Moral Disasters Bring Wrath

Posted on September 20, 2012 by ehurst

The greatest threat to the people of the US is our own CIA.
If you’ve read any of the books and collections of articles published since they first came into being, you know they have from day one broken the law and spied on us, gotten deeply involved in domestic affairs, and even helped assassinate political figures here at home. The least of our worries should be their lawless spying on us, and the rather large number of thefts from and murders of innocent Americans. The biggest threat they offer to us is psychopathic disregard of morality.
I’m sure you’ve heard and read a lot of crap about what a government is supposed to do for those it governs. Most of it is absolute baloney. Under God’s Laws, the single most important mission of any human government, of any type, anywhere in the world and any place in history, has always been to uphold morality as God defines it. Fail that, and nothing else they do is worth a damn, because failing that means that government is damned.
If you claim Christ, you cannot give moral support to an immoral government.
Nobody says spying on other nations is wrong. Nobody suggests catching lawbreakers here is such a bad idea. What’s wrong is how they go about such activities. If any part of their work includes violating God’s Laws, then they have become our enemies. That’s because no matter how effectively they keep out threats, real or imagined, when they violate the moral fabric of this fallen world, they open wide the floodgates to demonic presence and power. They give permission on a level we cannot fight. I’ll give you one example you cannot dismiss: the CIA tortures people they know to be innocent. That’s documented and available on the Net.
On this one issue alone have we as a nation merited the full burden of God’s wrath. It makes not a whit of difference whether we know about it, either. Stuff done in your name is stuff you’ve done, in moral terms. We could have and should have stopped them long ago, but we are perversely proud of them. That makes us full shareholders in their moral guilt before God.
Your moral duty before the Laws of God is to repudiate their deeds. There is virtually nothing you can do to set things right with your hands and words. God hasn’t put anything in our hands to change their actions directly. All we have left is the moral declaration these people are enemies of this nation because they have willfully transgressed God’s commands to human governments. You can repent of their evil, and should, because they won’t.
But every time you think winning on human terms matters, you transgress afresh. The proper moral vision sees all things in terms of morality, and measures all things by that standard. The only victory worthy of the name are moral victories. Everything else is a failure. Sure, go ahead and win if you are playing a board game or card game. Don’t cheat, just play hard within the rules. Be ruthless, because that’s how people learn why it’s wrong, when the consequences are purely imaginary.
In the real world, be ruthless against the Devil, because he will cheat every time. The only rules binding him are those of God, to Whom Satan is still merely a creature. It doesn’t require anger or any of those silly human emotions. It requires a clarity of moral vision, seeing and embracing the moral fabric of the universe. Be ruthless with yourself, because that’s where Satan works hardest against you, is in your flesh, even in your very intellect. Your mind is fallen, too, so don’t trust knowledge and reason. Trust your spirit speaking through your convictions, that part of you which speaks the language of imperatives far above logic. Don’t do what makes sense, but what you simply must do.
Satan loves the CIA, because that agency eats its own, and embodies everything God hates about America.

For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro in all the whole earth to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward Him. You have done foolishly in this; therefore from now on you shall have wars. (2 Chronicles 16:9)

Hear the word of the Lord: Because of the vast ocean of their sins, the people who govern this country shall utterly fail. Whatever competence they once had will flee them at the worst possible time, the whole system will dissolve in political infighting. The wars will not cease until there is no one left able and willing to fight.

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Biblical Pastoral Psychology

