More Cynicism, Please

Posted on June 11, 2013 by ehurst

Most people have no idea how government works, much less clandestine government agencies.
Moral excellence includes not being easily fooled — wise as serpents and harmless as doves. You know you are being taken for a ride, but you go along because there is little to gain by fighting some things. You might know the drunk is going to blow your contribution on more booze, but giving him your loose change may still be the right thing to do. It’s less what you do and more how you do it, in the sense of what you value. Saving the world is the stupidest hope anyone can have. You should know striving to make life better for folks won’t really change anything if you are gripped by the divine moral imperative to focus on the higher plane of existence. Don’t believe the lies; they are aimed at consuming your soul. You can’t fix this world.
You can only show this isn’t the whole story. We live in the Shadowlands. This is a prison of falsehood, billowing curtains of deception and smoke intended to keep you from seeing any truth. A thousand half truths and lesser truths are routinely offered to prevent you thinking about what really matters.
The government of the US is not a monolith. The plutocrats are not all friends, keeping to one sheet of music and following a single script. They are more ambitious than the general run of the population, more likely to cut each other’s throats than you can imagine. It’s highly competitive, and they accept the risks because it’s how they get more of what they want. They have no sense of unity and trust is always conditional. They use each other all the time. The competing agendas are seldom a matter of genuine belief in some greater good or even a genuine evil dream. The agendas are virtually always a collective aspiration of personal benefit. People join a team for what it offers them personally, and switch to another team if the offer seems better. The partisan squabbles are almost entirely fake; what you see in the news is seldom the real point of contention.
The best of us are fake in one way or another. It’s part of being human, and you need to get used to it. That way it’s not so hard to imagine someone like Ron Paul has his own moral blind spots, as would any other of the legendary sterling statesmen of our time. Ron Paul is better than just about the entire range of other politicians, but he’s still willing to play by the rules of a fixed and tightly controlled game in which the rules are for suckers and losers. He should know that, but acts like he doesn’t. The system cannot be fixed; belief in the system guarantees you’ll be fodder for the grinding. That includes Ron Paul. I don’t support him because he isn’t radical enough; he doesn’t begin to understand the biblical message and morality. He’s just another Westerner supporting a dying Western Civilization, a wholly and utterly lost cause.
The things we can and should do under God’s moral laws are not what the majority of humanity would expect. That’s because the vast majority of humanity thinks in the wrong terms completely. See the world, not on its own level, but from a much higher level. Live with your commitments outside this world and you’ll begin to understand what you should do.
The clandestine services of the US government are loaded with the same competitive, conniving lost souls as the rest of government. Bradley Manning? He knew to keep back from disclosure the material that would genuinely threaten security. He might not have known what his superiors knew about that, but we can see in his selective disclosure an educated and trained eye on what was actually too much. That was part of his training. The IRS persecution of certain political groups was not news; it’s been going on for decades. It was known for decades, if people bothered to pay attention. It’s been in plain sight the whole time. Snowden and the NSA Powerpoint slides? Controlled release to distract, because we were told as much a long time ago.
Snowden and his ilk are professional liars; deception is the whole job. Maybe Obama is being thrown under the bus. He was always an empty suit, a man for sale to the highest bidder and slimy enough he wouldn’t even stay bought. His predecessor was too stupid to run a business even with a masters degree. And so on back down the line. All of them had handlers, often from competing teams, and the only thing they all have in common is some invisible wavy line marking what they won’t reveal about government inner workings. You don’t betray your meal ticket, but you might betray some of the food handlers. Somebody in the system is still sponsoring Snowden and helped select just what, or what version, of information he would leak.
Never believe any leak was unplanned. Things like that make a good bargaining chip for infiltration. Credibility with your espionage target is critical. Somebody in the system, with whatever agenda they might have, sponsored this whole charade and we still don’t know the worst of it, nor will we ever.
What difference does it make to a committed Christian Mystic? Recognize a distraction for what it is. Don’t be suckered into lending moral support to a false cause. Chances are Manning is the real deal, but being used as yet another propaganda tool. The system was waiting for someone like him to come along for just this purpose. Those revelations of IRS persecution? The IRS itself is a fraud, never legally ratified in the first place, but a fact of life under which all Americans live. It’s a private agency with government powers. DHS and tons of bullets ordered? That’s more complicated, serving multiple agendas. It really boosts the profits for the big arms dealers and their investors, and exposes the erstwhile patriots willing to resist. Upper level bureaucrats know they don’t have the manpower to do anything the screamers fear they might do.
One of the biggest lies of all — Modern Israel — is really little more than a huge distraction to keep genuine faith and morality off track.
Most Americans aren’t cynical enough. They care too much about what doesn’t matter and are careless about things to do matter.

