Sanity Subversive 7: Tell

Posted on October 9, 2010 by ehurst

A couple of weeks later, this letter appeared in the school news paper.

The cause of human conflict is not some deep mystery. We all probably realize it is nothing more than insecurity. What seems mysterious is how we resolve the multiple insecurities we all carry with us from birth.

Changing the human circumstance won’t help much because no two of us will be satisfied with the same thing. No amount of conditioning can quash our individuality. So the mere fact we are all different becomes the excuse for violence, for wars, for needless death. But the problem is not our differences, but our sensitivity to them. When we feel secure, those differences are actually pleasant.

A sense of security is not absolute. It only has to be enough for the moment in which we live. The Peace Club is not deluded about how easy it is to pull people up out of their pitiful small existence into a sense of security and peace. All of us are still struggling ourselves. Yet for all this, we live for peace, and we would rather die than turn away from our cause.

This is the Peace Club Manifesto.

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Sanity Subversive 6: When

Posted on October 8, 2010 by ehurst

Two questions from opposite sides came almost at once.

“How do we keep this going when the newness wears off?” And, “How far can we branch out? The city? The state?”

He smiled. “Excellent questions, both of them! They have the same answer.”

Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, he looked at them from a lower angle. “You need to branch out, broaden the range of activities. You gained more from this past week than the entire school together. Branching out requires a deeper understand of the philosophy behind making peace.”

As he straightened up, for once he almost wished there was a chalk board. “This is not about persuasion by logic and reason. We are aware of them and use them, but they are mere accessories. Recall I said at the beginning this is about awakening Peace in people who already have it. That we cannot really know whether that happens for anyone but ourselves is not the point. We don’t have to know they get it, only that we have been true to it ourselves. That is precisely the one thing which will work, if anything is going to work at all.”

He pointed to his head with the index fingers of both hands. “The head is not where all this happens. It’s somewhere else. Not emotions either, but something much higher and deeper at the same time. It’s somewhere beyond the five senses and our reasoning capacities. Your brain does all it can to hang on and organize the response; it cannot realistically evaluate the whys. If you get this, no one has to explain it, only help you do it.”

Dropping his hands, he rose to his feet. “But we have to meet the brain half way, or it won’t let us do much of anything that matters. Peace has a thousand identities, but it always calls to us just the same. It’s the ultimate truth, if you will. Making peace means coming to terms with reality, a reality too big for words and mere rational thought. Peace is the face and name we give to this core of being; it’s the excuse we have for a club which answers all the needs of humanity. What Peace cannot do cannot be done.”

As usual, he circled the group slowly. By now they had rearranged the junk desks to facilitate their usual meetings, so he didn’t have to dodge around anything. “When Peace owns you, it becomes your focus, not your self. Peace calls you out of your little world. People who are easily bored are boring themselves, because they are so empty. People who are full of only themselves have nothing when they are alone. People of Peace are never bored, because they don’t have much room for themselves inside, at least not in that sense. You don’t just live with Peace, in a sense you are Peace. When you pursue it full bore that way, you discover just about everything your little self actually needs is already met.”

The one quiet boy finally spoke. “It clarifies your priorities.”

He spun and pointed at the boy. “Absolutely! When you have something bigger than yourself, something worth living and dying for, all the silly and inconsequential things of this world fade to obscurity.” He held his palms together, and tipped his hands back to touch his lower lip. “No, you don’t get there today or tomorrow, or ever. I don’t claim to have arrived because it’s not a goal. It’s an ongoing mission.”

He held up one finger. “That’s our starting point. Peace is our ultimate truth, the name we give whatever it is on our plane of existence which matters most.” Holding up a second finger, “It leads us to a capacity to care. We know what it means and we do it reflexively. We want this same wonderful Peace for others, because a shared peace is a much bigger peace and more powerful peace.”

Then a third finger. “We can afford to lose. Indeed, we must lose all sorts of things. We start with losing ourselves, in a manner of speaking. We will fail a thousand times in a thousand ways, because we can never quite overcome our own limitations, but we don’t turn back. Start now building up permission for yourself to screw up; get it out of the way. Then you won’t be expecting much from anyone else. We give people room to do everything wrong, and we don’t get involved until they invite us, or Peace compels us to act. Most of our actions aren’t poking into the lives of others, but holding up Peace as a beacon in the dark. We don’t pretend to know who or how others are affected, or not affected. We do what we do because Peace demands it.”