Posted on September 19, 2012 by ehurst

Today marks the return of posts under the heading of “eldercraft” — the study of serving as a church elder. I’m adding it as a broad category of posts. Because of the rather modern confusion of roles from the New Testament church era, we are stuck with the term “pastoral care” to describe what elders did for the original churches.
Let no one mistake this: I’d sacrifice a great deal to return to the field of pastoral care. So long as things keep running as they do in this world, that remains a highly unlikely prospect. I’m not willing to compromise my commitment to what I’ve learned, and religious organizations don’t see any reason to change their operations to accommodate me. So I’m left drawing on what experience I’ve had and pressing the case for a better way here on this insignificant blog.
We could learn a lot from guys like Dr. Thomas Szasz. The vast majority of difficulties people have adjusting to this world are moral failures, not some kind of illness in the mind. He would not use my terminology, but the biggest problem is not that demons are now gone from this world, but we understand them so poorly they run rampant. While their infestations are seldom comparable to what we see described in the biblical narrative, they are nonetheless the primary vector of what we see afflicting so many these days. A huge chunk of eldercraft is tied up in an accurate demonology.
Granted, we are forced to use parabolic language to describe spiritual realities, but this should never prevent our minds getting enough clue to formulate a plan of action. The brain was never supposed to rule, but to implement the commands of the Spirit-spirit communion in our souls. A proper working demonology starts with the realization they are spirit entities confined to our realm of existence. This confinement is a critical element in their punishment. There is a sense in which being forced to operate here means the Laws of God bind them; time and space constricts them quite uncomfortably. We can’t possibly grasp the whole picture, but we can at least realize our obedience to God’s Laws, our embrace of the moral fabric of this fallen world, will prevent most of what demons seek to do to us.
As always, the sterile absolutism of Western intellectual culture only makes this job more difficult. The task of a spiritual elder is to reduce the power and influence of demons in this world, to guard against demon intrusions into a situation already bad enough because of the Fall. This whole thing is a living, breathing experience, organic and dynamic, and it requires a flexible and active attention and daily effort. The essential mix of good and bad, ebb and flow, is our normal. The silly Western mythology about demons only aggravates things.
What we discover by our experience is the biggest part of our task is repentance. Getting ourselves to live in the Land of Repentance, and persuading everyone under our care to stay there with us, is one way to characterize the whole mission. It’s a vibrant, living landscape, and nothing is ever finished until we leave this realm of existence altogether. Repentance is a commitment to constant vigilance and pursuit of weak spots. The hedge of holiness requires constant maintenance, care and feeding. The modern field of psychology is simply the human science which traces clinical cause and effect; it offers no moral judgment. When it’s practitioners attempt to posit a scientific “norming” it will always fail, because science is hopelessly disabled in the task of discovering moral truth. That requires a moral and spiritual awareness of divine revelation from the One who designed the universe and keeps a constant living relationship with the moral fabric. Repentance is the commitment to discover and implement the imperatives of that moral fabric.
The task of elder is to develop a sensitivity to how this all works, to live through our own horrendous fights with demons, and thus have some sense of what it’s like for everyone under our care. While the Bible highlights the rather dramatic activity of driving demons out with grave verbal commands, frankly that will seldom happen for us. Most people who make so much of that dramatic activity don’t understand the bigger picture. The vast majority of demon-swatting is simply repenting, which drives them out by default. The vast majority of the time, people drive out their own demons, little by little, by reclaiming the territory of their souls and occupying that turf with a new purpose. When we bring our lives into conformance with the moral fabric of Creation, demons are weakened and forced out.
This world is not their natural abode. They really can’t do anything unless a human grants them permission. People have to agree and cooperate, or demons can’t get much their way in this world. We teach people to stop cooperating. In a very broad sense, that’s the mission of elders; that’s eldercraft.

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The Failure of Pastoral Care