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Real and Moral

Posted on June 10, 2013 by ehurst

Re: ACCM
Morality = reality; it works both ways.
Reality is whatever God says it is. Sin is arguing with what God says. For me, the Bible is sufficient source for what God has to say to us all. His Holy Spirit working in my spirit is sufficient source for God’s message to me directly. All of this presumes an intellectual outlook consistent with that of the Bible.
We have a tough time with Hebrew writing in Scripture because there is virtually no other Hebrew writing from before the Hellenizing of Judaism. It requires going way back to the late Stone Age and Abraham’s time to extrapolate a bit of flavor from Ancient Mesopotamian literature. That is, we know it’s not the same, but there are some shared underlying intellectual assumptions. You could suggest a bit of Egyptian influence, but it would appear that was minimal. Besides, we aren’t really all that sure of the literature from that far back in Egyptian history. All our chronology of Egypt stands on a house of cards prior to around 500 BC. On top of that, the Hebrew people didn’t seem too worried about dating precision until rather late in the game, so that we can’t reliably date anything much before David’s reign.
If you think it matters that much, you are missing the point anyway. The Hebrew Scriptures were aimed at explaining reality-morality. It’s not so much how we got to this place, but more about what we face now that we are here. It’s not as if the twelve sons of Jacob didn’t exist and didn’t do what the narrative says, or that Abraham was just a mythical figure. He was legendary, but the outline of the narrative focuses more on his background and experiences, then his calling and battles of faith, until he arrived at the point of passing it on to Isaac. We are left guessing and estimating what sort of man he was. His character we can get, but his educational background is a mystery. Yet it is also a critical factor in shaping what eventually became Hebrew culture.
We find ourselves in the place of trying to guess what the Hebrew people took for granted was common knowledge, an issue that continues up through the New Testament. The various writers, not least that of the Letter to the Hebrews, keep referring to an oral lore we don’t have. Should we trust modern Judaism to reliably report it, given their blatant departure from the Hebrew intellectual foundations over some centuries starting before the Babylonian Exile? Most of what I propose in my teaching is only my best guess on a lot of things.
This is part of the challenge for the proposed project A Course in Christian Mysticism (ACCM). At any rate, we are left with the necessity of developing an openness to the Spirit of God leading each of us in our own individual paths to serving Him. The very nature of mysticism is not having a large body of prescribed thought. There are some pretty obvious assertions, but they cannot be implemented without the proper mystical frame of reference. We are obliged to build from a sketchy history of previous events and a body of prescribed behavior which applies directly only in a narrow context. We are supposed to extrapolate how that body of law and ritual would exemplify broader concepts hard to put into words. The most important product is not the shape it takes in your soul, but the very existence of a sense of moral imperative.
ACCM won’t attempt to answer all the questions, just eliminate impertinent ones.

