Morality = Reality

Posted on October 11, 2013 by ehurst

In quantum moral reasoning, all questions are related to morality.

Yesterday I went to a restaurant seeking breakfast. There was no particular conscious reason to avoid the place and it was convenient. I ate; it was a mistake. The food was so-so and the service was okay, but there was something toxic in the food. Not in the normal sense of a Health Department violation, but in the sense my body reacted negatively in several ways, the sum of which indicated the food had something not good for me. It was not immoral to eat there in the normal sense of the word, but doing so had moral implications. It affected my ability to obey clear and undeniable guidance from the Spirit of God. Having experienced this, it would be immoral to go back again.

Refresh: There are Two Realms, the Spirit Realm and the Fallen Realm, though other labels can be used. The Spirit Realm is unknowable to the mind; we can’t really talk much about it except through parabolic-symbolic language. But the Spirit Realm does communicate to the fleshly mind in terms of moral justice. That is, while God has woven His character into Creation, only by revelation from the Spirit Realm can we gain any useful understanding or perception of that moral fabric. This realm is broken and will not be fixed; it will be removed at some time in the future. Rather, we have sufficient revelation from God how to live while here in this prison that we can make the most of what is here. We can embrace His revelation, given in the form of moral law, as the means to standing in His glory and participating in what His power can do to redeem the situation. It becomes a down payment, a promissory note on future blessings in the Spirit Realm.

Western intellectual assumptions will find this whole thing utterly foreign, and tends to offer a hostile reaction to such truth. Thus, it’s not enough that we have to overcome our fallen fleshly resistance to His moral truth, but we have a vast weight of intellectual and cultural conditioning we must fight through to even begin the task. The Spirit helps us stumble into some good answers, but if we do not take seriously the task of consciously countering all this conditioning, we will come woefully short of what God offers here.

The Bible was cast intentionally in the Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) intellectual and cultural tradition. It’s radically different from the West. A fundamental question in life for folks in the ANE is not, “What is this thing I’m facing?” The proper question is, “What shall I do about/with it?” In our binary intellectual atmosphere, we tend to operate in a highly compartmentalized mode. In the quantum moral reasoning of the ANE, it’s all one organic whole. Questions can be diced up academically, but analysis begins somewhere else entirely. We don’t properly ask what something is; we ask what role it plays in our calling.

The fundamental truth of your existence is your sense of calling from God. For men, the fundamental image is shepherd; the women it’s motherhood. Your specific role in any given context may fluctuate against the roles and callings of others, but this is our fundamental assignment from God. Men are shepherds in one way or another, while women are mothers in one way or another. Only in our foul Western mythology would a woman try to mother her own husband; her role as wife is a branch of motherhood that makes her submissive to him, as the Bible says. Unfortunately, we read into that our vast lore or Western deception and it never comes out right, particularly when we try to explain that motherhood means. And Western men are all about the false dichotomy of being either a little boy or a complete jerk, though most are a fluctuating blend of both. The biblical shepherd is absent from Western social mythology, a concept utterly impertinent. Yet the Bible assumes the shepherd or mother as the starting point of your role as a servant of God.

Notice I didn’t say “identity” because that’s an impertinent question. It presumes a more or less static image of personality, as if you are forced to be that way all the time for the rest of your life. Yes, you have fallen human tendencies, but nobody has an identity in the Spirit Realm except as either spiritually dead or alive. It’s all about your role and sense of calling. If you get stuck on your sense of identity, you’ll never be ready for God to promote you to higher responsibilities. Yes, we know you can’t simply stop thinking that way. It’s not evil to remember how the rest of the world operates, but it’s wrong to stay there. Your entrance into God’s moral truth is an extension, an additional faculty of human operations. You bring your past with you in the sense of what your mind knows, but you add on a vastly larger understanding from the Spirit Realm.

A fundamental assumption is that you never quite arrive while here on this plane of existence. This is why identity is the wrong approach to self understanding. Your internal talk with yourself needs to focus on what comes next: “What do I do now?” Nothing confronting you is simply good or bad, right or wrong. You have to measure the context with your best understanding of Biblical Morality. You expect to stumble and fall, but you don’t expect to stay down.

