Don’t Be A Slave

Posted on August 6, 2009 by ehurst

In the next twelve months, the US will be reduced to third world economic status. The objective is amassing all available wealth in the US in the hands of an elite group. It has to do with creating conditions which sucker the masses into dreaming of grand material wealth, then make them believe it can be achieved. Create conditions which actually delivers to a small group, while making it appear that small group is just a collection of ordinary Joes and Janes who figured it out. Get them to follow the lies, inflate the economy, scrape off the wealth, which will crash it all. Then, while everyone is in a dependency panic, crush them under tight controls, and start the cycle all over again.

The only way out of the cycle, of course, is to stop chasing grand wealth, and accept the reasonable prosperity God intended under the Covenant of Noah. The only way to get that is cling to the Covenant. Aside from long term philosophical considerations, that means committing yourself to forming your tribe. While ANE feudalism is a matter of academic interest, you have to find an entry point to begin moving that way.

The first and most obvious step is your irrevocable commitment. If you are determined to form a covenant tribe, your success will become the gift God supplies. You need not succeed in all particulars for this to work. You must simply seize the desire itself. It can begin with a single household, just a couple. Determine in your heart (the seat of the will) you are going to obey the Covenant.

This need not involve researching what it means to be an “alpha male” — that requires competition within the community, which is hardly a good thing. Competition requires rules which will not fit well under Noah. The tribal leader is always the one who seems to sense what God requires, and can persuade the group with love and influence while keeping the peace. In other words, it’s the father figure. It’s not about mere charisma. It is never of necessity the eldest, but an elder.

It’s really simple until your community reaches about a dozen. Suddenly, everything changes, though it might be hard to put that in words. At about 20 members, you have some hope of being very effective in the objective itself: self-sufficiency. At 50, you must break it off into separate households at a minimum, with elders closer to the people they lead. At 75, no one man can possibly do it without the worst brand of favoritism. These are thresholds you can learn from other sources.

The point was to note the objective is pulling back from outside government. You probably can’t fully accomplish that with less than 20, but you can aim for it, work toward it. God’s government is by close relative, patriarchal and based on common necessity. That shared necessity fades above 50, simply by the factors of human nature. Nor is it a question of high competence. It’s a question of whom God chose. We in the West approach that very, very poorly. It’s a good idea to start with the oldest man still in full control of his faculties.

Once a tribe starts in that direction, God will intervene to make it obvious who is best for what, but more importantly, will see to it your best is actually good enough to please Him. He takes a personal interest in folks who want to please Him, even if only at the worldly level.

Here’s what you need to know right now: Just decide you will start today. You can’t possibly control all the factors which affect your execution, only what’s inside you. If you aren’t the leader, give your loyalty to God by giving it through your leader, those things which God says are the leader’s concerns. Keep civility in negotiations, because most of your time will be spent in renegotiating every day. That’s the nature of the beast, as it were, until some things become settled. The leader does not control, but negotiates consensus. Again, and again, and again, until certain elements of life can be made routine, but all things remain flexible because humans are flexible by nature. Patience, never arrogance. You should already know all that. Just do it.

By all means, the one thing non-negotiable is the need to minimize dependence on outside sources. That is never absolute, and some flexibility appears here, too. The underlying principle is not flexible. The more you surrender to the outside, the more exposure you have to harm. Make peace with the peaceable; seek ways to disengage every one else. This does not mean a last stand like Masada, but so much as the leaders in clear conscience before God are willing to do.

The very foundation, of course, is the commitment to be free under God’s terms. Everyone serves someone, but by choosing the Covenant of Noah, you cannot possibly be more free.

Posted in social sciences | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Don’t Be A Slave

Cheaper Life

Posted on August 5, 2009 by ehurst

We are sliding down the slope of brutality here in the US. It was always bad, but now it’s worse.

After making such a mess of my first enlistment, I decided to go back and heal the wounds on my soul by doing it right. When I went for the counseling interview, the only Army school willing to accept “re-treads” was Military Police. So I became a military cop and learned to understand it. At some point, I caught a glimpse of the latest training doctrine proposals. At the time, I didn’t understand all I read, but I knew I didn’t like it. So when I got hurt, and the military nearly begged me to stay, even with a high physical exemption rating, I went home.

