Of Truth and Angels 4

Posted on May 14, 2013 by ehurst

They were ready bright and early the next morning to catch the bus down in the village.
There was a simple connection to another line in the south that ran all the way to the head of the kayak run in Houyet. They were hardly alone among the passengers with the same destination, but the morning was still cool and the crowds would not come until later. With the recent rains, the stream was a bit swollen and fast, perfect for this time of year. The only problem was finding the particular vendor who had issued the ticket, as there were several, each with their own color of kayaks. It was easy to find the guys who rented out the red ones and yellow ones, stacked on tall racks all over the place. They eventually found one with blue and white boats that matched the name on the ticket.
Their ticket included the deluxe paddles and a relatively fancy two-seater. Preston knew from experience he had to sit in the rear. They were launched from a rollered track that ran down into the water. It wasn’t all that different from his experience canoeing in the Boy Scouts back in the States. For the first kilometer or so, he talked Angie through keeping the thing aimed down stream and away from obstacles and other kayaks.
They really weren’t that far into the trip when they saw him. There were a handful of serious kayakers who rode their own equipment, and Gary was one of them. They were facing a tight turn to the left and he called to them from the shadows on the right. There was a tiny stream feeding into the main flow, running out from under a small wooden foot bridge up on the bank. Gary had tied up his orange and black boat to a small but solid tree on the bank facing outward. He extended his line for Angie to to tie off on the loop at the bow of their boat. This made for an odd water-borne conference with him facing them both.
“Glad to see you didn’t waste any daylight,” he started off. “Angie, if I really wanted to threaten Preston, what do you think I would do?”
She glance back at Preston behind her and blurted out, “You would attack me.” Preston nodded agreement.
Gary grinned. “You two are an amazing team. Your level of trust is quite rare in this world. Yet people intending evil are forced to use the same means to their ends. They have to rely on people they can trust on some level. Preston, you helped run a business during the worst of the off-shoring days in the US. How did you stay competitive?”
Preston felt he knew where some of this was going. Without hesitation, “Well, fleet maintenance is pretty hard to do offshore, but a couple of companies tried to bring in foreign workers. We beat them on service. Parts are parts and we were all pretty much restricted to using the same basic equipment with so many suppliers closing shop. But the big thing for us was keeping our people happy and motivated to do better work for the money.”
Gary laughed. “Key word there — people instead of personnel. That says it all. It was the same in the Army, wasn’t it?”
Preston shook his head, “It would have been if the system hadn’t promoted bean counters over genuine leaders. I dare say some units I saw, the soldiers might not be too convinced their own superiors weren’t the enemy.”
Gary nodded. “Even bad guys know that. They might be willing to use fear, coercion and slavery, but there have to be a few insiders who run interference for them. A big shot working on his own has to run himself ragged in micromanagement. Smart bosses always find good people and divide up the workload.”
He took a deep breath and waved at some random passing girls hooting at him. “Kids,” he snorted. “You two don’t look too bad in your dark hair. For this mission you aren’t likely to see too many trafficking victims. In a few days there will be what I call a mini-Bilderberg meeting here in Dinant — politicians, business and labor leaders, big investors, and so forth. As you might expect, at least half of them are mere figureheads. We aren’t too concerned with the big shots. We need to know about their lieutenants.”
Gary shifted in his kayak and pulled on the rope a bit. “The paparazzi will be here, too. Did you ever work with them, Preston?”
Preston had, indeed, tried early on to get work with the freelance news photographers, but decided that was the wrong field of operations for him. “That was a cluster,” he snorted.
Gary continued, “In a crowd of photographers at a media event, how many are actually working for their sponsors? Don’t you find some of them always willing to haggle with the competing interests?” Preston nodded as Gary went on. “Yeah, and there’s always a few who actually work for the people they pretend to photograph.” Again Preston nodded.
Gary turned to Angie, “Can you spot a photographer who isn’t really a photographer?”
“I think so,” she said with some curiosity in her eyes.
Gary leaned back a bit in cockpit of his kayak. “Don’t shoot pictures or video of the big shots. Shoot everyone but them. This thing should take a few days, so you’ll get plenty of time to figure out who is always there, who is playing maitre d’ for the people who get in the news. We are about to publish some big scandalous splash to shake things up, and we need to know who’s doing the real dirty work. Nobody else in the association has the time and energy to work this on the ground, nor anywhere near your talents — not to mention the obvious protection of God. You two are walking miracles. Don’t fling a needless challenge in His face, but don’t be afraid to keep His angels busy if that’s what the situation requires. Also, don’t stop anywhere and tie up your boat and leave it today. Someone will trade you for their less deluxe accommodations while your back is turned.”
Without another word, he turned and released the line holding them all in place and slipped past them into the river.
Angie grabbed the line and pulled the slack end into their kayak. They turned and drifted back out into the mainstream. Gary was already a distant speck zipping down the river ahead of them in his custom fitted kayak. They focused on enjoying the scenery. At places the bank rose up steeply to stone cliffs. There were a couple of fancy chateaus right on the water.
Preston remembered a warning he read in one review: Somewhere beyond the half-way point was a dam with a sluice. When riding down the sluice, it was critical to line up straight and off on the right side, and then stay to the right and paddle quickly to avoid getting caught in the folks dawdling at the bottom to watch others. The right side was a little deeper and most of those who hung around drifted toward the left where it was shallow.
They managed to clear the sluice without getting overturned. It had become quite warm and they removed their light jackets. At the end, the worker on the reception dock directed them to reverse the kayak, point the bow back upstream, and then sidle over to the quay. Strong hands helped them climb out and took control of the kayak. All they had to do was walk away.
It was impossible to avoid getting pretty wet during the run downstream, both from splashing by others and by water running off their paddles. But after glancing into the shower facility and seeing it was unisex with both genders running around nude, Preston glanced at Angie. “Not my scene, Babe.”
“Mine neither,” she assured him as they strolled toward the main street. They had already begun to dry and were quite hungry for lunch. Angie suggested they not grab the first one near the kayak endpoint, but walk out toward the gorgeous cathedral on the main road. The tourists were already out in force, and they drifted across the bridge eastward over La Lesse and along the street until they spotted a cafe with signs suggesting it was a baker-butcher shop. It seemed the right place at the right time, so they turned in there and picked out some sandwiches and a pair of what Belgians called “chocobollen” — a flaky light popover filled with a rich pudding-like cream that wasn’t too sweet, then dipped in chocolate icing. The coffee was superb, as it usually was in these parts.
Preston was describing a few volksmarches he had made in the area during his first stay in the Benelux. Dinant had become one of his favorite destinations, especially the Two Forts March that took walkers upriver on one bank to Givet, France, and then back down the other bank. He mentioned there were lots of trails in the area not on the bike maps.
“Show me,” Angie challenged him.

