Modest Presentation

Posted on September 24, 2010 by ehurst

What does holiness look like? Let us think for a moment what would be noteworthy differences in the first century world where the New Testament was born. Within Judea itself, it would be quite subtle, a difference only locals would notice. That’s because the more obvious things were unchanged; standard Judean practices in the main were quite acceptable in Christ.

But Judean lifestyle was certainly different from the rest of the Mediterranean world. How much of that was necessary for following Christ? Paul’s letters in particular are loaded with admonitions which, while not all inclusive in detail, do serve to indicate the differences were substantial. We have a pretty good idea of what was common in most regions Paul traveled, establishing churches. We tend to forget the issues were quite thorny because we don’t stop to think Paul wasn’t simply pushing his own preferences, but those of Jesus Christ. Western Christians tend to agree with the assessments of those to whom Paul aimed his messages, those who did not like it, and this is simply wrong.

We should not seek in any way to draw attention to ourselves. We don’t keep up with the latest fashions. We don’t struggle to make ourselves seem respectable by worldly standards. Do I have to state we don’t try to draw attention to ourselves by looking pretty? We draw attention to Christ by avoiding it for ourselves. Evangelism isn’t a talent contest, nor a sales competition. Evangelism means being transparent so His glory shines through.

Paul was a stickler about not showing too much flash or flesh. He didn’t wear the finest gentleman’s haberdashery, no jewelry or marks of nobility, and didn’t adopt the Grecian style of showing some leg. Grecian style was all about portraying the human ideal, as the entire culture was man-centered. And we are even worse today in the West.

The biblical culture also doesn’t call for us to reverse that by adopting any alternate fashion and style for some other brand of respectability, particularly by embracing something simply from an earlier decade or two. Nor should we strive to create our own “Christian Chic.” There is no correct and godly haircut, but it shouldn’t be like Absalom’s long locks, either. Women need neither burkha nor bling. There is no one right style, but we should strive to be pretty much without any particular style.

For my own use, I would pretty much say cover up between the knees and neck, and out to the shoulders, both sexes. Nobody should have to tell you skin-tight attire is wrong, as is see-through materials. In general, women have more hair and men have less. Do something reasonable to differentiate your gender from the other. Don’t ever catch yourself choosing something for the purpose of impressing someone. Ask the Lord to show you when you might be doing that, so you can stay humble and modest. The vanity of human adornment is evil. Neither your church meetings nor any other place in your life is a fashion show. Just keep your flesh covered without too much ornamentation.

These general comments should help make a point: If someone has to specify rules for you, something is already wrong. This is voluntary by the leadership of the Spirit every step of the way. There is no coercion of any sort, no nagging and wheedling, no ostracism — that is, unless someone adamantly persists in something too obviously disruptive and self-centered. If you can’t find a graceful way to advise someone who seems out of line, stay quiet. If you can’t absorb a comment from someone who disagrees with your choices, fix your attitude. No one walk in the Spirit demands uniformity in that sense. Rather, they demand a peaceful sense of cooperation over a ton of things which aren’t essential.

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Lynx Web Browser on Win7 (Updated)

Posted on September 23, 2010 by ehurst

This post is a couple years old still getting lots of hits. I now recommend you move the installation within your own Documents folder and work from there. You’ll have to change the paths below to match that, but you’ll find it less heartache in the long run.

Running Win7-x64 has lots of advantages, but I find much of my favorite software is playing catch-up. In the case of the Lynx text-mode browser, it gets pretty dicey.

The work-arounds depend on how you use it. The latest packages available in a convenient format from Invisible Island (2.8.7 and 2.8.8) won’t work for me on Win7. I’m not sure of all the details, but on many sites Lynx will get an error about reading the compressed file. Even if you run in circles making sure you have gzip and bzip2 in your PATH statement, Lynx won’t find them and won’t unzip any webpages fetched in compressed format.