Shortly thereafter, I observed the Waco Massacre on TV. At the time, I was inclined to support the government because I had been on the happy side of law enforcement. I drank the koolaid. A few years later I moved to Texas for a time. I was immediately introduced to the wrong end of federal law enforcement (see Part 2). The experience made me an ally of the victims of illegitimate police activity. The Feds have always been questionable at best, and more than once I have heard local police warn folks never, ever trust the Feds.

Lately, it seems more and more local police are becoming worse than the Feds. This rapid decline into casual brutality is making more and more of the US population into scarred victims. Those scars tend to mark both body and soul, and whatever sympathies the victims might have held before, as with me, their answer to the Tom Jode Test changes.

So here, stated briefly, is the question that serves as the shibboleth/sibbolet dividing line in the “Tom Joad Test”:

When you see a cop — or, more likely, several of them — beating up on a prone individual, do you instinctively sympathize with the assailant(s) or the victim?

If it’s the former, you’re an authoritarian, irrespective of your partisan attachments or professed political philosophy.

If it’s the latter, you’re an instinctive libertarian, whether or not you are consistently guided by that impulse in your political decisions.

It may later be demonstrated that the figure on the receiving end of the beating had committed some horrible crime. However, such a disclosure wouldn’t invalidate the results of the Tom Joad Test, because that test reveals a subject’s default assumptions about the relationship between the individual and the state.

Do you assume that the state is entitled to the benefit of the doubt whenever its agents inflict violence on somebody, or do you believe that the individual — any individual — is innocent of wrongdoing until his guilt has been proven?

Having been subjected to state-sponsored abuse, albeit not directly physical, I now assume the cops are wrong. I can’t forget how it was drummed into my head: The suspect is a human being. I can’t forget the overpowering sense I was responsible for making my handling of suspects the very picture of kindness and respect. God would not let me be so much as rude. I would smile, joke, and make them relax as much as possible. It would have been reason enough this was, on sheer mechanics, the easiest way to get things done, but my conscience demanded it. When people hurt, I weep. I made enough serious mistakes in other ways, but I don’t recall ever being too rough. I won awards, promotions, a high reputation in the community, and the Army begged me to reenlist.

Part of me now regrets ever having been involved in Law Enforcement, because it now has a dirty name. It’s getting dirtier by the day. When cops beef about the need for more roughness, the justification is always how rough suspects are getting. It never occurs to them they have set the tone for the decline in civility, or could fix it if they tried to make it better. Instead, it is they who lead the way in making every citizen understand you cannot ever be friends with a policeman, because there is no such thing as a policeman who is your friend.

Posted in social sciences | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Cheaper Life

Turn It Off

Posted on August 4, 2009 by ehurst

The mainstream medium was never meant to actually inform anyone, only to provide a means for advertisers to reach the consumer. When you consume the mainstream output, you are not the customer. The advertiser is the customer, and you are the product. The media are just that: the means of transaction. We know they hook you by billing themselves as the source of information and entertainment. That’s just the sucker call. The pretense of objectivity is the biggest lie of all, and they tell it to themselves. What actually goes across that media and into your mind is heavy duty manipulation.

We also know it’s not just commercial advertisers, but the government as well, which consumes the product of the media. Government typically does not pay in cash, but by enabling the whole thing to work. Naturally, the media will present the government message to you, though it will be cloaked in a thousand ways. A favorite method is pretending to be a little argumentative with government, but in the end, always avoiding the hard questions which matter most. Thus, the world is seen through the lens created by government of, by and for big commerce. So much we have covered in the past.

You could, in theory, attack the government which promises to serve you and promptly proceeds to serve big moneyed interests upon arriving in the office. We attack it verbally every day. It does no good, though. We all know it. The pitiful response from the sheeple will never provide the groundswell of reform. We have come to the point where destruction and death is inevitable, on all sides, before change is possible. So you could take it to the government people who keep the system alive. In the realm of human probability, you could put your hand to violence and start killing government officials, or at least ruining their lives in various ways. Sure, terrorize them the way they terrorize you.