The girl with the perfect hair was weeping, and had to blow her nose. When everyone looked at her, she managed to blubber out, “I’m sorry. I’ve never had anyone give me permission to mess up. I just realized I don’t know how to give myself permission to fail … at anything.” There was more snuffing and wiping of eyes.

He stood holding his hand under one elbow, the other cupped his chin between thumb and index finger. “We have all the time in the world for you to cry. Peace was here before us, and will be here when we are all gone. We need you, and we need you at peace, so don’t be embarrassed. What you express so obviously is what we all feel now and then, regardless how we show it.”

Some of the students gathered around her, patting and hugging, offering words of encouragement. After a few minutes, he offered, “This is how we make peace in the small. Take that out into the large. You can’t touch the whole world, but you can surely bring the new dawn of Peace to your own world.” He help up his enigmatic hand sign again. “Make Peace.”

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Sanity Subversive 5: How

Posted on October 7, 2010 by ehurst

Over the intervening week he got several email reports from the sponsoring teacher.

On the first morning after the last meeting, the students and staff were greeted by numerous brightly colored messages drawn in sidewalk chalk on the front steps, a couple of concrete walls and other fixtures. A few were simply, “Got Peace?” Some were more graphic, vaguely psychedelic, and one quite extensive in size and complexity. Each bore at least one of either the old peace sign, a dove, or olive branch, but always some variation on the sunrise emblazoned with “Peace Day Dawning”.

On another day, quite a few students showed up decorated with variously colored t-shirts with large peace signs and doves. On one sleeve everyone had the sunrise symbol again. The staff one morning found fresh cut flowers, one in each of their mailboxes in the lounge, with a simple card saying, “Peace!”

There were other creative expressions, but one in particular stood out. During a lunch period, a mixed quartet stood near an entrance with a boom box, and began singing very soulfully the old Chi-Lites tune, “Have You Seen Her?” However, the lyrics had been changed to make it clear the lady being sought was Peace. Half-way into the first verse, a girl slipped out of the ladies room nearby. She was dressed in a colorful psychedelic full body suit with numerous peace signs, over which she wore a diaphanous dress with long flowing sleeves. Atop her pixie-cut hair she wore a headband with doves mounted atop long springs, waving constantly with her movements. She darted around, touching the various singers who pretended they were trying to catch a glimpse of her. She kept this up, until the last verse, when she danced around in front of them, teasing as they reached for her, spinning away.

So it was no surprise when it became somewhat fashionable among the students to wear variations on some of the peace symbols, with a bit of the hippie-era revival of peace, love and flowers, and flashing the two-fingered salute.

At their next meeting, their greeting of him was a bit more enthusiastic. They had been quite busy and the response was fairly strong. He grinned broadly and allowed them to tell him about some of it. The group was well over twenty this time.

“So, you’ve at least created a certain flush of awareness. By no means could I criticize any of it. Excellent, all of it.” He sat down in the middle at his usual place. “You know, of course, most of this will die down.”

They agreed, and no one seemed to dampen much.

“Good. You understand this is just the first salvo. They know you are here, and what you are all about. I like your logo of the dawn. Keep that; use it in more places. It’s the branding for your message, which cannot be confined to just this one institution. We know everyone in the world deserves a chance to have Peace awakened in them, but we can reach only so far. As others are awakened, we want this to be inclusive, not just a thing you have here at this school. Indeed, this is something for the entire human race, and the symbol of dawn is fairly universal across cultures and languages.”

He stood. “Keep it harmless. Be obtrusive, but measure skillfully — artfully — how far you should push in each context. Peace has a thousand names, and does far more than just de-escalate tensions. Peace means doing the right thing all the time, everywhere. Another name is Love, or Compassion, or Charity, but always the aim is to awaken Peace in others.”

“Sounds like a religion,” one fellow said, laughing. He didn’t laugh alone.