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Humorless God

Posted on June 9, 2013 by ehurst

Warning: Star Trek reference ahead!
In the original TV series Star Trek, we encountered the character of Spock, half human and half Vulcan. His people mastered reason and logic to overcome a hideous emotional nature, according to the background legends. So Spock seldom expressed the slightest bit of emotion, but seemed to understand humor well enough to use it on his human associates when the dry, literal facts weren’t necessary.
Western evangelical Christians tend to regard God as something like Spock. It’s not so much what they say, as what they imply in their literature, and what they don’t say. The Christian evangelical mythology equates our brutish Germanic background as the only alternative to a rather sterile and dry rationalism. In their minds, they conflate the entire Ancient Near Eastern cultural legacy as pretty much like the Germanic warrior tribes prior to the Fall or Rome. By the time these evangelicals become adults, the foundation has been laid such that intellectual learning is unable to correct their assumptions.
The visceral hatred for anything not Western is what keeps people from understanding that the God of the Old Testament is the Father of Jesus, and that dying on the Cross was entirely consistent with everything God did from the beginning of Creation. Our cultural mythology reads Germanic brutality (itself largely myth) back into the Old Testament, so that God’s character is rather like something out of Norse legends. Jesus did not moderate His mean and brutal Father; Jesus expressed fully once and for all the character of His Father. Evaluating the God of Ancient Hebrew literature by Postmodern Western cultural values is begging for damnation.
It’s not as if God has no sense of humor. I can get evangelicals to say those words, but I can’t get them to change the underlying unconscious assumptions they bring to the task of talking about God. They color God’s sense of humor as urbane and modern American, and can’t imagine how God created that “nasty old Hebrew culture” as the primary necessity for humans to approach reality. So they simply read their biases back into the Bible and talk all nice about how it was so wonderful, all the time working from false assumptions that are entirely contrary to their conscious thoughts. Yes, modern evangelical Christianity is schizophrenic. Evangelicals make God out as some kind of Spock figure, and He’s not permitted to use sarcasm. It’s okay for Him to use figures of speech, but they can’t be too flexible in meaning; ambiguity is not permitted. And He damned sure isn’t permitted to use legends and mythology to get His point across.
No, the Bible has to be read as baldly literal, say evangelicals. Otherwise — why, it makes God a liar! Calm down folks. God can speak in legends if He likes.
Let’s try the figure in Scripture known as the Antichrist. It’s not as if the Bible precludes having a singular being who eventually rises to fulfill the prophecies of Antichrist. However, the Bible presumes you know better than to demand there must be a single ultimate figure near the end of time who is The Antichrist. They envision images from Rosemary’s Baby or other fictional entertainment. 1 John 4:3 should serve as a hint: In John’s mind, the Book of Revelation was not meant literally. Antichrist is a characterization, not a single figure in some future history. He takes quite seriously the notion Antichrist is more like a demonic character, a non-human that can inhabit the actions and thoughts of people who make themselves available. Reducing this down to a single human manifestation would miss the point entirely. The Antichrist was already in the world at the time of John’s ministry.
By the way, the theologically liberal feebs who want to judge the Bible against their socially and politically correct mythology are also too stupid to take seriously. Don’t bother talking to them until they repent of their arrogance. They are the controlled opposition to evangelicals, and either or both are a bigger threat to genuine Christian faith than all the Muslims in the world together.
Human evil is too complex to reduce to simplistic mythology. Western Christianity bears a vast burden of false mythology, often more heathen than Christlike. Jesus was a Hebrew man, not a German. And if you try to reduce this discussion down to something so silly as hating modern Germans, of Nazis and anti-Semitism, you really are trying hard to avoid understanding.

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Ecclesiastes 5

Posted on June 8, 2013 by ehurst

Solomon begins here to confront directly the folly of attachment to this realm of existence. Only a fool takes this world’s concerns too seriously.
If you think of God as a Western king, you’ll never understand the Bible. He portrays Himself as an Eastern sheikh; there is no law or logic outside His Person. He defines reality and is by no means constrained by it. People who dream of solving the world’s problems are fools; they are morally blind and cannot grasp reality. It’s not a sin to want the best God offers under His Laws, but it’s downright evil to assume your human logic can perceive a better world and make it happen. Even if all you care about is your own comfort, you cannot possibly build your life on your dreams. Such talk is empty and leads only to sorrow, unless it reflects directly what God has promised.
We’ve all had to endure dreamy big talkers. If only they could get this or that advantage, they would change reality itself. As King of Israel, Solomon had his fill of such idiocy, people asking for this or that authority and how wonderful it would be if they could just get what they needed so they could act on their grand dreams. God must have it even worse. What must it be like to have people traipsing into the Temple and making all sorts of silly bargains with God? It would be a whole lot wiser to go to the Temple and listen to what God has to say. Try your best to understand what God said is and must be, and confine yourself to that reality. What will you tell Him when you promise to do this or that, and He decides to grant your request, but you are unable to carry out your grand promises?
You want grand piles of material wealth? That translates to grand taxes. You think your local lord is greedy? Someone higher taxes him, and someone higher yet taxes them both. They all get a piece of the pie, so the best produce of your garden plot ends up on the king’s table. That’s the reality of this world. The only way to avoid taxation is to have nothing productive to tax. (Tithing and taxation only applied to those who produced things, primarily agricultural products.) And what the tax collector leaves behind, your relatives will consume. You get to own it just long enough to look upon it with pride before it’s confiscated by someone else. Stop investing so much emotional energy in what you can pretend you’ll have tomorrow, because you cannot predict what God will do. Just enjoy what you have today, because people who are owned by their property never rest.
But if you liquidate your wealth into silver and gold, what good is that? Sure, you get to keep it all, but you can’t eat it and it won’t grow anything by itself. You’ll just spend it until it’s all gone. So you invest it and try to make more, right? That’s the life! That is, it’s a good life until some business deal goes sour and you lose your investment. If you own no real property, you have nothing to bequeath to your children. Isn’t that great way to build loving memories? Getting wrapped up in the cares of this life is like eating in darkness, it’s worse than ordinary blindness because your very own soul is the cause of darkness, filled with constant disappointment.
The notion that you can really accomplish anything of lasting importance in this world is stupid. Yesterday is gone and you don’t have tomorrow with any kind of certainty. Don’t focus on tomorrow, but on eternity. Take what comes; play the role in which you find yourself right now. Trust what God says in His Laws about providing the needs of those who are faithful to Him. If He gives you lots of stuff, He also gives you the skill to handle it for His glory. If He gives you almost nothing, be glad you have no cares to burden your days. Focus your concerns on what He puts in front of you and you won’t have room for worry.
This is not, “Eat, drink and be merry.” This is, “Find joy in obeying the Lord.” The Hebrew legacy of revelation was a gift from God, not an impediment to human greatness.