Thus, I ate some bad food because the Lord didn’t see fit to warn me some other way. For His glory, He led me through a mistake that cost me some physical energy through two workouts and left me in a sub-optimal state of mind. It weakened me, but the Lord allowed healing to come according to His wisdom. It was not a matter of what I needed; that was taken care of, but it was not the focus of attention. His glory was the focus, both for Him and for me. There is no better place to stand than in His glory; it is my best and highest self-interest to be there. Life as a human on this fallen plane cannot be better anywhere else I might stand. So I won’t go back to that restaurant without some really big changes in management, etc. — all highly unlikely.

The proper approach to morality is not one of many academic compartments for thinking about reality; morality is the fundamental nature of reality.

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VMWare Player on Wheezy

Posted on October 10, 2013 by ehurst

It doesn’t really matter why; you might have any number of reasons for needing to run Windows software on your Linux box. Sometimes WINE is enough. It works pretty good for things like Notepad++ and it’s not too bad if you like MS Office 97. Too often what you need to run requires Windows itself, and that means running a virtual machine (VM) on your Linux box.

For most things I find Win2K adequate; it demands less from your system as a VM. However, the procedure is pretty much the same for WinXP. I’ve not tried it with anything more recent from Microsoft because my system isn’t all that powerful. I have a Dell Optiplex 780 made for Win7, running a dual core Intel 2.93Ghz CPU and 4GB RAM. The OS is Debian Wheezy 64-bit with XFCE.

The instructions on VMWare’s site are hard to find and incomplete. You can scavenge various forums and blogs and usually get some good advice, but much of it is out of date, including the official Debian wiki articles. VMWare offers a 64-bit version for their current free engine (6.0.0). On Debian, you’ll need at least the packages “build-essential” and the kernel headers (“linux-headers-`uname -r`” is what you type for apt-get or aptitude to identify yours). There may be some other stuff needed, but I’m not working from a fresh install of Debian. For example, I’ve already installed all the stuff necessary to build Firefox.

Find out where you downloaded the VMWare file and prepare to obtain administrative credentials, either via sudo or by logging in as root. The file name is something like VMware-Player-6.0.0-1295980.x86_64.bundle or it may have gotten changed to something with a different extension. Change the extension to bundle and change the permissions on the file to make it executable — i.e., chmod a+x VMware-Player-6.0.0-1295980.x86_64.bundle on the console. Then execute (on the console, ./VMware-Player-6.0.0-1295980.x86_64.bundle). It should open up a window and walk you through the various requirements. You don’t need a code, which means it will become the free non-commercial use version.

Once installed, use the software from your normal user account. It should appear in the menu somewhere, typically under “System.” Once the window opens and things settle down, you should have the option to create a new VM. Drop your Windows CD (or mount the ISO as a virtual CD) into the drive and wait for your system to recognize it. Then click to create a new VM. It should recognize the mounted CD as the proper source and give you a chance to proceed. I typically choose to double the size from the default virtual hard drive to ensure I have room for all the software I need to install.

I highly recommend you run the full installation without the toolkit. You’ll get the most primitive VGA window, but downloading the toolkit too soon will stall the installation of Windows. Many folks report that happens anyway. In the window menus you should find a “send Ctrl+Alt+Del” but that may not work, either. Just tell the VM to reboot and it should recover and proceed from where it froze up. Once the thing is up and running, then install the toolkit. As soon as possible in all of this process, I disable the ethernet connection for Win2K.

For Win2K you’ll need SP4 and the final roll-up from Microsoft, otherwise the toolkit won’t install. What happens is the toolkit downloads automatically, then is mounted as a virtual CD in to your virtual Windows computer. Simply double click the icon for that virtual CD and it should begin installing. Once done, you’ll have the option to use your system video capabilities. Also, you won’t have to hit Ctrl+Alt to release the mouse from the VM; it will simply transition in and out automatically. You can revisit the virtual machine settings. I usually give it both CPU cores, but most of the defaults work otherwise. One handy item is setting up a shared folder for work on your host machine. I have a folder in my $HOME called “Projects” that I label the same for the VM. Then I place an icon on the Win2K desktop for easy access.

For WinXP, you can typically allow it to connect to the Net long enough to run all the updates from Microsoft. You will need to run the usual AV, anti-malware, etc., to protect it or disable the ethernet.

Now it’s ready to install software. On my machine, the only thing that taxes the system at all is DOS software running on a Windows VM. Apparently stepping down from a hosted 64-bit to 32-bit is easy, but dropping farther to 16-bit is pretty resource intensive. Your mileage may vary.