However, the slightly older 2.8.5 release from CSANT doesn’t present the compression issue. Click the link labeled “Lynx 2.8.5rel.1 installer (1.68MB)” and download. I chose to install it in “Program Files\Lynx” instead of the default “Program Files (x64)\lynx”. During installation you have a chance to get a desktop icon, which I recommend. It is linked to a batch file which needs significant editing over what works in XP. Mine looks like this:

@ECHO OFF
@rem command /C
set term=vt100
set home="C:\Program Files\Lynx"
set temp=Program Files\Lynx\tmp
set lynx_cfg=C:\Program Files\Lynx\lynx.cfg
set lynx_lss=C:\Program Files\Lynx\lynx.lss
"C:\Program Files\Lynx\lynx.exe" -center %1 %2 %3 %4 %5

Parsing that, we note Win7 in the commandline environment doesn’t recognize the ‘command’ line, so we ‘rem’ (remove) it out. Setting the “home” parameter, simply use the location where you installed it; I had to use quotation marks to get it read as all one item. The next item doesn’t need the leading ‘C:\’. But the next two parameters do. I prefer to use ‘lynx.lss’ with a few modifications to suit me. There are several color schemes pre-packaged and you can try them to see what you prefer.

The ‘lynx.cfg’ file I edited somewhat because I don’t like webpage paragraph lines justified in a square block (‘JUSTIFY:FALSE’); I prefer ragged right edges with standard spacing between words. I also changed my STARTFILE to a bookmarks file I made up and use with all my browsers as the page loaded at startup — ‘STARTFILE:file://localhost/~/bookmarks.html’ which tells it to look in my Documents folder for ‘bookmarks.html’. Also, I don’t like the double status line in the bottom of the window, so I set the file to load in advanced user mode (‘DEFAULT_USER_MODE:ADVANCED’) which shows where the link points. You’ll also notice there is a line regarding rejecting cookie domains, and you can add to it if you know enough advertiser domains. Take your time editing this file, and make sure everything is set to your preferences. I left most of the defaults alone. If you prefer to make it simple, copy the ‘lynx.cfg’ to your Documents folder and rename it ‘lynx.rc’, then edit it all you like.

The last line in my batch file requires putting the full path in quotes, but the ‘-center’ switch must be outside them. What this does is reduce the number of times you’ll find webpage paragraphs centered for no apparent reason. Mostly this has to do with Lynx’s habit of rendering what it reads as table data centered by default.

Finally, I modified the icon properties on my desktop. I prefer to view the window with 10×18 font, and laid out 80×50. There are plenty of other tricks I don’t know about, but perhaps I’ve pointed out some you can use. I’m hoping soon the developers will find a way to compile future versions of Lynx specifically for Win7.

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A Community Life – ANE Model

Posted on September 23, 2010 by ehurst

Introduction

First Century churches were in essence spiritual Hebrew households. It was not exactly a carbon copy of the nomadic roots, yet incorporating many of the features to reflect the essence of the thing.

It is hardly necessary to prove we don’t know all those features. All we can do is estimate from archaeological research and a Hebraic reading of the Scripture. When we adjust our own thinking away from our modern Western assumptions and embrace the intellectual climate of the Ancient Near East (ANE), we are able to see the particulars don’t matter nearly so much as the approach. It’s not what you know, but how you come to know it, which is what distinguishes biblical mysticism from Hellenism.

Symbolic logical structures are not natural to our Western minds. We struggle with parabolic language and prescriptions which are indicative, not descriptive. We want to know the very nature of a thing, to analyze it from every angle. God’s ways do not yield to such an approach. We aren’t seeking objective information, but ways to obey the imperatives from God. The only proper approach is indirect and entirely personal.

Over the next few days I hope to explore here the implications of this approach, specifically in describing what a genuine biblical ANE church body, a household in New Israel, would look like. All I can offer is my own personal understanding; there is no pretense of establishing prescriptions which bind others. I actively invite comments, and hopefully they’ll be on topic as described above.

Paired Leadership

The first item to cover is leadership. In the first church in Jerusalem, half the leadership was built in from the start. Among the things not yet stolen by Hellenism was the basic social organization of the Hebrew people. They lived in the extended family setting. Each household had a head, an elder. A grouping of several households might be a clan, which had another elder at that level. It was basically hereditary feudal rights, in that sense. The New Testament term translated “elder” is pretty much restricted to this meaning.