He turned to face the lad. “As you know, the system is militant about dampening any religious expression on the taxpayer dime, so I’m not going to give you openly religious talk. Ask me about it privately; your sponsor will give you my email address. But you can figure out for yourself what it should mean for you in those terms.” He turned to face the rest of the students, slowly rotating to engage them all with his eyes. “There is nothing I can do to avoid making this sound like some sort of religion. It is most certainly all encompassing like one, making claims on your entire existence.”

He sat back down in his seat. “I know of few religions which don’t value peace on some level. In the long run, I strongly expect if you carry this even half so far as I am encouraging, you’ll get into trouble with every source of authority in your life — government, church, family — everyone will be at least inconvenienced by your choice to be a full time peace maker. Some will be openly hostile. You’ll have to find your own balance, your own level of commitment.”

A girl asked, “So if we want to make of this nothing more than another silly activity with friends, we can?” Her tone implied she had no such attention.

“It’s only what you make of it. If you want me involved, we’ll keep talking and doing the same way it’s gone so far. Otherwise we can contact one of the major peace institutes and get you a more traditional leader. There are hundreds of overpaid time wasters like that out there. But I warn you again: It won’t be Peace you are promoting, regardless of what you call it. If you really want peace, I believe I have some and I’m willing to share how I got it. You can’t have mine, but you can surely have your own. The last thing you should want is anyone else’s control, at least as you know of it in this world.”

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Sanity Subversive 4: Who

Posted on October 6, 2010 by ehurst

When he entered the room at their next meeting, they all echoed his parting salute from the previous week.

He responded, “A symbolic gesture which matches perfectly. Each of you affected your own version of the hand sign, and you were not in unison. Unity without uniformity.”

The group was smaller. Over half of the students from last week did not return, but two new ones came. There was a cluster of five, a trio, and three loners. Eleven was better than he expected.

One asked, “So what should we call you?”

He chuckled. “Whatever suits you. Our sponsor” — waving his hand at the teacher — “will handle the administriva, taking names, counting noses and offering some report of what took place. That is simply so we can continue in this setting.”
The last words came as he looked askance around the room, and earned a few chuckles.

He went back to his previous seat from last week and sat down. “Peace is the only person who matters here.” He paused while they digested that for a moment. “It won’t matter whether you think of Peace as he, she, it, because it is far above all that. But Peace is surely a personal entity, a spirit if you will, who lives in some people in this crazy world. In any given context, people of Peace can come together and make peace.”

He gazed down at the floor. “It would be wonderful if we could do something concrete which changed the situation in which we lived. People have been working at it for centuries, but we still have violence and wars, and the more it seems we study and know about peace, the worse it all gets. It’s futile.”

He suddenly stood up. “It’s futile if you plan to fix politics the way the Peace Movement has been at it so far. They keep getting suckered into the same game, trying to take over the turf of the war makers. They make peace something objective, sucking the life out of it. Whether it is actually possible to change politics, to stop wars and violence, we can’t know, because no one has actually tried it the right way. As long as we follow the path of so-called ‘Peace Studies’ we’ll never get there. We will always be under the control of the war makers.”

He began the slow circuitous walk again, but in the opposite direction this time. “The only leaders you can dare to trust are those who refuse to lead in any sense typically recognized. The very existence of political power is itself a moral disqualification of those who hold such power. The true moral leaders are so rare we might as well presume they don’t exist in our expectations, only in retrospect.”

One of the loners said, “What about Ghandi?”

“Ghandi had that rare and exceptional talent, but made some mistakes. He used the power of peace making to achieve what was, in the end, a political goal. His work ended British rule, but by making that a goal, he lost the opportunity for something much bigger. We have yet to see in human history the result of going after that bigger opportunity.”

He picked up a metal rod broken off one of the desks. Holding it in one hand, he laid it back to rest on his shoulder and began walking again. “If we expect to march around concentrations of power to get out the message of Peace, we can do no better than Ghandi. Once he was dead, his movement was hijacked by others whose hopes were not peaceful. Today India murders her own people because they won’t conform to the will of the government leaders, not unlike the British they once threw off. Changing political leadership accomplishes nothing, because leaders will always lead you where they want to you to go for their own personal needs, not yours and certainly not peace.”