The preferred shutdown method is to suspend Windows through its own menu. Often when you go back, VMWare Player will forget what it was doing last time and lose your VM from the list. You’ll find it under $HOME/vmware and keep double clicking until it starts the thing up. You’ll get bogus warnings about missing hardware drivers but justs give it time to load them and things should be back where you were before, at least in terms of window size, if not placement.

Connecting a USB drive or other removable file system in your VM usually disconnects it from Linux. You’ll need to learn how to navigate the menu system for VMWare Player itself and get used to where they place those things.

Enjoy.

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Confusing Mission with Method in Evangelism

Posted on October 9, 2013 by ehurst

Re: Missouri Police Descend Upon, Arrest Evangelists Preaching Gospel in Public Square

The heresy of Decision Theology carries vast implications of unjust behavior. The church involved is Lighthouse Anabaptist Church in Springfield, MO (they have the bad taste to construct their whole site as a Flash application). They adhere to a goofy revisionist history known by the title “Trail of Blood.” You can read it if you want; there are copies all over the Net. It pretends to string together a long list of historical Christian minorities dissenting from the established churches. What’s almost hilarious is how some of those groups represented heresies Pastor Aaron and his flock have already denounced. In other words, the whole idea is vastly overwrought in order to claim some kind of continuous lineage back to the New Testament churches. It’s pretty much the same kind of mythology used by Pharisees to claim Moses personally approved or taught what eventually shows up in the Talmud.

There is plenty of bad history worthy of revision, but we often do so using much stronger evidence than the slipshod propaganda of folks like Jack Chick, James Carroll or Pastor Aaron Brummitt. Brummitt should be lumped in with the radical American Zionist Christians who bought into Dispensationalism. With a sigh of regret I note I was one of them some years ago, but it gives me first-hand knowledge of the intellectual territory they inhabit.

So Pastor Brummitt is part of that background and he has every right to be wrong. Under God’s Justice we don’t use coercion; we aren’t the truth police. We simply let folks know we have a different take on things and let God handle the results. That’s how we do evangelism, too. Brummitt participates in a branch of American Christianity that makes legal and constitutional rights a matter of Canon Law, as it were. It is a far-reaching logical extension of a collection of heresies, beginning with the adoption of Aristotelian epistemology. If any part of Western rational assumptions are correct, then Brummitt and friends represent a valid expression of the Bible. So we have to feel a bit sorry for them because they are not really in a position to know better without some miraculous intervention from God.

But we cannot let this episode pass without noting this does not qualify as “persecution” according to Scripture. You see, the Apostles had several very good reasons for preaching in public squares during the first century as they scattered across the Roman Empire. They were hardly alone in making their pitch or passing the news in that fashion. Their message was quite new, indeed, and justified engaging in a common practice universally accepted. They didn’t do it to disrupt other activities; it was a part of normal activity. They might continue at it awhile, but for the most part, we don’t hear about marketplace preaching once a church got started in the area. And if there were any synagogues around, they might not even bother with public preaching like that. The whole point was seeking a likely audience among the crowd of ordinary folks, knowing full well the majority was likely to reject their message.

However, we notice they didn’t harass people. They weren’t pushy within the context of the local culture. They didn’t seek to stir up trouble; it came to them for plenty of other reasons, but not for disturbing the peace. It was their opposition that created all the hullabaloo. When you read a dispassionate account of Brummitt’s behavior, you quickly see he’s just asking for trouble. He wants to falsely claim persecution for his faith, when the real issue is political hucksterism. The whole thing is a matter of constitutional rights, not a matter of sharing religious belief. First century Christians were taught to be unobtrusive for the most part, minding their own business because they had plenty of work just mending their broken lives and recreating the ancient tribal social structure within their church, along with all the other cultural adjustments. You won’t see much of that in any American church.

What we have here is a political sales pitch with Bible verses and an American Jesus face plastered on the outside. It’s pure political activism. Bringing out the old saw — “that may be the only way some folks ever hear the gospel” — has become a hideous excuse for very un-Christlike behavior. It’s not as if I support the illegitimate behavior of the police in this story, but I cannot support the illegitimate behavior of Brummitt, either. How about we live the gospel first, because the American public sphere has been saturated with dozens of false gospels. If by our conduct we bring glory to His name, folks can have an easier time deciding whose message they’ll hear. And for Christ’s sake, stop acting as if spiritual birth has anything to do with human choices and stop confusing the Two Realms.

