility” — we are prostrate before the Lord and His mighty works. This is not our show; we have at most bit parts. Still, the rewards are far beyond anything we can imagine, a richness and goodness well outside the scope of human grasp. If any part of you is aware of this, you can’t say no.

A critical image is that we should be wise as serpents and harmless as doves (Matthew 10:16). The context of that passage is Jesus sending out the Twelve on their first mission, wherein the biggest threat is the political-religious leadership of their people. It’s no surprise I would tell you that’s our biggest threat. Not so much the politicians, but those who mix their religion with political power. That happens to be most of the Western Christian religious organizations we encounter. They forgot long ago, beginning at least in the early 300s AD, that our calling is to avoid entanglement in secular politics. We aren’t called to fix this world because God said it would only get progressively worse and He would destroy it. His Kingdom is active on this earth, but rooted far outside this dimension of existence. He is saving souls as individuals, not the world in which we live.

So our human life is disposable, but useful. In our minds, we must let God decide when the end comes. Be ready at all times, facing it with total aplomb. Meanwhile, those thousands of little points of death we face along the way are part of that same package. Jesus was born pointedly to die, and we are following Him. Die with a purpose, marking out His path for others to notice. But we are not heedless; we are called to participate in His glory with some level of understanding appropriate to our condition. That’s the business of “wise as serpents.” We know how to take full advantage of human foibles, but we aren’t predators; we are “harmless as doves.”

I’m little better than the dirt under Apostles’ feet, so I can’t offer their warnings about the near-term future, aside from noting that a time of tribulation is upon us. While it’s possible we could face a direct persecution, I tend to doubt it. Instead, some portion of the mainstream Christian churches will pretend they are the target of religious persecution, when it’s actually little more than the fruits of normal human political entanglement. Part of the Apostles’ warning to their flocks in the First Century was to stick with the message, don’t pretend to change the social or political context, and take what comes. Numerically, very few Christians faced official persecution. That we as Christian Mystics should be a select few possessed with the notion that activism is a lie is simply in our favor. The problem is mainstream Christians who will vehemently insist we join their political tomfoolery or be counted as pagans or useless. So long as we avoid activism, the government will seldom notice us.

The single greatest threat is focusing on the wrong threat.

On the other hand, today the business of communication is the very center of political activity. This is the leading edge of the Networked Age, and the majority of human attention is, or soon will be, via the Internet and related means of communication. Try not to confuse the Internet with networking itself; the latter could well take off in new directions. The Internet is more of a symbol in this regard. My point is that a very significant portion of human attention is focused on cyber-this-n-that. A human government’s single biggest problem is gaining control over information traffic. It’s never been like this in human history, where ideas could travel the entire globe instantly.

Human idiocy prevents it being the pure force for good we might imagine it could be. It takes only a small measure of human evil to make it far worse. As with most things, our insight into God’s moral character can aid us in making good use of global free networking, but we still have to plow through a vast ocean of lies. A significant element in that problem is how folks with savvy and power are making it murky intentionally as a means to blunting resistance.

More in the next installment.

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Song of Solomon 3

Posted on August 29, 2014 by ehurst

Western scholars heavily favor the notion that the first section here is a dream sequence. That would almost be missing the point, as the whole work is a dramatic parable. It is enough to recognize the symbols.

On the night before the wedding, the bride can’t sleep, so great is her anticipation. She dozes at best, and finds herself feeling around in the bed for her man. She can’t rest until she is in his arms. So she arises from bed and wanders the city where she awaits him. The image of searching and finding is woven lyrically; she does not find him, but is found instead by the night guards. The situation itself is rather crazy, which is precisely what a bride ought to feel at such a moment. She’s safe, but not where she wants to be. Ancient tribal people would have been careful to post guard over a noble bride as the marriage arrangements became more certain. It was the basis for political alliances that easily outlived the people involved. Far more than a simple covenant between husband and wife, there is much more at stake here.

Because these watchmen stand on the walls, they would have a much better view of the surrounding territory. The bride queries whether there was yet any sign of his entourage approaching. He would come with a large ceremonial escort, so it’s not as if they would miss it. The wording indicates she keeps wandering below the walls, asking all the guards at their various lookout points. This whole scene follows elaborate social customs in the Ancient Near East. The bride would wait at the finest house among her kinfolk, and the groom would show up at some random hour, typically during darkness. It’s part of the game to sneak up and surprise everyone, to keep them in suspense. Thus, she no sooner queries the guards when her groom shows up.

She clings to him and won’t let go. She drags him to the bedchamber in which she was conceived, a symbol of completing the circle of life. We have no evidence, but it would seem this was also a custom, at least during Solomon’s reign. What we dare not miss is the image of “Take me now!” She repeats the previous refrain that suggests a genuine love is worth waiting for, but it now has an added meaning. Anyone wishing to greet the honored guest will simply have to wait until they have their conjugal moment.