He tossed the rod across the room where it bounced noisily off a stack of desk parts. “It doesn’t matter what you call me, but I refuse to lead. When people of Peace gather at any moment, in any context, their devotion to peace will determine what is the best way to make peace, to show the power of Peace, so those others there who have the seeds of Peace inside can fumble around for that awareness. Whatever we hope Peace might do for our world won’t happen until we become peace makers full time.”

He returned to his seat, and collapsed into it. “I can’t tell you what peace making means in such a way as to fit all occasions. What I can tell you is what it is not so you can eliminate barriers inside yourselves. Once you do that, you are in position to do the one thing which has never been done to any extent so far as I know: Make more people aware of Peace. I am in no position to judge whether every one in the world has the seeds of peace, but we will never find out if we don’t work for that intermediate purpose. Without making peace with others and in others, we simply cannot hope to change the way the Peace Movement has gone so far.”

“What happens when you walk out that door? Can you devote yourself to Peace and start seeing everything as an opportunity to rise above the same old crap? Can you shrug off distractions, genuinely let people do whatever it is they will do, while you do what Peace makes you do? Your sponsor here will do what’s required of her administratively. If you start to do something the bureaucracy won’t permit, she’ll tell you not to do it. Not because she necessarily believes it’s wrong, but because that’s how she maintains her position and official support for this club. Beyond that, it’s just a matter of tactics and strategy, and in the end you alone can decide what you will do.”

He stood up and moved outside the vaguely circular formation of students. “You each have your own talents. When Peace cries to be let out, you’ll each find your own way to express it — fine arts, drama, mundane labor — it won’t matter what it is, only that it is. Until we unwrap our own individual issues with this insane world, we can’t help anyone escape the madness which makes violence and war so inviting. I’m just offering my own understanding, but everything really is on you. Take charge, but don’t fall into the trap of leader and follower. Simply negotiate and agree to act together in whatever way you find comfortable.”

He stepped away from the group and conferred silently with the teacher. Slowly at first, with almost nervous chatter from a few, they began hashing over what they had heard.

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Sanity Subversive 3: Why

Posted on October 5, 2010 by ehurst

“So, we just come and do what we like?” The girl’s tone sounded like an honest question.

He smiled, “Exactly.” He rose and put his foot on the seat, leaned his crossed arms on the raised knee and faced the girl. “Throughout human history, all the trouble and wars have been caused by leaders. The path to making peace is doing all we can to weaken every leader over us, and every leader around us, and every leader with so much as the potential to touch our lives. We must dedicate ourselves to acting leaderless.”

“Dude, we in a government school, in a state which does everything possible to prevent alternative education schemes.” One young man was catching on.

He straightened up and began slowly threading his way among the broken desks in a wide circle around the group of students. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking there is some well defined goal in all of this. Making peace in the world is not an objective, but a commitment regardless of consequences.”

The smallest boy in the group said, “So if we don’t need leaders, why do we need to you to explain it?”

He chuckled, “I’m glad so many of you are actually awake.” He took a few more slow steps in his circuitous route. “I’m not leading you. The only way you can be a peacemaker is if it lives in you already. All I do is share my own perception of things from a much longer base of experience. I am surely wrong on some things, but it’s the best I know.”

He stopped at a vantage point where he could see all their faces at once. “If making peace lives in you, my words will only awaken it. If what I say grabs hold of you, not in the desire to be my disciples, as it were, but calling you to your own fire, your own plans, then I succeed. I am making peace.”

He gestured with his hands inclusively of the crowd. “If to any of you I sound like a rambling fool, then you aren’t actually a member of the club, regardless of what the forms in the office say. You are certainly free to hang around, play along, or even make trouble if you wish, but you won’t actually be a part of what happens in the long run.”

He glanced meaningfully at the teacher. “Depending on whether your actions afflict this lady’s conscience, you may get into some sort of trouble for some things you might do. You’ll have to negotiate with her, but not with me. If this doesn’t interest you, nothing I can say or do will make it work. But if by now some spark has been lit in your minds, this meeting will be its own reward. You’ll come back next week ready to discuss your own ideas, and I’ll gradually fade farther and farther into the background. You will each lead yourselves in making peace.”