But it would tend to leave the culprits who created this mess free to do it again. Yes, when government is destroyed, it does tend to expose big commerce to some losses, but not really enough to get their attention. The people behind big commerce have already planned for that. Their companies might die, but that golden parachute has already been deployed, and they have their tidy nests somewhere difficult for us to reach. They’ll escape, leaving us to clean up the mess, only to return once we try to rebuild.

And we would likely not remember who they are or what they caused, but will be hungry for their wares, and welcome them back. So the lying will start once again. Pretty soon, whatever government we can construct to serve our real needs will be perverted again. In other words, we always get the government we deserve, because we can’t understand what is in our own best interests. Instead, we are suckers for shiny, tasty, and snow jobs.

You want to be really free? Just be free. Choose today to break the cycle. You can get yourself killed trying to kill the people who make your life miserable, but that’s like killing dope dealers — as long as there are buyers, a new dope dealer will be in his place in an hour or so. Stop taking the dope. Stop giving in to the desire for things which destroy you.

Want a new start? Turn off that TV. Better yet, get rid of it and the cable, satellite, etc. And if you can’t keep yourself from going to the media dope dealers on the Internet, maybe you need to reconsider how you surf. For example, you might not be aware Windows is simply another media, a means to sell your eyes to the liars. Mac is an elitist version of the same thing. And while Linux and friends are hardly pure as the driven snow, the point is it works pretty much the way the Internet was meant to work. You can do a lot of nasty stuff on the Net, but you don’t have to — you can choose (for now). With TV, you can’t choose. Every channel is the same in that respect, or they wouldn’t be there. The system itself is designed to control you.

That’s the whole point. To the degree you can keep from harming others, there is no reason you can’t do whatever enters your silly head. But if no one is making money by selling you their silly ideas and manipulations, they’ll have to get an honest job. Or at least, they’ll be forced to work on a smaller scale, with far smaller piles of wealth, and far less likely to buy off your government. Really, it’s up to you and I. We don’t have to kill a bunch of bureaucrats and self-important bigshots, nor even the filth which buys their favors. Just pull the plug and watch it all come apart. You can kill the whole thing by just deciding you have more important things to do with your brain than waste your life letting liars construct your world for you.

Posted in social sciences | Tagged , | Comments Off on Turn It Off

Silly Debates on Creation

Posted on August 3, 2009 by ehurst

Recently my surfing has taken me across a collection of discussions about Creationism and Evolution, along with the variations attached to them. A primary flaw in all of this is making it man-centered.

By “man-centered” we are dipping once again into the sin of Hellenism. Go ahead and look up that term. A fundamental element of the entire field of thought is the arrogant assumption man is the measure of all things. Those of us who claim to rely on the Bible can’t allow ourselves to yield that ground in such a debate. From the biblical point of view, God is the center of all things.

So it works like this. Was the earth created some 6000 years ago? Or for the generous, would it be more like 12,000? The biblical answer is “wrong question.” First and foremost: God created the world. His purpose is something at which we might guess (I rather like CS Lewis’s suppositions), but that is not actually revealed in any obvious way. Rather, the point is to note He is the center of any questions we might ask about the whole thing. So instead of looking at all the data you can gather, or the data you might believe you can find in the Bible, how about we look at the question using the Bible’s own philosophical bias? Yeah, it works a lot better that way.

Whatever the various reasons God might have had, at least part of it is hinted at broadly in Scripture: A place for mankind to act out a reaction to God’s revelation. From there, it’s not too hard to imagine if you find evidence of human activity in the dust of the earth, it wasn’t created that way. Just about every other sign of activity and change is “natural” by definition.

The next mistake is assuming we are capable of dating those human events for which no dates are provided in the Bible. For example, honest historians will tell you the entire dating system for events in ancient Egypt is a house of cards. Most of what we think we know about Bible History and other ANE chronologies rests largely on associating them with “known” dates of Egyptian contemporary history. Objectively, it’s very iffy. The Bible text itself pays little attention to dates, frequently using round numbers, symbolic numbers, and generally treating time measure as a silly obsession of other people, not folks in the Bible. We don’t know how to handle that, for the most part.