The role of Narrator is introduced to us, rather like a royal crier. Here is the picture of the king returning with his queen, riding in splendor back to his palace city. Granted, Solomon inserts himself into the story here. However, had he actually observed this ancient ritual for every one of his weddings, he would have had time for little else during his reign. It would have gotten boring and the spirit of celebration would have been forced. We aren’t supposed to notice such things, and this is part of what makes the entire drama fictional. However, a more typical king with less profligate habits is what we are supposed to see here. It would hardly be such a wonderful thing for any bride to be just one of several hundred who seldom saw her husband. So we pretend this was a singular event with all the attendant excitement.

Perhaps we are meant to see this as somewhat sarcastic, written by a man who clearly didn’t take himself that seriously, judging by his other writings.

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Of Marriage and Curses

Posted on August 28, 2014 by ehurst

Adam is a lazy jerk.

The typical masculine failing is clearly revealed in the Genesis narrative. Adam was lazy. It’s not as if he was unaware of the Serpent’s presence in the Garden, or that he didn’t know about their conversation. It would have been a part of his natural moral awareness. Nor did her choice to partake of the Tree of Knowledge catch him by surprise. Nothing about the narrative hints that he was off elsewhere too busy to pay attention. He was the manager and guardian of the entire Garden, and fully capable of keeping track, as God had equipped him.

Rather, he couldn’t be bothered to do that part of his job that didn’t confront him every day. He had his routine and this was outside of it. Or maybe he was simply entertained by something in this visit and was unwilling to enforce God’s moral justice. At the point when Eve offered him the Forbidden Fruit, he could have turned it down but decided to indulge in the tempting morsel.

What was the curse upon his sin? To work hard and wear himself out. The whole point of a curse is a change from something good to something bad. Adam didn’t have to work that hard in the Garden. Whatever it meant for him to manage God’s Garden, it didn’t include sweating and fighting against a reluctant soil. Thus, because he was unwilling to exert that little effort to prevent the Fall, the Fall brings to him the utter necessity to work, to sweat and die in a sense of futility. The natural world was no longer a close ally.

In God’s Laws, and even more so in the Cross, we have a partial redemption. That is, we get a taste of what we could have had in the Garden, and what we will have once we leave this fallen plane of existence. We men are returned to a place where our work means something and we aren’t confined to the pitiful response of a natural world we no longer understand. In spiritual birth, the Laws of God start to make sense and we can feel our way through a natural world that is once again an ally. We see that truth through a mirror darkly, as it were, but we do see it.

Overcoming the Fall, inasmuch as it will happen in this life, means getting our butts in gear and taking command of the moral obligations God puts on us. We are training, practicing to return to God’s Garden. All that we do now on this earth is rework our awareness and our instincts so that we are ready to get to work.

The most awful lie told today in mainstream Christian churches is the disguised feminist “man up” crap. All it means is a fresh demand from devotees of Oester that men should stop being men and act like little boys obeying their mommies. Somewhere in Church History we got off of the Hebrew shepherd track and the hideous Anglo-Saxon image was substituted in its place. A Western man can be almost anything but a shepherd. And our mainstream Christian women want them to become neutered little men who do what their mommies tell them to do, because women are somehow the guardians of civilization. Whatever that means, it bears no resemblance to the Garden of God.

Each individual woman must find her own guidance from God in helping her man be less like Adam and more like the Son of God, Our Good Shepherd. If he’s too much like Adam, nobody can tell you how you personally quit acting like Eve. Somehow you work it out with God dynamically to leave Him room to work without just letting things rot. The most difficult part is that part of the Fall includes our sense of limitations in time and space, not something found in the Garden. Everything is either too fast or too slow and we are never in quite the right place, it seems. That’s part of the curse on both sexes, but don’t get caught up in trying to dominate your man. That’s just a snare that keeps you outside the Garden. You can’t do it for him and you surely can’t do God’s job.

But God will most surely use your surrendered life, Sisters. Somewhere in that tangled mess, He will bring you His answer at His time and place. Returning to the Garden is hardly a single step. It’s your whole lifelong struggle. That Flaming Sword has a lot of work to do carving off the sin from both of you.

Don’t assume traditional roles are the only ones God will bless. Some men are far better at cooking and cleaning than any woman they’ll likely meet. By the same token, efficiency may not be the issue. If you know beyond all doubt your income will always be higher than your man’s, bless the Lord but don’t use it to eviscerate his manhood. The two shall become one and God alone tells them how it must be.

While we’d rather not talk about it, there is that chance your marriage was dead when it started, and you have some serious pain ahead of you. God is not legalistic about divorce, but it’s pretty obvious Jesus taught us to take the marriage commitment seriously. I won’t pretend to lock you up with someone who resists redemption, but whatever comes from God’s work, a bad marriage makes our ordinary suffering more like crucifixion than it really has to be.

Guys, the burden of moving forward is on us. For whatever reasons, God chose us to do the work of discerning the broader mission of our lives, and that includes anyone who shares life with us. We have the mission, and if we leave it to the ladies, things might not come out as God intended. It’s not her job to search the horizon for signs of God’s chosen path, nor to recognize and deal with enemies, so stop dumping so much crap on her.

Get off your duff, Brothers. Decide and act.

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