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Emotional Devotions

Posted on May 13, 2013 by ehurst

The hardest thing for a Western Christian is separating emotion from Spirit.
My single strongest accusation of fraud against the modern Charismatic movement is their vociferous, almost hateful insistence that their emotional manipulation is the hand of God. No, you can’t even get them to admit God uses emotions and heals them; it is the Spirit in their minds. They get really ugly and nasty when you question it. I worked with them directly for years, so this is not some speculative commentary. Hell hath no fury like a Charismatic exposed as a fake. If you think their “move of the Spirit” isn’t carefully scripted and planned ahead of time, you have never worked on a church staff with these people. Yes, the majority of them learned their “tongues” intellectually and emotionally and it is only incidentally any kind of divine presence.
Meanwhile, I am myself a Holy Ghost Mystic, so it’s not that I poke at them as an enemy. I want them to get right and keep doing what they are trying to do. Their willingness to dump shame on the ground in favor of godly fervor is most admirable. That was easily the best thing they did for me. But their confusion of emotion for spiritual activity is typical of problems with Western epistemology. Aristotle denied the existence of the entire Spirit Realm, so there can be no Holy Spirit in his world. It’s just a name for some kind of sentiment and emotion. Since Christians insist there is a Holy Spirit, there is only one place left in their worldview for Him, and that’s in the emotions. Western epistemology not only does not yield space for a Spirit Realm, but steadfastly denies it could possibly exist. When you absorb that background, you end up with a pretty funky brand of religion.
It’s just about as dysfunctional as the mandatory memorialists. You’ve met them. They have this vast store of emotional energy devoted to something, so compelling and powerful in their souls, that they become dangerously hostile if you somehow fail to feel it. They insist their personal sense of tragedy is somehow morally universal. They would willingly kill almost anyone on this earth, and a whole bunch of anyones, to insure no one can argue with raising up some hideous monument to their lost loved ones. The more inconvenient and disruptive of ongoing human life, the better. Their personal tragedy is God’s tragedy, so don’t argue with their demands for a huge freaking memorial that uproots the most productive business center in town and blocks traffic for miles around. If you don’t feel their passion for such a thing, you have to be evil.
Only in Western thinking is it so utterly necessary to assert that the Bible is infallible. In a Hebrew culture, the intellectual background of the Bible itself, nobody would care. It’s a question that would not arise. Since ultimate truth cannot be conveyed to the human mind in the first place, there is no need to invest so much emotional devotion to the means of conveyance. Yes, we might have some practical concerns with accuracy in copies and whatnot, but a Hebrew mind does not conceive of anything on this earth having perfection. The question of textual infallibility is simply not possible, since the words themselves cannot be perfect. Instead, the Hebrew mind trusts God to bridge the gap between an imperfect human record and their desperate need to know what He demands of them. The logical necessity of objective perfection is gone, because we don’t have to prove anything to anyone. All we need is some attempt at fidelity in copying and translating.
Translating becomes a huge issue itself, because almost the entire business of translation is owned and oppressively controlled by those who insist the only proper approach is based on Western epistemology. A genuine Hebrew epistemology would yield a totally different translation, but we work with what we have. The point is, you cannot have a perfect translation by any means, so what difference does it make to demand a mental assumption of infallibility? We aren’t worshiping the book, but the God who commanded some people write a narrative of His revelation. And since we cannot possibly compare with any originals — God wisely made sure there are none — all we need is reasonable accuracy.
The question is not the Book, but the soul that comes to the Book. Does it provide sufficient frame of reference to guide a spirit awakened? Because without that spiritual birth, the whole question is pointless in the first place. I fully understand the frantic necessity of an error-free Bible if your god is subject to Aristotelian reasoning, but God did not promote Aristotle. He had His own system in place long before Aristotle came along. I tend to think God’s brand of reasoning is better.
We are accountable to the God of the Book; the Book itself can judge nothing.

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Of Truth and Angels 3

Posted on May 13, 2013 by ehurst

There was also a date, three days from then.
Preston and Angie had reduced virtually all communications to electronic means. For their pay packets, they decided to set up regular mail retrieval through the PostNL office nearest their apartment. Everything came addressed “Poste Restante” (General Delivery) in their alternative names and they checked weekly to ensure the personnel got used to seeing them. Their pay came twice each month, typically in the form of currency, but was postmarked from all over the Benelux. Aside from a handful of advertisement fliers, nothing was ever pushed through the mail slot in their door.
Until the day after the priest gave them their next assignment, that is. When they returned from their regular workout the next day, there was a fat padded envelope on the floor just about the size for shipping a cheap paperback novel. It bore the marks of some obscure private courier service.
Preston and Angie were justifiably nervous about it, but upon slowly opening it, they found a small, nondescript box of single-wall cardboard. It bore a lone adhesive mailing label from their ostensible employer in Luxembourg City. Inside were two thin packets with French labeling and a cover letter wrapped around some currency. The letter was something dashed off on a computer in a decorative, oversize font.

No camping or bikes this time. Need casual dress, swim and athletic attire. Don’t bother your hosts. See the old barn out back.

