The Risk of Two Realms

Posted on June 30, 2014 by ehurst

Yesterday’s post on depression hit a nerve with several folks. In my own mind, it’s summed up in my response to a comment: “Much of what we dislike in this world is the back edge of something we simply don’t understand.” In other words, depression is the manifestation of something deeper, often unseen. We don’t see that deeper thing because we’ve been conditioned to believe there’s nothing to see.

Every unpleasant sensation in this life has a cause. Sometimes it’s not worth pursuing; you just have to learn to work around it. Sometimes it genuinely hinders, but we already have a serious problem with knowing whether the thing hindered is worth pursuing in the first place. Most of us are taught to want things we cannot and/or should not want. Instead, we are told it is immoral to have certain feelings that we cannot possibly control. Most of what you think you know about reality is just a long train of false dichotomies.

It’s bad enough we live in a realm of shadows, but our Western society tries to paint those shadows in bright colors. We are virtually forced to confess that darkness is light.

In a certain sense, you really don’t even have to know precisely what your mission is in life; with a mere sense of mission calling itself you can push through the worst this world has to offer. Let me save you some struggle: Your mission is to glorify God. Fundamental to that mission is reaching out to embrace the moral character of God as expressed in His Law Covenants. That demands you step outside our Western Civilization. Some of you can instinctively do that, but most of us have to spend at least a little time considering what that means in terms of what we have to reject to do that. That’s the reason for the book advertised on lower end of the right column on this blog page.

If you would prefer that book in a different format, just ask: plain text, HTML, PDF, Word (DOC), Open Document (Libre/Open Office), etc. I’ll pay almost any price to get the truth into your head.

I don’t promise that you will overcome all your sorrows, but that you can if you decide it matters. Chances are it will be expensive in one sense or another, but that’s only because we have been herded into investing far too much energy in things that don’t matter. Depression is sometimes just a signal that your tank is empty, that you have nothing inside to keep you going.

At the same time, what lies behind depression is the same thing that makes me willing to do some of the riskiest things for the right reason. For example, at a youth camp one year I was the first to volunteer for a nearly impossible climb on the ropes course that included jumping between trees high above the ground — this was after my knees went bad. Some of what causes depression is the same fatalism that grants God permission to take my life in pursuit of His glory. Senseless danger? No, I was pursuing His glory. In that sense, depression is merely the flesh’s response to the recognition that nothing in this world really matters, anyway.

When I leave this world, His glory is about the only thing I can take with me, so I need to make sure I pile it up high.

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Depression and the Spirit

Posted on June 29, 2014 by ehurst

This is something that’s been rumbling around in my head for a while. Recently someone asked a question about it and it seems a good time to post on it.

God’s revelation is a two-edged sword, we are told in Hebrews. So it is. Often in our daily human experience, we find ourselves facing one edge without a clue that there is another.

It’s no secret I have chronic clinical depression. It’s just part of the package of what makes me unique. But depression is not what everyone seems to think it is. Most of us are aware only of the back edge. We don’t know much about the other edge.

On top of that, our culture has a very poor grasp on the nature of depression or anything else in the human soul. We are fed lies about what it is what we might do about it. As with most things, the common responses are all wrong. Depression is not feeling bad or sad; it’s not feeling at all. It’s a deprivation of feeling in a sensitive soul. You tend to feel deprived of life itself and wonder why you have to keep on living. Why bother?

We bother because the other edge of that deeply cutting sword might be the power to avoid feeling too much at crucial moments when feelings can hinder. When something rips me hard, there’s always a part of me that stands aloof and uninvolved. The connection between the various parts isn’t broken, but sometimes the various threads of consciousness are distinctly discernible. Some threads want control at the wrong time. When you know you have a mission, there’s a reason to do stuff without any feelings.

I don’t know how to put it into words very well. I wish I could package it up and give it away. Some part of me objectifies depression as just something my flesh experiences and I pull away to let it experience without all of me. Something inside is struggling to be more connected to the Spirit Realm than the Fallen Realm. It tends to disassociate from the part that remains hopelessly broken.

It’s not compartmentalization where I lose contact completely and don’t know what’s going on inside the bad. Boy, do I know what’s going on there! Yet, at the same time, I don’t feel too tightly wrapped up in it any more. It no longer owns me as “me.” It’s the thing I know I’ll leave behind when redemption finally calls me Home.

