Song of Solomon 1

Posted on August 20, 2014 by ehurst

The primary characters are a king and his bride. She is of noble birth, but presented here as a country girl, familiar with the urban scene, but previously not at home in it. A recurring role is the choir of city girls, not yet married. They often represent the attitudes the bride faces among such women as she enters royal society in the capital city. These are the girls who have hung around the palace since birth.

The chapter opens with the rapturous celebration of the bride, likely a short time after learning she is the chosen. She is wholly enamored with her man, and eager to assume the role. She is not in the least bothered that all the other gals are swooning over him; she’s just awfully glad he chose her over any of them. She’s all too happy to offer herself fully to this man. The girls’ chorus agrees that she’s a good choice and celebrate with her. A final line has the royal groom affirming that all this rejoicing is fully justified.

In a sort of apology, the bride compares herself to the black goat’s hair tents of the Arabic tribes in northern Arabia, known then as Kedar, along with a similar tribe known as Salmah in the vicinity of Petra. Tanning was not in vogue. Unlike the city girls who hide from the sun to keep their skin milky white, the bride has worked outdoors most of her life. There’s a pun here about the burning of the sun compared to the burning anger of her brothers. We aren’t told why they were angry, but it was common enough to find rural nobles demanding the household females earn their keep. In more literal terms, she would have been out there supervising peasants and servants keeping the vineyard. She’s no less attractive for it, but notes her own property suffered from neglect because of it. This is another subtle bit of humor; she was forced to neglect all that urban girly stuff, and developed a no-nonsense management persona.

Guys, don’t be a sucker for mere appearances. Think about how she will contribute to your calling and mission. A gal with strong capabilities can still make you tingle in the bedroom. Ladies, don’t rely on mere femininity as your sole contribution to a man’s life, even if it is primary. The best queen for a king suffers no inflated sense of entitlement, but brings a lot to the altar.

Hebrew culture universally despised whiners. Fresh in everyone’s mind when Solomon wrote this was the image of David, a king who earned his crown as a man who never shrank from getting his hands dirty with work or war. David was the shepherd king and anyone so much as pretending to noble status would be physically present, at least part of the time, when their servants worked in the fields. He fit right into the basic image of the ideal king as shepherding his people. This bride is fully invested in her man’s mission. It’s not a question of keeping an eye on a wayward skirt-chaser, but a powerful interest in what makes him tick. She wants to be involved. His answer is that he won’t be hard to find if she really cares.

Then the groom bursts out in celebration at what a fine lady he chose. Nothing else a man wants could possibly compare. Because she is so very committed to him, he’s willing to give her all the things any woman could want. Her response is to focus on the treasure of his love. In a very public setting where his reputation is everything, she allows her exotic and expensive perfume to symbolize her adoration of him. Let them see her in near worship of him because they don’t know the half of what she enjoys about being his wife. Provoke their envy, if possible. Among such august company, she has eyes only for him. The chapter closes with another back and forth between them, each reaffirming their devotion to the other in terms wholly consistent with common gender types.

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Mission Support

Posted on August 19, 2014 by ehurst

Sometimes it is downright disturbing how folks in ministry beg for offerings.

It remains one of slimiest aspects of religion today. Most of what any of us could see sickens me, but I worked behind the scenes to see how donations were wasted on every petty and gross vice you can imagine. Some you can’t imagine. God help me; I want no part of that.

In the past few months, one person in particular has posted a couple of contributions to my PayPal account. I used it to buy a shop-vac — been wanting one for years — and then a regular carpet vacuum cleaner because our old Dirt Devil was working poorly. Got them through Wal-Mart’s online store because they take PayPal. When you tell folks how you spent their money, it’s called “accountability.”

It’s getting rough on everyone. I suspect the next PayPal contributions will be spent on groceries. No, we aren’t starving, but it is tight. I’ve changed my “Donate” page here to reflect this new reality. If I knew how reach out there and clip that guilt wire in your brain, I would do it right now. The last thing I want is someone trying to assuage false guilt by donating to my work. You can’t buy God off like that, nor your own conscience. Don’t try it.