Angie translated the writing on the packets — hair coloring kits, including the means to wash it out.
Preston looked at one of them. “I can see doing this to disguise your beautiful red mane, but I’m a little puzzled about mine.” Preston had allowed his hair to grow back out and kept a trimmed full beard. The instructions covered how to darken beards, too.
It would mean slipping out of their apartment before dawn to avoid being noticed with their different coloring. They decided for this trip to simply pack everything in normal duffle bags that had straps allowing them to be worn like backpacks. On the appointed day, it was just a short hike to the train station. There was an early express through Masstricht into Liege. This left just a short layover in Liege for a departure farther along the Meuse to Namur where they waited briefly for their train to Dinant. It was during this segment they each slipped into a toilet and changed from casual to hiking wear. Because these were such important rail links, it wasn’t too far from the scheduled times. They arrived mid-morning at the station.
It was pretty easy to find a TEC bus running close to their destination. They found it a fairly short and refreshing hike up along a stream, mostly through the woods to the north of the village. Near the crest of the terrain was a clearing on the left side of the road. At the far edge of this stood a very old stone farmhouse. The address was the one they had been given. They looked the place over from the road and noticed a narrow graveled track running around the north side of the house.
The place was very quiet and they were understandably nervous about it. Around back was, indeed, an old barn, mostly of stone but apparently patched at some point with bricks. On the far side was a small door set deep into the brickwork. On it hung a tiny brown envelope with a rubber band through a hole punched in to top. Inside was the key to a padlock on the door. They opened it slowly and looked inside.
The ceiling was high, but the rafters slung low. It was clean and free of cobwebs. The interior space was only a few meters across and somewhat farther in depth. A single small window on the left, somewhat dirty, let in a little light. Across from the window on the interior wall was a double sink with a high arched spigot. The plumbing was mounted on the wall in plain sight. Beyond the sink was a toilet with the typical old European style high-mounted water tank up inside the rafters. On the nearer side of the sink was an old zinc-coated, slope-sided watering tank, just big enough to use as a bath. Both the sink and tub drained into an open channel cut into the floor and disappearing under the interior wall.
Opposite this on the wall with the small window was an ancient desk with two metal folding chairs. They had paint splattered on them from long ago, but were still serviceable. What drew their attention most was the hammock. The mesh was woven from strands that were quite thick. Slung on the high end from a rafter beam and tied on the low end to an upright post, it was over a meter across with sturdy spreader bars and the mesh was covered with a rather thin mattress. Angie walked over to the bed and squeezed the mattress; “federbett” she announced in German.
She turned to Preston with a smile. “This should be interesting.”
Preston grinned. “Just getting into it would be some work. Let’s see if we can work this out.”
With practice, they decided for the most part that Preston had to get into it first. He was just shy of six feet and substantial, though not burly. That the hammock was tied close to the gather at the top helped dampen the swinging a bit when they shifted in it. Preston glanced up and expressed a bit of surprise that the wooden framing didn’t creak under the weight of their small movements. They rested a moment and he noticed the desk had a single lamp plugged into a double outlet, the only power visible in the place. In the corner nearest the door was an old hanger rack with the built-in hangers, perhaps a dozen or so.
“This is really a classy accommodation,” he noted.
Turning to look around, Angie spotted something on the desk. It was a simple matter to roll off the side and she went to see what it was. After reading it a moment, she held it up for Preston to see. “Ticket for a kayak tomorrow morning!” She was clearly excited.
That’s because it had rained starting that night after they met with the priest for pizza. In the Dutch flatlands, it was a continuous moderate mist for the past three days, but in the Belgian highlands, Preston had noticed it was a heavier rain. It was just tapering off during their hike up the road from the bus stop. This virtually guaranteed La Lesse would be up to a good depth for their run down it tomorrow.
For now, it was close to lunchtime. There was no kind of wifi anywhere close. Preston tethered to the cellphone and found a decent signal. Between the tourist information maps online and the bike map they had picked up in Monschau, they discovered that the only eatery nearby was to the northwest. It wasn’t a long or unpleasant hike, just not what they expected. They were so very close to a major hub of tourist attractions, yet very nearly isolated in the Belgian highlands not far from the French border. The actual city of Dinant was something like seven kilometers away, mostly a straight line once they got back downhill into the village.
The tiny cafe in Falaën was quite adequate for a surprise lunch. The menu was available in several languages, but Preston let Angie do the talking. They also ordered something they could carry back and have for dinner later. They traded off carrying the bag as they looked around the picturesque village and took a few photos. Then they trudged back to their hideaway.

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Ecclesiastes Intro and Chapter 1 (Updated)

Posted on May 12, 2013 by ehurst

Introduction
The sarcasm and mocking Solomon offers here could easily be aimed at the large number of Western Christians who don’t get Hebrew wisdom literature. The underlying premise of the book is portraying the vanity of trying to understand life, the universe and everything from a human point of view. The wisest man in human history could not come up with a good answer, try as he might all the ways men seek to conquer this existence.
That much is obvious. The difficulty is that virtually no one in Western Christianity has a clue about the fundamental human approach Solomon uses here. This book is easily the pinnacle of Hebrew mysticism. That is, there is nothing here truly spiritual, in the sense that this book is wholly a matter of God’s moral laws for fallen mankind. It does point to spiritual depth, but never mentions it directly. As non-Western literature, there is nothing here of questioning the nature of existence, nor defining the meaning of things from a rational position. That’s the wrong question here. The question is how to make the most of human existence after the Fall. The question is how best to obtain the very most life here can offer.
That question is played out while trying to avoid references to revelation. Solomon experiments with all the ways men pursue the different approaches, and he does so with vastly superior native ability. He does make reference to mere logic in the rational mold, but dismisses it, too. In the end, he answers with the assertion that, taking the very best of all the various philosophical approaches to the basic question of how to make the most of our human existence, and using the very deepest and wisest mind with access to as much human knowledge as existed at that time, you still can’t come up with anything better than a pretty simple grasp of God’s Laws.
Solomon didn’t have to put pen to parchment here; he had numerous scribes working in the palace. It’s possible this was published after his death. However, you can’t take seriously scholars who assert it comes from Post-Exilic times, because by then, only a tiny handful of Hebrew scribes could possibly understand what Solomon meant. They would have written up an entirely different book from his notes. By the time the Exile was over, Hebrew Mysticism was virtually forgotten, and this book is very firmly the product of classical Hebrew Mysticism before the Exile.
Chapter 1
There is no ambiguity in the author’s identity: Solomon, heir of King David to the throne in Jerusalem. He calls himself “the one who assembles,” a Hebrew pun describing one who assembles words of truth, then assembles people to teach the truth.
The first thing he tells us is to not take this world too seriously. It doesn’t matter what you bring to the task, you can’t make much of by yourself. No matter what you accomplish by any scale of human measure, it won’t make any difference for very long. You can’t change the rotation of the earth, the movement of wind currents or the hydrologic cycle. The better you understand things, the more it drives you nuts. The one thing you most want to change is hardest of all — human nature. It ever reaches for things it cannot have. What little improvement there could be requires paying attention to human history, but even if they know it, they still repeat it.
Again, the issue is not whether we can change our world physically. We should know better than that, Solomon says. The one thing that affects us all the most is fallen human nature. If there is one thing we could fix, and should try to fix, the one thing which is the key to all our problems, it would be human nature. Thus, the whole point of verse 15, for example, is a description of human nature itself — irreparably bent and broken.
Solomon informs his readers he has examined the issue fully. Human talent, wisdom and creativity simply cannot change anything that matters. Here he sits, the wisest human on earth so far, downright legendary for his grasp of things, and with all he gained in that department, he still can’t change anything. God has revoked human access to the Garden of Eden, so man must work simply to stay alive, and it is work guaranteed to do little more than keep him alive. Should he somehow amass the resources for leisure, he ends up wanting more of something else. It is unspeakable misery to realize nothing can be done to nudge humanity back where they could be.
The greatest peace fallen men can have is engaging the task itself of staying alive and minding your own business. Sure, give expression to your soul’s longings but never take yourself seriously. Once you begin to imagine you have some advantage over others, you cannot avoid creating trouble for yourself and others. You will only make things worse.