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Psalm 4

Posted on June 28, 2014 by ehurst

This is considered by scholars as a song of the evening. It’s another of those psalms that sound far better in Hebrew than in any translation. What comes across as simple and simplistic truism is actually quite majestic in tone. Hebrew language never pretended to carry much truth, but served as an indicator of things for which no words exist. Thus, this is a case of words serving as mere signposts to vast lands just waiting our exploration.

David calls out to the sole source of a life worth living, the God who is righteousness defined, and who supplies what it takes to lay hold of righteousness. It matters not the facts of his context. David knows that in the tightest place God will give him room to breathe His Spirit. Thus, already David has established that here is nothing new. While he may have failed God countless times, God has never failed him.

Who are David’s enemies? Mere humans are no match for God, and hardly capable of understanding what David values most. In vain do they attempt to make him look bad or feel bad. They cannot touch, much less take, what God has given him: divine favor. They aren’t even fighting on the same battlefield with David. Unless they repent and consider the vast difference between their desires and his, they can’t even understand how David rose to his position. Their envy alone is proof of their impending failures.

David warns them to walk in God’s moral justice, to embrace the revelation in full trust. All they see is David’s privilege and comforts and assume this is what it’s all about. They assume God is just a vending machine; pay your dues and get your reward. It’s not like that. The most valuable thing on this earth is God’s smile and personal warmth. If that comes at the price of privation, so be it. David is ready to make that trade.

David symbolizes the ultimate value in this world by his ability to rest peacefully. He has peace with God, the Maker of All Things. What else could possibly matter?

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Wide Open Info

Posted on June 27, 2014 by ehurst

I’ve often said the only activism even vaguely appealing to me is open information standards.

That’s not to say no one has any business with privacy and encryption, but I don’t need those things for my work. Sure, I need time with relative quiet in meat space, and I’m often tempted to leave the house and sit in the public library with my laptop. But once my thoughts are expressed in digital form, it’s time to splash it out there for the world to see. I live solely to participate in revelation.

Thus, my fleshly nature loves word processors, but my calling demands neutral formats. Frankly, most of what I do could be in plain text. But when it involves linking, significant footnoting, or anything more than plain text, HTML is plenty good. To be precise, XHTML with printer formatting included in the rolled-in style sheet (CSS) is about as much “word processor” as I need.

And I don’t mean complicated, kludgy XHTML code, but clean and standards-compliant. So if I were to use a “word processor” it wouldn’t be MS Office or even Libre Office/Open Office. Both of those spit out some really ugly junk when saving as HTML. I might consider using Kompozer/Composer (part of the Mozilla suite of products), but even that tends to be a bit clunky. So far, the best in terms of code clarity is Amaya, but I’d have to build it from source because the binary releases for Debian aren’t keeping up with security updates. Nobody in the Debian world manages it as a package. (Edit: It’s no longer developed, but the Windows version should work just fine.)

So I’m left with mostly hand-coding, which is fine. I can write like that on-the-fly for the simple stuff I do. I keep a collection of code clippings and templates around to save time. It’s not hard to find that stuff if you decide to learn how to write in XHTML. Just get yourself any good “for dummies” level of introduction and in just a couple of weeks you’ll be whipping it out like a webmaster.

It’s not so much that I love doing things this way; I don’t. I love having a stack of word processors to suit my moods, but that’s not where it’s at. I keep a copy of MS Office 97 simply because it works well with WINE on Linux and I do need the nudging about grammar now and then. So I tend to write the text in a plain old text editor (Geany, Notedpad++, Gvim, Joe etc.) and paste the text into Word 97 for a grammar review. Once I’m satisfied with the draft, I churn out first a copy in HTML, then blocked out plain text, and only after that do I actually produce something for Smashwords if needed.

All my stuff is free because it’s all about the message. I have no other reason to keep sucking up the oxygen.

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Redemption and Restoration

Posted on June 26, 2014 by ehurst

Sister Wildcucumber raises a very good point:

We’re told by many a guru that we must meditate ourselves away and out of this physical realm, daily, if we seek enlightenment. This world is illusion — you know the drill. But as these Eastern understandings are translated into Western thought, the whole thing becomes a mess. Western thought obscures even the original illusion. You can’t “rise above” something you haven’t been immersed in, in the first place.

Even if this physical plane is illusion, it is important to remember that it is really all we have to work with right now. It is cursed, on the one hand, and a blessing on the other. Why are we here? I’m not wise enough to say. I am wise enough to know that squandering this life by embracing the distractions we invent will never lead to understanding.

