Who Says We Can’t?

Posted on June 14, 2009 by ehurst

Inherent in the concept of “academic” is the idea we isolate things from the complexity of the real world so as to understand some element more fully. The assumption is we do this for as many parts of the reality matrix as possible so we can come back to the matrix better informed. In real practice, everyone gets really good at one particular part and assumes they have reality all worked out completely within their own little discipline. Turf wars follow. The biblical worldview assumes you start from the whole, and apply peculiar talents to the part you can grasp, but never assume you can play God. That is, you never assume your understanding of things is more than woefully limited. You know enough to act, but never measure things in terms of success, but in terms of faithfulness. The more mature and experienced are the first to admit they don’t have the world by the tail.

That sense of healthy self-doubt is missing from far too much of our world today. It seems worst in the cesspool of government bureaucracy. Those who are particularly free of any hint of self-doubt are steered into enforcement roles. It’s a paradox the people least morally qualified are the ones most likely to hold such positions. From personal experience in law enforcement, I can attest people with a conscience are driven out by the others, if only because it took them too long to leave on their own revulsion. Now, that would be fine if we all realized it and took it for granted. That falls under “know your enemy.” But no, we have to paint this glowing aura of holiness on government in general, and in particular over those who face the front line of enforcement. We have no room for recognizing there can be a hero for bad causes.

I’ve seen the underbelly of the beast and left because it was sickening. I came to that conclusion, not because I have read things like this, but because such writings merely echoed my own personal experience. I was being trained to attack everything in my own personal background. Monthly Review supports socialist and communist views avidly; I am aware of that. Capitalist writers support torture and wars of aggression, so it’s not a matter of whether I favor left or right, but condemn the whole mess. Both sides embrace different flavors of evil.

Rather than launching into another diatribe against police officers, let us cut to the chase. What we have today is fundamentally wrong all the way around. Carping about police abuses is a waste of time until we cease from the niggling academic discussion of what they should act like, and realize the whole thing is horribly broken. The reason we have high levels of complaints about abusive police behavior is more than just a reason to call for reform. It is a symptom of the utter failure of modern Western society itself. You can’t fix something which is badly designed, or poorly built, when it has an evil purpose from the start. According to the Bible, no one who isn’t related to you by blood or marriage should have any significant control over any part of your life. The very existence of strangers carrying guns and directing your compliance with written laws and policies is sin itself.

That so many cannot conceive of life without a police force simply indicates how successful Satan has been at shaping this world. Yes, much of Scripture assumes we can’t change political structures, even to the point of advising us not to try. No amount of learning can overcome the Fall, since the whole of the human being is damaged by it. The idea behind civilization was to ameliorate some of the effects, to provide a framework for keeping things together until God is finished with His Creation. He made clear through the writings of the Apostle John, called The Book of Revelation, He fully expected things to only get worse as time rolled. At the same time, He held forth a demand we increasingly withdraw from the broken structure of human society and adopt His original plan in defiance of those structures. The structures were laid out, but far too many are blinded by false assumptions going into the reading, so they can’t see what He meant to say.

We are meant to live tribally. We are supposed to stay together in the extended family household, living in whatever space we can negotiate to hold. While we do interact with the fallen world around us, we do not accept its mold, but follow our own. We are called to live a separate existence even in the middle of fallen society. All this business of dysfunctional families is Satan’s handiwork creating a system preventing that extended family lifestyle. But when we do it God’s way, there is no need for much government in the first place. Your government, your school, your social system, your entire world is your family. That’s what God intended from before the Fall.

Who says we can’t return to that? God demands it.

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Interwoven by Nature

Posted on June 13, 2009 by ehurst

Do you want God to help in some particular way? Seek the welfare of another. It’s not a simple matter of paying your dues, because God is hardly reducible to a slot machine. He’s keeping an eye on you, and if you take seriously His command to love your neighbor as yourself, He will meet your needs. It won’t much matter the mechanism He chooses; the principle is reliable whether you consider yourself born-again or not. That’s the Covenant of Noah. When you need something, give something. If you become a giver by reflex, your needs are met. Guaranteed — written on the rainbow.