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Of Truth and Angels 2

Posted on May 12, 2013 by ehurst

In Belgium generally, and Walloon areas in particular, there were numerous little shrines, field crosses, chapels and so forth.
Some were quite artistic. A few were frankly disappointing, consisting of little more than a cheap plastic bottle from which the holy water of places like Banneaux had been already drained. The bottle was molded in the shape of any number of famous statues of Mary. Other shrines were dedicated to various saints. Preston’s interest was measured. The artwork was pretty and he took seriously the strong feelings people attached to such things.
However, it was plain to Angie that Preston shared little of those feelings. She remarked, “Most non-Catholics aren’t really into it, I know. Besides, it’s not all that popular in the Netherlands. Maybe you know we have a large rebel Catholic community based in Utrecht called Old Catholic Church. They don’t venerate Mary or the Pope so much.”
They were walking past a collection of icons planted firmly alongside a narrow lane, representing the Stations of the Cross. Angie had stopped at each, was quiet for a moment, then moved on. Their conversation came and went between the stations.
Preston noted, “I remember seeing some posters and signs about that in Utrecht. For me, there’s more to it than that. Obviously, Americans have little of the history available here in Europe. Half of these shrines are older than the United States. You’ve still got Roman Roads in places where we’ve marched. On top of that, we have a cultural revulsion to anything that smacks of feudalism and privilege. But in my own case, it’s no longer a simple matter of reflex. I’m not hostile to the veneration of Mary, but I can’t go there because of very strong convictions based on what I’ve learned about spiritual matters.”
Angie responded, “I know you have always been polite about my devotions. Had you asked me a year ago, I would have certainly said I expect men and women to argue. That’s so common here in Europe, like an unwritten law. Americans have big noises about feminist politics, but here those politics have ruled for a long time. You never said, but I know you don’t agree with much of feminism.”
With a half grin, he noted, “And you seem to be okay with it. I’m not much on arguing and debating. I trust in God and simply obey what I know He demands of me. Feminism is wrong because it’s native to Western Civilization, which is also pretty messed up. The whole thing is based on a completely false set of assumptions. I gave up trying to teach people a long time ago. I just walk in the light I have and let God worry about the details. For whatever reason, you have found yourself at home with my choices.”
She nodded with a firm expression of agreement. “Yes. I don’t know what it is, but it seems to work. I can tell when you don’t like something, but you just let it go. It’s like you know I’m going to run into trouble with it, but even if I don’t, maybe it does no good to argue.”
Preston shook his head. “We have too much else to worry about for me to pick at everything I don’t like. But you’ll notice I take full authority on some things and don’t make room for argument. That’s conscious.”
She grinned. “Yeah, but not for me. When you do that, it seems everything in me gets kind of quiet. I never met anyone like you before.” She put an arm around his waist and hugged him.
He responded in kind, grasping her around the shoulder. “For me, it doesn’t matter what you believe about Mary. I don’t care about the theology and mythology, if you will. What bothers me most is the tightly entangled feminism that comes in the package. When devotion to Mary gets in the way of serving her Son, it makes me uncomfortable. I don’t agree with folks who say it’s the same thing. Her Son was a Hebrew man, a very masculine culture. But a masculinity totally different from the European brand or the American brand. When devotion to Mary comes off like heathen idolatry, and especially when it becomes the excuse for perverting what the Bible teaches through these unconscious cultural assumptions about God’s Creation, I get a little unhappy. Since I often can’t explain it without people getting hysterical, I just back off and try to stay on course with my own devotion to God.”
After a few moments, he added, “You do what you have to do to keep a clear conscience. So will I. As long as we can negotiate the differences, we belong together.”
At that, she stopped him and fully embraced him with a firm kiss.
They decided not to antagonize the young priest at Pancratius Kerk over such things, and simply accepted him as a supporter, at least, of the association that employed them. They seldom saw him outside of Sunday worship, but did run into him one evening at the local Pizza Hut.
As they sat together enjoying the uniquely Dutch flavored American franchise offerings of Italian food, the priest made it a point to apologize to Angie for past abuses by the church. She didn’t query how much he knew of her past, but the controversy over revelations that Dutch priests and nuns had abused children was still a warm, if not hot, item in the news. Then he changed to topic.
“I’ve been praying for rain. I’m not so worried about it here in our water-soaked lowlands, but for the Belgian highlands. It would add so much to your next journey.”
Angie and Preston glanced at each other in puzzlement. Was he that much inside the association?
The priest went on. “It’s highly unusual, but I wanted to confer with you about something coming up in the next few weeks.” He paused at the look on their faces. “Yes, I know Gary and Henk. Most of us are constrained in ways you two are not. Perhaps it would amuse you to know what a large number of people in odd places are relying on you for things we’ve often longed to do ourselves, but just could not afford the risks of losing all our advantages.”
Preston offered, “We knew a long time ago not to poke at what’s behind the curtain. We aren’t mercenary about the pay, but as long as everything keeps working out and our few contacts seem happy with the results, we plan to stay at this.”
The priest smiled. “You make this too easy for me. Gary wants to meet with you down near Dinant. As I understand it, you’ll be doing something we believe is more typical of our operations. At the same time, it will add a dimension previously not possible.” He pulled out a pad of sticky notes and peeled off the top sheet. Sticking it down on the table top, he produced a pen from another pocket. Actually, it was a very fine-point pencil, Preston noticed.
After scribbling a bit, the priest pulled it up off the surface of the table and handed it to Angie. “Again, don’t lose heart.” He smiled warmly, then slid out of his seat and left, dodging through the crowd of the busy pizzeria.
On the note was an address in Weillen, Belgium.

