Open Source, Closed Mind

Posted on May 7, 2014 by ehurst

I support my fellow humans.

People come first; my God says this whole universe exists as a place to guide people to His truth. That puts me at odds with the majority of the human race, but I genuinely love people. That includes individual persons I encounter. Ask my neighbors whether I care about them. I’ll put that much on the line, at least.

One of the things I help them with most often is computers. I run a computer tech support ministry. That word “ministry” implies I am willing to do it for free, and I’ve done plenty of that. I like people and I think computers are a good way of meeting some limited human needs. I sort of like computers, too, but people come first.

I highly recommend to my friends that they use Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). I lump it all together because I am not an orthodox enthusiast of Open Source Software (OSS) alone. Despite the loud and voluminous blather about how virtuous Open Source is, particularly versus commercially produced software, there is plenty of moral failure in the OSS community.

The kind of person it takes to be really good with computers and software tends to make that same person poor in dealing with their fellow humans. Try to understand that this isn’t true with all of them, nor even a majority of them, but is a tendency that characterizes OSS development more, and more noticeably, than it does with commercial software development. Despite the huge overlap, with a great many people developing both kinds at the same time, the two communities tend to attract different people and it shows.

People who really like other people seldom get involved in software development. However much you might think I fail at dealing with people, I’m a lot better with humans and computers. The majority of developers will go along with the flow because they generally don’t care much either way. The dominant flow in commercial software is to make that money. Lie, cheat, steal if you can get away with it, but make that money. So commercial vendors will pretend to care about your needs and you’ll get the general feeling they’ll do something about serious complaints that affect their bottom line. OSS developers don’t have a profit motive. However, they aren’t much friendlier and tend to be more honest about their general misanthropy.

Commercial vendors put marketing first. Instead of putting marketing first, OSS puts the developer first. It feeds developer arrogance. Read any forum or mailing list where OSS developers hang out and you’ll be sickened by some of the vile hateful contempt they spew about their fellow humans. Not much by volume, but it seems to dominate the discussion by the sheer depth of it. There is precious little software development that puts users first.

In other words, neither commercial nor OSS holds the high ground. Simply free software varies widely and is harder to characterize. Some of it is annoyingly ad-supported and others are just crappy junk in the first place. But enough of it works quite well, and often better for general human needs, so I include it all as FOSS. Honestly, the best projects seem to involve one developer doing the whole thing, or maybe with a small circle of friends. But with the strict philosophical divide between OSS and commercial development, neither is morally superior by any means.

The only advantage is that with OSS, you can sometimes find ways to correct the misanthropic arrogance of the developers. In some few cases, individuals or small projects will do a great job of restoring sanity by forking or repackaging a project. But the bottom line for regular humans is this: FOSS is affordable and it generally gives you more control.

You have to know what you want in order to take control, but it’s easy enough to learn. I don’t promote Debian and CentOS simply because I believe they are superior technology or because they are somehow morally better. I support them because it’s easier to make those two meet common human needs than almost all the other stuff out there under OSS or FOSS, and certainly better than with any commercial software. As long as you understand what you are getting into, there are no surprises arising from believing the propaganda sales pitch from either the commercial cut-throats or the arrogant OSS advocates.

I’m here to help you make the most of what’s available.

(This post updates a previous post by the same title.)

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Gossamer Thunder

Posted on May 7, 2014 by ehurst

I realize it all sounds like bullshit.

You. You are the project. Not someone else and certainly not the world around you. No other part of this reality is of any real concern. Your reactions are what you need to work hardest to change. Your entire focus is fixing you.

Not in the sense of fixing yourself, as if you were the ultimate source of change, but fixing you almost as an externalization. You have to become both alienated and yet more familiar with your self in order to do it right.

This is why we Christian Mystics act as if hard reality is not that important. It isn’t; God says so. If you don’t read that message in the Cross, then you haven’t seen the Cross. C.S. Lewis called this world Shadowlands and it is more true than even he knew. There is an appearance of consistency to our reality, but it’s a lie. God said you cannot trust your senses for more than provisional operational utility. You cannot get any real meaning from this reality, though you can surely find it in this reality.