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Ancient Truth: Minor Prophets Published

Posted on June 8, 2013 by ehurst

book cover

Cover art for the book Ancient Truth: Minor Prophets

It’s done. The cover art depicts a Torah scroll, largely because the entire prophetic message of the Old Testament is founded on the urgent need to return the Covenant. You can get your free copy here.
The next book will be the novel which arose from the Of Angel series.

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ACCM: Brainstorming

Posted on June 7, 2013 by ehurst

Re: Proposed A Course in Christian Mysticism (ACCM)
Brainstorming is grabbing every idea which might be in any way related or simply driving your concerns. We pray over the mixed collection of ideas, then organize them into some recognizable pattern. The pattern itself often tends to eliminate things which simply aren’t suitable to the project. In other words, we can’t cover everything because the reader would get lost. You can always put the extraneous stuff in another project if there’s enough and it fits together in some way. However, our process must not lose sight of the eventual goal: Building the sort of logic which no longer requires such strategies. Mysticism is not the antithesis of rational organization; mysticism is not reliant on reason. Mysticism seeks truth which reason cannot contain.
Our task is to tame and train the intellect, to harness it to serve the Spirit.
The brainstorm is where I crave your input, dear readers. Here’s what seems apparent to me initially:
This will be an academic level study. It’s not for the casual reader without the level of intellectual development necessary to attain at least a bachelor’s degree. It’s not going to be a huge book, but a study guide, a sort of syllabus.
Western Civilization is based on myth, falsehood, a damaged worldview. It is not consistent with reality as God revealed it.
We’ll have to talk about where we are as Westerners, and outline what it means to be Western. I maintain the capstone of Western identity is the Enlightenment, the final welding of Greco-Roman culture with Germanic culture. We have to talk about what those two inputs are and how they dominate the very structure of thought. We’ll include an outline of the history of this process. Sadly, the Western Church was a primary player in building this mythology.
I will probably need some good references to Aristotle, especially good summaries. I’ll probably include something like Beowulf; it’s Old English Norse literature, but captures the soul of Germanic tribal mythology. It reflects the cosmology and anthropology, two key elements in worldview.
The nature of Western thought is one issue; the nature of Western Christian thought is closely related and slightly different. The dominance of another bastardized worldview is a major problem: Judaism. We’ll trace the shift from Hebrew Mysticism to Hellenized Judaism, which is easy for me to explain.
Much more difficult to explain is where I get my ideas about Hebrew Mysticism. So much of that comes from readings way back in my academic training starting forty years ago. I absorbed it, but didn’t formally organize my thinking until much later. I don’t have any good footnotes or even good authors. Most of the references I know about agree with Judaism; they embrace the Jewish claims about what it all ought to mean. I can justify rejecting that approach, but I can’t easily reference the material to replace it. I sense in memory getting little bits and pieces here and there.
Perhaps that is the task itself of mysticism. This may be the approach we propose in the study course. Each reader needs to build their own internal frame of reference so that, when they read the Old Testament, they get a powerful sense of their own purpose and calling in analyzing what the text means.
What do you think?