Personal example: My wife needed to talk last night. It was spiritual stuff; she needed a sounding board to confirm what she was sensing. Her welfare is my welfare. It wasn’t a chore, because it was interesting to discuss. In the middle of that, the Lord inspired me with an answer to a query of my own. No one has to explain the dynamics to me. By putting myself aside, stopping what I was doing and giving her my full attention, I filled my own needs. It is not possible to separate my needs from hers in marriage; the union is organic in nature. When I embrace that, act on it, God supplies.

I have been puzzling over why I feel so burdened to go Downtown and spend time. I had wanted to do so this past Monday, but I something else arose. Besides, my bike was not quite suitable for long rides like that. I needed something to elevate the handlebars enough to take some pressure off my hands and arthritic shoulders. The part I ordered arrived yesterday — a couple of days earlier than promised — but I still wasn’t sure what I would do Downtown, aside from walking around and praying.

It’s part of the bigger question regarding the next ministry pursuit. I knew some time ago it was something about the urban setting, much to my dismay. I prefer the rural setting. Still, once I took my sign downtown, I was seized by a desire to be there as much as possible. For whom, I did not know; there was nothing concrete, and I find most modern ministry training about “target audience” is a corruption of the New Testament practices. When I received such training at college, it felt somehow wrong, even though it made sense intellectually. At that time I was unaware of the vast gulf between Western logic and biblical logic. At any rate, I had no idea how to filter out the possibilities, so I could not think of an obvious course of action to match.

Earlier in the day, I had realized a very significant part of what I have been doing is very much in the way of pastoral counseling. Indeed, it’s at least half of what I’ve done since the Lord called me to ministry at age 16. In case you haven’t been enlightened, this is not some glorified social work, because the divine version is more about sensing what God is up to in that person’s life, at least insofar as I can contribute. It’s mostly listening and asking useful questions, but it’s also a large degree of expressing confidence in God’s ability to answer anything and everything. Sometimes all they need is a little hope. Having walked through the Dark Valley of the Shadow of Death myself all too many times, I can affirm surrender is not an option. This sort of work became rather large in my mind during the day.

So I applied myself to my wife’s need for a listening ear. Then it hit me.

I’m going to letter another t-shirt. On the front, it will say, “Street Pastor.” Now, I realize that’s not a unique phrase. I am hardly of the sort to even appreciate the style of that young fellow using that title to promote his Gospel Hip Hop recordings. Nor would I care to ape the glorified social workers for which the Church of England uses it, where men and women do little more than escort home youngsters suffering from a night of partying in the pubs and clubs. There is nothing really wrong with their work itself, but I won’t be carrying water bottles and cheap shower shoes. Indeed, I may end up doing nothing but sitting around on public benches nodding at folks who smile — or snicker — about the message on the t-shirt. Still, I find it a safe assumption, based on past experience, God will selectively move folks by that label to consider the sorts of things they might discuss with a pastor. I’m quite certain a major element in doing any good is being there consistently. I’m guessing for now that would mean mostly catching folks at lunch or on break, so initial planning is to ride out from home to arrive mid-morning.

I won’t accomplish a thing without the loving and prayerful support of my beloved wife. Without carrying my share of the load, I can hardly justify that support. So it is in this world for all of us. There are plenty of people we should stay away from on very good grounds; we don’t need to raise any unnecessary barriers. God is watching. If we can’t reach out to another person with some expression of support and respect, we deserve none from God.

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Economics: You Don’t Have to Understand It All

Posted on June 11, 2009 by ehurst

Economics, as a part of the Social Sciences, is an effort to explain how we got here. Data is pretty easy to get, but providing a comprehensive explanation of human nature requires interpretation. If your interpretation is flawed, you will inevitably ignore some data, maybe even hide it (consciously or subconsciously), to prevent your precious theory falling apart. The problem is, no one theory really accounts for everything. In the process of examining the record of mass human behavior, we find ourselves in the stream itself, and no one can ever really step out of it without losing the ability to comprehend the whole thing. We aren’t gods.