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Flavors of Reason

Posted on May 11, 2013 by ehurst

Western reasoning gets in the way of everything, even in ways we don’t realize.
We can be smart enough to recognize when something needs only concrete logic. If you drop a rock on your foot, it will hurt; if you touch fire, it will hurt. That’s physical science; we get that.
We can be smart enough to recognize when something requires abstract logic. That’s the whole point of analysis, where we examine the world around us and try to recognize patterns. We see how certain types of phenomena work according to the same principles. We learn the details of one instance and can discover how it applies to other instances that are not exactly the same, but seem related. After awhile, we refine our understanding of the underlying principles until we can reliably predict what will happen when we do this or that by abstracting the principles from reality.
We can learn those things from others by deductive logic. If we find someone is a reliable source of information on reality, we listen when they assert basic principles and apply them in other cases. We build an understanding much more quickly because we don’t have to discover the basic principles for ourselves. Someone is able to explain convincingly and on our level, and we build from their work.
We can also learn when things we’d like to say require encoding. We learn to use symbols for words and sounds, and we transmit our knowledge much more efficiently. So we abstract our communications and people can deduce the meaning by a common standard of symbolic communication. Computers, anyone? We reach out to reduce the entire pool or human knowledge into symbols any computer can pass down a wire to another. We now have the luxury of instant access to more knowledge than any of us can possibly process, much less use.
But this is not the same as symbolic logic. Symbolic logic is a very ancient form of reasoning; it assumes there is an active force in this world which is not part of this world. It posits humans could, in theory, have a faculty for dealing with this outside force, but it would have to be a faculty above logic and reasoning, per se, because anything powerful enough to intrude on this universe must be more powerful than anything inside it. And we further deduce it would be awfully hard to discuss it with anyone if we don’t possess the means of communication to tap into that other person’s super-intellectual faculty. If we could, it would surely be something we couldn’t simply write in symbols. It would require symbols inside the symbols, a symbolic logic that is simply too much for human communication itself, because it’s too much for the intellect, which is the foundation of communication. Symbolic logic is not exactly rational in nature.
The whole question of dealing with forces greater than the universe itself demands something above our conscious human level. I can’t prove it because it’s outside the range of proof, in the sense that you could surely find an alternative explanation for things I claim reveal something from that greater force. If the existence of that higher level is not self-evident, there is nothing I can do to help you with it. If you find it self-evident, then there is grounds for trying to communicate something about our individual experiences with that self-evidence.
If that outside force gets involved in the process by communicating in some way, it changes the whole picture. That is, we assume this higher force is able to accurately assess what we need in order to cooperate. However much that demands from us, we are compelled to try. A critical element of that is gaining use of symbols. By our own human level reasoning, we realize the best we can hope for is communication that is not descriptive of things which are above description, but are indicative of what we can do with those things. If there isn’t anything we can do with it, we dismiss it. Most folks end it right there, of course, which is what we call agnosticism. For some of us, there is a compelling call to accept the notion we can do something with it. We can’t own it with our minds, but our minds can be instructed on some level. That’s where the symbols come into the picture; the symbols are indicators.
The symbols don’t obey the rules of lesser levels of reasoning. They are bigger, and seem out of focus, sort of fuzzy. They are granted from that higher force, so we are compelled to use them, but we can’t possibly control them. Our only hope is to deduce their meaning by how they act in any given context. That effort awakens a slender link between our higher faculties and our minds. Something in us responds to a question of the mind: Now what? It carries that question up to the higher faculty, which then answers back with some imperative. The mind struggles to make sense of whatever pattern it can discern. The process is never completed, so we remain open to fresh applications of the symbols all the way to the day we die. We don’t lose confidence, because we discover that higher faculty is more reliable than the rest of our entire human nature.
The Old Testament uses a lot parabolic or symbolic language. It is designed to call upon our higher faculty to engage the situation and learn how to apply the imperatives of that higher force. Jesus used parables that way. It was designed to keep out those who lacked the higher faculty because people who run around insisting on relying entirely on the lesser human capabilities were unable to act according to the imperatives. It wasn’t exactly a question of having that higher faculty, but using it. In essence, if you don’t exercise and build that link between the higher faculty and the mind, and learn to trust that higher faculty, you have no business pretending you can do God’s business reliably. You’ll keep trying to force Him into your intellectual constraints, and you will be wrong when it counts the most.
Humans without that higher faculty can move a lot closer, but it’s been centuries since any corpus of learning has been sought by humans trying to learn about it, at least on a wide scale. In fact, I submit to you that religious pagans have been working harder on it than just about anyone, certainly more consistently than the Church. The Church seems intent on denying the real deal and demanding we keep everything within the constraints of human intellect and a very human frame of reference. Virtually everything churches have done for the past few centuries is entirely under the power of human control, and views with great suspicion anything that smells like it comes from outside it. Thus, when someone gets a taste of that higher faculty, there is no background of teaching to guide it. That results in a lot of wacky stuff. It’s not God’s fault; He’s doing what He promised to do. The wacky stuff is our fault for not keeping alive the knowledge offered in the Old Testament.
Everything God did to establish a proper frame of reference has been thrown in the trash, and the first to trash it was Judah. When Christians began to reclaim the heritage, the Jews fought tooth and nail to take it away from them. In one sense, they succeeded, in that the infrastructure for that broad understanding leaked away from the churches rather early.
It didn’t go away completely, but it was buried in the sands of time. I’m struggling to recover some of it, and I have no way to gauge how well I’m doing. There are others involved and we share the labor but I don’t yet see a way to share the fellowship of the struggle. Too many of those contributing aren’t interested in actually using it. It makes their discoveries a little suspect, but it’s all we have. It’s quite possible the community of those willing to work together on this will remain small. I don’t pretend to know God’s plans on this matter. I know only what He demands of me.
Part of that demand is offering a prophetic warning to Christians. I have to trust the higher force — God — to work out all the things I can’t handle, which is an awful lot.
Let me leave you with this: If you aren’t otherworldly, you are too worldly. There is no stark clean line of departure between what the flesh can accomplish and what the Spirit does. It can only be perceived from that higher faculty. You can accomplish a lot of good in the flesh, but for some small portion of all that, you’ll miss the point and God doesn’t get the glory — people are not given a glimpse of that higher realm. You cannot understand the Cross with your minds alone. No amount of theologizing will produce the right answer. It still requires you and God together in communion on that higher plane where He exists, using that higher faculty to bring the Cross to life inside your soul. Then you are in a position to put into practice what you cannot possibly explain.
We tilt our awareness toward a readiness for any part of our human processes to be interrupted by the Divine. We don’t have to understand much about it, only understand that there is a demand that we obey. Attempts to explain will require those symbols that can’t quite be defined. We have to say things like, “I’m not sure I can explain to your satisfaction, but if I don’t do it this way, I’ll be guilty of disobeying God.” To the flesh it looks like mere sentiment or emotion, something lower the reason. We cannot possibly convince the flesh otherwise, and who’s to say in “real” terms it isn’t? There is no certain proof on this level, only the sense of divine peace we can’t explain.
Thus, I may still have a divine necessity of dropping a rock on my foot despite knowing it will hurt. There are other decisions I’ll make contrary to human logic because symbolic logic is above that. We discount suffering as a steering component on itself. We examine human suffering in light of whether it matters at that moment in spiritual terms. The flesh is just a tool, and our entire human existence is merely a passing resource in service to something outside this universe. We take care of the flesh so much as God says it matters to Him, not on any other basis. We offer comfort to others who suffer, but only the comfort God says He wants us to offer, not the comfort which human logic says is demanded by the need. We use human reasoning when the Spirit is silent, which isn’t very often. We default first to the symbolic reasoning of the Ancient Hebrew traditions, which many people call “mysticism,” then slide on down to deductive reasoning, then abstract, and finally concrete reasoning.
There is no answer to the question of what a symbol means without a context in which to apply it. When that makes sense to you, we can talk to each other about following Christ.