Jesus has no part in Brummitt’s political activism.

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Serrapeptase Update

Posted on October 9, 2013 by ehurst

As of 26 June 2015, I’ve been taking it again for several months with no ill effects. The business with my heart mentioned below in my first update was another issue entirely. The primary reason for taking serrapeptase without the enteric coating is it boosts the metabolism and, barring no other problems, helps you burn off fat. Original post below…

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I’ve been taking serrapeptase (more properly: serratiopeptidase) for about three weeks now.

I prefer to use a local vendor, but ours almost didn’t remember they had it. Apparently it’s not on the list of current fads, because virtually no one asks for it much. But they had three different versions and we chose something from Now Foods. Digging through the various advocates of this stuff, I decided to try taking it on an empty stomach, some minutes before eating breakfast.

Initially, it hit me hard, rather like a harsh liver cleansing agent. It gave me the runs, but a single dose of Pepto-Bismol stopped that and things progressed naturally to stability. On the one hand, it boosted my appetite for protein foods — I got hungry much sooner and needed to eat a little more than previously. At the same time, I lost a good bit of endurance in my work outs, and had to back off on lots of things. There was also a rapid weight loss of about ten pounds (off my 215 pounds). I sensed this was temporary, and it was. About seven to nine days later, I was back to where I was before taking it.

The longer term effects center around a boosted metabolism. Not simply feeling more energetic, but a very broad based synergy with just about everything. All my other supplements, including topical ointments, along with plain old medications, are working at least a little bit better. That is, anything with a noticeable effect is noticeably more effective. It’s like dialing back some of the effects of aging.

It took a couple of weeks to start helping with my sinus allergies. The first of my joints to hurt less was my bad knee. Reducing the pain in my bad shoulder was indirect: Serrapeptase seems to have granted me a better body awareness, so that I could more accurately tune my workout to match what I should do. Without a discrete knowledge of just what sort of problem I have in my shoulder and other joints, it’s hard to estimate whether and how soon things will improve, but I’d say there is an overall reduction of arthritis suffering. I believe it might also improve mental clarity in some ways, simply by virtue of cleaning out the blood stream of some types of junk. I’m told there are some interesting longer term effects in the offing, and I may comment later if warranted.

This stuff is a keeper, and will be accorded a fairly high priority if things get tight.

Late update: (July 2014) There comes a point where taking serrapeptase has caused an odd sensation in my chest. When lying on my side at night, my heart hammers a bit too strongly and I can’t sleep. It’s not beating too fast or anything causing discomfort, but it simply beats too vigorously. A bit more research indicates two issues: This is partly the result of taking a version which does not have enteric coating. The coating is necessary to make it pass through the stomach where it is absorbed better in the bowels. Otherwise, it works differently. The other issue is that most of us cannot keep taking serrapeptase forever. After awhile it doesn’t have much to do and it keeps things like your heart a little too active. Back off and give it a rest. If your body slows down again, take another round for a week or so until it gets back up to speed.

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Sneaking Back into Eden

Posted on October 8, 2013 by ehurst

The Bible portrays most human sin as various attempts to sneak past the Flaming Sword back into the Garden of Eden.

It’s not possible to describe life before the Fall. What we have are characterizations and Hebrew parabolic language in the Bible plus all sorts of highly varied symbolic tales in other ancient traditions. Only Western Civilization has an obsession with precise and literal descriptions. But a part of what we can discern suggests Adam and Eve didn’t have to do the hard labor in the Garden that folks did outside it. The Garden itself fed them and beatific visions of any future paradise includes the same basic idea. Turning stones into bread is an extension of this same sort of thinking. It’s not as if Adam and Eve did no work, but it was obviously not the unpleasant sounding thing in the curse: “By the sweat of your brow will you eat your bread.” Whatever they did wasn’t like the work we do today.

Instead, it is implied that they worked by the Word of God (a primary meaning of the symbol of the Flaming Sword). In Hebrew thinking, the terms “Word of God” and “Laws of God” are interchangeable. His will, His Word is Law. Throughout the rest of the Bible, particularly in the miracles of Jesus, we see where He often spoke the will of God and Creation changed to match it. In Hebrew intellectual tradition, we rightly read this back into the Eden narrative: Adam and Even lived in the Garden and managed it by the power of God’s Word. In like manner, Satan suggested to Jesus that He could command stones to become bread.