But even if we could pin down dates of most human activity, it wouldn’t help us much. If any part of the major catastrophes described in Genesis can be taken literally, then any system of dating based on extrapolations of steady progress are utterly silly. Most secular dating systems do this, blindly assuming digging in the dirt to find layers associated with prehistoric eras and putting dates with them is possible by simply extrapolating, as if all natural events took place at some steady pace.

The biggest kicker is this: Why does anyone assume the world was created in some pristine state? Would that even make sense? Can you not imagine God knows a thing or two about efficiency? I have to wonder: If this were my project, would I need an earth in pristine, “new” condition? There’s not much point in that, since it would not be usable in that shape. If I knew millions and billions of years of radical changes needed to take place before man could make any sense of this created world, why not just create it in an aged condition?

Lest you consider that some sort of “fraud” on God’s part, you are back in that Hellenized territory, where man is the measure of all things. God, by definition, is always Truth and Righteousness. If He did it, it’s right. Just because humans — who deny Him — are confused by the apparent aged condition of the universe is no sign He is guilty of anything. They are. I am not logically required to assume some long string of world-shaping catastrophes compressed in some short time span to suggest the earth isn’t much more than 12,000 years old. I’m assuming my God is smart enough to put stuff where it was needed, rather like the science fictional act of cloning an adult with a full adult copy.

Until it can be proved conclusively God didn’t do that, I’d say the whole question is goofy.

Posted in religion | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Silly Debates on Creation

Tribal by Nature

Posted on August 2, 2009 by ehurst

It is a common error to mistake “perverted” for “civilized.” When Satan has a measure of control over your cultural foundations, it’s easy to accept some of his suggestions as advancements to a higher plane. Humans have struggled for years to break away from instinct, even to the point of denying we have any. Even the most damaged and schizophrenic among us still exhibit instincts, however twisted. A very powerful instinct built into human nature is clinging to the tribe.

The best way to see what’s at the bottom of human nature is to scape away everything on top. We see this during catastrophes, with people clinging most to those they have come to trust for whatever reason. While this would most often be one’s blood kin, there are degrees by which that net spreads wider when the closest affinities aren’t available. Even in places where you couldn’t and shouldn’t be trusting anyone breathing (in prison, for example), you will seek passing alliances for the advantage they offer. It’s hard wired.

Denying such wiring does not make us superior. No one is such a virtuoso at everything, such that they can always win. There is always someone out there with an advantage over you, and always will be. You will need to analyze possible alliances to see which offers you the best chance of gaining what you really believe you must have, at a price you are willing to pay. When you can start with an alliance in which you have already made heavy investment, where trust is already there, you are far more sure of the results of testing.

The pretense of standing “on your own two feet” is dangerous. Not that you will always fail, but that you will tend to build a life outside God’s will. God’s own Word assumes you will act tribally. His very own Kingdom assumes fellowship, and He has no Lone Rangers. We stand alone before Him in repentance only so we may join, as the rite of passage which strips away everything He calls evil. So it is in this lower realm, as well. We are tribal. It would make a lot more sense to cultivate it wisely and intentionally than fight our one hope of gaining the blessings God offers all humanity. We must consciously break down the myth of the individual, and replace it with the God’s viewpoint.

Most of what we fear and complain about in bad government is a direct result of trying to set aside the tribal lifestyle. When you build up the tribe, you don’t need government as we know it.

Posted in globalism | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Tribal by Nature

New Reasons to Use Linux

Posted on August 1, 2009 by ehurst

Let’s be clear: I don’t know all the details, don’t have a full range of understanding in computer technology. I’m pretty much a duffer. But I know what I like and what seems to work for me. What I do understand is human nature, particularly government and bureaucratic human nature. I’ve worked in it extensively. The biggest threat to any of us remains the combined mind and desires of human governments. It makes me just short of paranoid, but feel free to pretend I’m over the line, if it makes you happy.