I keep hammering the necessity of striving to understand the difference between Western and Ancient Near Eastern epistemology. Most of what we as Westerners know of Eastern thought is a trashy false rendition. Our problem is not the words we use, but what we make of words in the first place. This is the reason I push the notion of parabolic language or the the use of parables. Western thought is an illusion of an illusion because we have that burned-in habit of mind that starts off with a literal rendering of everything. And when we begin to understand how that’s a problem, we literalize every attempt to build something better. To be Western is to be twice damned.

So there’s a good chance you’ll get this wrong, but that won’t relieve me or Wildcucumber of the divine duty to participate in revelation. I added a comment to her post that quotes the end of the Creation Narrative. At every step, God was pleased with the results; the narrative tells us He “saw it was good.” When it was finished, He saw that “it was very good.” But then we go and ruin it all in the Fall. Paul then tells us that Creation longs for our redemption from the Fall.

So why is God going to then someday destroy it all? There you go again, getting literal with ineffable truth in parables. Does it not occur to you that said coming destruction applies only to the fallen human element in things? Are we so tightly bound to our conceptual “purity” that we cannot grasp the idea that there is a whole lot more to Creation than just the portion we experience as our universe? Are not angels created, too? The coming destruction applies to our plane of existence; we don’t have language to express how that does not include everything God ever created. It might well seem that way since we are so horribly blinded about what He has created.

Get a clue folks: The notion of “propositional truth” is a heresy the Church learned from Pharisees (“the Judaizers”), not something Christ and His Apostles taught.

This is not some advanced, super-intelligent gobbledygook. It’s like everything else in God’s revelation that really matters; it’s ineffable — it can’t be told in human language. So when we stand on one side of this truth far above our intellects, it feels like one thing. When you move around to another side, it feels like something else. Keep moving and you’ll find different ways to indicate something about this thing way too big to fully explore and far beyond the limits of our human perception. When Paul writes in Ephesians about tasting to powers of the age to come, that’s what Sister Wildcucumber is talking about when she encourages you to experience life around you on some level above the intellect. You can’t get there as long as you remain trapped in your Western limitations.

About the most literal statement we can make is that our blindness will be removed when we experience that final redemption because our very humanity will be transformed into something we could never imagine.

First, move out your Western thought patterns into ANE epistemology. Then you will be standing on firm ground to rise up and touch the heavens.

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Rasps

Posted on June 25, 2014 by ehurst

I wish I could say it made me smoother, but it seems more like rubbing me raw. We solved our washer problem, settling for a smaller and older used model that is far better designed than the one that died over the weekend. We settled on this particular model after checking all the outlets and discussing their payment plans, etc. Because interest rates are so low, no one finances any more. There’s more money in cutesy plans to charge all kinds of fees like a short-term “lease-to-buy” or insisting you have to first get their credit card with the higher consumer credit rates. We bought something older and easier to repair.

It required borrowing a trailer to haul it. This piece of equipment we attached to rear of our vehicle just barely qualifies for the term “trailer.” It trails behind and carries stuff, but beggars can’t be choosers. So once I had it attached to my Jeep, I decided today would be a good day to clear out the last batch of firewood I had cut for my brother during cooler weather. He hadn’t needed it for a while, so it piled up until it was simply too hot out for cutting and the chiggers and ticks became a threat. When I stopped, I had quite a large pile. The load of wood was about as much as the poor trailer could bear, but it made the long trip across town.

Today was not just a washing machine shopping day but grocery day, too. Yeah, I’m a little tired.

Another tooth on the grinding rasp to dull our senses: Apparently governments have been contracting for malware that affects all major smartphones. Some big-name security researchers discovered this thing, but no word yet on whether they will be developing their dutiful counter for the malware. This is the stuff Snowden should have told us about.

I’m not the first guy to suggest that Greenwald has been carefully dribbling out the most shocking, yet most harmless, secrets he could dig out of Snowden’s documents. What we have seen so far is woefully obsolete already, but creates just enough hysteria to keep Greenwald employed and in the public eye for a very long time.

Meanwhile, if you really wanted to know what’s going on in places like Iraq, you simply cannot trust the news, and sometimes not even the popular alternative news sources. Sometimes it works best to speak to someone who actually lives in Iraq.

You know, things are seldom what they seem.

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Tired of Living?

Posted on June 24, 2014 by ehurst

Turn on your Bible memory. If I drag in every Scripture reference that supports and explains this, we’ll be here all day. You are accountable to God for familiarity with His revelation.

As recorded in the Gospels, during those moments when Jesus and His Father spoke audibly to those around Him, a primary concern was the Father’s glory. Get a clue: There is nothing in this life of greater value to us than the Father’s glory. Not because He said so, but it’s because of what His glory does to us and for us.