Knowing the will of God for your life is chasing gossamer threads of uncertainty. Grasp those threads and your life with change more radically than any tectonic shift. It’s hard. That’s because we have an instinct for a certainty that isn’t important, nor really possible. Reality is fungible. Miracles should prove that well enough. If God can alter reality with a whim, it’s because reality isn’t that important. It’s a reality that is only apparent.

Ultimate Reality is outside of our time and space experience. It cannot be searched or even reached by human intellect. You cannot know it in that sense. You have to use a faculty that belongs out there, that suffers nothing from the limits of time and space. That faculty is what the Bible calls “faith.” We were created on that plane, but chose to exist on another. Nobody is going to explain in terms you can handle intellectually, but it’s a human choice that put us in this mess and blinds us.

We are told to make a choice to get out of this mess, yet also told in the same breath that we cannot even want that choice. It’s not supposed to make sense on our level of understanding. The initiative for change lies only with God, yet all humans are called to it. Attempts to nail this down with logic and theory will always fail, always come up short. Don’t try to define it with theology, but understand the necessity of action. Not action to change things external, but you internally.

You don’t have to understand how it works in order to do what’s right. One set of imagery is as good as another in the sense that getting you to respond any way at all is more important than seeking some “right” answer. It’s not what you know, nor what you do, but the question is to what you are committed. The worst thing you can do is take so seriously your own way of organizing your response that you try to make it normative for others. Your conceptions, your theology, are yours alone. Your orthodoxy might get some vibes, but the more precise you make it, the more wrong it is for someone else. There is no objective truth, and if there were, you would not be competent to define it. Get over yourself.

You are fully competent to decide you will obey that calling, and competent to respond to things you cannot control.

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Death March Ukraine

Posted on May 5, 2014 by ehurst

No one but God alone knows how it will turn out. His plans are seldom revealed on such things because the people have chosen to avoid His revelation. Nations are used much the same as natural forces or animals without a clue to God’s intent. Okay, so animals actually do know a thing or two, and we are like the dumbest of rocks.

We cannot pretend our rulers don’t quite understand that their actions in Ukraine are provoking war. We cannot pretend to believe the outright bullshit they spew. The MSM are pretending the fire in Odessa wasn’t murderous arson, suggesting those hiding in the building were actually snipers setting up to attack the opposing group. How do these people sleep at night with such blatant lying? Normal people find it all incomprehensible.

Yes, they do know they are lying. It should be obvious they are piping the tune they were paid to play. You and I sit helplessly watching this train wreck in slow motion. There are so many things wrong with this whole scene that we cannot begin to list the failures. We can only guess where the point of impact will be and what it will look like. Will the bridge collapse first or will the tracks fall apart somewhere else down the line?

Nor can we predict all the consequences, but I sense in my spirit that they will be huge.

God help us.

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This, Not That

Posted on May 4, 2014 by ehurst

Why do I blather about this thing, but don’t promote that great cause?

I can only engage what I know, what God has called to my attention. So I pick on Western Christian churches in general terms because I am expert on the differences between fundamental intellectual assumptions (epistemology). I pick on specific churches where I’ve been directly involved, and particularly when I encounter deception and abuse of members. I leave the others alone because I don’t know enough about them. I can only speak to what I know.

For the most part, I don’t pick on other religions. That is, I’ll address differences I know about, but I feel no drive from God to harass them verbally. That includes atheists. Most of them are some brand of rationalist and I’ll address that issue, but I see no need to poke at people who promote atheism. Even if they attack me directly, the most I’m likely to do is draw distinctions and correct what I perceive as factual errors. I usually don’t bother with false characterizations unless I can see a chance to entertain.

The point is that I’m not trying to whip up an angry crowd of supporters and score points for “our team.” That’s the sort of agitation you get with almost all forms of activist communications, and I think activism is for fools.

However, sometimes I find that a significant difference in epistemology leads to a significant failure in other areas. That would lead to boycotts. Not the activist kind where I try to get you to join me, but by way of explaining why I may not share your enthusiasm about something. For example, I don’t go out of my way to pick on the folks involved in Slackware, but you’ll never get me to use their stuff. That product is closely associated with something I consider an ugly and wholly unwarranted attack on, not just my personal religion, but the entire range of religious faith itself. The guy who runs the Slackware Project has said some foolish things that promote that attack and now refuses to discuss it or distance himself. We can be friends if you use it, but we won’t be friends if you harass me about it. The whole point is not to stir debate, but to put you on notice where I draw the line.