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Proposal: A Course in Christian Mysticism

Posted on June 6, 2013 by ehurst

I am a true Christian Mystic.
That should not be taken as a suggestion everyone else is false, but that I obviously disagree with just about everyone else promoting Christian Mysticism. If you understand anything at all about mysticism in general, you recognize that I rely entirely on force(s) beyond the human level to back my declarations. I rely on that same force(s) to draw your attention to what I say, or to turn you away from it. I am proclaiming only my personal experience with Truth; I can’t do any more than that.
As a fallen human, I struggle to invest my limited talents and resources into a proclamation that puts some measure of my experience within your reach.
I am highly disappointed at the current academic output in this field of study. Yes, there is a massive volume of work in the field, but much of it is impertinent to my experience. I read only a small portion of that work, and the more I read, the more impertinent it became. There are brilliant flashes here and there, but I sense it would save folks a lot of time if I could distill the results of my exploration. I cannot promise it will bring you the same overwhelming sense of personal peace it has brought me, but I simply cannot remain silent. The peace itself becomes a burning flame I cannot hold within.
While I hope to emulate some measure of solid academic standards common to Western scholars, the whole point is that such standards are inherently wrong. That is, they place a barrier far short of what can and should be revealed. They miss the point. I’ll use that approach only as a sign post to call those who have some internal question seeking better answers.
As with The Mind of Christ, this will be an open source project. I’m only too glad to receive input and play editor. You’ll be credited or not as you wish. It is utterly necessary to cite external sources to help Western minds begin the journey. I’ll nudge my way into Western academic territory but the anchor remains in the Ancient Hebrew tradition of parabolic and spiritual references that can only be confirmed fully by the individual reader reacting with the Truth for himself. Thus, anyone who can tolerate my biases can have their words added to this project. Or you can be inspired to write your own competing approach, and that’s just dandy with me.
The general idea is to help folks transition from their Western limitations to the Ultimate Reality beyond those limits. It will serve as a more readable approach to explaining how I got where I am, in the hopes you’ll start your own journey. It seems a significant portion of those who comment here, or discuss with me in other ways, keep requesting footnotes, references, etc. I’m hoping to create a condensed reference. Not a justification so much as I want to offer an explanation where I’m coming from. It’s not hard for me to frame a contextual reply every time, but it seems it keeps leading to wider and wider questions when someone is actually interested. Maybe I can reduce the workload a little.
So I’m going to compose a course in Christian Mysticism as taught on this blog and in my other works. I solicit your input. At the same time, I offer a warning this is where I’ll be investing a lot of my time in the near future. There will be posts on this subject; the abbreviation is ACCM (A Course in Christian Mysticism).

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Epistemology, in a Manner of Speaking

Posted on June 5, 2013 by ehurst

My use of the term, and the implied question, of epistemology is an accommodation to Westerners. It’s an attempt to speak their language.
Frankly, the question itself is circular reasoning. That is, the common Aristotelian evaluation of the answer to the question assumes Western values. Eastern Mystical epistemology is prepared to answer the question, but rejects the fundamental assumptions by which Aristotle and his kin arrive at their solutions. They define the answer outside of mystical terms in the first place.
Eastern Mysticism isn’t too concerned with whether things work out too well in this world. Sure, we can discern God’s moral laws and construct a frame of reference guaranteed to bring optimal life in this realm of existence. However, we assert the whole point is not the better life here, but what it says about things beyond this universe. Aristotle rejects any discussion of anything outside this universe, as it were.
Aristotle’s epistemology is just another silly logical game.