When Ezekiel explained to us the nature of Lucifer’s Fall in chapter 28, he referred to the traffic and trade. In the Hebrew culture, trade would include all goods, services and information passed between people. That’s a parabolic image of something taking place in the Spirit Realm regarding Lucifer’s original position. He was the Covering Cherub; not covering God, but covering Creation to prevent it coming into direct contact with God’s divine Presence.

Scripture is quite clear that such contact dissolves Creation. All of this is far beyond our human understanding. It is not possible for the human mind to rise to such truth, but a certain portion of it can be indicated so that we can formulate a valid response.

So Lucifer’s position was to convey God’s requirements to conscious elements of Creation, or if you prefer, responsive elements in Creation. Scripture hints that includes an awful lot of stuff far beyond our comprehension. In return, glory returned to the Father, also passing through Lucifer. Ezekiel also makes reference to violence. Something in this went awry when Lucifer decided to grab some of that glory for himself. The Hebrew word typically translated as “violence” portrays the notion of unjustly taking something, of stepping outside your place. He stretched the envelope of his assigned dominion.

The fundamental nature of all sin is summed as arguing with God. Lucifer defied God’s command in some way regarding his assigned mission to transmit God’s commands to Creation and Creation’s glorification of God. So what glory was rightfully his in the first place was taken from him and he was confined to human space. He was no longer permitted to enjoy the direct Presence of God. He still reports to God, but does so indirectly when God calls the rest of Creation to account through other angelic beings. Satan reports dutifully from within human space.

He no longer receives the satisfaction of participating in that glory he once knew, but has to still give God a glory tribute. Whatever blessing and sustenance of his spirit he once gained from his position as Covering Cherub is now denied him and that can’t be pleasant for him. Whatever he stands to gain comes only from the pitiful remnants of fallen human glory. He has to devour human energies and it will never be enough to satisfy.

Again, all of this is parabolic. Literal description is simply not possible. Trying to pull this down to human reason results in things like the Manichean Heresy, Gnostic heresies, etc. It doesn’t have to make sense.

When humans achieve human glory, it’s not much more than the passing fame and adulation of other humans. When God gains glory, all Creation itself chimes in. Jesus spoke to His Father in those moments when human glory was not really much of a concern, and often not much there at all. However, God said He had most certainly glorified Himself in the Son. God wasn’t seeking human adoration on those terms. That is, He didn’t seek glory that originated in the human soul. Rather, He sought glory from something more fundamental in Creation itself, and a glory to which humans had some option to join themselves.

Our commission here is to develop a moral sensitivity that does not wait for emotion and human energy to build up to a level of outburst. Rather, we seek to discern whatever threads of glory we might find within Creation itself. It’s not singing worship songs with talent, but with a fervor that you cannot possibly generate from within yourself. It becomes a background song that no human voice can sing, and humming-thrumming rhythm and music that your mind can hardly appreciate.

The human soul is stretched beyond belief by spiritual awakening. It is called to reach out beyond itself and simply obey without evidence or substance. It’s that “leap in the dark” that we cannot make in our own power. All of this is somehow participating in His glory. It feeds our spirits and reduces the flesh. It is beneficial in ways no human mind can perceive, yet we are most assuredly aware of how much we like it when we touch it.

When we come to value His glory more than life itself, we understand why we are still here.

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Vanquishing the Self

Posted on June 23, 2014 by ehurst

This is something with which I struggle even today.

There is a time and place for the prickly response. Those are the moments when, as best you can discern, nothing else will do in pursuing your mission. There are contexts where you simply cannot bless some people with your serenity. When harsh responses are justly given, you have nothing to regret.

The basis for deciding either way is not self-image, but mission necessity. To the degree we project any persona at all, our aim is the serene mystic who bears all things in the name of Christ. The instinct to rush in and heal all woes, correct all untruths, etc., is all around us, but foreign to biblical morality.

When I’m in the gym, a genuine safety threat calls for intervention. That’s defined typically as someone lying on a bench unable to get out from under the barbell in their hands. That is not the same as someone struggling to lift when the weights are no threat to them. And unless they cry out in pain and obvious sorrow, I’m not going to suggest a better form without first being engaged as a coach, even if only for a brief moment. People who really want to improve will either ask you or will research it for themselves. Humans need to find their own way until they realize it doesn’t work.

You cannot help someone who doesn’t want help. You can only justify acting unilaterally when there is a threat to your mission. The Spirit can tell you if you cultivate the habit of listening. My constant chatter here about dominion and informed consent is as much a reminder to me as any one reading.