Find some other motivation. Participate on any basis that moves you, but I refuse to beg. Give because it blesses you and me. I’ll be glad to explain where the money went, but I’m willing to bet you’ll find me pretty responsible, if that matters to you. But you can’t give what you don’t have and I would be deeply disturbed if I saw some of slavish crap I’ve seen elsewhere. Don’t do that to me.

Do what’s right. I’m just letting you know the real situation.

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Let’s Study Romance

Posted on August 19, 2014 by ehurst

Our Western culture militates against moral wisdom.

Paul and his associates confronted a somewhat less foreign culture in the first churches outside Palestine than we do today. When you read between the lines of the New Testament, you still see a constant struggle. On the one hand, Paul himself struggled with defining what was essential from the Old Testament way of life versus what belonged merely to the specific Covenant of Moses. It was easily the bulk of what he discovered in his three years of isolation before engaging Christian ministry. Once he was fairly certain of that territory, it was still a major battle guiding Gentiles into that same world.

Reading his letters in the New Testament, you can sense the conflict. Hebrew mysticism was not entirely foreign to them, but the particular moral assumptions often conflicted with their heathen Gentile morals. To their advantage, the world around them did not flatly deny the mystical approach. Our world seeks to crush it with a malevolence hard to describe.

The moral character of God as revealed in Scripture cannot rest on mere intellectual study. It requires a broad recognition of elements in knowing and deciding that our world seeks to exclude. At best, we have pitiful substitutes based on mere sentiment, which is easily the most dangerous path we can take. Despite the ostensible secularity of our society, it is a nasty and ugly war of one moral outlook (largely Anglo-Saxon) against that of the Bible. Saddest of all is how very much the established mainstream Christian institutions in our society have sold themselves into the service of that competing view and don’t even recognize that following Christ means a radical shift in assumptions about reality.

Against this, Christ calls us to strive daily to find that now-secret path He marked out centuries ago. It is in the midst of this overwhelming tsunami of deception and violence that we struggle to carve out a life consistent with God’s moral character. It’s not enough to recognize His character as an influence in reality, but it is the underlying fabric of all Creation. It is the founding principle, the thing on which all else stands. The Law Covenants reflect that divine moral character.

That much have I written many times here and in my books. Without that understanding, little of what I write will make much sense. Even more so will Scripture seem to offer a useless message, unless you approach Scripture from its own intellectual assumptions. It’s a standard, but one that is living and active and sharper than any cutting implement. This is God’s policeman living in the world today, not some mindless robot, but your best friend. His enforcement policies will ever remain incomprehensible and inscrutable, but nonetheless binding and calling to us always to take the better path for our own good.

I sensed the shepherd’s calling in my youth. Starting from those insane teenage years, I have suffered much turmoil from the pulling of the Spirit against so very much of what everyone in churches insisted I learn. As you would surely expect, the art of marriage counseling was a part of that. Not that I would pretend any level of perfection. Even as I enter the latter years of my life, having moved so very far from the boiling cauldron of Western mythology and into the life and freedom of Biblical morality, the day I don’t screw something up is when you need to check my pulse to see if I yet live. Not just common things, but things critical to romance.

I have come to the point where my internal message system does make some decent progress off of my daily mistakes. That is, I am ever more conscious of what to do with emotional pain. If I get grouchy and it’s not merely a physical issue, I recognize that I am grouchy and try to chase down the source. Most of the time it is a sense of having been injured. I’ve been hurt by something my spouse said or did, and though it’s path out of me may be circuitous and tortured, I tend to let her know. After which, I struggle to make sense of what happened so that I can bring healing, not just to her feelings, but to the source of conflict itself.

Whether you blow up or not, don’t let stuff fester. If love and romance are worth doing, they are worth doing right. Scripture pours so very much into the issue of human romance. On the one hand, the Bible clearly dismisses a large swathe of standard Western concerns. On the other hand, it elevates other issues to such prominence that you cannot escape them. The biggest problem we have in Western society is the double-bit ax that either ignores the stuff that requires thoughtful consideration or traps you in bondage to bogus reasoning about things that don’t matter.