He held up his left hand, palm out. The thumb was extended directly horizontal, the first two fingers were almost straight, and not quite together. The other two fingers were limply curved. The gesture itself was almost indistinct. “Make peace.” Then he abruptly turned and left the room.

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Sanity Subversive 2: What

Posted on October 4, 2010 by ehurst

They sat in clumps of three or four in various postures on the mixed furniture. There was no obvious focus of attention, which pleased him immensely. The chatter tapered off quickly as he and the teacher entered to room. A few uncovered fluorescent lights glowed fitfully. He felt it was a perfect metaphor of the students waiting for them there.

The teacher made a perfunctory introduction as he moved to the approximate center of mass of the twenty or so students. The remnants of a desk offered him a relatively stable seat, as most of the kids offered some sort of greeting.

He smiled around at them, ignoring the few who persisted in whispered conversation. “What are we here for?”

One or two answered without hesitation, “This is the Peace Club.”

“Good,” he responded. “At least you know what is supposed to be going on here, so you’ll know if you are in the right place.” He grinned.

Turning to the student nearest him, a rather sturdy young man, he asked, “Tell me what you think we will be doing here. What is this Peace Club all about?”

And so it went, with a similar challenge presented to everyone. He pressed no one to actually answer, but most did say a few words, with the answers getting better organized as more spoke up. A few terse answers were better thought out than the others, but it was too soon to tag any stars. The sum total of their answers were mostly anti-war, anti-violence, progressive peace-nik stuff.

“We will do all of those things, and none of them.” He noted with satisfaction no one was apparently shaken by his words. “The worst thing we could do is organize and set an agenda. That would be so artificial we would be nothing more than one more cog in the machine. We would become the planned and provided opposition in a battle to make sure no one ever has any real peace.”

A few raised eyebrows, but this was still not so different than any politician had said.

“If you were hoping for rallies, demonstrations, marching, signs and banners, or more assertive actions, don’t look to me to guide you. Some of you will surely do those things, and I’ll be glad to teach you the savvy to make it effective, but that’s not our primary objective. Yes, we may even see some members of this group in detention, or perhaps arrested, as some of you could engage in acts of sabotage.”

He sat back, scanning the group again. “But that’s not the point of our meetings. I’m not a coach with a game plan, and inspiring speeches to get you all psyched for challenges. This won’t be the locker room, nor even a practice hall. We are not an extension of the Green movement, the Communists or Socialists, and certainly not capitalists. Not a single political party on this earth will have any to do with us.”

He stood, mocking some great and dynamic speakers. With excessive drama, he gestured and spoke with an affected voice. “Yes, boys and girls, we give birth today in this room to the movement which will change the world!”

To scattered chuckles and giggles he sat back down. With all seriousness, “I’m not here to be your leader.”

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Sanity Subversive 1: Where

Posted on October 3, 2010 by ehurst

It was ugly.

There was surely some time in the past, before this ancient facade was constructed, someone thought it was attractive, or perhaps simply appropriate for the purpose. But it was ugly — cast arches and framing in concrete, and burnt red bricks dominating. All of it was crumbling.

This was the older part of the high school campus. The predictable nature of bureaucratic inertial action kept the historic building in use, with a generous maintenance budget, most of which was consumed in more bureaucracy. Thus the bureaucracy pronounced it well maintained simply because it was so on paper. He stood for a moment envisioning brightly colored murals and abstract designs, but realized the structure would probably not offer much of a permanent painting surface.

With a rueful sigh, he climbed the worn stone steps. Pulling on what was surely the eighth set of doors, none of which ever properly fit, the ponderous and incongruous nondescript blank faced steel door, he stepped into the entry hall.

The whole thing was the symbol of political favor and disfavor. The fancy, new and equally ugly facility which had been built on the confiscated warehouse site next door was reserved for the most politically popular activities, those deemed so important the teachers’ fears of stuff happening to the expensive new equipment and supplies in their classrooms was set aside. In this building were the teachers and classes required by some other bureaucracy, but somehow not participating in the current trends of the school bureaucrats. One bureaucracy thumbing its nose at another. Thus, unfavored extracurricular activities were also relegated to this mausoleum.