There are a handful of websites I won’t read nor share links because of similar concerns. I personally boycott sites that block the Lynx browser, largely because Lynx is essential to a very large number of Internet users, many of whom live with disabilities that make Lynx the only (or best) way they see the Net. I’m one of them, though I’m hardly a good example, since my disabilities are frankly not that significant. I have other options, but I prefer Lynx. Some sites are spiteful about religion in other ways and I find it comes across in the particular way they approach issues. That is, they can’t be trusted to simply cite the facts or useful opinions on some things because their rancid hate for my beliefs colors their reporting. A couple of examples would be Vox Day or Washington’s Blog. Go ahead and hunt them down and read their stuff, but I won’t link to them. You can ask why, I suppose, but they aren’t really worth my time to fight.

You can’t just swallow everything that’s thrown out there. If you have no discernment, you’ll draw no boundaries. Without boundaries you have no moral identity. It’s the same as not supporting some who claim to be on my side, because I perceive they actually aren’t. I won’t poke at them; I’m not interested in alienating anyone. I’m not unfriendly to them, but I don’t promote their stuff because I can’t. They should be free to say and do what really drives them, and should be equally free to live with the consequences. If what I have written so far doesn’t serve as adequate warning, I’m not too sure anything else I could say would help them understand or matter to them.

In other words, it’s about the message, not me. I don’t take myself that seriously and I’d rather you didn’t either. Consider whether my blather serves any purpose and act accordingly. And if you feel driven to attack my message, just do your best to be accurate. We owe it to our fellow humans to ask their attention only for things that can help them understand their own world. I’m not worried about people who hate me; sometimes I hate me, too. That’s human nature. We have enough struggle without making it personal, but if it helps, go ahead and vent about me.

Still, just give my message a shot.

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Job 38

Posted on May 3, 2014 by ehurst

The storm arrives. Whether literal or not, it surely must have felt all too real for Job. We can’t pretend to know how God speaks to others, so one reader’s imagination is as good as the next. Job got a message only God could send. In any language, the imagery here is too rich for mere minds, but strikes to some part of the soul much deeper than mere intellect.

Like a cheap perfume in the presence of sweet flowers, commentary on the text is almost embarrassing. We note that here and in the next chapter God’s message does follow the same order as Creation. There is first the mention of light and darkness, with the same moral implications for which darkness and light represent falsehood and truth. God’s moral character is infused throughout Creation. The heavens as the place earth rested are followed by separation of sea and land. God dwells on the issue of climate and weather as utterly beyond human control, completely in His hands. He mentions vegetation, the luminaries in the skies and animal life.

What we notice most at this point is that God is asking the question: To what could we compare Him with any hope of understanding? We could fancy that today we understand some of the mechanics of our world, but we cannot possibly nail down with any significant accuracy what will happen before it comes. God goes on to note we cannot reach out into space and adjust the movements of the stars. Nor can we create sentience. We cannot pretend to know which animals should be fed by what means and which should die from various causes. Even when we try, we only make things worse by meddling.

God is the Creator, and none of us is Him.

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Moral OPSEC

Posted on May 3, 2014 by ehurst

Human conflict is a given.

It requires a special kind of truculent stupidity to imagine we could ever remove it from human existence. It’s why we have the military. Experience in the military tends to affect the way one thinks for the rest of life. Such an influence tends to spread across all sorts of institutions as soon as they are forced to consider the existence of human threats.

One of the borrowed terms you often see in OPSEC — Operational Security. The basic idea is doing things in a way that minimizes risk to the actual work everyone is doing. Most of it has to do with avoiding giving your enemy an open door to hindering you. You learn to move quietly, provide mutual cover for elements of your operating forces, avoid giving away your intentions too soon, etc. OPSEC rests on basic habits plus analysis of the known threats.