A tip of the hat to my friend, Robin, for alerting me to yet another strong analysis of how we got in this mess. You can read the original post by Charles Hugh Smith, and you might understand it. I agree with Robin’s critique in principle, but for myself, I detected a hint of his contention buried in Smith’s own analysis. That is, without reading everything else Smith has written, it seems he assumes fiat currency is a problem of its own, but does not squarely address it because he emphasizes something else.

And if you really wanted to dig into the banking moguls who lead the pack of greedy wealthy elites scraping off all the profit from the world’s peasantry, you could find all too many commentators willing to enlighten you. I don’t deny the term “Illuminati” could refer to something real and dangerous, but too many people have their own definition. The threat is real, but too many fools jabber endlessly about their private nightmares. Perhaps that is partly intentional to mask the facts, but you can easily get lost in trying to discern who is a propaganda plant, whether they know they are such, and how much fact is used to disguise blarney. It’s not a total waste of time, since the mainstream media is no better source of information than a million blathering idiots, but we don’t have enough time to sift everything. I’m pretty sure consensus is not possible, any more than it is in academia. Even PhDs can write some really stupid stuff. You’ll have to build your own filtering system and make what you can of it all.

It’s much easier to agree on what we can do about it. On the one hand, an awful lot of this is completely out of our hands. Indeed, I remain convinced the elite folk seeking to steer all this suffer, thankfully, from their own limited vision and leverage. The global intentions of past empires lasted a lot longer than anything we see today, and I doubt the brightest minds of today’s Illuminati see things any more clearly than Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander, or the Roman Senate. They have the advantage of far faster communication nowadays, but that would not exist were it not so open and out of their control as it now is. So while they can extend their manipulations farther and faster, they are paradoxically less absolute. The fine science of human manipulation inevitably grinds to a halt on things too easy to ignore in making grand plans. There will always be some who just won’t play along, the cranks who see just enough to prepare monkey wrenches to limit the power of the machinery to devour them. We can develop resistance because that is one thing which seems to change little over the course of human history.

Characterize it any way you wish, but the single greatest monkey wrench is your own brain. When you tend to question everything, to include maintaining a healthy dose of self-doubt, you won’t be herded so easily to your doom. The very existence of monkey wrenchers is the defeat of tyranny. They can never be fully eliminated, neither tyrants nor rebels. Indeed, glorious visions of liberty are always false. The American Revolution traded one slavery for another. Only briefly did anyone living in Colonial America hold real freedom, perhaps a single generation. While the tyrants of the world are afflicted with eternal lusting for a control they can never really gain, it is dangerous for us contrarians to ever believe in our own dreams fully. Rather, we have to realize the mere existence of thinking rebels is its own good. In this we agree with Jefferson about revolutions every twenty years — it’s the best we can hope for that tyrants are never allowed to fester long in control, but we should never expect them to simply go away. We can’t afford to take ourselves that seriously.

No, you don’t have to understand it all to be blessed with the assurance it’s not all a waste. Tension is both the bane and blessing of living in a fallen world. You want to end all tension? The grave is the only place you’ll see that.

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Secret Sins of Government

Posted on June 9, 2009 by ehurst

During military service, I went through all the stupid security briefings, worked alongside a couple dozen military “spooks” and so forth. I asked rude questions to make sure I understood the philosophy, and didn’t care about the cute little scenarios you get from training documents. Here’s what it boils down to: We keep certain tactical information secret so our enemies are caught off guard, and don’t catch us off our guard.

Okay. So why do we mark “secret” stuff which we know the enemy already knows? It boils down to this: to cultivate paranoia. I realize suffering from paranoia doesn’t automatically mean they aren’t all out to get you, but paranoia is another name for a sinful denial of useful information to those who have a need. We end up with thousands of troops killing civilians because of stuff like that. Or maybe we end up with troops committing other heinous acts they would not willingly do if they fully understood what was going on. In other words, it all becomes an excuse to fool men of conscience into violating their conscience, and — yes, I have to say it — exposing them to demonic activity they might otherwise avoid. We have enough of that already, thank you.