These elders were the traditional leaders, blood kin or married into the family. The choice was not entirely hereditary, because truly capable leaders might be promoted over the titular heir. A critical element in gaining such trust was not simply talent in taking charge, but an absolute necessity of having earned that trust by demonstrating a devotion to the common welfare. This was leadership by sacrificial love.

The first organizational controversy in that first church was over the lack of eldership for a big slice of the membership. Most members came into the church, not individually, but by entire households. It was by commitment under the elders who repented and embraced Christ. Surely we know some folks in a given household separated because they were simply too much opposed. But there were quite a few who went along without an individual spiritual rebirth; they went because that was their support structure. Indeed, it was their whole life, everything they knew. We scarcely comprehend the depth of such necessity these days. For the large group of widows and others who lacked a support structure because they joined as foreign Jews (“Hellenists”), folks who didn’t originally live in Judea. They didn’t have elders because they didn’t belong to anybody.

So the apostles instructed the Hellenists to form their own households and appoint de facto elders. Lacking any valid blood ties, they substituted spiritual ties and probably various natural affinities. Thus, all the Hellenist Jews from Crete, for example, would gather in a spiritual household. The result was a clan structure which included everyone not already in a traditional clan, and seven men from this mixed Hellenist group were appointed to be their elders. So whether you call it deacon, elder, ruler, or whatever, these terms typically refer to the same basic function in the body.

We discover outside the traditional Judean households there were females serving in these roles in some fashion. Aside from teaching, we see the apostles didn’t balk at matriarchal leadership. We have the Greek feminine of deacon in several places, and several mentions of women in key roles of leadership. However, we note this leadership was restricted to the organizational roles, not spiritual roles. The organization of the church is a matter of spiritually discerned Laws. The Law Covenants, as taught by Jesus, are the living necessity of how humans implement spiritual imperatives.

The spiritual leadership was uniformly male, and Scripture explains it adequately — women aren’t equipped for that stewardship. Slice and analyze it any way you like, but Eve was deceived, and Adam was not. The spiritual leadership is far, far harder to describe simply because the calling is above logic. Granted, we find passages listing important character traits, but the actual description of the job is rather fuzzy. They are servants of the Word, keepers of the fire of truth, walking Scripture. While everyone in the Kingdom should be sensitive to the Spirit of God’s leading, these men were burdened with the teaching and preaching to the mind to make it ready to pull in the harness of the spirit.

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A Virtual Community of Faith

Posted on September 22, 2010 by ehurst

Nobody is more anxious to avoid creating yet-one-more church denomination than me. The last thing I want is a personal empire, a little kingdom over which to reign. With all my ranting about how wrong it is to do things according to Western fashion, it would be the height of hypocrisy to build a Western organization around the idea itself.

The underlying need is developing biblical literacy on the Bible’s own terms. I typically use the academic term ANE (Ancient Near Eastern) as a general label to provide a contrast to Western (modern American and European). Once people pass through that gateway of understanding, there is still an awful lot of work to do. Typing or saying those labels gets to be extra work we can all agree is unnecessary, provided we are on the same sheet of music.

Yes, this means we become fully aware we must live two lives, a foot in both worlds. This is hardly less dramatic than what it required of the First Century Church. We become strangers to this world even while we spend the remainder of our lives in it. Because of the dissonance between our new, higher natures and this fallen existence below, we often seek the soothing of our ragged nerves by withdrawing into the comfort of that social network which anchors on the higher spiritual plane. The language, thoughts, and whole orientation is divine, and we can relax somewhat because we are among our own kind.

Anything we can do to reduce the tensions and very human barriers within this other-worldly atmosphere is obviously going to help us make the most of our time left on this earth. The very nature of a spiritual congregation means not only are we not there yet, so to speak, nor can we ever be “there” in this fallen world, but sometimes we run into experiences which can pull us backward. These are entirely normal, central to the spiritual existence in conflict with a fallen world, so we have enough to do that we don’t need to struggle with anything which adds unnecessary complications. Most of Paul’s letters address the very human tendency to create even smaller, more tightly knit sub-communities, creating fractures within the divine assembly. A very fundamental element in our new divine life is removing the barriers of fellowship built into the Fall.