On the one hand, my urge to write is strong, and not merely in response to a few questions here and there. Romance is the foundation of all human social interaction; if this is broken, society itself cannot be healed in any way. I’ll be exploring the quintessential discussion of romance in the Bible, the Song of Solomon. On the other hand, we have to translate that into our world and this is the part that requires a sort of hands-on exploration of our daily experience. Even if I can write it and have it make sense to you, it may not fit into a book. The threads of quantum moral logic require a shift of commitment, not mere understanding. It means you have to embrace that flaming sword of truth at the entrance to Eden, not merely admire it and describe it.

This subject remains open and I’ll gladly take your questions: here in the comments section, privately by email and on Facebook as well.

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Ego and Idolatry

Posted on August 18, 2014 by ehurst

In Scripture there is a consistent warning about a particular class of female idols, commonly referred to by variations of Asherah, Ashtarte or Ishtar, and these are related to the European Oester. Reading between the lines, we see that this all hinges on women asserting a dominion against their men. It goes back to Genesis 3:16, part of the curse of the Fall: “You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you.”

We note in passing that, while the various pantheons in that part of the world did offer other classes of female deities, this one was singled out as loathsome for deifying and enshrining as sacred the single greatest flaw in feminine nature. This is a perverse mockery of redemption. Granted, the Hebrew language is rather cryptic here in the curses, but what’s obvious is that in our current fallen state, it’s utterly wrong for a woman to dominate men, and wrong for men to supplicate any female for her favors.

Of all the various deities the Germanic tribes could have adopted from the Ancient Near East, Oester represents the ultimate folly. It also reminds us of the quintessential problem with Western Civilization, which went on to absorb the perverse deity. Everything wrong about Western feminist mythology arises from that mistake.

To complicate matters further, all the worst of Western manhood rests on the sin of Adam. That is, being a lazy ass and refusing to perform his duty as moral guardian, Adam went along with Eve’s choice and cursed every man ever after. The Germanic tribes thus give us a manhood image deeply stained with self-absorbed boyhood. It’s a little more complicated to describe, but a critical moral failure of the Baals worshiped alongside the Asherah was the lazy, self-absorbed lordship image.

My point here is the pastoral duty upon me to help heal this broken image. Not that I could pretend to offer any change to our fallen nature, but to point out how the revelation of God aimed to ameliorate the Fall and offer the best hope for a life worth living to bring Him glory. Participating in His glory is always in our best interest.

At one time it was very popular to make jokes about men (“male chauvinist pig”) with fragile egos. To assert that all men are irreparably so and then openly arming women to attack this is no redemptive effort, obviously. Healing begins with first and foremost making men less lazy and teaching them to ditch the fragile ego. Build a genuine shepherd manhood and pay no attention to our social orthodoxy. In fact, make it a point to opt out. Find your own way of expressing it, but simply refuse to participate in the silly games.

Sisters, a man with a fragile ego is just a boy, but a man’s ego itself is not your enemy. A man with a poor or broken ego is just a slave. What you need most is the divine moral covering of a strong shepherd and his ego is very much a critical asset to the performance of his calling. Proper feeding and caring for the man includes a good moral ego maintenance.

Brothers, you had best figure out what a woman’s ego is like and how it works. There is some overlap, but your woman is not like a man. She has her own unique logic and it’s your duty to God to understand her. The rest is in my book, or if you prefer, any number of Red Pill “game” sites, sometimes referred to as the manosphere.

What you must not forget is that you two are a team, and you never, ever cast aspersions on your mate in front of others. You don’t have to defend their mistakes, but you have to defend their ultimate value to you. When you first reach out for each other, the covenant stands in the presence of God. You should not embrace whatever it is you imagine they might become, but what they are and all the bad habits they may develop. You give them first to God and wait to see what His hand brings, but do not marry unless you are certain He is in it.

However, a woman who makes a habit of attacking male egos serves her Ashtarte, and will never be yours, nor even just a friend.