It’s called manipulation, tricking people into doing things they would rightly resist. No, sir, you do not know better than I. Nor does anyone else, from the President on down. You see, God Himself says so. Bluntly, plain as day: If we adhere to His Laws, it won’t matter what our enemies know about us, they cannot prevail in the long run. He will direct Nature itself to fight on our side. We don’t know much about it because we’ve never tried it. Demons don’t find it easy to show up where folks tend to observe God’s commands.

The corollary is simple: Because we refuse to do things God’s way, we have guaranteed in the long run our nation will fall. Nature itself will fight against us. Instead, we will pile up crime upon crime, offending God mightily, until He’s had enough. Not just that, but we will get more and more demonic powers active in every element of what our nation does, in particular in government. Does anyone not realize the way Congress responds more to dollars than voters’ expressed will? Demons run Congress. Does the President lie about what he intends to do? Does he lie about what it’s going to take to fix this country? Demons run the Executive Offices, too. Do we see the Supreme Court filled with idiots and making unjust rulings? Demons live in their law libraries, attach themselves to the judicial robes, live in the equipment, etc. Meanwhile the bureaucrats in every office are wading through demons.

It won’t matter how wise, good and faithful any man or woman may be. When they get into those demonic buildings and breathe in the atmosphere of Hell, their work will be damned. You think this is hyperbole or colorful speech, don’t you? It’s the literal truth. We have rejected God’s ways, so don’t be surprised when blood runs in the streets in places during the next few months. It’s so easy to think we have it all figured out with our social sciences, but we like to ignore what we can’t see with a TV camera. Fine, look for the bloodshed, riots, civil war, etc. Demons will be having a party.

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Police: No Neutral Ground

Posted on June 7, 2009 by ehurst

You might think the writer and commenters at Pro Libertate blog start out with a hatred for any law enforcement. You’d be wrong; they only hate what it has become. In response to an interesting look at the sheepdog metaphor for police officers, this one comment from Jim O’Connor stands out:

So, how is it that we little people aren’t justifiably in fear of our lives with every police interaction we might have given:

1) there are almost no severe penalties for police when they maim or kill us

2) they are almost always armed with multiple life threatening weapons while making it difficult for us to be similarly armed

3) they often travel in gangs and always have access to backups via radio and dispatch services

4) we’re effectively legally prohibited from trying to do even the slightest thing to defend ourselves once they attack us

5) any other place you might try to get to is occupied by a similar gang who is all too willing to take up their “brother’s” grudge so you can’t get to a neutral place to surrender yourself for impartial evaluation without risk of unaccountable reprisals for things you may not have even done

As a former policeman myself, I find this an accurate appraisal. The particular item of interest is the last. Under the Law Covenants of the Old Testament, there was always a refuge, a neutral place where you could wait until your case is reviewed. The existence of such places assumes no one is perfect, and any policing agent may be mistaken. We have no such viewpoint in evidence in our nation these days. That business of “presumed innocent until proven guilty” is nothing but words.

So let’s state the obvious: This is sin. That is, our current situation is a rank offense against God. In His Laws, this justifies a certain amount of resistance. Second-guessing may be very messy, time consuming and expensive, but without it we have no claim to a just system. You wanna be a cop? It’s not just a job, but a sacred calling with a very high standard. Bear the full burden, or count yourself among the Children of Satan.

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Downtown Clown

Posted on June 4, 2009 by ehurst

The canyons of Downtown Oklahoma City were fairly peaceful today. I carried my sign back and forth between roughly E.K. Gaylord Avenue and Walker Avenue, incrementing one block north each time between Reno and 3rd Street. It took roughly two hours starting from the convenience store at Lincoln and Reno, scooping in the few blocks of Bricktown.

There was a lot more pedestrian traffic there, but little visible response. One fellow stopped me to shake my hand and jabber a bit about his faith. It was refreshing, but I’m afraid I may have seemed too much in a hurry to him. Still, I enjoyed seeing some of the revitalization projects.

I’m going to start spending more time riding my bike with the lettered t-shirts, so I can cover more ground with the message. Perhaps I can start thinking about handing out pamphlets more visibly. I’m hoping I can avoid having people take them only to toss them to the wind. Littering is really annoying to me. I’ll need to pray and think about this some.