Nothing we do as humans is risk free. The concept of OPSEC is as old as human conflict itself. We might change the calculus based on cultural assumptions and mythology, but most of us are instinctively aware that we can’t just blunder through life and expect everyone to go along with our decisions. Friction is a fact of life.

A critical element in OPSEC is expecting internal threats, too. More so, your biggest threat is not espionage, but the all too natural internal feuding. I note in passing the US military has by far the worst record for dealing with this. This is largely because the US military is almost completely abstracted from Prussian military traditions, a foul mythology. The entire frame of reference in US military psychology is hatefully anti-human. You have to be a complete sonuvabitch to advance. The entire institution asserts this is not a problem, that humans don’t actually exist as humans. The greatest operational threat to the US military is its own leadership. Thus, the US military is being steered down the drain by the growing entropy of failure to connect with reality.

Just as OPSEC as a concept bleeds over into other facets of human life, so the signal failures of OPSEC tend to stain the work of those who bring their military mythology into other areas of life. Churches are perhaps the worst at considering the very real threats to their operations. That’s because, like the US military, they focus on a mission that has nothing to do with their fundamental reason for existing. Someone making the decisions at the top is deluded and the whole thing will someday grind to a halt.

There isn’t much any of us can do. The primary failure of the Western Church is the same failure pervading all things Western. The individual trooper struggles against a crushing systemic failure, as does the individual believer, even when they understand the problem clearly. To imagine that this is not properly an OPSEC issue is itself a blind spot.

If you prefer to bind yourself totally to the institution in which you serve, then you can play the role of cogwheel in the machine. If you profess to follow Christ, that is not an option. The Kingdom of Heaven has its own organization and OPSEC considerations. Failure to recognize that can easily destroy your divine calling. In the Spirit Realm, your greatest threat is yourself — that is, your fleshly nature is your biggest problem. It wants things that will render you morally powerless.

One of the biggest problems I face in teaching is the failure to grasp that there are Two Realms, that Aristotle’s assumption of a unitary universe is a lie from Satan. The second problem is closely related, in that folks seldom grasp the nature of the moral sphere of consideration, as well. I envision a working model that posits a Spirit Realm, a Flesh Realm (under the Fall), and that the intersection between them is God’s divine justice, AKA moral law. The moral realm of consideration is invisible to the intellect alone. You cannot possibly reason your way to moral truth. But it surely exists within the reach of fallen human intellect if intellect recognizes revelation as a valid source of moral truth. However, to absorb truly the moral sphere requires spiritual awareness, a faculty totally separate from the intellect.

OPSEC is adherence to divine moral justice.

The mission of human life for us is to bring God glory. Without that, we have no reason to live on this plane of existence. His glory is tied up in our obedience to His moral justice. We use the record of His Law Covenants to inform our understanding of what moral justice looks like in certain contexts, then we extrapolate through our convictions what it looks like in our context moment by moment.

Now grasp this: Good moral OPSEC is, by definition, good OPSEC in every sphere of human concern.

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The Stink of Hell Nearby

Posted on May 2, 2014 by ehurst

What we know of the Spirit Realm cannot be stated in literal terms. Jesus taught in parables because all truly spiritual teaching is of necessity parabolic. The logic and the language is symbolic, not analytical and descriptive.

I have no interest in harassing Pentecostals and Charismatics, but I need to point out that there are differences between me and them. The common evangelical teaching about demons and such is mostly derived from the Neo-Pentecostal movement. Because their unspoken and unexamined assumptions about reality are a mixture of Greco-Roman rationalism and Anglo-Saxon mythology — the definition of the Enlightenment — they frequently miss completely what the Scripture says about such things. Further, they tend to ignore the wider intellectual assumptions of the Hebrew people. Frankly, Charismatics tend to use the same analytical tools as the Pharisees and modern Judaism, both of which share a lot with Kabbalism.

Instead of denouncing all that is nasty and evil, I’m just pointing out where they are coming from, and wishing they would be honest about it. I fully confess my biases and assumptions come from a long struggle to understand the ancient Hebrew people and their way of thinking, which means a lot of overlapping with ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, and broadly a part of the Ancient Near East (ANE). I will tell you Charismatics tend to call my ideas “evil” when they understand them.