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Not a Spiritual Influence

Posted on August 17, 2014 by ehurst

As always, it’s more complex than we want to recognize. It’s easier to pin it all on this or that one thing and make it our crusade to end that thing. And I could easily take you down a false path that would lead you to simplistic conclusions as to why we demand simplistic conclusions.

While some folks are fully aware of how it works, I tend to think it was by accident that we are hypnotized by moving video. The effects weren’t recognized until after the medium was firmly established in our culture. What is not accidental is how certain agencies in our world have struggled to suppress that knowledge, and have done everything possible to take advantage of the effects. Meanwhile, a great many involved in the industry are both unaware and unconcerned about it, determined to make the most of their artistic and earning opportunities.

There are multiple follow-on effects from other kinds of media and cultural objects that both enhance the hypnotic power and harvest the profits of video. There are a mixed bag of government programs and private influence peddling that participates, both with sinister knowledge and simply taking advantage of what is.

How many Jesus films do we have? It’s just like church programming in general, for example. I am fully aware that some people are spiritually born in such activities, but Scripture denies that spiritual birth comes by such things, because regeneration is by no means a human choice. Spiritual birth is entirely the initiative of God. Silly questions about whether God can use something like video hypnotism to convert lost souls blatantly ignores too many fundamental truths bluntly stated in Scripture. Spiritual birth is a miracle and it has happened to plenty of folks spontaneously without any church or video inputs, so whatever part they play, it’s entirely incidental. It’s quite true on some level that God brings people into His Kingdom in spite of churches and misguided Christian manipulative “soul-winning” efforts.

But a fully developed spiritual awareness, a properly trained moral discernment, will make you irritable about that hypnotic effect from videos. It doesn’t turn that effect off; we remain human and fallen in this world. However, discernment can make you aware of how that medium abuses your soul and you won’t like it. In my mind, it’s a sign of good spiritual development that you be so aware. If you lack the awareness, you aren’t stupid, but it would make me doubt the power of your faith. It’s essential that we be alert and on guard to the portals of our souls in this fallen world.

The effect is pervasive on Western society. Almost all the complaints about broad moral failures, particularly in the US, can be partially traced to the hypnotic conditioning from TV and video. If I read on Slashdot about how the average computer user is mindless about their own system security, I already know why they can’t be taught differently. It’s the video hypnotism complex of effects that make people generally mindless about everything. Why do people need whole books on romance sanity? Because of the pervasive influence of romantic TV and movies filled with bullshit about human nature.

It also helps explain why organized religion has become so perverted. Our “normal” is deeply abnormal; we have no sense of what ought to be. Too much of our good impulse to independent thinking is curtailed by closure of vast areas of creativity. Some folks making TV and movies are fully aware of the effect and strive mightily to wash out of our minds such individuality. The medium of video is itself inherently bad for you, but when a broad program of conditioning is built up around it, we should be surprised when anyone escapes it.

I realize what a massive uphill battle it is. Much of what I’d like to read on the Net is only in video format because the people who are doing the research can’t imagine organizing and writing it up with skill; it’s just too easy to ramble through a video and post it on some popular site. The expression of individual genius is itself homogenized and blunted by pervasive norms. And telling your kids “no more TV or video”? It tends to be worse than cold turkey from powerful addictive drugs, because it’s more addictive than almost any chemical substance. Yes, I feel your pain, but I will gently remind you from time to time that if you indulge yourself in TV and video, you’ll never be as free and morally discerning as you could be. I don’t suggest absolute abstinence on this, just a developing awareness. Stop telling yourself this or that favorite presentation isn’t harmful; all of them are harmful.

Oddly enough, it was a scene from a movie that said it best: “There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who are addicted to [this stuff] and those who haven’t tried it.”

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Psalm 11

Posted on August 16, 2014 by ehurst

David was born in a noble household, fully educated in Hebrew culture. It is preposterous to suggest he would have been so shallow as to have written these songs from a silly, Westernized literal mindset. We enter a series of shorter songs that contain a depth easily missed. Not merely in the artistry, but David hints at far deeper meanings that require an Eastern turn of mind to discern and understand.