I run Linux to be secure. There are OSes more secure than Linux, but they don’t work as well at the same time. It’s a compromise between security and function within my habits. If I was truly paranoid, I wouldn’t bother connecting to the Internet. As it is, the Net is currently my best venue for publication. I don’t have to charge anything because I don’t have to mess with expensive ways of getting my message to the masses. My ideas might be utterly stupid, but they won’t cost you anything. You can find my books linked here, no ads, and the pages load quickly because I write the code by hand, without images or JScript.

The stuff I write tends to poke at The Establishment in several ways. For example, a primary element in my writing says we don’t need organizations to do religion and please Jesus. We need to organize when we involve more than two people, but what we have in terms of mainstream organization is utterly contrary to what Jesus commanded. Another thing I attack is the epistemological assumptions which allow Evangelicals to assume they are obeying the commands of Jesus, when they aren’t. But I won’t bore you with the details of all that here. In doing all that poking, I’m also poking at the relationship which has churches sucking up to government. I also attack government — in short, all Western governments. I try to present a reason to find they are all illegitimate in God’s eyes.

There was a time the US gave lip service to the notion criticism was a good thing for government. But that was a myth some time ago, as the government here seethes at the temerity by which anyone would dare to complain. While I don’t support any part of what most people think of as democracy, nor even the particulars of a republic, I’m hardly the only one saying we don’t even adhere to those flawed principles which are widely advertised as the foundation of the federal government. You might say the whole building has slipped off the foundation and is resting on something else. That something else does not include a respect for the will of the people. In every way you can imagine, it is very much a case of us versus them.

As a part of all that mess, I have seen some things happen which make Linux a much better choice for doing what personal computers do.

As a former Military Policeman, I am painfully aware of planted evidence. Do not doubt for one second it’s not happening. It’s been part of the scene for a long time as the way to get rid of someone who annoys the system, but has clean hands. Put dirt on their hands for them. It is now a primary tool of federal law enforcement. One of the easiest ways to plant evidence on someone is to find in their possession a computer running Windows. Yes, Windows can be locked down to some extent, and Linux can be wide open, if you change a lot of things out of the box. But most people don’t. So when it comes out of the box, Linux is more secure. It’s harder to plant evidence because the majority of the tools for that don’t work well on Linux, but are all designed to work with Windows, and maybe some with Mac. If I were a real target, I’d already be gone, but until I cross that threshold (it does keep moving), I’m able to avoid most threats of planted evidence.

In fact, it’s pretty hard for just plain old snooping. For example, recent federal government websites, to which you are very much invited to visit, have begun requiring unconscionable levels of trust. For now, it only applies to auto dealers who attempt to participate in clunkers program: “When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the United States Government.” Given what I know about such things, this is just the start. That provision will soon appear on every site where contractors, vendors, and such interact with government. Eventually, it will surely become the policy for every citizen attempting to use any government service. At that point, what the feds say about the clunker program will apply to every federal activity:

Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized CARS, DoT, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign. By using this system, the user consents to such interception, monitoring, recording, copying, auditing, inspection, and disclosure at the discretion CARS or the DoT personnel.

They will assume your computer is part of their system, and you have extended an open invitation for snooping. It’s not enough the NSA eavesdrops on every electron of traffic across the Net, reads your unencrypted (and some encrypted) email messages, and notes every URL you request. No, they will demand full access to the whole thing. And while I have nothing to hide, there is a difference between secrecy and privacy. What is on my system is simply none of their business. For now, it’s more likely if they take an interest in the contents of my harddrive, that interest will appear on one of several levels. It’s not all one thing, and each agency does things a little differently. Between routine traffic sniffing and confiscation of the hardware, there are multiple levels and methods of snooping which might apply. So while I know the feds have left their IP addresses all over my site logs, they haven’t done much else. Yet. They could come right through my hardware firewall and try to scan the system, but most tools are frustrated if the target is running Linux. So if they want my stuff, they’ll have to decide it’s worth a little bigger investment in man hours. That website would hardly offer them full access to my laptop.