Part of the question also includes finding ways to both exclude the world of the spiritually dead, even as we hold forth the invitation for them to join. We hope to maximize the drawing power of living and doing what God says we should here, while keeping enough distance to avoid mixing in all those hindrances outsiders bear as part of their very nature. It’s not simply being winsome in the larger world around us, but letting them see how winsome we are when together. The tension between the need to withdraw where it’s safe to be our real redeemed selves versus the need to demonstrate a redeemed community publicly, requires a nimble soul ever watching for what God wants to emphasize at the moment, what is the best course of action in the given context.

Somewhere between the ways of this world and the ways of the Spirit we must remain connected even as we are jarring in our disconnection. Human words and procedures are necessary, but they must be ruled by the divine imperatives. Each of us must make our own best choices, utterly free within the context of needing to work together. This is challenging enough when the community of faith is tangible and local, but the game changes when we seek to make a virtual community by taking advantage of the Internet.

On the one hand, given the esoteric nature of my teaching, no one should be surprised there are no large supporting organizations of any sort in meat space. We live in a world highly distracted, as well as highly jaded by the vast number of fakes which sound, smell and look like what I suggest is the real deal. And Satan has had centuries during which he built up a vast world of resistance to this teaching. Moving into the Land Without Words is so naturally repugnant to humanity at large, it is truly a miracle any of us got here. Frankly, we need to have an online connection to give us enough critical mass to realize it can be done, given the bulk of my outreach almost has to be via the Internet, at least for now.

I’m praying earnestly for the Lord to reveal His own excellent planning for this. I’m willing to make any changes necessary in my own habits here in order to obey this urging call. The burning desire to teach a better understanding of the Bible, and to consider all the implications of that understanding, won’t let me rest until I make those changes. I don’t pretend to decide for others what they must do; it’s all I can handle making me behave properly. This thing I am doing must run on its own, or it will be only me. This readiness to be conformed to whatever it takes includes any part of the mechanism by which I communicate with anyone else who embraces the essence of what draws me forward. It’s the teaching and the spiritual life, and I can’t pretend to run the show, nor control the mechanisms. We have to discover in concert what God has in mind, because we come into it knowing our instincts have suffered much from the world’s perversions.

So this blog will change. I’ll continue to post thought pieces and teachings on my other blog, and this one will be more about practical matters. I can’t pretend to know right now all the things I’ll do tomorrow, but for now I predict there won’t be any more Linux and Unix posts. Those articles draw the most traffic here — success by the world’s standards — but aren’t what really matter to me. Last night I installed Windows on my main system, and on my laptop the day before, simply because I sensed the Spirit needed me to focus time and effort in other directions. I still have openSUSE 11.3 on another hard drive in the desktop machine, but I don’t expect I’ll dual boot that much. And if I sense His hand leading in yet another direction tomorrow, I’ll change it all again. I can’t say what difference it will all make in days ahead, but computer technology is merely the means, not the goal. This blog itself isn’t a goal, just a tool, and is wholly subject to what I can understand as God’s wishes.

I only know what burden rests upon me today. That burden is to prepare myself to teach, to reach out to others with a more single-minded devotion than before. I sense the time is upon us for things to shift in may ways we cannot begin to imagine. Since planning for such things is above my pay grade in the Kingdom, I am simply carrying out the orders I can understand. Yes, I could be deceived entirely, but it’s the best I know. I’m not in charge of the results.

That something big is coming should be obvious to anyone who shares this spiritual teaching with me. For our part, I believe we should consider ways to build and enhance an online community, to organize enough to commune in our ANE understanding of the world. That seems to call for a forum of some sort, a virtual place to meet and fellowship. This is not my baby, but I’m ready to contribute what I have to the process. If you are moved, pray with us.

(Great minds think alike, Brother Benjamin!)

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The Fable of Nice

Posted on September 19, 2010 by ehurst

The Prince of the Power of the Air wants you under his thumb, preferably by putting you under his servants. For the vast majority of humanity, that means keeping them busy with things which don’t matter. Putting a magnifying glass in front of every molehill keeps folks from noticing the mountains. One of the primary molehills is the Fable of Nice — the fake culture of coddling and keeping people hyper-sensitive to even the slightest offense.