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Of Truth and Angels 1

Posted on May 11, 2013 by ehurst

(This begins Part 4.)
Things had slowed down a bit for Preston and Angie.
They were ready for that. It was good for them to have a period of adjustment without crises to force the sudden definition and redefinition of priorities in life. Time to think about things.
It was also time to consider a regular fitness program. Both of them had been operating on the strength of previous fitness efforts, but as part of their overall search for a norm, a baseline from which to operate, they felt the need to regain some control. But the private gyms were didn’t feel right. Angie was not used to creating her own guided program, having simply taken advantage of whatever training was included in the various sports in which she had participated. So it fell to Preston to come up with something for them until a better idea came along.
In their explorations and photography forays, they had stumbled across several playgrounds with substantial equipment. They concentrated on those closest to the vast Brunssumerheide, creating workout routines on them. While recent years had seen a lot industrial scraping in parts of it of the heath, there was still plenty of greenery left over and Preston’s memory from twenty years earlier served well. He and Angie established a pattern of mixing upper body exercises on the playgrounds with running in the sandy hills of the heath.
The ride out from Heerlen served as a good warm-up, and it was a decent cool down in the ride back. True to his promise, Preston began adding training in Taekwando. Not that he was really up to par himself, but he used what he could remember. Angie picked up on it quickly, despite her misgivings about the idea of violence. They had several weeks to settle into this routine.
That was largely because their hopes for kayaking in Dinant were squelched by an extended summer drought. There were a number of volksmarches that Preston felt were worth the effort simply to see the countryside. It gave them a chance to see places like Malmedy, Namur and Bastogne. Until further notice, they continued avoiding Liege and Masstricht as advised earlier that summer. But in general, while they were culturally more comfortable among the Flemish, it was the accident of history and geography that placed the most beautiful hiking areas in the hands of the Walloons.
During one of their hikes, Angie decided it was a good time to broach a question that had been tumbling around in the back of her mind. “This work we do is personal for me. At the same time, I’m highly motivated to work with you whatever it is you are doing. What drives you in this work?”
Before he could answer, she went on. “I know you just sort of stumbled into it. I was there. But you seemed to have a mission in your soul already, just waiting for a chance to do something like this.”
Preston grinned. “We don’t often talk philosophy and religion because our instincts are the same on most things.”
He slowed a moment to pet a friendly dog someone was leading on the trail. They moved on as the dog decided to stop for a nature call.
“I went to one kind of church or another for most of my life. Even while I was stationed here, I went to chapel pretty regularly. Back when it was called AFCENT Chapel, the staff would organize an annual retreat at Rolduc Abbey down in Kerkrade. One year we had a speaker who was an Iraqi pastor. Hardly anti-American, he was trying to get the message out that Christians in Iraq were badly hurt by American military activities. There was a lot of political posturing about having him speak to American troops so soon after Desert Storm. They wouldn’t let him come to the chapel, so we had to go outside the system to see him, but something told me to ignore all that crap and go.”
He was silent for a few minutes while they took an arduous climb up a hill. At the top, when he caught his breath, Preston continued.
“There weren’t very many of us there at that retreat, so it was very informal and much more interesting. The man spent a lot of time talking about seeing the world from a non-Western viewpoint. One of the first things he said was, ‘Christianity began as an Eastern religion.’ Then he went on to make the point that you can’t really understand the Bible unless you understand that Eastern point of view. Not like Hindu or Shinto Eastern, but Middle Eastern before Islam. So I did some reading. Most of it I didn’t really understand, but some of it must have leaked into my head, because it changed everything.”
They stopped to admire the view from a cliff overlooking a small river valley.
“American religion in particular is deeply afraid of anything outside the tight control of the conscious mind. Almost the entire field of evangelical religion is too cerebral, and that isn’t what we see in the New Testament. That has its place, but it should serve, not lead.”
Angie reminded him, “The Catholic Church has a wide range of different traditions feeding into it. In the positions I held it was easy to see a lot of infighting behind the scenes, but somehow things manage to keep going. Still, there is more than one grand tradition of mysticism. We have eastern churches I heard about only a little, so I can’t pin it down between east and west. Some of it was like psychobabble, but some of it seemed quite powerful.”
Preston nodded. “If you rely too much on emotion, you’re just an animal. If you rely too much on intellect, you’re just a smart animal. If you learn to listen to something higher, you at least have a chance to get involved in what’s really worthwhile. People who deny that there is anything higher can’t even be called Christian in my book. Even after those papers we read and the work we’ve already done, I don’t pretend to understand this business all that well. But inside of me is a very quiet, very hot fire, and it won’t let me ignore this problem. We already know we aren’t saving more than maybe ten percent of the kids caught in this mess, but there’s something in how we do this, something about simply exposing it, that seems to answer that fiery demand on my soul.”
They agreed it was something strong enough to keep them focused until the next episode.