Posted on September 18, 2012 by ehurst

In my rebuke against most churches, one thing seems increasingly common: an utter lack of genuine pastoral involvement in broken lives.
Let’s peel back the layers here. On the one hand, Scripture assumes a church stands to replace the lost legacy of tribal cohesion. There was a time when your neighbor was your close relative, someone acquainted with the details of your life simply because you wouldn’t dare be aloof to your blood kin. You couldn’t hide anything anyway. So they would be gently nosy when things weren’t going right. There was no formal rules for this, and it depended heavily on the loving shepherd care of the family elders. Your pain is my pain, so let’s at least talk about it. Maybe we can’t fix the problem, but you aren’t alone in this world.
Second, we live in a far different time and place, and in Christ we are seeking to reclaim what has been lost from those ancient tribal times. Not in all the details, but in the caring involvement, the closeness and openness we find sacred before the Lord. We rightly bristle at outsiders horning in on family business. It’s a sin for third parties to be curious; it reflects the fallen nature, the Lust of the Eyes. Good people mind their own business, and their business lies in their own kin. The fundamental flaw to all of Western history is no one has any business involving themselves in the details of your daily life if they aren’t related by blood or covenant. Any government which does not respect that is not valid, an abomination to God. Thus, as you can well discern, no Western government is valid in God’s eyes. But we are stuck with them, and we must strive against sin by holding forth holiness.
That holiness is pulling together into the spiritual bond of kinship which is actually the real thing behind the symbolism of ancient tribal life. Your Christian brothers and sisters are closer than your literal siblings. By whatever means one organizes a church body, it must include that deep personal involvement. That we are talking about people who start out as strangers means we hold this image up as our goal, the mark of holiness. We teach it as good and right and necessary to following Christ; we fight the common Western cultural bias for aloof friendliness. Aloof is good among strangers; it is evil inside the church.
But when the church is so deeply wedded to the Post-Modern Western Secularism of this day, you can’t do what Christ demands of His followers. When church is merely a gathering place for entertainment and happy emotions, folks who happen to share some smattering of ideas and religious practice, but nothing of the pastoral care atmosphere, it simply isn’t a church as the term was used by Jesus. If no one on the church staff is trained and equipped to deal with suicidal tendencies, sexual dysfunction in marriages, families under attack from the darkest demonic forces and people whose souls are broken under the strain of an evil world, then your church is badly damaged and a threat to the gospel message.
It’s one thing when people who come from this secular world, in all its sub-cultural variations, and don’t easily trust others. That’s just holy cynicism. But when the church staff does nothing to build that trust, and offers only a shallow and dismissive program, a one-size-fits-all franchise approach, they aren’t worthy of their roles. These days it does take a bit of training to overcome the secular worldly habits, but if the church organizes to become just another business franchise, that church is actually the enemy of Christ. It’s not a portal to redemption, though God in His grace may well work His redemption in spite of such failure.
The measure of success is not the number of people showing up, the size and depth of the budget, nor any of those things humans in this world use to define success. The measure of success is the redemption, however limited, of people’s broken lives because the power of God is coming, not in spite of your staff and organization, but built into the staff and organization. If no one on staff is ready to face the likes of incestuous rape in blended families, then that staff has no business leading anyone anywhere. That garbage happens in real life, and the hidden horrors of sin people wallow in is the real target, and healing such disasters is the real measure of success.
Granted, a truly determined love will work even when a good education and professional training is not available. In my experience, the vast majority of people can figure out what God requires of them once you scrape away the standard collection of lies this world tells. Too many churches build a curriculum of “holiness” which amounts to a select slice of what they already have. Simply offering the best of middle class cultural morality is not holiness. The church staff need an education which emphasizes the stark departure from such, into spiritual depth which relies on the hand of God. Miracles abound in that kind of work.
We don’t need personal reformation, but transformation.

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Clowning for the Camera, Part 2

Posted on September 18, 2012 by ehurst

Happy birthday to me!
To celebrate my birthday, I’ve decided to offer a quick comparison. Back in March, I decided to show off just a bit as a test of our new camera. Since that time, as part of my divine calling, I sensed God demanding I get serious about fitness. Aside from simply obeying God’s Laws, I still profess I have no idea why, only that I have the burning conviction it is critical for some future purpose. So I’ve been working on it. Given the camera angle and so forth, the results aren’t stunning, but perhaps you can detect the small changes.

I went from 230 pounds (104kg) on the left down to 215 pounds (98kg) on the right. It’s not a lot, but it certainly feels different at times (that’s 15 stone and 5 for Mark the Trigeek). As of the date of this post, I’m 56 years old, and my typical blood pressure is 116/69, resting pulse usually around 60 bpm.
Perhaps more important are the changes you cannot see. The changes in my diet have been pretty substantial. While I have added back a few carbohydrates, I’m still avoiding all wheat and any GMO grains. I no longer take any acid reducer medications for my stomach. Even my perspiration smells different. The stiffness and tiredness which plagued me for years is gone. I still have arthritic damage to my joints which keeps me from doing any more muscle building, and I’ll never be able to run again, but I can easily keep what I have and make it work better. I sleep better and more consistently, and my mind has a consistent clarity I could not entirely depend on previously.
Yeah, it’s worth doing. Without apology I declare this is due in part to my commitment to obey God’s Laws; this kind of health improvement is a promise of the Laws of God.