In a civil world, you generally care about all humanity. But you don’t have resources to invest that care into every human you encounter, so you build a series of internal filters by which you ration the minutes of the day on people who form a significant portion of your daily existence. When society is properly structured, most of us seldom encounter folks who aren’t related by blood or covenant. Thus, the filtering is by context, because the necessity of investment of resources is based on the importance of what is taking place right now. However, we do not live in such a world. Our world is perverted, and we encounter almost nothing but strangers. Thus, you cannot treat most of the folks around you as friends and neighbors in the sense the Bible uses those terms, because they assume an affinity which does not exist in modern society.

The Bible has much to say about dealing with strangers. You are honest, but not totally open to strangers; there is a privacy barrier. You spare them getting entangled in local affairs, even while you protect your kinship from prying strangers. Thus, you offer only so much as is pertinent to the context of the encounter. But you presume kindness until they offer hostility. Your response to that hostile posture depends on circumstances and context. Given the presumption they simply don’t understand what binds you, you are obliged to withdraw and cease dealing with them. If they are inside your home space, you do your best to drive them out as gently as possible. You would typically have the support of your family community, but the lowest level of defense necessary is rule.

In the more subtle social encounters we usually have every day in our corrupt Western world, we are the strangers, in some ways. In other ways, everywhere we go is God’s turf, our turf as His servants, so to speak. We bear His truth as ambassadors, as recruiters. Truth takes precedence over being nice. We have to thread our way through the confusing mess of this world in order to manifest that truth.

Our modern society languishes under the false perceptions which hinder truth. It is a cultural demand we be nice to avoid hurting people’s feelings, one of those molehills under the magnifying glass. It’s just to give every person due respect for the context of each encounter. In some cases, we need to tiptoe around fragile feelings. In other cases, bold affront is actually appropriate. Either extreme is quite rare, but our society encourages jumping back and forth between them, as if the vast ground in the middle does not exist.

When the silly cultural expectations bleed over into how the church behaves internally, we have a serious problem. Teaching church members they have to be nice to each other, by which is meant you have to tiptoe around fragile feelings, assumes bringing someone to spiritual maturity actually lies in our hands. It’s the same thing as misapplying sales techniques to evangelism. Nothing — absolutely nothing — in our hands can breathe life into dead spirits. Farther along that path, nothing in our capabilities and talents will make someone immature ready to hear mature truth. Both are a work of the Spirit. We are used to reveal, but change is wholly in God’s power.

It takes a peculiar arrogance to distrust the listener, as if some teaching was adult material kept from children. But the worse sin is creating an atmosphere where it feels like that. Countless times I’ve watched church leaders pass some non-verbal communication slyly between each other, as if no one else caught it. That’s fine with strangers, but evil presumption with members. Paul didn’t play such games in Corinth, but those Judaizers sneaking around behind him did, and it made the church folks wonder about Paul. When he taught or preached, he spared no feelings, but always revealed honestly what was going on inside his head.

Only on TV and in movies are people that stupid. You damage your own leadership, raising doubts about your honesty, when you withhold a comment, but allow non-verbal communication to indicate there is something you could say. It smacks of unspoken put-down. You create a wall of distrust, and those with whom you deal justly decide they can’t trust you. The first step is learning to communicate spiritually and truthfully, not with the false politeness of this world. If you set your heart on truth, you won’t have to worry too much about polished mannerisms. Truth makes you humble and quiet until the moment comes to proclaim the message from the housetops. So the answer is not getting a better poker face, but stop playing.

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Oklahoma State Fair: A Total Waste

Posted on September 18, 2010 by ehurst

Update: Here we are three years later and things are even worse. In particular, the prices are much higher than when I first wrote this. Our state fair is still a rip-off and still run by the most corrupt criminal thugs the state could offer.

Original post:

I live in Oklahoma because God tells me to stay here, not because it’s such a wonderful place to live. Consider as an example our State Fair, which is currently running 10 days only at the Fairgrounds nestled into the northeast corner of the junction between Interstates 40 and 44.