I’m no threat to the government, but they are most certainly a threat to me. My whole point is warning people they are a threat to everyone. While I give people a reason to believe resistance is no sin, I don’t call for direct action which constitutes anything criminal under current definitions. I don’t have any dirt on anyone important and I don’t hack into their systems looking for it. I doubt I could, but I’m not interested. Along those lines, I am content to observe what comes into plain sight. And I’ll probably talk about it, because I can’t avoid warning people when something harmful is on their path. At some point, I’m sure things will get more dicey. History shows governments always run from bad to worse in how they treat those they govern. Until then, just running Linux is pretty good protection from low level threats.

Posted in computers | Tagged , , | Comments Off on New Reasons to Use Linux

Hype, Hysteria, or Intel?

Posted on July 31, 2009 by ehurst

It’s pretty rare I would post twice on the same day, yet here it is. Apparently this business of the H1N1 flu virus is really jangling raw nerves. There is plenty of reason to believe it’s a designer virus, and not at all a natural occurrence. Even without that, we are rightly suspicious when the mainstream media pours on the scare tactics. As I understand it, some 35,000 die every year from natural flu epidemics. The vaccines have always been almost entirely pointless at best, guesswork which often misses.

Indeed, the best long-term preventative for flu is getting it and recovering naturally. Okay, that might be pretty rough. The best natural defense otherwise starts with basic good health. You know: no smoking, eat right, exercise, etc. The single best thing you can do after that is Vitamin D3. Consistent across the board recommendations run something close to 5000 IU per day (which also whips cancer). After that, lots of Vitamin C, then Echinacea. There are other precautions, but all of these don’t make money for Big Pharma nor corporate medicine and HMOs, so you won’t get this from them.

As we’ve covered here at least twice, it’s altogether moral and righteous to resist the government or anyone else seeking to coerce you into accepting these bogus inoculations. Places I visit across the web indicate an awful lot of folks are willing to use violence to do so. This whole thing looks like an attempt to herd folks into something for which the flu scare is just a cover. Some suggest it’s likely RFIDs will come with it. A great many are utterly certain the vaccine is nothing less than a covert poison program to reduce the population. If this has any basis in reality we are talking about a “cytokine storm” — a hideously unpleasant way to die.

The broad distrust of the companies producing the vaccines is almost surely justified. Their recent record of behavior has been downright criminal, but they are protected from prosecution on most things, either by choosing to test dangerous new drugs in 3rd world countries, or more recently, federal law which gives them a complete tort protection. And do we trust the federal government, either?

So when a story pops up this morning from Greg Evensen warning about roadblocks, metal bracelets and forced vaccinations, you would hardly be surprised it spread like wildfire. I noticed it around noon, CDT. I found about eight sites linking to it. Four hours later, there were several dozen. By now, you should expect to find over a hundred references to it.

I don’t know Evensen, nor his reputation. It could be an honest leak. It could also be a false leak, perhaps even as a test to gauge reaction to such an idea. Would anybody know if this is just Evensen trying to sell his seminars? If his warning is true, there is an awful lot of background missing. By itself, any combination of state, local and federal forces attempting to institute roadblocks for this purpose would result very shortly in dead police and medical contractors. I feel certain this is one issue which would provoke an armed uprising. Not even an economic collapse would be sufficient cover to make this work. It would require better protection than serious Iraq War tactics our troops are using.

I don’t doubt there are people in the US government right now who drool at the thought of culling the population of the country, or at least having an excuse to impose martial law. Some of them wear military uniforms. Still, I doubt many of the troops themselves are eager to do that here. I’m almost certain a sizable portion of the policemen in this country would outright refuse to do it, if for no other reason than their own safety. I would hope most medically trained people would consider it unethical. It would almost certainly require some serious major disaster to distract people, to create a huge climate of fear which would make them less likely to be on guard against such a program.

That would be the real story.

Posted in globalism, health | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Hype, Hysteria, or Intel?

Religious Music Woes

Posted on July 31, 2009 by ehurst

Why do so few overtly Christian songs break through commercially? How come there aren’t any powerful musical accomplishments among Christian musicians to rival, say, the long string of major hits by the Eagles? So I’ve been asked at times.