From that moment of the curse onward, we are given the sense that mankind forever tried to go back into the Garden. Not literally, since it was never portrayed as a literal place (never did those four rivers come together in any geography). Rather, we see a wealth of ancient non-biblical sources using the same symbolism, highly varied but fairly consistent in trying to reclaim the joys of Eden. Much of what we translate into English as attempts at magic were aimed at regaining mythical powers and controls over nature as was portrayed in biblical Eden. However, a critical missing element is failing to grasp that the Garden symbolizes obedience to the Laws of God. The entrance to the Garden, from where man stands outside it today, is guarded by the Flaming Sword. You have to pass through the self-death of confessing God’s Laws in order to receive the bounty of His divine order for human life on this earth. Not simply mouthing the words of the Law, but “speaking” as a synonym for living and acting accordingly. People would rather not have to do that, so they have ever sought ways to bypass the Flaming Sword to reclaim Eden.

In our Western society we are taught to snicker at the notion that arcane knowledge of nature was magic. Most ancient “magic” was simply taking advantage of common ignorance and doing stuff people didn’t think was possible. Or even more cynically, we are told it was merely smoke and mirrors, an appearance of change. We aren’t permitted to believe in any real change of reality without some deep science. So our “magic” today is science, as if the whole nature of reality could be understood by man’s mind. And have we not wrought wonders?

No. It seems in the long term we keep running into limitations of knowledge. We pushed into genetic manipulation of food plants so we could turn our stones into bread, as it were, but we have spawned a new generation of super weeds and other pests that are quickly taking over the arable land of the earth. It’s not as if all science is inherently wrong, but it is inherently flawed. It’s a crap shoot; sometimes it works out okay. Right now, there are problems with our scientific applications that are right near to destroying us all. It’s silly simplistic Western legalism to assume the Bible prohibits all scientific study. What’s missing from this whole question is one very important thing often noted here on this blog: If you don’t seek first to perceive that moral element God wove into His Creation, you cannot possibly comprehend where to draw the line between safe and unsafe scientific experiment. If you petulantly dismiss moral considerations, or mishandle them so utterly as Western religions do, you are going to take a few chops from that Flaming Sword when you try to sneak back into Eden.

Science won’t get you back into Eden, either.

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Life, the Internet and Everything

Posted on October 7, 2013 by ehurst

If the Internet is your world, you are walking dead.

Please understand that the Internet is not the only possible implementation of networking technology, and hardly the only means to giving life to the nascent Network Civilization. There are numerous parallel networks right now that people ignore every day. What keeps the Internet alive is the profits it makes for those who control the core hardware. At any time, the networking that people actually do could suddenly and irrevocably escape that hardware and leave it in the dust. The technology is already in use, but the urgency to switch over is not there yet. No one can reliably define the tipping point, but that Mr. McAfee is working on a fully automated device to make ad hoc networking possible is a sign of things to come. It will piggyback on the current Internet until it’s no longer necessary.

Have you ever noticed in history how the heedless urge of plutocrats to seize control comes apart just about the time they think they have it all? Empires collapse when they consume more than they can produce internally, and can no longer easily steal it from others. But it works the same for every metaphorical empire, as well. Advertising as we now know it is about to consume itself because marketers reject the notion of boundaries that they shouldn’t cross. The only reason they aren’t robbing and burglarizing is because manipulation is more entertaining. Otherwise, working as a marketer requires you adopt the same moral standards as any crook. Most imperial agencies calcify and attempt to freeze the technology at about the same time it leaps off in another direction. Those who refuse to recognize new ways to make money as the landscape shifts beneath their feet face catastrophe. It’s the same with governments, banks, military, and every other parasitical entity seeking to control some element of human behavior in large groups.

What’s really sad is how vast the portion of humanity that is equally stodgy about inconsequential elements of our daily existence. Social tipping points are often unpredictable, so all the scare-mongering is just about half-correct. That is, we can see it coming, but we can’t possibly nail down the breaking point in the social fabric and mass perception. We tire of the short-lived predictions of apocalypse, yet each one could be relatively accurate if things suddenly reach that invisible breaking point. When it does come, most of those living through it won’t even notice. The larger the shift and the more people affected by it, the harder it is to perceive. Only as we view it through the telescoping lens of history does it seem quick. Living through it can be too distracting for you to realize the magnitude of what’s happening.