I’ve often tried to explain that demons are servants of God. They can’t do what He doesn’t permit. Their role in the Spirit Realm is more or less divine lictors. Satan is God’s Jailer. The best basis for understanding the Kingdom of Heaven is ANE feudalism. God is the divine Sheikh of Heaven and all things bend to His will as Creator and Owner. Every ANE sheikh had his lictors; larger domains would require a noble lord to take up the job. That noble retainer of the sheikh made his income from slavery of the folks rendered to his control as prisoners. Jail and enslavement are essentially the same thing.

Slavery isn’t necessarily punitive if you were born there, but to lose freedom and become a slave is shameful. In the Fall, we were all turned over the Satan’s dominion, born there. Those who are spiritually alive are in a position to discover they have a writ of emancipation — the Blood of the Cross. On a lower level, the Law Covenants were granted as a half-measure of emancipation. Even those spiritually dead can still realize the Laws will set them free morally. This is why we proclaim the gospel message in terms of moral duty. God’s Laws — divine moral justice — is the wrapper for the gospel. Divine moral justice is our freedom from Satan’s dominion.

Breaking free isn’t a matter of words, but of commitment and choice. If you live by the moral justice of God, a moral justice reflected in the Law Covenants but not restricted to the Laws, then Satan loses his dominion over you here on this plane of existence. How easily we forget that Satan was cast down to the earth, and his actions are restricted to this plane of existence. Yelling at the Devil “in the name of Jesus” doesn’t do a damned thing if you don’t back it up with moral living as reflected in the Law Covenants. Pedantic legalism does not fulfill the purpose of the Laws.

It’s a sliding scale; there are no absolutes of that sort. The more just, the more free you are. Further, there is an amplification effect from God’s mercy. If you desire righteousness, He meets you half-way as it were. Performance is not the whole issue because none of us can ever perform half so well as we would like. The boundaries are fuzzy.

In my life, I am relatively free and have been granted a broad measure of mercy and power to overcome my own limitations. Some people very close to me are less free. For whatever reason, they don’t walk with me all the way. They bring into my world their demonic oppressions and some of it stinks up the place. It grates on my nerves, literally and figuratively. There’s only so much you can say before you simply must start erecting barriers to keep that stuff at a distance.

Some of the people near me are spiritually alive but foolish. For some, it is painfully obvious they are spiritually dead. That is, using the definitions in the New Testament, I am forced to regard them so. The degree and amount of closeness is not entirely in my hands, so there are times when life really sucks because these people bring their moral filth with them and I can sense the weight or moral oppression. That’s nerve-wracking.

I will assure you, dear reader, that when I get that dream job for which I have long been praying, and which I feel certain is near me in time and space, that will also relieve my current discomfort with the situation I describe above. It will also put me up against a new set of moral challenges, but it’s entirely different when you don’t have to live with it as family.

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In the Eye of the Storm

Posted on April 30, 2014 by ehurst

This evening I’m going all the way back to my original purpose for this blog. I’m bursting; writing about it with the awareness others might read it will help me juggle with some added clarity. You could call this serious whimsy, or whimsical gravity. By trying to draw some entertainment out of it, perspective improves. Try it sometime.

I’m utterly convinced God plans to hook me up with someone who needs my personal assistance. This is like a burning bonfire in my soul, so if nothing comes of it, you can write me off as nuts. Meanwhile, I’m unable to get off this track without doing serious damage to my own head, so I’m committed. This is the first time a mission calling has struck with so much force, and at the same time with so little concrete shape. It has never turned out as I imagined in the past three or four times, but it always turns into a real mission. This one is more challenging because I have no hand in stating it. I’ve already done all I can do on the human level. There is nothing I can do except wait.

What troubles me most is how much I know I’m going to weep. Some part of me is utterly certain the mission begins on the wings of major turmoil. Not just my own situation, though that is troubled enough, but I sense it will mean serious bad changes for all of us. Something really awful is coming and many of my readers will be touched by it directly, I fear. But my mission is built on that disaster.