You will no doubt encounter far too many people “just trying to help.” It is a particular sickness of Western society to make that a virtue, and to shame people who object to it. The disabled community ethic as a response to it is also morally flawed. People with any measure of empathy have a hard time watching someone else struggle or suffer, and Western culture bungles it senselessly. By a complete lack of dominion awareness, we have created a social context ripe for hard feelings.

Don’t wait for that insistent offering of unhelpful help to come along before you decide how to stop it. Review in your soul what sort of boundaries and thresholds you can tolerate based on what you see others experiencing around you. Prepare yourself to face such things. Sometimes it isn’t worth a response and you have to know when. We should generally be reluctant to thrust our moral truth on others until there is a context that gives it meaning. They have to see our non-verbal witness of faith first.

Don’t offer your admiration to someone who vanquishes everyone they encounter. It’s not a matter of control for us. We aren’t here to conquer the world, only our own fallen nature. Most of us will never have the charisma and presence of mind to pull off a strong social presence. It’s all we can do to keep our focus on the mission regardless how others perceive us.

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Seeking Substance

Posted on June 22, 2014 by ehurst

Pray with me.

No, I don’t feel oppressed and harassed. I’m frustrated by a few things in my life, but I don’t see it as the hand of Satan or any of that silliness. The hand of Satan is more about moral incontinence; hassles are just that background noise we face when following Christ.

Our washing machine has been giving us trouble. My son and I have managed to fix quite a few nagging issues, but now the logic circuits have gone bonkers. There is no good reason for putting a computer inside a home washing machine, except as an excuse to charge more and give less. Parts wearing is one thing; I can handle that. When the logic board and sensors go haywire, the cost of repair is more than that of replacement. That’s the whole idea, of course.

We didn’t choose the washer; it was a hand-me-down. Now we are researching replacement because we have more time than money. I’ve used a washtub and rubbed my clothing on that ribbed board before. It’s not the end of the world; it’s just background noise.

I’m quite sure I could continue to drift along these lines grinding out articles and books in our splendid isolation here. Aside from the occasional computer hiccups, almost no one is interested in my services. There are jobs, but all of them require standing, something my bad knees won’t tolerate. Accommodation under the ADA, you say? American socialism isn’t half so sane as what you find elsewhere and I consider it unconscionable to assuage my sorrows at the expense of others. It’s not a question of pride, but in that sort of work, my contribution would hardly justify the expense. My real complaint with flipping burgers is the unconscionable toxicity of the food I’d be churning out.

I’m not praying for prosperity in the first place. I’m praying for meaningful service. All I really want is to demonstrate the power of the Spirit. I long to expose my faith to a wider audience because I suspect there are more folks out there just waiting for a revelation of that sort.

I’m not unhappy with this blog and what it seems to have done in that direction, but it doesn’t satisfy my moral appetite. I’m up against the place where, if I don’t take this out into the real world and test it first person, it’s value remains too thin. I’m not the same guy who went out and garnered all that experience in the broken world, so what I’ve gained and changed since then still needs confirmation on the ground. Until then, it’s just so much theory.

Pray with me.

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Psalm 3

Posted on June 21, 2014 by ehurst

The context is inserted by tradition, not a part of the original words, referencing events in 2 Samuel 15. It is by no means implausible. This psalm reveals how David was hardly arrogant, rather quite confident in the power of moral purity. We could argue that David’s sorrows were often of his own making. He was overly indulgent of his kin, particularly his sons and his cousin, Joab. Such was the source of much evil during David’s reign. No one argues David’s failings, but He was deeply and personally loyal to his God more than anyone living on this earth. His primary virtue was his utter humility toward the Lord.

At the point when David and his court fled over the ridge toward the Jordan Valley, it certainly appeared God did not favor him. David knew better, because the problem was with David’s choices, not God’s. The Lord is not fickle as humans are, so David felt certain things would run their course. Eventually God would restore him to the throne of Israel. Meanwhile, David had no reason to believe this was the hand of God turned against Him, so he maintained his faith. He presents the image of God patiently waiting in His tent in Zion for David to return, this being before the Temple was built. Meanwhile, God had His own plans for events and David must ride out the storm.

With this divine assurance, David had no trouble sleeping peacefully at night. Being surrounded by human enemies was no significant threat because God had already seen him through worse. Remember Goliath? In God’s good time, He would rise up and strike most decisively. That’s how God handled people who served His purpose.

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