You have to be nimble folks. You have to travel light in the sense of your moral burden. If you don’t really have a solid grasp on what matters most to you in moral terms, you won’t be ready for even the slow changes. If I somehow lost the use of the Internet, you can be sure I’d devote more energy to other means of touching my fellow humans. I have a resolute commitment to sharing my loopy religious ideas and spiritual reasoning with others. The Internet is currently the best means of sharing them, but hardly the only means to living out my personal imperatives. I have no idea what kind of changes I can tolerate, and what will even be possible for me tomorrow, but I don’t have to worry about those things. My imperative is simply living with a focus on God’s glory until He takes me home.

While you may not share my vision, I can assure you that your own version needs to have that kind of shape or you won’t do too well in the coming days.

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Moral Rewiring Job

Posted on October 6, 2013 by ehurst

Most people are morally wired like children.

In the past I’ve mentioned the Delphi Method for destroying opposition to radical changes in a system. It’s the sort of discrete and scientific method you would expect from Pavlovian folks, never mind that it has worked quite well in the past. The only reason Pavlov’s theories are still around is because they do tend to work somewhat. Behavior Modification is not actually an explanation, though; it’s a set of methods with varying levels of effectiveness.

The reason those methods tend to work is because so very many people are down on that level of operation. I’ve also discussed often and at length how the plutocrats have worked hard to put us there. Still, a few of us manage to escape. Some portion of humanity will always progress through the stages of moral development until they come relatively close to adulthood and independent moral reasoning of the sort that gives us folks who aren’t at war with the rest of humanity or reality.

From the earliest writings of ancient civilizations we see that rulers have always been aware of how easy it is to manipulate those with moral weakness. They were morally children in adult bodies with adult skills and knowledge. More than one ancient ruler sought to reduce his people to such a state for easier control. The only difference nowadays is the technology involved. Instead of a broad general moral awareness, we have it nailed down to a fine science of action-reaction. Except we don’t; it only appears so.

The Delphi Method was developed by RAND back when I was born. As the research into such methods progressed, it become more and more institutionalized until we now see people using this form of manipulation instinctively. It has never been more effective, because it’s wired into the subconscious assumptions about how things ought to be done. I seriously doubt the people who used it on me even knew what it was called. There is a defense to the specific method itself. If you generalize about the moral implications, then you can apply the same defense to all forms of manipulation. The key is to always expect it and not be caught off guard. Manipulation is most effective when it comes as a surprise. Return the favor and turn the tables on someone using it against you. If nothing else, make a fool of them before they can finish making a fool of you.

If your defense is as wired into your subconscious as the attack is, you’ll do just fine. But that’s a tall order for most folks. At the very least, you should be ready to call attention to the technique in such a way the abuser can’t shoot it down. That’s the most honest defense because it gives others involved a clue. A critical element in the foundation of moral maturity is giving folks a clue, and chance to evaluate independently. When you point out manipulation, it’s almost the same as breaking chains of deception and setting people free. This is the precise opposite of what folks using manipulation would want.

Moral wisdom is more than simple freedom of the will; it’s informed freedom. It’s a freedom that takes full responsibility for choices, with all their consequences, implications and fallout. That’s what we want for everyone. The epitome of moral failure is passing the buck, dodging the generic suffering that is simply a part of human life. You catch this best in the reasoning of irresponsible people who operate from the assumption that every need simply must be met, especially if it is their own need. “Well, I must have this and someone else has to cough it up.” Thus, they act as if they have a claim on your personal resources. They simply assume that claim and accuse you of truculence for failing to recognize what seems so obvious to them.

The reason people in the New Testament withdrew just a bit from the wider society and spent time inside their church family huddle was to counter all this awful conditioning. It’s quite hard to get folks weaned from this dependent behavior because it’s so very deeply wired into their minds. You have surely met people for whom you were forced to conclude there was no hope for them; I know I have. These are folks we allow to hang around so long as they aren’t actually disruptive, but if their demands become a problem, we ostracize them justly. The Body of Christ needs to embrace and absorb His Justice to the point it’s the very wiring of their minds. The intellect must be trained to serve and obey the Spirit, and do so by reflex. This is the Law of God.

We are called to push through the layers of moral immaturity until we become adults.