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Laws of God 101

Posted on September 17, 2012 by ehurst

This outline assumes you are living in a Western culture.

1. Acknowledge God as Creator. This is you and Him, not me or anyone else serving as gatekeeper. He will welcome you on terms you alone will understand.

2. Rise above Western cultural and intellectual limitations. You can start here if you are new to the question of epistemology. You can also look it up on the Net, but my explanation is less reading.

3. Commit yourself to personal obedience; embrace the mission. While I might offer some useful examples, the issue of mission is you serving God as if you were submitting personally to an Eastern Potentate. That’s how God depicts Himself. The Kingdom of Heaven is an Ancient Near Eastern feudal monarchy, in the sense it’s as close as you’ll get to understanding on a human level.

4. Commit yourself to learning the Laws of God. It’s a tall order and won’t be finished during this lifetime. I offer a rather lengthy starting point here (site is closed).

5. Realize the Laws cover a lot more than some mere religious expression or lifestyle. It’s all that and more. If you are actively serving God with a clear conscience, the goalposts will keep moving, and you’ll learn to love it. You’ll keep looking for ways to subject your behavior and choices to the mission, and rise above mundane human concerns. You’ll still have those mundane issues to deal with, but you’ll consider them from a different perspective.

6. Seek to perceive the moral fabric of the Universe. You’ll simply have to assume it’s there and try to measure all things against it.

Don’t rely on me as your guru. I’m just a mouthpiece, an emissary. Some of what works for me will not even fit in your world. Enjoy.

Tomorrow I’ll offer a single example of what promises and blessings come from obeying the Laws of God.

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Realistic Mission

Posted on September 16, 2012 by ehurst

If you imagine your divine calling requires having control over the activities and behavior of others, you are lying to yourself and listening to Satan.
I run Scientific Linux 6 on my computer, and I am an advocate for Open Source software in general. However, there is a moral horror which seems ineradicable among the fanboys of Open Source software: They are determined to reprogram users just as they do computers. This is the single greatest evil, and they are spitefully arrogant about this demand. If there is anything keeping the masses of computer users from adopting Open Source, this is it. If there is anything which makes Open Source commercially viable, it’s business people who understand and tame this awful beast. Scientific Linux is a clone of the very successful Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is as close as anyone comes to making something competitive with the monopoly OS, but is more for business use, and not consumer home use. Ubuntu used to come close to the consumer market, but has been hijacked by wild-eyed fanboys and their touch-input obsession, so there is really no consumer Linux that gets any kind of press except Android. If you run a simple workstation, you’ll have to learn quite a bit to duplicate what you already have with Windows.
That Microsoft is now doing utterly foolish things is another story. The point is there are billions of desktop systems still in use, and almost nobody is reaching out the owners, especially from the Open Source community. Real people, the masses, don’t take well to reprogramming; you have to meet them where they are.
But it’s just as bad with religion.
I’ve worked the mainstream church angle professionally. I’ve analyzed it professionally, and it’s broken. Very badly broken. As I’ve often noted, it’s completely out of touch with its roots in the First Century churches. Their claims of fidelity are manifestly false, but like the Open Source fanboys, blind to anything which doesn’t make them happy and excited. Fanboys don’t actually use computers the way ordinary computer owners do, and have no valid concept for their use patterns. So it is with virtually everyone really involved in religion. The serious fanboys and fangirls of religion aren’t getting people connected with God. There are a thousand reasons why this is so, but the one thing I point out here is that old issue of remaking believers from the outside. Lots of good talk about giving the Holy Spirit control, but only when He operates in narrowly defined parameters.
If you call my computer ministry number, I’ll do what I can to assess your needs within the limits of your wishes. I’ll try to help you grapple with what is actually possible and choose whatever options make you happy. I won’t tell you where to find your porn sites, but I’ll tell you how to avoid having your system hijacked when you visit the ones you find. What you end up doing with your system is your business. I don’t pretend to know what an average computer user does or ought to be doing; just tell me what you want to do and we’ll work on it. When enough people tell me what they want to do, I get a feel for general needs and can prepare those things in advance. At the same time, I am sure I don’t know it all, but I have a good idea how to research the things you ask when I don’t already know.
If you call me for religious guidance, you’ll get the same deal. I know what most people need, but I won’t pretend to tell you what you need. I’ll tell you what I know about and you can work out your own salvation. If you want to work with me on a regular basis, I’ll tell you what I can and cannot do. Overlap as much as makes you feel comfortable with God, and the rest is really between you and Him. This is how I stay out of court, out of jail for most of the things we read about crazy pastors in the news, and how I avoid a lot of other embarrassing heartaches. I don’t have satellites to launch so you don’t need to watch your purse. I’ll never be famous, thank God. I have no intention of remaking you to suit my tastes, or cloning myself in you. For all of this, I have a burning sense of divine approval.
What I will be is faithful to the calling, and realistic about what you and I can share.