David first declares that he has surrendered completely to God as Lord and Emperor. On the one hand, it’s obvious there is no risk of God failing. On the other hand, anyone who lived under an Eastern potentate realizes that this also means embracing that ruler’s whims and anger. Whether or not David enjoys how this turns out, he has no intention of searching other options. He was resigned to whatever fate attaches to his commitment to Jehovah.

Thus, well meaning advice to play it safe against very real world threats is almost insulting to David. It’s not as if David is unaware of the danger. When in human history have there not been people plotting against others? To take any throne is to paint a target on oneself. The psalm quotes a hypothetical question that wonders if Israel loses her righteous king — the foundation — how can she keep the kingdom standing?

To Western minds, David’s reply is a non sequitur. The Temple had not yet been built, so the reference is to God in His divine Temple Courts in Heaven. That is, Jehovah is not dependent on David’s continued existence; He is not harmed if Jerusalem is wiped off the map. Since God can read every human heart and knows all things before they transpire, He’s not up pacing and wringing His hands at the threats to David. If David’s God sits placid on His throne in Heaven, David can afford to remain perched on his where God put him on this earth.

It’s not as if God isn’t paying attention, either. He is active in human affairs. He is also sovereign and does things to suit His own counsel. For David to call down fire from Heaven on the heads of the wicked is a well-established image that only incidentally might turn out literal. So whether David sees literal wrath from God on their heads or not hardly matters, since the final judgment of God takes place in Heaven. God’s divine fire of wrath in that realm above is surely worse than anything He can do in this fallen realm. In like manner, those who obey Him here will surely get their reward there in the hyper-reality of Heaven, even if they see little reward here. Meanwhile, living obediently in moral justice is its own reward.

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The Pastor Is IN

Posted on August 16, 2014 by ehurst

Come on in!

If you subscribe to my blog, or even if you just visit once in a while, I consider you a member of my parish. Not that I’m counting noses and boasting of the numbers, but it’s in the sense that I offer myself as freely as I know how. Most of you don’t need much from me and that’s fine. But if you show up here in my virtual ministry office, you are equally entitled to whatever I offer to anyone else. We can commune as much or as little as you like. You can call me if you need to hear a human voice, but I warn you my writing is far more thoughtful than my conversation. (BTW, if you chase down my resume from my “About” page, that cellphone number has unlimited texting, too, but no data — that means no pictures or documents. I don’t use a smartphone.) Still, you can call me if you can afford it. The point is, if you are reading these words, I serve as a pastor for you.

One of the distinctions in that service is that I am wholly unrelated to any current religious organizations. It’s not a matter of animosity, though some of them have been pretty rough with me. It’s that what I’m doing won’t fit inside any of those organizations, in large part because I insist their form of organization is all wrong. So I don’t wear any of their labels, despite still sharing some ideas with most of them. The distinctions are so large I’ve published books to explain them.

Telling you I’m a Christian Mystic is more of a warning than a description. Other mystics also have trouble with me. For the most part, my mysticism is not like theirs. Mine suffers no reliance on Western intellectual traditions at all; most of them aren’t even aware of the difference. I’m no better or smarter, but the differences are obvious if you attempt to understand any part of what I’m doing. But I make no effort to be exclusive unless it’s necessary for me to get my work done.

A critical element in that work is warning folks, not simply that we are headed for rough times, but how to avoid being suckered about the real threats we face. Way too many people are convinced this is going to be something dramatic and earth-shattering, as seen in many popular movies and TV shows. It ain’t like that. It’s bad, but not that kind of bad. What they show is far too simplified, too comprehensive in simplistic ways.

Indeed, the biggest threat to folks like me remains organized religion. Not in the sense of a direct threat — again, that’s too simplistic. Rather, it’s in the pervasive influence that mainstream organized religion has on the human race and even the very act of thinking about religion. Consciously or not, they have built a frame of reference that excludes my calling and teaching before I even show up.