There was a time it was worth going. It ran two or three weeks. The entrance ticket was just a couple of dollars, the food and drink were decent, and the exhibits were consistent with a state dominated by agriculture and smaller manufacturing. A gratifying collection of local youth exhibits of all types could be found. We had plenty of international exhibits, too.

Those days are gone. Please note: The price rise is far, far above inflation. It’s almost $10 per head to enter. The food costs are now outrageous. Of course, that’s because the vendors pay such huge fees just to get a place, they have to triple the price of what they offer. Anyone for a 24 ounce soft drink? $8. Yes, the food is about triple what the same vendor charges outside the Fair. I have met several vendors, and they do not gouge just because it’s a captive audience; it costs them that much just to be there.

Many of the old favorite features are gone. For example, there was a beautiful historic home there once, but the management decided they couldn’t afford to keep it open, so they sold the building to some small time building mover. It now sits partially dismantled on the mover’s lot, where it has been for quite some time, but no one can afford it. The monorail ride was shut down long ago, and dismantled. Most of the permanent infrastructure is crumbling, and things like the space needle are closed. The raceway is closed, which once featured some fun and unusual events during the Fair.

The midway consists of the cheapest creaking mobile carnival rides, staffed by people you would not want to meet. I know these people because I once drove a cab in this city, and had to transport a bunch of them. I had to fumigate the car after they got out. The same class of folks still work the Fair carnival venues. On the other hand, they complain of horrific treatment by the full-time staff, and I’ve seen it myself.

Therein lies the problem. This is a bloated, overpaid staff, and it gets worse as you go up the ladder. I recall reading a tiny article in some obscure newspaper about graft and corruption, about state and city tax money invested which seems to have bought nothing much. I remember brief snatches of reports on local news radio about investigations, but obviously they know how and whom to bribe, because I don’t recall hearing about the results of those investigations. I’m really not in a position to follow up on such things, but these are not mere rumors. The pricing structure alone should indicate the very best we can say is the management is criminally incompetent.

Don’t bother with the State Fair of Oklahoma. It’s one of the most embarrassing rip-offs in this state.

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That Green-Eyed Monster Stalks Me

Posted on September 17, 2010 by ehurst

I confess: I am suffering a serious case of envy. It’s almost like lust.

Among the clients I see in my computer ministry was a fellow with a nice Inspiron 1525 laptop — 2.0 Ghz dual core CPU, 3GB RAM, fast Intel graphics, and so forth. It’s almost as powerful as my desktop. He was griping about it not being fast enough, but that was because of spyware and a very junky anti-virus package. Having been ripped off at Best Buy, he tried to get someone else to reinstall the bundled Vista, but that didn’t go well. So he brought it to me and I got the installation cleaned up, found all the missing drivers, etc. Normal stuff I do every week.

Over the next few days I took calls from him and another visit to add a few features and explain things he didn’t understand well. He never understood, for example, the hibernate function on laptops. He’s probably doing okay right now, but I expect a few more calls in the coming weeks as I warned him I can’t make any computer meet his expectations; he has to learn what to expect from computers. And he still complains he’s not happy with it, and may be getting rid of it soon.

I told most firmly I wanted a shot at it if he didn’t keep it. I may not be able to meet his price, but boy would I like to try.

Update: Sometime after I first wrote this the man offered to trade for something I had, and didn’t know he wanted. That worked out well.

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Poverty of Morality

Posted on September 16, 2010 by ehurst

Jesus clarified the meaning of the Law of Moses. In the process He clarified the underlying meaning of all God’s Laws under all Law Covenants. This He did in the process of showing how the leaders and teachers of His nation were utterly wrong in embracing Aristotle and Hellenism. Modern Judaism is simply more of the same sin, so don’t expect devout Jews to help you understand God’s justice, since they have no clue.