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Passages 3

Posted on September 15, 2012 by ehurst

The unknown New Testament author of the Letter to the Hebrew Christians defines faith as the inexplicable certainty of things no one can detect with their senses, things which will only ever be fully understood in the Spirit Realm. It’s a certainty far more established than any mathematical fact your mind could discover on this plane.
I still get massive hits on stuff I wrote long ago which didn’t seem too important to me. Stuff I write which really hits me hard, which seems absolutely critical to me, it seems few people ever see. Reactions are few and far between. I don’t expect to understand and I long ago lost any interest in my feelings about such things. I’m ever more certain I’m on the right path for me.
You aren’t supposed to agree with me. The best outcome possible is you’ll be shocked, or at least jolted just enough to consider things. Extract, extrapolate, abstract what I say is happening in my soul and see where it might speak to your context.
Right now, this is all I have — the computers, the Internet, the writing. The computer ministry is merely a tiny thread. We don’t really expect folks to attend our home worship, at least not just yet. Once the crash starts becoming more apparent, once the affects of QE3, the Chinese trading petroleum in their own currency instead of the US dollar, the likelihood we’ll lose vast quantities of men and equipment if we even twitch on the trigger of the guns pointing at Iran — once it all starts to come apart in painfully obvious ways, I suppose a lot of things will change.
I won’t tell you I’m ready for it. I’ll tell I don’t care whether I’m ready, because my faith screams in my soul’s ears I’m on the right path, to keep going. I’m not looking for success any human can measure, because all I need is the sense of conviction I’m serving well.
Chase your own convictions, because pretty soon, you may not have anything else.

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Nahum 3

Posted on September 15, 2012 by ehurst

It would be the same as any modern prophet shaking his finger at some dominant superpower, warning their doom was close. It all seems too far beyond the pale, to unlikely. Could there be a god capable of destroying such monumental power? So Nahum rubs it in, conjuring the most shocking images of destruction.
Predation was their god, and the world knew the Ninevites could not be trusted to keep any promises or treaties. God hates broken treaties. When the Ninevites got bored, which came pretty easily, they would start a new war with their closest allies just to have an enemy to attack. They were bursting with plunder, but this made them a target.
Were you a mere bystander watching, perhaps the great tumult of chariots and warriors, both inside and outside the city, would be high entertainment. But only a Ninevite could truly appreciate the unspeakable slaughter which was waiting them. In classical Hebrew poetry, Nahum describes a scene of stumbling over dead bodies, the stench and disease so hard to escape because the destruction was beyond description.
The prophet compares the city to a prostitute, but this one always inflicted crippling wounds to all her lovers, forcing them into lifelong dependence on her. It required the most obscene sorcery, calling up the powers of Hell to blind men so. To a Hebrew reader, it’s hard to imagine more evil rolled into a single image. What we also find hard to understand is the huge difference between the nudity of intimate privacy versus the hideous exposure of public nakedness. The Lord promised to expose Nineveh, humiliating her in the light of the sun, exposing her as an old hag with the makeup caked on and her gaunt shape exposed from under those colorful enticing sheer skirts with hidden padding. No one dares to weep for such a sight.
The ancient Theban capital of Egypt was so very secure, but Nineveh had no trouble crossing the open water to bring her down. Did she then think herself any more secure than Thebes? All the horrors wrought on Thebes would be worse, if possible, for Nineveh. Tough, predatory and violent? Wait until she was taken down by those she thought she ruled, Babylon and Persia. Her own defenders, so numerous as locusts swarms, would be like old locusts devoured by yet another fresh generation of an even larger swarm. What you are, you will beget as worse yet.
So the Lord would scatter these warrior peoples, drive them back into their ancient mountain villages to the north of the plains, never again to assemble as a single nation to conquer. No one would remember proudly any association with them, but would cheer, and laugh over her demise. No one will miss her, will reminisce fondly over her greatness. It’s time to party hearty, because Assyria is broken!