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Mankind Is Fallen

Posted on May 10, 2013 by ehurst

Perhaps it seems a bit odd I should have to use a title restating a pretty basic Christian doctrine.
By no means am I trying to address those who might actually dispute the assertion. I expect that from the fallen world. People who are fallen would prefer to deny the very thought. Christians who join them in this assertion are not Christians in the sense we need to take them seriously at all. Their claim to faith is false, and we have plenty of them. What drives me here is how most Christians who claim to believe this doctrinal assertion still live as though it were false.
If the church looks like the world, what’s the point?
The message of God is whatever God said it was. It is not subject to revision and updating according to human fashion. The only reason we don’t die upon spiritual birth is because the Lord said He wants to use us to promote His glory. Where we get into trouble is when we attempt to summarize or characterize that message of glory. Nobody has to tell me I’m out of step with the mainstream. I’m not going to engage in debate and offer proof. I’m a prophet and I will simply present my claim. If it doesn’t call your name, it’s not my problem. God’s truth cuts its own path in the hearts of men.
Again, humanity is fallen. The world itself isn’t fallen, but was delivered to the management of humans and they botched it. We didn’t stay on the path God laid out for us, so things are broken. The first dispute I have with mainstream Christianity is the assumption this world is going to be fixed up. It is not. The reality you and I experience will remain broken until it is replaced entirely. 2 Peter 3:10 comes as close to a blunt statement as we can get on this point. This whole reality is doomed because we messed it up and God does not intend to repair it, but to replace it entirely, down to the level of matter itself.
Whatever the mission of the church is, it cannot include the notion of fixing this world’s problems. We are focused on what follows this current reality. That’s what the resurrection proves, that there is something outside this existence, something superior and more powerful, and we should want that. Granted, Paul warns it is not possible to want it without God awakening our dead spirits first, but that’s another point of conflict. The churches keep insisting there is something humans can do to bring about spiritual birth, and it’s closely tied to the instinctive belief this world can be fixed. Those things are not in our hands; they are not the mission of the church.
We are here to serve those whom God touches and calls into His Kingdom. The election is totally His; the mission of helping them live out the implication is ours. Jesus said He would use us in that way to get His message across. It is not our place to question the efficiency of this plan or the justice in God’s election of some and not others. Those things are stated in Scripture as truths to which we have to adjust our behavior. We aren’t in on the conference in the Judge’s chambers in Heaven when He discusses His divine law and His plans for humanity and His creation. Our mission is much more limited.
God created all there is. We are accountable to Him. How He goes about that is not our business, except insofar as He bothers to tell us what we need to know to serve. We all serve Him; He is Lord and Master and has the power to do whatever suits His whims. “Every knee shall bow” comes with a certain background of assumptions. We aren’t in His position so we can’t argue. Our feeble sense of justice does not apply to Him; He does not subject Himself to us. We are subject to Him. He has revealed to us a portion of His sense of justice; we have rejected that. Seriously, folks, by embracing Western epistemology, we have rejected His revelation. If you can’t be bothered to learn the Ancient Hebrew view of reality and truth, you can’t expect to understand His revelation. Being fallen is hindrance enough to understanding God’s Word; rejecting the fundamental intellectual basis God chose for His revelation guarantees you’ll fail. The entire range of Western logic is broken and alien to Scripture. The sense of justice that comes in the package with Western reasoning is all wrong, and cripples our ability to understand and embrace His truth.
The only reason He keeps us here once He has granted enlightenment and spiritual birth is because He has determined to glorify His name before He ends it all. He has determined certain things must happen in a particular sequence in this time and space continuum. We don’t belong here, and critical to what He wants from us is demonstrating that we don’t belong here.
We who follow Jesus do good things. We don’t do them simply because people need them. We do them because it reveals His glory. The entire logic of how we go about planning those good things is broken because churches invariably operate from a broken human logic. Nothing in what we do should represent the notion of solving problems. Let me say that again: Solving human problems is not our mission. How do you think we are going to suffer for the gospel message if we do everything in our power to fix the suffering? God says He has no plans to fix things. Why are we devoting so much energy to fixing this world’s ills? That is not God’s agenda. Making some pitiful effort to helping someone next to you is a means, not an end. We do good things because they are one of the many ways we draw attention to God’s Heaven.
We are not responsible to God for solving any problems at all; He does not hold us accountable for that. He holds us accountable for His glory. He said repeatedly we would fail on this earth. Even after we lay claim to the full range of powers from the Holy Spirit, we would continue to fail. It’s built into our fallen nature, the flesh we still have to drag around that holds us in this fallen realm of existence. His redemption of life does empower and improve our performance, but performance was never the issue. This fixation on human accomplishment is what damns the churches. The focus is not in this realm of existence. We are seeking to kill this human flesh, to deny it’s hopes and dreams for this world. The entire range of our connection to this world is what we try to nail to the Cross, and struggle to keep it nailed there. It is the fallen Adam who wants to fix the damage on his own terms, as if he could undo the Fall and get back into the Garden. The Garden is gone! It is not coming back to this universe.
Don’t mistake the methods and means for the mission. The mission is revelation of His glory, not making people’s lives better. Making life better is just a means.
The second problem is we struggle mightily against His plans for making life better. We have embraced not only the ultimate goal of fallen men, but we have embraced their methods. Those methods are wholly contrary to the Word of God. Virtually the entire range of church activity is hostile to His revealed method and means. We keep turning to fallen mankind for our instructions on this issue, ignoring that their instructions are based on a false hope of taking over as gods of this universe. I don’t know of a single religious organization in existence on this earth that promotes God’s ways of doing what little can be done to fix things up. We have rejected the mission and the means, and we insist on methods devised by men hostile to the message of Christ.
Correcting this secondary mistake is the purpose of my writing about God’s Laws. That’s not the message here. The message here is that the churches seem to have no clue of the basic “why” of things, so they can’t possibly do the right things.
Stop organizing around perceived human need. Stop planning to grow a church organization with more members and a bigger budget and facility. Those are human goals, totally missing the point. God may grant those things, but they should never be codified in written planning unless it is first acknowledged they don’t really matter. Engineers and planners are not the church hierarchy, and certainly not the spiritual leadership. Their vision is practical answers, but deciding what needs to be engineered is a wholly different level of operation. No one should be seriously frustrated if they find the organization has planned things that don’t happen. All our human aims are mere estimates of where we are at the moment. Investing deep emotional energy into the mere facts of our human existence and instrumentality is blasphemous.
Do you suppose it was for nothing God called Abraham to the life of a tent-dwelling nomad? There were plenty of ancient palaces and temples, but God’s primary representative on earth was a nomad. Do you suppose it was some kind of accident of history that God had Israel living in tents for such a long time? Does it occur to you that investing much of anything into human facilities is all wrong? Centralizing into one huge organization is an abomination in the first place. We should have gotten that message at the Tower of Babel. There shouldn’t be a single congregation on this earth any larger than a couple hundred members. I don’t pretend to know the threshold; that’s an engineering question for experts in behavioral science, but concentrations of wealth and human talent are not what God had in mind. People love that grand vision of greatness as humans measure it, but God calls it an evil obsession. The human organization and facilities are not the Kingdom of God. While I can convince plenty of organizations to put that in writing, it seems no one can persuade them to live accordingly.
Churches were meant to live as tribal communities scattered across the face of the earth. Each was meant to be deeply involved in the locale where the people came together for the purpose of His glory here on earth. They do quite simply what they can, with the resources they gain from whatever it is God calls them to do. Use what you have, not what you imagine you can get for something a fallen man tells you is essential. If the world takes us seriously on its own terms, we are in deep trouble. Dying on the Cross was not a human success; see John 15:18f.
The Hebrew model of life is God’s model for the churches. The church leadership was meant to be two kinds: organizational and ritual. The pastor is not an organizational leader but a ritual leader. There should be ruling elders who operate like Ancient Hebrew clan elders. The idea is not to whip the organization into shape, but to simply come together in seeking to conquer the flesh. We plan for the power of the Holy Spirit to shine through; we make room for that, even as we fully expect the bulk of activity will ignore Him even in the church. Conquering the fallen flesh nature does not happen by the disciplines of the flesh. The church is meant to be an on-going crisis in itself, always in some state of flux because the included humans are always facing new problems. The church victorious does not look like a human army marching over the corpses of their enemy, unless you understand those corpses should be our own, for we are our own enemies. We should pay scant attention to human problems as anything more than a background against which we seek to die.
Death is our goal. It can come as a penalty, and while we can’t possibly understand how, dying without first killing off some measure of our flesh puts us before God somewhat empty-handed. It means we didn’t get the job done; we died for the wrong reason. Otherwise, we seek to earn our exit from this realm. We cannot possibly earn our entrance into His Presence, but we do earn our share of His glory. We earn it not by accomplishments, but by killing the flesh and accomplishments. We earn it by learning to discount the elements of our human existence as having any great importance. We die slowly, bit by bit, working our way out of human concerns. That’s why we can be generous and giving, suffering with others who don’t understand so well — we don’t worry about clinging to things they seem to want and need. We can’t hope to comprehend in the flesh the balance between doing too little and too much for any one person’s needs, so we rely on the Holy Spirit to help us in the moment to know what He wants us to do.
I can’t feed every hungry child, so I let God tell me which children I shall feed, and He gets to choose who I will not feed. The ones who go hungry are His problem. Human suffering we understand, and we commiserate, but we don’t get wrapped up in it. Don’t let the needy person decide what you must do for them. Their suffering is not a guide to our work; His moral justice is and virtually no one in Western Christianity has a clue what that is. Don’t let your own human inclinations and wisdom rule whom and how you help. Let the Lord guide your choices as the instrumentality of His glory. For all the people Jesus fed by miracles, there were thousands more who continued going hungry.
The final issue is our vast ocean of hostility to operating in the Spirit. We have so deeply and thoroughly defined “spiritual” as cerebral that there is little hope for many to ever operate spiritually. That’s a part of our hostility to Hebrew mysticism, a mysticism God Himself built on earth as the means to understanding His revelation.
Yes, we are fallen, and our vast ocean of bad religion is not making anything better.