As it was, his group met in the basement room used for storing the ancient and unused desks, most of which were broken in some way. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he turned into a darkened hallway to be greeted by the sound of light stepping in sensible shoes. In a random splash of light he met the faculty sponsor for his meeting. This was the first time they met in the flesh, having only chatted online in a forum until now.

It was her first year teaching. She was not particularly young, so she had her own ideas about things. Nor was she particularly pretty or interesting in any of the ways which breed popularity with the management. With a half-smile, he greeted her, all the while wondering how long she would last. He had been a public school teacher himself once, and knew all too well how the system either broke you down by making you adopt a measure of its bureaucratic conformance, or made you so miserable you had to leave teaching, or at least that particular school system.

Her smile and response was all he needed to realize she would last longer than most. She turned to walk with him down to the end of the hall to the assigned room, and chatted about her positive hopes, as if this were the best of all possible worlds for such a thing. From the direction of their destination even now were the scattered sounds of student chatter and laughter.

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Peace Radical for a Radical Peace

Posted on October 2, 2010 by ehurst

Without offering room for debate, I make the naked assertion peace is not an ideal. You cannot arrive at peace through mere study and logic. You cannot make peace some disembodied ideal you pursue through Peace Studies or such. You can promote peace only by being peaceful yourself. Peace is by nature a living entity, and it must live in you, or you cannot comprehend any part of it.

Sure, we see the symptoms of peace as deescalation of tensions. That’s if we understand tensions are natural to the human condition. We all want something we don’t yet have, and we cannot help perceive someone is getting in the way. Regardless how we handle it, tension is a fact of life. The problem, then, is not the tension, but how it is handled.

Or so it seems. I agree with Dr. Kolkey in one aspect of his thesis: Every war in history appears to be the result of nothing more than the personal ambitions of one or another ruler. It has never, ever been in the national interest, or any approximation of that, but always the personal desires of some big shot who is all too willing to lie about his motives. Perhaps he lies even to himself, but every war has been nothing more than a personal gripe of some ruler or group of rulers.

And I agree with what lies behind the answer Dr. Kolkey offers. While he asserts we must make sure every leader lives in fear of his subjects, I would say that is just another way of describing decentralization of power. Leaders who have all the power fear nothing. Leaders in a world where such concentration of power is not possible won’t make war with the lives of those they lead. They can’t.

But the mechanics of implementation are the real question here. How do you and I go about changing how folks live so that power remains decentralized? Obviously, it requires raising a consciousness. So far, various peace movements have never gotten too far. That is in part because the peace movements themselves were too often centralized. But worse, they viewed peace through the logic of achievements, of goals, something so vital it could eventually move people to compromise principles, the old end-justifies-means question. You can’t avoid that if you pursue peace down the wrong trail. You’ll end up chasing ghosts, because you don’t understand where peace flourishes. It’s like hunting waterfowl in the desert.

Peace is a very personal force. You get there by commitment, by loving it enough to sacrifice just about anything for it. All that blather by experts around the world means nothing without such a commitment. No, I don’t mean making peace your god; rather understand peace as one character trait of any god worthy of worship. Yes, I’m a Christ follower, but I realize where peace lives, so does He. You can think of it any way you like, but peaceful people smell like the robes of Christ, the smells of long hikes across rocky mountainous terrain, sleeping under the stars, the smell of sheep and unwashed humans crowding around in desperation, of perfumed hair and feet, of blood and beams of wood.

Let’s serve peace. Just presenting the peaceful ways to all you encounter is the one best way to promote the idea there is a better way than fighting. We don’t need a movement. We can recognize each other easily if we choose to keep our eyes open. Do your own peace, and make friends with those who are making peace in other ways.

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For the Children

Posted on October 1, 2010 by ehurst

Because of our cultural truculence in rejecting biblical values regarding children, I felt this required its own article. In the West generally, and in the America particularly, we do everything backwards with our kids.

Start here: Your first duty it to God Almighty. If He wants to take your children, fighting Him is the worst thing you can do for them. They are His children first, and He granted them to you. If He is not sovereign in every detail of your existence, He is not your Lord.