Sure, I could tell you in general terms my mission has always been the message I promote here. But I knew some time ago I needed to be ready for promoting that message in meat space in ways I’ve not been able to do so far. I won’t be going as a missionary, as it were, but as an ordinary guy with some kind of secular employment. Just being there and being myself is the mission, but doing it in a setting that will guarantee a few folks see something they won’t see any other way. At least, that’s what I believe is coming at me. So a couple of weeks ago I came under an irresistible impression that my resume [PDF] represented the nature of my future employment. That’s what I’m waiting to see. How this relates to the rising turmoil across the globe is beyond my guessing.

So I’m watching. I’m watching news about Ukraine, Syria, China, etc. I’m watching what happens here in the US, too. I noticed the Oath Keepers had a serious falling out with the militia leadership at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada. I don’t know all the particulars, but near as I can guess from someone outside of the whole thing, the Oath Keepers tried to grab too much control and weren’t happy with folks not bowing the knee to them, so they concocted a wild story and bailed, taking lots of cash and equipment that might not have been theirs. At any rate, the Oath Keepers are taking a real beating in terms of reputation right now, and their spin isn’t getting much traction with those inside the broader resistance effort.

You ever notice how, when a revolution becomes too institutionalized, it becomes part of the establishment? Yeah, I think the Oath Keepers are too much about being establishment, and their huge miscalculation will cost them influence, even as it strengthens the more radical elements of the militia. Seems to me this will only make the militia stronger in the long run. They’ve learned a lot from all the beating they took under Clinton, so they don’t operate the same and won’t be so easily shut down again. Meanwhile, I’m not sure the official government is going to have what it takes to effectively move against them. Too much effort and resources are being shipped overseas to our little projects in regime change elsewhere.

It’s going to get messy here all too soon. On the other hand, the things I’ll most weep about are really too close to discuss here. My wife and I will be okay either way; we know God has us in His hand. Still, this thing is painful to watch from such close range and no power to do anything about it. I’m going to learn an awful lot from it and I’ll be glad when I can tell others about that.

The main point is that some of you are quite sensitive to things in the Spirit Realm and you may have discerned things are rough for me. Don’t worry about me. I made friends with Death a long time ago. I write as much as I have here so you’ll have some idea, some shape for those nameless burdens spiritual people tend to get. With all honesty I can affirm that we aren’t hurting in any way that matters.

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Tribulation Preparation

Posted on April 30, 2014 by ehurst

The saints of God will tribulate.

Jesus warned that the same forces nailing Him to the Cross would not allow us to follow Him without some resistance. It’s not enough that those forces are within us to varying degrees, but that we face a whole world hostile to His message. At the very minimum we are embracing a serious insult to the human assumption that we can overcome all obstacles to make our world as we see fit. Not only can we not do that, but it’s simply not worth trying.

The paradox of God’s revelation is that we most certainly do know how to make the most of this world while it is under the Fall. And we shall surely find ourselves driven to obey that vision of doing what actually works. But the whole motive is not to make the world better, but to make our passage through it as glorious for His name as possible. The dispute is primarily a matter of what is in our human best interest.

This is also what drives most of us out of organized religion. It’s not that organizing is wrong, but we can scarcely get anyone to understand how the Bible says we should organize, much less find anyone doing it right. Virtually every “church” you can find is determined to ignore what God said is the right way of doing church, even as they proclaim so loudly to be the one best fulfillment of that revelation they ignore.

My assertion that organized Christian religion is captive to Western Civilization, and that said civilization is morally vile from the very foundation, is not easily placed where most of the captives can grasp it. Only briefly did I ever believe my vision could catch on with church folks. The resistance was brutal. A few folks let slip their violent anger, an urge to torture and kill me, for daring to challenge the orthodoxy. It was only institutional restraint that kept them from acting on it. I was shocked at the time, but from where I sit today it makes perfect sense within the context. As with Hellenism’s effect on Old Testament religion, so Aristotelian assumptions make modern Christian religion more likely to find other ways to crucify dissenters.

I submit that we will see the heat turned up even higher as the social order degrades further. That we are facing bad times is obvious. We need not indulge in the popular fear mongering to recognize that things are coming apart. A human governing institution that is flexible and sane is so rare today as to be remarkable. We are at the end of our civilization, so we should expect turmoil. It won’t come all at once with anything like a clean break. This stuff trails off over centuries. Stop and think about what politics look like in every place today that stands over the ruins of previous empires and civilizations. The story of how each one came apart serves to indicate what we are facing.