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Job 10

Posted on October 5, 2013 by ehurst

By default, fallen mankind justly owns the wrath of God. We deserve a short miserable life, a long and painful death and eternity in Hell. That’s the starting place. Anything short of that is a blessing or mercy. So the worst that can happen is our due, and if this life is particularly difficult for some, that is merely breaking even. God pointedly warned He would not explain why some have it comfortable and some do not. While there is some correlation between those living according to His Laws and some measure of earthly blessing, His Laws remain our duty regardless of reward. Obedience is its own reward; God’s glory is all the glory we need in this life. Until we understand that critical truth, nothing in this world can ever make sense to us.

Job understands this. He’s had it good, and when God took it all away, he still had his own resolve to live justly. That resolve came from outside himself, a divine power not his own. His morally upright standing was a gift in itself. He understood that God could not be offended by mere human words spoken in private sorrow. What the three friends utterly failed to understand is that God’s glory was not defiled by Job’s words here, because words have no power. Job begins with a clarification: The only relief he had was in his complaint. He wasn’t putting any blame on God as he might any earthly authority, but was keeping it on himself. There was no need for restraint because it could hardly make things any worse. All that was left was death; even that would come as a relief.

Further, Job had nowhere else to turn but to God. No one else was going to help him; they could not. Certainly no one in present company truly understood his sorrow. So his questions are rhetorical, an appeal to God to answer if He would, but clearly prepared for none. Is it possible God is somehow pleased to bring suffering on those who serve Him, while evil people received good things? We see that it seems to come out that way, but we can never really know. That is precisely the point. It’s not as if God were a mere human ruler who would have to torture Job to get a full confession. Could anyone suggest God was unjust? He is the definition of Justice. Whatever it is, this is not a question of justice, because God already knew Job was about as righteous as men could be.

Since God made him, there was nothing Job could hide from Him. If God determined he should suffer, Job would suffer, indeed. If God chose to keep the reasons to Himself, there was nothing Job could do. All the more so if Job were actually guilty of any particular sin. Thus, Job asks for the final release, to die like all the rest of humanity. Can he get a break, maybe just a few moments of relief before he dies?

The notion God would get angry with such words could only come from a very poor understanding of His revelation.

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Yes! Means “NO”

Posted on October 5, 2013 by ehurst

Update: Corporate management contacted me and was concerned enough to explain stuff that had not been too well explained locally. So maybe the local manager will be alerted to the discomfort we have here and try to work out the kinks. If things improve a bit, maybe I can write a letter of praise the next time. (Original post follows below.)
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Open Letter to Yes Communities Corporate Management:

Re: Timberland Mobile Home Park, Choctaw, OK

Your management style leads me to believe your corporate leadership are psychopaths.

Perhaps a little public embarrassment will work. God knows, letters, calls and emails have proven pointless. People who do a little research will find at various consumer complaint sites that you do answer, but it’s always with about as much friendliness and humanity as HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In other words, you have no problem with highly specific complaints, but you totally ignore broader and more generalized issues which require a more subtle and thoughtful response.

When my family first moved here some years ago, we felt the community vibes. The manager lived here, as did some of the maintenance staff. A significant portion of the residents were highly engaged in community relations amongst each other and the staff. We were all family. You folks killed that. Given what I’ve seen from the way you respond to the concerns of residents, I would contend you did it with malice aforethought. I contend you set out to destroy the family atmosphere in hopes you could get away with nickle-and-diming us to death.

We know you bought this place to make a profit somehow. Fine; most of us understand that. In fact, you’d be amazed how many of us hope you do make a decent profit. We would even volunteer our time and skills to make it happen, but you’ve done your darnedest not to even know about that. Who is the park manager this month? I can’t keep track. We don’t even know who it is, and they sure as heck don’t know a darn thing about us. From what I’ve observed, they don’t want to know about us, and have studiously avoided engaging us in any way. That’s just like the last two or three. Is it the case where you keep them too busy handing down ogrish and hateful demands to us nobodies?

If you folks bothered to engage us in solving some of your expenses around here, you might be surprised at our willingness to work with you. I suppose you still could, but right now I’m hearing from a lot of my fellow residents how they utterly despise everyone one of you. Is the concept of accountability to rent-payers foreign to you? You have the park manager drop on our doorsteps ominous edicts of how you plan to sock us for every dollar you can imagine we might have left in our pockets during these bad economic times. The latest atrocity is your plans to hammer us with fines in an attempt to micromanage our lives.