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Burdens of the Soul

Posted on September 14, 2012 by ehurst

I can’t sleep. I’m up late because something has been awakened in my soul, burning like fire.
My resume makes it clear I served in the US Army as a Military Policeman. It also makes clear I was stationed in a pretty sensitive post. It’s no secret that was related to AFCENT HQ and SHAPE HQ, and I spent a lot of time on both installations. It was my job to know where all the bunkers and nukes were in a certain area, and what types. These were small, tight-knit communities, where I was off-duty pals with lots of people at all ranks assigned to all sorts of high security secret jobs. We had fellowship in chapel, on religious retreats, went to leadership academies together, hiked and biked across the countryside, etc. You would have to assume I had some kind of clearance just being on those installations, never mind hanging out with these people.
You would have to assume, as a very religious Christian man who volunteered a lot in chapel operations and similar types of activities that I would end up playing confessor to these people. Now we were all pretty conscientious about guarding military secrets, so when we talked, I would often stop them if it sounded like something I really didn’t want to know. In that business, what you don’t know can’t hurt you nearly so much as what you do know. And these guys were trained to get tension out of their system without breaking their oaths. So instead of telling me facts, they expressed huge mountains of cynicism and bitterness at the nasty business they saw and were required to handle and protect.
No power on this earth could keep these men and women from opening up their wounds, even if I had no idea what caused them. In fact, it was assumed they would, and I was debriefed often enough to know what was considered routine and normal among these people. After awhile, with just a modicum of intellect and a decent education, you could extrapolate the flavor and frame of reference for this burden they carried around. Thus, when you read up on conspiracy theories, you already knew what constituted a proper smell test. You could develop a strong, reliable feel for what’s silly nonsense from someone with no clue, and what’s leaked privileged information. Maybe I’m not any smarter than you on such things, but I know what I know.
Once again: What you read in the news reporting government activities is always a lie. Either critical information is missing, something which would change the whole story — or — they are running out a meaningless report to distract from something really important. Sometimes, the facts are presented, but with a flavor or fashion guaranteed to make you miss the point. And any time some official bothers to deny something, you should believe the opposite. Parse it carefully.
With all the crap about rowdy Muslims blaring out across the news sources the past few days, how many people noticed the Fed has promised to dump millions of dollars into the banks? QE3 is real news, people. Something like $40 billion per month, swapping good assets for junk, and keeping the interest rates near zero, and there is no limits set. Of course, the money is all going to banking institutions. We are all supposed to borrow it, you see? And then go and buy stuff we can’t afford because our income will not rise with the prices. And prices for food and fuel will soar. That’s pretty important news. That’s just an example of how it works.
If you really want to understand the riots, just read Land Destroyer. All that stuff is going pretty much as planned, and Ambassador Stevens was a sacrificial lamb, because someone told the attackers where to find him, and made sure his guards wouldn’t defend him. Then the perpetrators were whisked out of the country. It doesn’t matter what the actors knew about it, they were sponsored by the CIA and Mossad. You don’t need someone like me to tell you that. It was just noise, and isn’t really worth that much attention.
Don’t buy the fear. It costs too much and won’t do you any good. Keep your eyes open and read with a very cynical mind. Stay away from fear mongers whichever side they claim to represent, because they are paid to stir you up to a blind frenzy instead of spending time taking stock of your life and making up your mind what really matters.