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Of Children and Angels 11

Posted on May 10, 2013 by ehurst

As they were moving out with the line of worshipers when the service ended, a young priest beckoned to them. They turned and followed him to one side of the entryway. He turned to face them with a gentle smile.
Preston was mildly surprised the man chose to address them in a very precise Dutch-flavored English. “Victory is not in what we win, but in our willingness to continue the battle until we die. Please don’t stop what you are doing. You brighten the light this world needs to see.”
With tears in her eyes, Angie stepped forward and took the priest by the hand and kissed it, and then hugged him. Preston settled for a warm handshake. Somehow, it seemed proper to copy the way Hendrik and Gary had done, using both hands.
As they turned to leave, the priest added, “Don’t be strangers. Our angels are all friends, so we should be, as well.”
Indeed, there were angels everywhere, it seemed.
(This ends Part 3; Part 4 is next.)

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Mythical Military

Posted on May 9, 2013 by ehurst

As you may know, the heroic image is baloney.
I went through Army Basic Training twice. On top of that, I spent several years working in a whole division of drill sergeants. It was an Army Reserve unit. The entire division was devoted to the mission of setting up and running a Basic Training base should the nation mobilize for war honestly. I am very well acquainted with everything that goes into the very fundamental design of Army training specifically, and am acquainted with the training of the other branches.
Everyone knows it arises from our adoption of the Prussian military structure and culture.
So why is it the very best of the best are trained to differently? You can find plenty of published information, and it will be confirmed by people who have been through it. Even when they tell you stuff they shouldn’t, the basic story doesn’t change: Elite military training is totally different from the general run of military experience. If you attend an elite school for Special Forces, you are pretty much on your own, in the sense they don’t yell and scream. If you don’t want it, you go home. If your head isn’t on straight, you can’t take it.
That should be a magnificent hint as to what the military leadership thinks of the rest of the folks in uniform.
From the moment you first walk onto the assembly area of your basic training unit, it’s non-stop head games. The drill sergeants are carefully schooled in sadism and humiliation. They somehow imagine this will force some measure of conformity on the whiny brats what show up from God-knows-what social situation. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence recognizes this is not optimal. Yes, most people from the general run of the US population are totally useless for even the honest mission of the military, never mind the foul hateful stuff we actually have our troops doing in the world.
People who leave basic training already know that atmosphere does not reflect what they’ll face in any subsequent military assignment. So they pass through something they know instinctively is pointlessly brutal and dehumanizing and carry that spiteful cynicism with them. The only ones who don’t were decent to begin with, and didn’t need that sort of breaking down of dignity to become useful. Plenty of drill sergeants know it’s all wrong, but if they balk at being cruel and hateful, they get into trouble. A significant number of them didn’t want that assignment in the first place, but were pretty much drafted for it.
No, it’s not fun and not funny unless you are the scum of the earth.
Is it any surprise we have such a big problem with things like rape? I’m surprise how little there is of it, given the vast effort to turn people into abusive sons-of-bitches in the first place. Gleeful abuse is a fundamental necessity to what we have, in the sense that if you take it away, the whole thing would come apart. We’d have to start over from scratch. It’s made worse because genuine heroism in leadership is a ticket out the door, as the entire system prefers the most useless, gutless bean counters and soulless management types it can find. If you wear brass above the rank of captain in the US Army, it is highly probable I will despise you once I get to know you.
A significant number don’t stay for subsequent contracts with the military. That’s the good news. The bad news is our current evil adventures have demanded the command staff implement policies of not letting people go when the contract expires. So the worst are kept in and all sorts of insane measures are put into place to keep them under some semblance of control. It’s not working, as anyone can see.
For all that, I assure you I never felt I accomplished more than I did when wearing that fool’s uniform. That is, the people who did stick around, for whatever misguided reasons and under high manipulation, were responsive to the faith I have borne for many years. It called to them and they wanted all I could give them. It wasn’t the ego-stroking fact the took me seriously; I never took myself seriously. I wasn’t proud of my official accolades, especially when some of the foulest creatures got exactly the same rewards with exactly the same high-sounding words. Pretty bits of color I wore on my dress jacket meant precious little to me. What mattered was the trail of changed hearts I see behind me. Civilians haven’t been half as interested, but when I walked among the folks in uniform, they loved my faith and wanted their own share of it.
That is the part I miss, and I’d love to be among them again, because I already know they would be hungry for what I have.

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