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Untangling Activist Logic

Posted on June 4, 2013 by ehurst

Activist logic does not even qualify as decent Aristotelian logic.
In order to reject the primacy of Aristotelian epistemology, I first had to understand it to some degree. This didn’t come as some dreamy longing for swords and sorcery. It came from genuine scholarship, though I’ll be the first to admit it’s not my scholarship, but that of others who have been ignored and marginalized. Somehow I managed to get what they were saying and the truth of it consumed me.
Activism assumes a certain power of the people which cannot be proved. Yes, there are apparent victories, but no lasting change. Instead, it’s the oppression that endures and finds another way, while liberty dies from a thousand cuts. What most people foolishly ignore is the hollow core of human decency. It’s there, but it always highly limited to certain contexts.
Glaring and dramatic illustration: Okies are generally nice people. Most folks out here in the semi-rural Eastern Oklahoma County will be decent when things are okay. Some are wild and crazy all the time, but generally decent. Put them under the least bit of pressure and decency fades quickly. Because our area was subject to tornado threats, our household decided to head south out of its path. That meant two-lane rural roads, laid out mostly in a square grid pattern here in Oklahoma. There are enough people and enough cars to pack these quiet rural roads if they all decide to do the obvious at the same time. So we found ourselves in slow moving traffic as we rolled over hill and dale toward some landmark we all knew. While the majority did stay within the common rules of courtesy, you would scarcely believe the huge minority that didn’t. So while we sat in an open parking area that was generally safe for awhile, we were treated to the spectacle of heavy traffic taking both lanes in the same direction and the most incredible panicky impatience that was willing to risk the lives of others to escape.
Prolong the panic past a single night and there would have soon been massive loss of life from crazies, compounded by those who were intent on teaching them a lesson. This is an anecdote to illustrate, not prove, my point. Our Western Civilization is exceedingly fragile. So long as we can expend our emotional energy on virtual threats in games and movies, or in wars in other places, things will be okay here at home. But the underlying brutality is not tamed, only diverted. This reflects the vast layer of Germanic social mythology lying over our Greco-Roman heritage — this is the fundamental nature of the Enlightenment, and the West will never progress any farther than that. We are not exactly Aristotelian. We still have this massive element of brutality and call it something else as justification for not examining it. The willingness to harm others as the means to changing things we don’t like is the core of activism. That we somehow convince ourselves our activist goals reflect the will of some god or another changes nothing. It’s still doing bad things in pursuit of what we imagine is good. It’s the same instinct for oppression but from the opposition parties.
Meanwhile, the pacifist veneer peels off quickly when it comes to things people really want. Doctrinaire pacifists are rare because they are killed off when things get genuinely hairy. Wise pacifists aren’t involved in the first place. They realize peace cannot be gained by activism, because humanity cannot ever be at peace. Only in the wildest frothy imaginations of idiots could we find the notion mankind is inherently peaceful. Violence is fundamental to the nature of the Fall. Humans evolve physically, and our intellectual wiring changes with both short and long term environmental influences, but intellect cannot possibly rise above a certain point. It cannot discern ultimate reality. And without a very solid background in mysticism, it cannot even discern the facts, never mind fundamental reality.
Activism is a manifestation a particular cultural mythology. You cannot sustain the energy level necessary to keep evil in a box. Static constraints are a waste of time; you cannot outsmart the genius of evil by designing barriers. There is no foolproof plan. The potential is there for containing evil, but it requires an opposing watchful force at least equal to the threat. The moral passion is not strong enough to keep it up. Logic and human longing are not sufficient. Oppression is fundamental to our human nature; it requires no particular effort. Activism against oppression is contrary to our nature. All the changes you think you can gain are illusory. We are still left with that damned meanness that pervades the human race and guarantees the same flood of sewage will go somewhere regardless of your levies to contain it. Talk the Army Corps of Engineers about the futility of flood mitigation; we’ve seen it right here in my county. No matter how far out you plan your cycle (“100 year flood levels”), that time eventually comes around and the levies are topped or breached. Activism is limited to tactical measures and temporary shifts.
Do you worry what your children will live with? Too bad; you can’t do much more than help them learn what you learned. Constrain them too tightly and your social edifice will crumble for being too ambitious. Constrain them not at all and they will turn on you for lack of interest. As for some vague notion of building a society in which they can prosper: You cannot possibly make that much difference. Peace, love and understanding cannot be imposed or it ceases being peace, love and understanding. It requires a voluntary embrace, a conscious choice which cannot be sold to more than a tiny minority at any given time. You can have it in yourself and demonstrate it. It’s a weak contagion against a strong immunization.
The logic of Paul’s admonition to be submissive to human government does not demand loving the evil that governments inevitably do, nor does it require imbuing those governments with a false holiness. Nothing in Scripture makes human government sacred; you have to misread it on purpose to get that idea. Ordained by God is one thing; sacred is another. Government is a part of the punishment of the Fall. Besides which, not a single government in the world today obeys God’s ordinance about structure and conduct. Thus, He works with them as they are, as slaves who never understand and require constant force just to stay in place. It requires a peculiarly damned foolishness to leap from “God requires we obey” to “God says it’s a good and holy thing.”
Paul’s logic is based on the assumption you can’t accomplish much by resisting, because the rest of the Bible makes it painfully obvious God is in control of human politics. His plans are indicated in parabolic language, but never actually explained because they are above human intellect. We are told to trust Him and play along, giving our time and attention to the things He has placed in our hands. Human politics is not in our hands. Such affairs run according to His dictates and He is not accountable to us; we are accountable to Him. We should expect no lasting or significant influence on human affairs. Rather, we focus on glorifying God, even at the cost of seeing our children taken from us and enslaved to unconscionable evil. Trust God for their lives and obey the mandate to stay focused on His glory. In other words, flee when you can, resist when you know His Spirit demands it of you, but don’t actually expect anything to change. Trust Him for the outcome.
It is a peculiarly damned Western myth that fires our hyper-protective instinct regarding our progeny; we go way too far in demanding control and prescribing outcomes. His Word admonishes us to raise them with a grip much more limited than the evil mythology of our times implies. We pull parenting epigrams out of context, completely missing the cultural and intellectual atmosphere behind them. We bring to the Bible a broad collection of false dichotomies and completely miss the point. We end up striving against God by not trusting Him to take care of our kids for us, particularly in those things He says are His concerns, not ours.
Teach your kids the moral laws of God first by living them. Those moral laws include a requirement we be otherworldly, not activist. Then, having demonstrated them, we teach them orally. Against the vast ocean of falsehood we face today, that’s a pretty big job. Still, at some point your spirit recognizes you can’t steer the outcome, neither for your children nor the rest of society. Just because you built your homes in Tornado Alley during the quiet part of the cycle is no reason to blame God when the storms come around and rip your house and children to shreds. It’s your fault.
Do you blame God for slaughtering the Egyptian children during the Passover, the final grand affliction of the Ten Plagues? No, we blame the Egyptian parents for rejecting God’s message. That mess was not necessary. It was human intransigence against the patient and merciful hand of God. Don’t be like them, demanding God conform to your expectations when He has offered plenty of warning it will not be that way. Nor should you be like the Pharisees, clinging to a false God of your intellectual reasoning. God is hardly constrained by Aristotle’s delusions.
Activism is the ultimate expression of human folly.