First, let’s make sure everyone understands there is a bias in secular music management against Christian music. The religion genre has its own market and marketing strategies, and the two don’t mix. For example, you can’t audition for American Idol singing a religious song. The exceptions in the system are notable, because they are so rare.

Second, the existence of a Christian music genre separate from the secular music market guarantees that rarity of “cross-over” hits. Worst of all, it guarantees the grubby-greedy-filthy ethics of the music management business maintains control even in the Christian market. As long as it’s “business” you can’t keep Babylon out of it.

The entire purpose of Christian music is not music, per se. It is worship. In the world of faith, all things are worship. You are either building up the glory of God, or that of Satan. There is no neutral ground; Jesus said so Himself. (And another thing: If I have to cite chapter and verse to prove that, you haven’t read the Bible enough. The ANE assumptions are you will recognize the reference.) In our minds, we over-philosophize about the divisions between overt support, overt attack, and things which seem neutral. In the Realm of the Spirit, there is such a thing as “harmless” in that sense, but I find the notion of black-n-white dichotomy a purely Western cultural invention. What Jesus meant was the matter of loyalty. If God is at the center of your desires, you are unlikely to embarrass Him.

This whole debate shows our cultural schizophrenia. We compartmentalize our world; that’s the whole purpose behind the analytical frame of reference. While we acknowledge a given thing can fit into different categories, even competing categories, we give far too much importance to the mere existence of categories in the first place. It’s okay to note our human experience in the world can be segmented into a logical structure, but to assume that structure is itself “reality,” even when we propagate that structure globally to most other humans (“academic standards”), is madness. Yes, it’s necessary for language to have definable terms in order to communicate between humans. What is not necessary is the degree to which we apply such structures, as if that’s the fundamental nature of Creation itself.

So explain this: The Beethoven, Wagner, and Satie I dearly love help me focus when I’m trying to write, but the Eagles, whom I also rather like, get in the way. Likewise, Petra and Bloodgood, also much beloved, also get in the way. It’s not simply a matter of instrumental versus lyrics, either. Strauss can get in the way, but the “Hallelujah Chorus” and “Carol of the Bells” do not. You may believe you or someone else can explain it, but it won’t explain it well enough to change things. And while we might mark that down to some degree as conditioning, it still is not, nor can ever be, something science and philosophy will ever fully explain.

The fundamental issue will always be that point of commitment: To what are you ultimately loyal? It won’t matter if some Christian band produces a hokey tune and unimaginative lyrics. Other Christians can sense the loyalty behind the song, and it will sell. That’s hardly the whole story behind the marketing of, say CCM. There’s a lot going on at the same time. Artistry matters, and whether it will sell to the crowd with the most money in their hands. Some of the most annoying songs are also the most comforting for a wide audience, so we keep hearing them. Or perhaps the song simply tickles an addictive mental distraction people want.

The Christian music market is rooted in Babylon, and some of the most loyal followers of Christ never get an album out. Some of the greatest artists of our time still labor in obscurity. Secular marketing has a very hard time with anything that won’t provoke mass appeal. For all their excuses, the marketing folks know they are trying to cultivate a manipulation factor in the buying public. If they could flip a switch to sell the next new album, they would do it, and try to make it hard-wired. Precious few music marketing managers care what’s right or wrong when they make that decision. Even when the managers are themselves musicians and servants of God, the decisions are made based on dollars, not loyalty to Christ. Some of the nastiest people you’ll ever meet perform CCM; some of the biggest names are folks you don’t want to know.

However, there is that extra element in their audience which seeks a worship experience, something altogether absent from the secular market. The secular music crowd don’t get that. They don’t worship in that sense. What appeals to followers of Christ on that level completely misses the secular audience. The music moguls recognize what sells, and can see some similarities in both products, which is frankly part of what damns the religious music market. Still, they don’t accept the existence of a spiritual factor because they don’t have it. To them, it’s simply a matter of a very different market, and frankly, there’s more money in secular music.