Don’t assume I’m suggesting you need to quit your church or other religious associations. Rather, I’m asking you to be aware of the inherent conflict. Again, that’s what the books are for, in particular the one linked on the lower right. Most churches are creatures of Western Civilization and the West is in a long, slow decline, dying. Churches will have to detach from Western Civilization to survive and prosper as things get nastier. But as this period of tribulation progresses, you are likely to find conflicts multiplying if you consider my work at all persuasive. I don’t do this simply to create conflict and capitalize on it, but I’m chasing the truth and it leads me farther and farther from them. You need to follow the leading of your own heart, not mine.

But to the degree your path resembles mine, your biggest problem during the coming years will be churches and other organizations. The influence of that broad system of religious expression will cause people to say and do some truly shocking things, and you’ll begin to wonder if burning at the stake is making a comeback. The entanglement between church and state is not a question of “if” but “how.” I want you to learn how to discern the ways the two use each other. It will always remain highly complex and rather fluid, but the underlying moral compromise will never change. They both intend to keep you from seeing moral truth and how our true identity is rooted outside this world.

Throughout the ages, the Lord has continually made the same basic offer when things go wrong: “Come; let’s talk about this.” I’m doing my best to help you make sense of what He has said to everyone so that you’ll recognize how He talks to you individually.

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Arrows in the Quiver

Posted on August 15, 2014 by ehurst

Can I suggest you take a look at this?

To summarize for you, it concerns a report coming down from Department of Homeland Security distributed to various law enforcement agencies across the US. DHS is attempting to create a climate of fear and anger among police by lumping together a bunch of incidents as somehow related to the Bundy Ranch standoff in Bunkerville, NV. The report assumes there could be no possible justification for this rising tide of distaste for the way law enforcement folks have been acting. By the same token, you’ll notice they long ago gave up the fiction that they are acting according to the wishes of any part of the citizens of the US, or protecting their interests.

Just another mile marker on the highway to Hell. I’m not gleefully anticipating a violent revolution. I’m not looking forward to human suffering and sorrow, but God has warned us it’s coming. Not that He is provoking it Himself, but you’ll notice that the linked report is doing that. It’s just a symbol of the high-level, deep politics involved in provoking open warfare in this country between government and those governed.

To some degree, this is sure to happen. However, I’m willing to bet those attempting to light this fire are a little frustrated at how long it’s taking. They can stage-manage big noise and localized rioting, but the violence typically fades. Nobody seems interested in going full guerrilla against the police just yet. It’s not that we lack for folks who know how to conduct such warfare, nor lack for the means. I assure you they don’t fear those fancy armored vehicles; those things do have vulnerabilities. And least of all do they fear the tactical competence of the police.

These days I don’t read the underground patriot forums much, so I can only guess. On the one hand, the Feds were running a test at Bunkerville. Not so much that they planned to create that scene, but took advantage of something they had expected even sooner, and analyzed how it went down. Meanwhile, the patriot militia types were fully aware of this and did their own analysis. I’ve heard rumblings about having identified folks they should not have trusted and won’t trust again, folks who are well known. Then again, the folks most likely to finally act someday are hardly all that unified in the first place. Forming and planning ad hoc still gets the job done.

I am convinced the Feds don’t really understand what they are up against. They are obsessed with a collection of concepts that simply don’t apply, and they lack the sense to realize how the militia operates. The militia won’t start shooting until they feel they have nothing left to lose. Depending on how the next confrontation goes down, I tend to think once the shooting starts, it will be an avalanche of militia folks coming out of nowhere. However, I am pretty sure both sides realize that the Feds plus every local law enforcement officer together are massively outnumbered by the vast horde of folks likely to take arms against them.

I’m willing to bet the cops start the shooting, though. From my experience, the idiocy factor is far higher on the side of government employees. So is petty corruption and all sorts of perversions that hamper their organizational discipline.

Still, it’s the highly intelligent psychopaths at the top who are primed to profit from this violent conflagration. They are the ones looking forward to it, trying to bring it about. I’m hardly the only one who thinks they have miscalculated, that it won’t turn out as they expect, at least not in the long run. Then again, I’m convinced there will be natural disasters to confuse things for them.