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Denominations and Two Realms

Posted on September 14, 2012 by ehurst

The primary reason for the proliferation of sectarian Christian denominations in the West, and in America in particular, is the failure to embrace Two Realms.
A primary element in biblical mysticism is the recognition of the distinction between this fallen realm and the Spirit Realm. The primary failure of Western thought is embracing Aristotle’s unitary universe. Even when we can get Christian theologians to embrace the idea there is a Heaven and Hell which isn’t part of this world, they still have this intellectual instinct to see all things as unitary. Thus, when Scripture separates between the Two Realms, these theologians instinctively mix things up.
The Laws of God apply to this realm. They were meant to indicate something of God’s ways and character, in the sense they were meant to tie us to Him personally. They were never meant to stand as some finished work, never altering throughout the ages, in that they could not possibly ever be applied evenly to all contexts. Moses recognized this by insuring there would always be priests who could get a word from God about peculiar situations, and with judges who were tasked with understanding the underlying purpose of the Law. The narrative of ancient Israeli history is loaded with reminders why using those priests and judges made a difference. The whole point was, nothing man could understand, such as the revealed Laws of God, could possibly cover all situations. It’s why prophetic commands from God could appear to contradict the Laws.
Thus, it’s not violating the Laws of God when you realize the personal emphasis of God requires you appear to disobey one commandment to fulfill another. It’s why people can walk in the Spirit and do something which appears to break one or more commandments. The Spirit has one major emphasis in this world: His Presence seeks to manifest the glory of God. Since the Cross, that specifically aims at glorifying Jesus Christ. There are times when obeying the Laws fastidiously will not accomplish His glory. So people who suffer under a Western mindset will see a problem, but the mind of the Ancient Hebrews is untroubled. It doesn’t have to be all neat and tidy, and we don’t have to nail down all the implications in our feeble and broken intellects.
In our Western minds this is not logical enough, so we realize we have to discard some portion of logic. The problem is, we are using the wrong logic. The logic of God’s revelation is distinctly not Aristotelian. It includes the direct analytical logic form as a lower default setting, something from which we don’t expect much. The symbolic logic of divine revelation is utterly foreign to Western minds, yet was the standard approach used in Hebrew culture. Yes, you can learn Hebrew mystical logic, and there is a considerable amount of literature explaining it. But Western Christians reject the whole thing, for the most part. So we end up with a broken application of Aristotle and some poorly informed attempts to use Aristotelian deduction on a revelation poorly understood. Western people do not understand the Bible, and refuse to understand they don’t understand, because Aristotle teaches them arrogance of intellect.
If your underlying logic rejects the Spirit Realm, your underlying anthropology must reject the possibility of a human spirit which is not bound by this universe. All discussions of eternal souls is wholly flavored by an assumption which excludes the truth. The truth forces us to realize there is nothing we can do to cross the barrier on our own, and this is anathema to the Western mind. Human helplessness is simply discarded before it comes into consideration. It’s very intellectually confusing because everyone insists their theology must make sense, must be reasonable and logical on Aristotelian terms, and Scripture would deny that necessity. Aristotle couldn’t handle the truth, and his logical constraints can’t even allow for revelation from outside the human sphere.
So we have this damned heresy of Decision Theology, that spiritual birth requires a human choice, when the Bible bluntly says no such choice is possible for a human. You are forced to deny something fundamental to Scripture, or build a highly rational and lifeless reasoning which can’t be applied in life. Thus, the interminable debate between Calvinists and Arminians when both are wrong for building on false intellectual assumptions. On top of this, we have one of the most damnable lies of all, that of the Great Man Fallacy. Western mythology (Post-Enlightenment) demands there always be a hero, a great man who cannot be contradicted much. It demands this Great Man achieve greatness on a very mundane human level, when Scripture bluntly points out human greatness is the greatest failure, and human failure is where God works His mightiest miracles. We simply cannot have a God doing things His way.
That’s why we have so many ugly controversies and schisms, and why we have serious contradictory claims made by all these really different Christian denominations. And all of them taking themselves so seriously! Everybody simply assumes their version is God’s version, because God can’t allow conflicting ideas; that would be unreasonable. They keep dragging God down into this realm.
I need to purchase a brown t-shirt and stencil on it: “Generic Christian in a plain brown wrapper”.

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