The biggest mistake any believer can make is letting a non-spiritual person define “success” for them. You might accept their definition in the sense of understanding how to deal with them, but the biggest disaster in religious music as whole is thinking the market does any good at all to promoting good music, much less good worship.

Posted in religion | Tagged , | Comments Off on Religious Music Woes

Truth Is No Threat

Posted on July 30, 2009 by ehurst

Loose lips sink ships. But only if the government owning the ships has rejected God. So let me propose a counter sound-bite: “Truth is no threat to the honest.”

Secrecy assumes there is no God. The Lord promised Israel if they relied on Him, He would take care of all the details and no enemy would stand before them. Just to show how much that reliance mattered, He once ran a demonstration which remains to this day utterly unforgettable. When a collection of allied forces approached, God informed Israel they should send out the choir as their advance line of attack. As the formation crested the hill, their enemies lay scattered and dying in the valley below.

That was no fluke. When you embrace the Laws of God, He supports your national safety and security. So much does He do so, He can use your army band marching with instruments to defeat a massive allied attack. You can broadcast to your enemy the exact details of your plans to defend, and it won’t matter. They will fail because God is on your side.

We have proclaimed in times past about God and right on our side, but we were lying. Justice is defined by the Laws of Noah, not by some materialist Greek philosophical base, filtered through Latin anti-human organizational structure, combined with pagan Teutonic morals, and all Sanforized and homogenized by Enlightenment atheism. God is not impressed by such things.

He is deeply impressed when a nation humbles itself before His throne, and enters the Covenant of Noah with Him. He’s pretty impressed when individual humans do so, too. Total honesty is an integral part of that.

Truth is no threat to honest people, because Truth is another name for God, and honesty is what He demands. Genuine honesty is His policy for all humans. Yes, there are things none of us should ever see, because they build an appetite for sin. That’s not secrecy, but covering sin. We also know we expose things to children slowly, in steps, so they can assimilate truth as they grow in understanding. The nation of adult Americans are children only if our national leaders worked hard to make them that way, also contrary to God’s commands.

Those who work to uncover secrets are doing God’s work.

[Note: This article will be added to the series, Studies in the laws of Noah.]

Posted in religion | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Truth Is No Threat

Ethics of Resistance

Posted on July 29, 2009 by ehurst

First off, nothing in Noah’s Covenant or the rest of the Bible requires you to resist. If you want to play along and believe God wants that from you, by all means, play along. You do have to reconsider when your decision applies to others. If by choosing to go along, you are dragging along others under your leadership, the burden is much higher. At that, you may well be required by Noah to resist.

Having covered that, there is a distinct ethical-moral consideration. Unless the threat is immediate, you cannot justify outright aggression. Naturally, it’s between you and God when the threat becomes “immediate,” but quibbling as an excuse for unjust bloodshed will fall heavily on your soul. All the more so when you lead others. The call from Noah is to form your tribe, then attempt to disentangle to the degree possible. If the ruling regime won’t allow it, consider ways you might resist and satisfy Noah.

Naturally, in these modern times, you should expect any government agency to use deception. If the decision has been made to, for example, to force the population to accept immunizations against the H1N1 flu, it is unlikely they’ll announce the intention honestly. People like me have already made enough noise and there is a significant portion here in the US who will not volunteer. Indeed, they will fight it. Expect the government to seek ways to sucker us into it.

That being the case, we do have some reason for being on-guard against any attention from the government. For example, I am a disabled veteran. In the past, I got most of my medical needs treated at the local VA clinics. In the past year, I found their treatments were pointless on a couple of things, and found my own solutions. I managed to cure some long-standing issues for which they were content to treat merely the symptoms. I haven’t been back in over a year. I’m trusting them less and less. I’m keeping my eyes open, reading the news, and checking non-mainstream sources. Depending on how it looks, when they call me to come in for the flu shot this fall, I may decide it’s time to quit going there altogether, forever. If I even suspect there are plans, all the more so if I hear about efforts, to make this stuff mandatory across the population, it’s time to make that final break.

Each of us has to decide for ourselves what’s required of us to obey Noah.

Posted in health | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Ethics of Resistance