Nor can you ask anyone representing the popular philosophical strains dominating the discussion in the West. For example, Progressives are all about helping the common man, but are quite willing to rob every one else to do so. They alone know what is best, and become hostile with even the slightest protest to their plans. They are the most hateful and oppressive groups on the earth. Almost as hateful are Conservatives, though libertarians are a faint bit better. However, where those two converge is the insistence anyone in poverty must have done something stupid to get there. Thus, they have no responsibility to help the poor. They believe the one best thing they can do for the poor is get themselves richer, because their favorite lie is “rising prosperity, like water, causes all boats to rise.” It’s been proven utterly false, but they keep saying it.

Sometimes God is the one who brings poverty. His sovereign will is typically incomprehensible, so don’t assume someone poor made bad choices. He does it to His children and His enemies, and it will never make sense to us on a human level.

Jesus had it right. First, don’t talk about fixing any socio-economic issues until you restore society to the biblical pattern. If you can’t live with your blood kin, live with your spiritual kin. Not just gather once in a while, but reside together like a clan. You must build that extended family society to reduce the imbalances which make the world an ugly place. You can’t keep Babylon at bay if you keep following Babylon’s social planning — which is precisely what Classical Liberalism (American Conservatism) is. Without that extended family dependency and social structure, you can’t fix a single issue, and you can’t have God’s justice.

Once you have that, then you can understand what Jesus said about poverty. He said there will always be imbalances because mankind is fallen. That means even when you do economics right, it’s not possible for everyone to make it big. Some folks simply find themselves outside the family support system, for any number of reasons. But under God’s Laws, you were to assume nothing, only that you were responsible for doing something. If you have material to contribute, you give alms, as it were. If not, give what you have. Look up Peter and John and their helping of the lame man at the entrance of the Temple. But you are always prepared to give something.

It’s none of your business what strangers do with the coins you drop in their tin cup; God says that’s His business. You prepare yourself to give. Set it aside as a portion of what you carry into the wider public world. Give when the opportunity comes. You aren’t looking at effectiveness; you are looking at obedience to a divine command. Indeed, you don’t have to interact with the recipient at all, because they are simply the agent. As far as you are concerned, the money went to God, because that’s how He sees it. Again, without the family bond, any attempt at significant involvement in their needs is usually sin.

In general, avoid mixing charity with direct outreach. Don’t use benevolence as a trap to capture someone’s time for your holy sales pitch. Find some other way to express the love of God; He will create proper opportunities. If they want to become family, and you sense God’s peace in it, get involved. If not, do what God’s peace does allow. If they seek to become family, seek to lighten their misery, but make righteous demands on them to contribute what they can in return. That’s the way it works. It is absolutely evil to have any significant involvement without those family ties. Family always comes first, but you had better be ready to give outside the family bonds.

Property is not sacred, not a God given right. Nor is your stuff community property unless you have that extended family social structure, where everyone is responsible to everyone else in a bond of commitment. All of it belongs to God. It is a tool for His glory, and stuff comes and goes, almost randomly, as His servants seek a clear conscience.

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Fake America

Posted on September 14, 2010 by ehurst

Whatever we once were, and certainly regardless of what we say we are, we are fake. Not just slyly fake, but in the most outlandish, over-the-top, blatant satire of ourselves. All the world can see it, but we are blind to it. As long as we do nothing to stop our rulers making fools of us, we are fools by choice.

Universal outrage has been drummed up over the case of an Iranian woman about to be stoned to death for adultery. She’s also implicated in the murder of her husband, for which she may be hanged. This second, more serious crime has been left out of many news stories. America also executes, but it doesn’t stone, especially for a bit of ticklish fun on the side. We inject, electrocute, gas, hang and shoot our condemned. We’re more humane that way. Forever bureaucratic, we pay attention to procedural niceties.

Our objection, then, is not to capital punishment, but to certain methods. Stoning is barbaric. We don’t stone, period, except during one of our serial wars, where we will stone entire communities back to the Stone Age. But that’s war, buddy. We also use phosphorous and cluster bombs, plant landmines that will last generations. To rectify and avenge the stoning of one woman, someone we don’t really care about, whose name we can’t even pronounce, we’ll flatten Iran, maybe by Thanksgiving.