We hate you because your actions lead us to believe you hate us. You drew first blood and haven’t stopped squeezing us since. Given how pressed we all are, you should not be surprised when we start biting back. I understand you were slapped by the EPA recently when a resident notified them of some mismanagement over the water supply. I’m pretty sure that water-meter business is retribution for daring to suggest you weren’t the greatest thing that ever happened in our lives. Don’t be surprised if this war escalates. We are all convinced you really do relish the idea of hurting us.

I’m doing my best to find another place to live as soon as possible.

Ed Hurst, #55

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Divine Justice and Gender

Posted on October 4, 2013 by ehurst

The God of the Bible portrays Himself as male.

I believe it’s safe to say only Western Civilization has so completely formalized and institutionalized resentment to God’s choices, particularly in matters relating to gender and sex. That’s not to say there was never any gender confusion in other cultures, or that no other civilization faced feminine resentment over the alleged power differential. Rather, only in the West do we see it embraced as a fundamental social myth. Only in the West is it confused as self-evident injustice.

In the Bible, there is zero maneuvering space on the issue of gender confusion: You are required to embrace whatever role your equipment indicates. Quibbling is perversion. The principle is quite broad and covers far more than gender. God is sovereign: The role He assigns you is not up for negotiation. To gain the full benefit of His promised blessings, you have to obey. Physical deformities are rare enough, and often enough attributable to human sin, that arguing against the revealed provision of God is evil.

So it should be obvious that the silly obsession with “gender-inclusive” language is itself immoral in general, but applied to God is blasphemous. Go back and review the Old Testament. At every point, the mere notion of deified femininity is invariably evil. To then jump to the conclusion that women are slandered is also blasphemous; the Creator is not accountable to His creatures. That’s just one of many examples of goofy binary thinking and false dichotomy so characteristic of the West. If, like Joel Osteen you want to pass judgment on the intellectual legacy of God’s revelation, and judge your own Western social mythology as superior to God’s millennia of revelation, then you can join him in Hell when it’s all over with.

Don’t confuse the Two Realms. There are people both spirit-born and homosexual, for example. The latter is a matter of confusion about God’s revelation. It’s just one of many examples where people completely fail to embrace God’s provision and cannot harvest His blessings on this earth. It has little connection with eternal destiny. Obedience is at best a symptom of spirit birth, not a necessary condition. God’s choice of whom to take with Him into eternity is in no wise dependent on any human choice. The New Testament says so in blunt terms, so there’s no excuse for getting that wrong. Decision theology remains one of the most heinous and blasphemous lies of our age, and also one of the most common lies.

The correlation between spirit-born (Spirit Realm) and obedient (Fallen Realm) is that you need not take seriously anyone’s claim to be spirit-born if they manifest insufficient interest in obeying God’s Word. Obedience has no knowable effect on your eternal destiny, but makes a world of difference in how things work for you here. The image of casting crowns at the feet of Jesus in eternity is a parable, a symbol not meant literally in any sense. It symbolizes whether your life here brought Him glory. Your only hope for His blessings here is to stand in His glory. The point is, while earthly obedience does make a difference in Heaven, it is portrayed as a matter of how embarrassed you may be for having so completely missed out on all the blessings you could have had here.

The point is this: Don’t be a fool. That means you should strive to understand and embrace fully the moral character of God as revealed in Scripture. That requires you understand Scripture from the intellectual heritage of the Ancient Near East, not at all anything like the intellectual heritage of the West. No one can deny that there is a radical difference between the two; search my blog on “epistemology.” Those who insist it doesn’t matter are in the same moral class as Joel Osteen and others who deny there is such a thing as “sin.” They are offering an entirely different moral law code from an easily discernible heathen source. It calls for a life of worldly success, one which actually tends to work so long as the world system runs well enough. But God is not complacent; in due time He will act to remove that matrix of lies that support that false image of success. When that happens, only those who walk in His Laws will be left standing. In other words, Osteen’s morals only seem to work.

As always, if these things don’t call your name — if what I write isn’t somehow self-evident to your spirit — then call me an idiot and ignore me. It’s that simple. You can always ask questions, but most comments I’m likely to see are off-topic on the grounds of demanding I address things I already said are not up for debate. If you sense a need to defend Western social mythology as somehow godly, then do so on your own blog. You are not entitled to equal time on my blog. I’ll help you set up an account and make sure you know how to point the finger at me so readers have no doubt whom you indict. Be as fiery as you like, impassioned or reasonable as you like. Meanwhile, I have to obey what I understand as the leading of God in my own spirit.

You won’t get me to take you seriously when you question biblical morality regarding gender.

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