A genuine bond of love will remain through serious testing, but I think many of us will be shocked at who turns against us because there never was any real communion in the first place. Commitments become crystal clear when the price of commitment goes up. We are in a morally inflationary spiral, so we will soon see what really matters to those around us. We will also have to decide what that person in the mirror really values, too.

One of the things I’ve blathered most about in the past few years was the urgent need to reevaluate how we do religion. If you think church politics is ugly now, wait until you see what happens when budgets and control become difficult for the folks at the top. Those who value the human manifestation most will make the most anti-spiritual decisions you can imagine. By developing a spiritual discernment about such things, we see more quickly when it’s time to move on.

We aggravate our own tribulation in this world by forgetting what it’s all about, that we are pursuing the interests of another world entirely.

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The Western Devil

Posted on April 28, 2014 by ehurst

God revealed Himself to humanity through a long path of ancient lore.

Abraham came out of Mesopotamia, a land renowned in its day for hosting a vast lore of archives representing ancient religions and mythology. Some of that traveled far and wide through various contacts with other civilizations, always gathering and always spreading.

In this mixture was the actual revelation of God. We see hints of accurate knowledge here and there because the Mesopotamians kept track of Jehovah as one among many gods. We see that accurate understanding in the religion of Job and Jethro, men who lived on the borders of the vast expanse of desert that separates high grasslands east of the Jordan Rift Valley and western edges of Mesopotamia. It was much the same religion as Abraham came to espouse after decades of living as God’s man for his time.

Moses went out and spent several decades living with Jethro relearning a lot of things lost during the Egyptian sojourn. That period of forty days and nights on Mount Sinai was not wasted time; God worked with Moses to sift through that vast ancient lore to extract with greater clarity what God wanted to reveal. The Books of Moses are the definitive account drawn from primordial religious beliefs in the Ancient Near East. The nation of Israel was the chosen vessel for the true revelation of God.

The revelation includes the intellectual frame of reference for understanding. If you move away from that intellectual frame of reference, you move away from the revelation. I have warned my readers in the past and wrote several books to get that point across. If you cannot quite grasp how very different our intellectual culture is today from what brought us the Scripture, then you haven’t studied it enough. To bring a Western mind to Scripture and fail to adopt the Hebrew mindset is to reject revelation.

It’s not as if the Hebrew traditions have no room for our brand of rational objectivity. They considered it inadequate. Such is a critical part of the narrative in Job; Job’s three friends were clinging to rational objectivity and literalism in their analysis. Job shot them down, but failed to do so with sufficient finality. Elihu finished the task, pointing out that the trio weren’t at all on the same level as Job, and then going on to berate Job for not making that more obvious.

Another critical lesson from Job is the futility of debate when there is no shared epistemology. Debate isn’t inherently wrong, but debate on that lower rational level is meaningless. Did the Pharisees ever hear much of what Jesus said? No, because they were Hellenized and fully embraced objectivism and literalism, whereas Jesus was completely Hebraic in the use of parabolic and symbolic language.

Language was never meant to be truth, nor even to convey truth. Language was meant to provide road signs indicating the way of truth.

This is why I distance myself from so-called “red pill” sites and their approach to Game and socio-sexual theory. Their entire approach remains buried in the mud of Western rationalism. You either get feminism or objectivity. It shows up in politics in the bogus left-right paradigm. Both represent a false dichotomy, because you cannot find the truth of God anywhere in the landscape.

The biblical image of the shepherd is someone who finds his place in God’s creation as one who protects the sheep God gave him. In many ways, it’s the same for godly women as the shepherdess. She doesn’t have to choose between feminism or Western patriarchy. ANE feudalism is God’s explanation of how things work in this world. We are each granted a domain. The logic is symbolic, not analytical and objective. Nor is it subjective; the argument between objective versus subjective is a red herring, another false dichotomy.

It’s one thing to understand Western Civilization; do study it. Make sure you know it root and branch, because you have to understand how it is a total failure. It remains a stumbling stone of falsehood and we are obliged to reject it.

If you remain Western, you are not following Jesus.

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