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Bits and Pieces 12

Posted on June 3, 2013 by ehurst

Gardening sucks this year. At least six times we’ve had to cover the plants from late and even later freezes. Eight times we’ve had to cover them from hail damage. They are too big to cover now. Because of the frequent and heavy precipitation, weeding has become nearly impossible, in part because the soil won’t bear my weight so I can get to the weeds. I’m doing things completely different next year.
The only computer games I’ve played are puzzles and solitaire. I don’t like most video games. I can’t get up enough interest to fight through and lose repeatedly until I figure out the game. It’s not in my personality to tolerate such things. However, the one kind of game I’d really like to play, no one will ever make. I really enjoy the part in some RPGs where you explore a very well thought out landscape. Something like Fallout 3 without the necessity of fighting would suit me well, but the market for such a thing is minuscule. It’s the visual equivalent of a really good adventure novel in terms of how the user experiences it, but there simply aren’t that many folks like me in that respect.
I’m a serious geography geek. Not in the memorization of places and things, but in the exploration. I’d give almost anything to see Europe again and visit all those places I never had time to see. As it was, I spent at least half my weekends volksmarching or biking and hiking in general. I simply wanted to see the places close up and personal. Weather conditions never made any difference. I was out in 40C heat or saw frost trails hanging from fences.
After my upper body workout on the machine at the park, I rode a bit farther to see the new terrain around Crutcho community. Crutcho Creek, running on the south side of it, overflows as soon as someone spits in it. The little community has flooded repeatedly over the years. This time, something had changed. A mile to the north is a landfill operation. They have a massive mountain of dirt and solid waste. The operation has expanded, buying up an old farm of some forty acres or so, which stood between the Mount Trashmore and Crutcho community. The landfill folks scooped out the entire acreage for the soil to cover their trash, and left a massive lagoon at least ten feet deep. This time Crutcho Creek really overflowed and ran across the whole community and over the main highway between the buildings and the new lagoon. As it fell over the side into the lagoon, it ate the soil away until it backed out a huge channel all the way to the road. This whole area is nothing more than alluvial sand in the first place (North Canadian River Valley), so it spread along both directions quite a ways. Two of the four lanes became unsafe, with most of the far lane already crumbling into this new massive channel that runs a hundred yards or so alongside the road bed. A nice geography lesson in miniature.
Edit: Couple of images of the washout from Crutcho can be found here.

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