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Surrendering to Babylon

Posted on June 3, 2009 by ehurst

We have surrendered to Mammon, and cannot claim to serve God. Babylon is the symbol of all sins arising from greed, and frankly includes middle class “virtues” (prissy materialism) and capitalism. Both capitalism and the middle class merchant arose from a rejection of God’s standards. No, not European Medieval Feudalism, but God’s Word assumes Ancient Near Eastern Feudalism. The biblical standard is tribal economics of shared resources within the family. No other basis can claim God’s approval. The same goes for the social structure God expects. We are supposed to live in the extended family association, and the so-called nuclear family household is a poor substitute.

I’ll point out two prongs of the stealth attack.

The first is cultural degradation. A single example: How many remember the so-called “Summer of Love”? While the average middle class American did object, he stood on sand in the face of a flood. The hippies charged mainstream America with materialistic phoniness, and the charges stuck. They had no grounds for objecting to wanton public lust because their own preferred sins were no better. What many in America had winked at behind closed doors the young did openly. So when Colin Blunstone and his friends recorded that lilting, “It’s the time of the season,” the artistry overwhelmed any token resistance. Fine music with hideous morals. No, not everyone was guilty of winking at sexual misbehavior, but the culture itself didn’t do much to stop it, so why should there be any pretense? The establishment wanted material progress at any price, and the rebels wanted material comfort without price. Now it’s the norm.

Second I would list the shift to false patriotism. In particular, I’m shining the light on Evangelicals here. It’s bad enough so very many leaders of American Protestant churches were guilty of secret sexual sins, but they bought into warfare as a duty before God. I can recall when the American flag was seldom seen in the church auditorium. Most folks seemed to remember that was a battle flag, inappropriate next to the pulpit. Then the vast and incomprehensible heresy of Dispensationalism took the Fundamentalists by storm, and suddenly we had to go to war against every enemy of Israel. In the background, the first real Neocon openly admitted it was his plan to deceive the people “for their own good.” The textbooks in a million classrooms changed, and the sermons in a million churches changed, and in just a decade or so, we were a nation of bloodthirsty churches. I have seen with my own eyes a blasphemous reverence for the US flag during ostensible worship of Jesus Christ.

Not a single war since 1812 was necessary for America. Every one of them involved the sponsorship of the same small group of investors and bankers playing all sides. I didn’t mention above the textbooks had already been changing since before 1900 at the behest of industrial investors seeking to turn the nation into a vast hive of mindless worker bees. The change during the 1950s and 1960s was just another step in that direction. The same group of big merchant moguls, even with newer generations, still adhered to the same plan — making money off the backs of the masses. The underlying emptiness of middle class culture itself was firmly established by the birth of consumer credit, the invention of the legal fiction of corporate “person-hood,” and the assumption people you’ve never met could meddle in your personal affairs. That meddling went down to minute details aimed at forcing a mere external observance to a rigorous cultural framework of “progress” measured only in material goods. If it didn’t make a buck, it was somehow frivolous and sinful.

That’s the heart of Babylon, and that is what we are today. Look what it brought us.

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Last MWC Sweep

Posted on June 1, 2009 by ehurst

My sign is wearing quite well. I took it on one last run through Midwest City today. Got my beloved wife to drop me off near SE 29th Street and Douglas Boulevard at 7:15. Traveled north to Reno Avenue, west to Midwest Boulevard. Headed back south to SE 29th Street, west to Air Depot Boulevard. The final leg was north on Air Depot back to Reno again, about 8 miles total, 2 hrs 45 min.

The interesting thing was the stiff southerly gusting winds. From every angle, it was work to keep the sign upright and aligned. Got back the LBE harness I gave my son some years ago, and it made things a lot easier to carry. However, every time I wanted a drink, I had to stop and put the sign down. It required both hands to get the canteens out. I’ll need to rig my sport bottle to hang on the belt for easy access.

A couple of people yelled at me, but one was obvious foul language. A couple of guys working on the roof of a restaurant gave me a thumbs up. A few waves and smiles otherwise.