Next, you must understand it is better for your children to be martyrs than murderers. It is better that they learn to refuse evil commands from mere men, at the cost of their own lives, than to disobey God. We are pacifist against all human governments because not a one of them uses violence as God decreed. God has not forbidden people from defending their homes and families from attackers, but He demands you first have something He considers worthy of defense. Life itself is not that something.

Related to that: The worst thing you can ever do is render your children unto Caesar, as it were, because it’s just a step away from throwing them to Molech. If you are going to fulfill your duty to God in raising His children, you have to understand they must be taught to obey His Laws. They will not learn that in any government education program. If your local school was controlled by the parents of the children, that would be fine. As a former “professional educator” in the public school systems, I assert with full conviction you have almost no input regarding the contents of their education, despite the possible illusion of such input.

They start very early with the conditioning from the likes of TV, movies, music and other entertainments. Even for the first church in Jerusalem, this was an issue, as the teaching of the Law of Moses was corrupted by Hellenism. However, they had the advantage of not having to fight for the right to teach their children better. Aside from a few radical communities such as Sparta, most early Gentile communities had similar advantages over educational choices. On the other hand, they had a huge barrier overcoming the local conditioning of the various pagan cultures. Today, a proper biblical education might as well be from another planet.

But we cannot begin to correct this until we first correct our own assumptions about child rearing. It is absolutely critical for children to develop with the doting attention of their mother during the first five years of life. Lots of cuddling, lots of attention, all day long from their mother first, then from others in the extended family — this is alien to our life style. All the more so with all these alternatives to actually raising our children. We have conditioned women to insist they have other things to do, more interesting, more fulfilling personally, than be a full time mother. God help us.

The fathers should be involved, but their role as head of the family typically means being busy most of the day. Somewhere around age five, that exposure to father should increase incrementally, but dramatically, over the next two years. In an ideal world, a father’s work would allow the children to be with him at least part of the time, helping some. It is in the father’s care they learn their place in this world, learn to incorporate other adults into their modeling of behavior. Yes, for girls there is less of this, but there still needs to be some. Somewhere around ages seven to nine, they begin apprenticing themselves toward their adult work life. Ideally, they would be exposed to all of the different types of work they might see from the whole clan, but only in the most exceptional cases of rare talent should anyone consider training outside the immediate covenant community.

At age nine or so the gender separation in public becomes essential. They are no longer little kids, and sexual differentiation brings in a host of moral issues. Young ladies are no longer to run free in the world, but must be escorted. They have only a few years to become prepared for marriage, and it is serious hard work. Boys must generally be kept from social contact with unrelated females until they are mature enough to take their place in society as men. Except for those whose callings require strong academic investment, there is really nothing inherent in human development requiring education past age fourteen or fifteen. At this point they should be ready to enter full time apprenticeship.

Marriage between age mates is simply not a good idea. The females are typically far, far more mature than any males their own age, up until men are approaching thirty. By that time a woman takes increasing risks bearing children, so she is married rather young to someone at least a decade older. By no means should any female be left to her own devices to choose a mate; her family is responsible for making things happen.

This is the way God’s people did things from the beginning, yet it seems repugnant and alien to us. We have so very far to go. Until we make a commitment to begin moving in this direction, we cannot pretend anything we do for our children is any good. Remaking our social order around the biblical mandates is now very much a tall order, as even churches seldom consider, much less act, accordingly. Most churches do nothing to remake people into God’s image for life in a fallen world, but simply reflect some of the tamer elements of the society around them.

We cannot continue pickling our children in this evil world.

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The Simple Life

Posted on September 30, 2010 by ehurst

You have one earthly purpose: To peel away the obscuring lies of this world so people can see God’s glory.

Chasing all the dreams of mankind, your nation or some worthy cause, or simply your own prosperity and comfort is evil. That is, unless those things are directly related to your calling in Christ. What makes it so deceptive for everyone is assuming those are things Christ promoted. He told us to pick up our crosses, not strive for any human measure of success. That means we look forward to dying at God’s whim.