I’m also convinced Our God will keep His promises. We shouldn’t chase the false notion that this is the End of All Things. We may be quite surprised at what elements of our civilization continue unaffected. The breakdown won’t be total chaos, at least not everywhere, not by a long shot. It’ll be substantial changes and some tribulation, but nothing like what you see in movies. Some other empire will pick up the slack. But however bad it may be for us here in the US, God isn’t finished with our witness. Some of us will likely go Home, but what you and I are doing here has just begun.

We are sweeping clean again the ancient foundation of God’s message on this earth. We have to wait for a bit of destruction before we can start building in earnest, a fire to consume the wood, straw and tattered scraps. In that sense, we look forward to the wrath of God, because for us it means a cleansing fire than can only harden our faith. Being in a country on the way to Hell is no threat to us because Hell doesn’t own us, so we’ll just be passing through.

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Song of Solomon Intro

Posted on August 14, 2014 by ehurst

Aside from the weekly Bible studies, we will add this series so I can get another book ready for publication.

Among King Solomon’s many talents we can include poet and playwright. This book is pure fiction. To the degree it might resemble the real life experience of any particular individual, it would not be Solomon himself, but someone he knew. In modern terms, it is a musical stage play. There are a handful of roles and scholars have worked out who said what, which saves us a lot of confusion.

We know too little of Hebrew culture. Unlike most biblical literature, this is more about presenting the ideal without any pointed correction of known problems. We cannot guess how much of this drama addresses issues of Solomon’s day, but we can easily discern how it varies greatly from our Western social mythology. This book is a presentation of romance done right. The primary reason it is included in the Scripture canon is because Hebrew moral wisdom addresses the whole of human existence, and romance is too important to be left to chance and mythology.

Consistent with what would be the pinnacle of Hebrew art and literature, this work is loaded with parabolic symbolism. The imagery would represent devices easily recognized by anyone who watched the original performance. That we are often greeted in modern Western commentary with silly nonsense about it being some kind of allegory between Christ and His Bride, the Church, is typical of the corrupt Western moral view. The Hebrew people would snicker at our vestigial Victorian foolishness about human sexuality, preferring their own no-nonsense, matter-of-fact Eastern approach. Those who follow Christ should be quick to discard their own twisted and perverted world to discover the rich heritage of God’s revealed moral perspective. This play reveals how God intended people to build a lasting romantic love, the foundation of social stability.

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The Pastoral Narrative

Posted on August 13, 2014 by ehurst

I haven’t seen it all. What I have experienced forms the burden of my pastoral communications. The shepherd’s call is to tell what you know, as best you know how to tell it, so that others can catch a moment in your place. We don’t pretend that we could control the outcome of that brief immersion; we are simply responding to the impulse to share. All I can offer is what I have seen.

When government arises in any way outside the natural organic structure of the extended family, that government is by definition a conspiracy. It is a conspiracy to rule and it conflicts directly with God’s revealed way of life on this planet. Anything that infringes on the divine mandate of family self-management is inexcusable before the throne of God.

Point out for me any human political government today that is not an evil conspiracy.

Once we define the terms, such use of words is wholly legitimate. Poking fun at conspiracy theories is the response of evil conspiracy to exposure. Willing echoes are just part of the game. What makes it so damnably hard is that the conspiracies will trump up their own fake conspiracy theories as part of the mockery.

We take for granted that there are folks in this world determined to rule all of humanity. Remember Nimrod and the Tower of Babel? Global dominance is a standard human lust, so the idea of conspiracies to take over global government is too obviously justified. What could easily distract us is all the crap put out by those who want to get you involved in helping or hindering the mechanisms, mechanisms that are often wholly imaginary.

Without question, anything that results in some deep dark fear is not a message from God. Either you mistook the message, or the messenger is a deceiver. So much is obvious from reading the New Testament, so I shouldn’t have to elaborate. The proper message is that there are plenty of things you can’t change, so don’t get too excited when you learn about them. Again, the generalities for handling such information are adequately expressed in revelation.