The United States is concerned about women worldwide. It is touched and outraged by one Afghan woman, Aisha, whose nose was sliced off by her Taliban husband. To defend her honor, it has killed hundreds of thousands of her brothers and sisters. To protect her, it has destroyed her country. It’s the principle that matters. We care about the individual, at least those who are useful to our agendas. It’s the masses we don’t give a flying whoopee about. How can we not raise our voices, for example, when an imprisoned prostitute – hardly a criminal, really, even less so than adulterer – is left in a cage, to be baked to death for at least four hours in 107-degree heat? Her captors ignored her pleas for water. They wouldn’t even allow her to use the bathroom, so she soiled herself before passing out. She was still alive, however, when finally taken to the hospital, where doctors allowed her to die. Incredibly, no charges have been filed. Such barbarity and judicial callousness deserve our fullest condemnations, except that hardly anyone has heard of Marcia Powell, 48, who died in an Arizona prison in May of 2009. The mainstream media ignore her, because her abject death cannot be exploited for political purposes. We’re not trying to bomb Arizona.

Granted, as one comment on the linked article says, we don’t own the system, and any attempt to change it makes us a targeted enemy. We aren’t responsible for the system in that sense, but if we acquiesce and make no effort to protest, if we take no risks because we fear the system coming after us, we are then supporters of it. We make no meaningful protest as citizens.

There is no goodness left in this country as nations go.

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The Non-Manifesto

Posted on September 14, 2010 by ehurst

AKA: Christian Mystics Manifesto

We are in rebellion, but we aren’t doing anything. Our rebellion is against this whole plane of existence, so considerations of doing and being are missing the point. We aren’t taking over anything; we don’t even pretend to take our own lives back from anyone or anything. This life is a prison, and whomever or whatever is welcome to it.

The only real manifesto we could offer is the way we face our existence on this plane. Each of us in our individual choices and actions, whether there be any perception of success or failure by any measure on this plane, is a manifesto. The labels are offered back to those who use them. We didn’t create them, only use them. The only reason anyone bothers to compose a manifesto in words is to make sure readers know we aren’t anything they expect.

If you have to ask, there is little we can do to help you. But it’s our nature to assay the impossible.

Nothing we have and nothing we do really matters in itself. That is, unless we catch ourselves turning away from our fundamental commitments. Those commitments are what we are, so to speak. We are committed to something which has no words, but we find some glimmer of useful meaning in words to point to those wordless commitments: peace, love, understanding, truth, empathy, welcome… But in actuality, nothing with a name is worth saving, simply because anything for which those names actually fit properly is not a thing of value to us.

We don’t care about this world. It’s just a place to which we are bound for a period we don’t determine, and we are eager to leave. Life is not precious, as commonly defined. It may be valuable to a lot of those who are in it, but not to us. We belong to another Life of another kind, and on another plane. That other Life is our agenda.

Thus, our manifesto is simply raising awareness of it. To do that, we end up rejecting just about everything everyone else holds dear. We are utterly certain this world can’t be fixed. We know there is a good way to pass through it, but humanity has spent their whole time on this plane trying to avoid that way. They have sought every way under the sun to replace it with something else, things absolutely guaranteed to fail every time. We point that out when we can.

Thus, we give allegiance to something which no earthly authority accepts. In return, we reject all earthly authority, in the sense we take none of them seriously. Going to take my stuff, confine me, cause me pain, take my life? I tremble not. Those things are surely in the power of earthly authority, but they just do not matter. There is something inside which cannot be touched by any earthly power, yet it can overturn the whole world when that serves the higher purpose for which we live.

We have no particular plans, just urges we cannot name, and which we will obey at any cost. While it is vaguely possible we might by necessity run over some folks and their little empires, it’s unlikely for the most part we’ll do anything to harm anyone. Then again, there is the question of measuring harm, and we reject standard definitions, even as we are thoroughly aware of them. We don’t care about what you care about, unless you are one of us. We can’t make you one of us, but we welcome you if you turn that way. It’s what we hope for, but we aren’t foolish enough to confuse cause and result. We can’t touch the cause of turning, only rejoice when we see it.

So we aren’t being anything, aren’t doing anything, but we refuse to conform. We are playing along with something you won’t ever understand until you find yourself in it.

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