No language offers words sufficient to shock you into the truth about this. All that I see and can touch as “mine” is nothing more than tools for the mission. Yes, I really do enjoy a lot of extravagant blessings from God, but they don’t have my heart; He does. The only hope I have is dying when God is ready to bring me Home.

When you really can embrace all that, it changes a lot of the things we do with our time on this earth. There is no need for amassing possessions, nor even a good name. If they come, we use them for the primary purpose already stated. If not, we still seek ways to get the job done. But so this job can be done, God offers a huge pile of promises related to how we go about this life.

When we take the covenants as a whole, we find God takes an interest in His own glory by supporting our obedience with tangible blessings. The very detailed specifics in the Law of Moses are simply a reflection of God’s character. Nothing in the Law pertains to your spiritual condition, though it does gain mention often enough. But you don’t need to be born again to understand the Law, nor what it offers as a covenant. You simply need to embrace the intellectual culture in which it was cast, and it all makes perfect sense.

Even after the Fall, the fundamental moral nature of Creation still lives and affects all things. You can ignore the Law and God and learn an awful lot about the observable mechanics of things, but you’ll never really understand what directs those mechanics until you wrap your mind around the moral imperatives not visible by mere scientific inquiry. Science as we know it utterly materialistic, and relentlessly amoral. But cast against God’s revelation, that simply means immoral. You’ll never understand life, the universe and everything unless you understand the logic of the Bible, the logic and epistemological assumptions behind it.

When you reduce things to their essence, you have no real need for most of what we see. That’s because almost everything man has accomplished is a desperate attempt to replace what we lost in the Fall. Adam was master of Creation as God’s agent. We cannot begin to grasp what that was like, but we can grasp the fact itself. We can feel some siren call drawing us to that mastery, but we can’t find a path without passing through God’s revelation. Our fallen condition rejects that, fears it, just is not able to go there. Only God Himself can make that happen. So we plumb the depths of our abilities to manipulate what we can do without taking that path. All that you see in this modern world reflects the bottomless desire to recover the peace, contentment and security Adam had in the Garden, and it won’t ever satisfy.

Instead, we go through endless cycles of raising up great civilizations, exhausting their genius, then stumbling into the downward spiral of collapse. Then we do it again. In the case of Western Civilization, the killing blow was manifested in the so-called Enlightenment. While that climax spun off many threads, each reaching their own peak independently, the philosophical fire itself had begun to burn out. Across the many generations, we see a particularly nasty civilization coming slowly to a particularly nasty and justified death. This is a time of tribulation, and the saints of God of will tribulate. We are here in the midst of the crumbling collapse, swept up in the debris of vast sorrows.

The best way to manifest God’s glory is to return to that First Century church lifestyle, insofar as we can understand it. We are the Tribulation Church of this age, and seeing all these things from the eternal perspective, we realize it was all about nothing. We who remember won’t miss it when it’s gone. Instead, we turn back to the most basic requirements for life according to God’s Laws, because in those Laws are found the best mankind can have in this fallen world. These are expressions of the very fundamental moral nature of the universe, as close as we can get to returning to Eden.

Not only can we say it doesn’t really take that much, we can assert with eternal finality it means tossing aside almost everything we know in our Western world. We pursue the most basic essentials of living on the bottom of the economy, intentionally slipping through the cracks, because the economy we see around us is corrupt — it’s Babylon. So we need only the essentials of food, cover from the weather, and basic health and security. If we stick to these basics in the full trust of God’s provision, He guarantees we shall have all these things, with abundant miracles if necessary, as a fulfillment of His promises from the very beginning of the Fall. A lifestyle in pursuit of much beyond this is departing from His umbrella of promises.

How this calls out to you, and what it demands of you individually is between you and God. It does not necessarily mean sleeping under bridges, but you should be open to that. For most of us seeking the full embrace of the First Century church, it means taking advantage of things currently within reach, so long as they don’t conflict with good discipline in the Body of Christ. There are no rules; the things covered so far in this series have been intentionally soft-edged. Some things are obvious; most are simply a matter of discernment. The whole point remains blocking out things which disturb your spirit, and working to uncover the hidden glory of Christ.

That glory shines through choices which simplify and reduce life to the necessities which God commanded from the very beginning.

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