So you won’t gain much traction if you try to convince me of space aliens when you discuss your global government conspiracies. The mere mention of it discredits everything you could possibly tell me otherwise. It’s not that there can be no alien life forms, but that they obviously must remain subject to the limitations revealed by the Creator of all life. They are still “people” and still fallen and still limited. Similar dismissals apply when you describe a global conspiracy of people with inhuman levels of intelligence and awareness. Depictions of literalized Anti-Christ figures totally miss the point of what the Bible says.

If you tell me the CIA’s MKULTRA program sought overwhelming power over humans, I would believe it reflexively. That’s in part because I’ve personally encountered government officials expressing the dire necessity of having such power over those they rule. Whether or not the author of such reporting gives us the facts or is blowing it out of proportion won’t make much difference. In terms of moral discernment, we should be quick to believe there are people that evil.

Reports of unspeakable torture? I could take you to meet folks who would be glad to engage in such torture if they could get away with it. But the wild stories of Satanic ritual torture of kidnapped children from the late 1970s up through the early 1990s is bullcrap. That nonsense was started by a religious huckster and it grew into a huge industry, including professional police seminars and expensive publications often not seen by the general public.

Children are tortured and sometimes by people who imagine they are worshiping something dark and evil, but that’s little more than the ancient worship of Moloch. More real and disturbing is the established record of folks who would film the long, torturous death of their own relatives, sometimes their own children, for the entertainment of privileged perverts in the ruling classes. Snuff films do exist, and a shocking portion of them are crimes committed by the family of the victim. The servants of the ancient god Moloch had to throw their own children on the bronze oven idol.

Given God’s own sense of expressed horror at such things that He would commission genocide to wipe the crime from the earth, you’d be justified in wishing to take after such people with an ax. Their blood splattered on your person would be a mark of holiness. Yes, God said as much. However, He said so within the context of an experiment, a demonstration wherein He was directly involved in a human government. With Christ, the Temple veil was torn in two and that covenant was closed. Thus ended God’s direct involvement in human government. Starting with the Resurrection, we who seek God’s favor must work in a different setting, and with different methods. You might still find His approval for stern actions individually against unspeakable evil, but He may not prevent you facing the social and legal consequences.

Most of us aren’t in the position to personally engage the pursuit of such monsters in this world, anyway. It doesn’t hurt to consider what God might expect of you if you did encounter something that evil. That’s because, along with the apparent progress of various plans for evil global government, you should expect to witness a tidal rise in human depravity in general. People in positions of power and influence have been pushing us in that direction all along as the means to enslaving us. It seems to work, but like many things in our fallen nature, there are points at which it fails. You should probably be ready for the continuing decline as well as the shocking moments when the social fabric finally tears.

Nobody knows exactly where those tipping points are, so the whole thing is rickety. We read about various apparent plans to respond, particularly where those in power are gearing up to crush any resistance. You can see where the plans are brutal, but the actual measure of brutality is often kept secret until it’s used. Yes, it’s evil. I know this because I have seen people with power and influence working so very hard to debase people they claim to represent, making them powerless so they are forced to turn to those hustlers and hucksters. The hustlers don’t actually lead, but herd their constituencies. I’m sure you’ve seen it recently in the news when these hucksters rush to the scene of reactionary riots and engage the press with propaganda that seems to justify the rioting and demand accountability from those who provoked it.

Both the hucksters and those who provoke the riots are working together. It may not always be conscious at their level of operations, but you can be sure someone somewhere is fully aware of all this and keeps both sides of this false image in place. Were it not all stage managed, some really big and important people would be dead, not working this racket into old age. Only the true believers die young because they refuse to serve the system. At whatever point the actors depart from the storyline, their role is eliminated.

I’ve seen all this. I’ve also seen God prospering people who took the time to seek His face and learn how to avoid being trapped in the deception. This is why I openly oppose most activism, because it’s just part of the storyline. The point of pastoral narrative is to help you see a different storyline that God wrote. If you know it’s there, you’ll understand that my voice is just one telling, and you should get involved and find your own.

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