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Don’t Hate, But Don’t Trust Cops

Posted on May 31, 2009 by ehurst

Perhaps you’ve seen the infamous video of an OHP Trooper roughing up a Creek Nation EMT. I dare say plenty of Okies are unsurprised. The State of Oklahoma has never been very kind, and hardly respectful, of the Creek Nation. Just a few days before that video was shot, the OHP had confiscated two truck loads of tobacco products headed to the Creek Nation shops. Oklahoma has fought hard to deny the treaties made with the various native tribes since before statehood. This merely echoes federal policies.

We note, first of all, this amounts to a very sinful failure to observe the Covenant of Noah, via unilateral abrogation of treaties between sovereign nations. Treaties amount to covenants sworn before God, and He takes that seriously. Niggling and quibbling around the edges until you eventually take a bite out of the center of the thing is de jure proof of bad faith. Our nation has sinned, and Oklahoma is a major party to that sin.

However, the smaller issue is important for those of us striving to please God. By all accounts, the Trooper is a decent guy, as most OHP officers are. People are people. Whether he was actually a good moral man remains open to debate, but at that moment he had a serious attack of the stupids. If we ignore, for a moment, the very ugly relations between the OHP and the Creek Nation, this whole thing was quite petty. Acting professionally would have meant following the ambulance until the patient was transferred to the hospital, then calmly discussing the alleged infraction. By no means was the radio exchange justified.

It’s possible there are other pertinent facts not yet released. As a former police desk sergeant myself, I would have removed Trooper Martin from duty until superiors could review the case. Such an incident indicates a patrolman needs some time to think it over, and I would not have allowed him on patrol again until I was satisfied the agency would not be further embarrassed by such foolishness. Cameras are everywhere, these days. Ethics means acting professionally as if you were being watched, even when you are sure you aren’t. Morality is a standard yet higher, because it assumes God is always watching. Keeping your temper, even when you have to defend yourself, remains a professional standard in my book.

So we are left now realizing even supposedly good cops can get stupid, and threaten life and safety totally without any justification. You don’t have to hate policemen to realize you can’t trust them at all. They are not necessarily the enemy of the rest of us, but we must never forget the systemic tendency for them to regard us as their enemy. Be relieved when the State does the right thing; never be surprised when it’s agents treat you as less than human. It’s what you should expect.

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Lawful Love

Posted on May 30, 2009 by ehurst

Jesus said “loving your neighbor” fulfills your obligation to God regarding His Creation (Mark 12:28-34).

The context of the discussion was very much a matter of law and Law. God had revealed His standards in a rather extensive suzerain-vassal treaty with the Nation of Israel, but the point of discussion was whether that could be summed up in simple statements. It could. The most basic requirement was giving God His due respect. The second was a similar respect for your fellow humans. To observe these two principles would easily sum up all the other written revelation from God.

The whole point was to think expansively, not narrowly. Western Civilization, via philosophical assumptions, does a very poor job extending an idea beyond its semantic boundaries. Ancient Near Eastern Civilization tended to use words as symbols of much bigger ideas, ideas hard to express in any human tongue. The point is: People who respect God and His revelation tend to act according to the principle of love. But not according our modern use of the term “love.” We have almost nothing in our cultural matrix to account for the meaning Jesus gave the term.

He would probably accept this definition for love: Seeking the welfare of another person. That is, extending your ego boundaries to include other people, such that you realize their needs are your needs, and vice versa. This is what Jesus meant was lying under the Covenant of Noah, as well. If within your ability to decide how to act (your “will”) you include a reckoning of what is in the best interest of others you touch, you will tend to act lawfully. The whole Old Testament structure of Law and laws regarding your duty to God for His Creation would be satisfied with putting humans first, and giving them all equal weight in deciding what’s good behavior. Thus defined, love is the satisfaction of the law.

That almost everyone fails this is manifestly obvious. That is, no one of us ever really succeeds in keeping this principle at all times. God made plain, speaking as the ultimate Eastern Potentate of All Things, He would accept a certain amount of failure. He offered a vast array of means for restoring us to His good graces, largely based on the concept of apologizing, of confessing it was a mistake. Indeed, it’s pretty much a confession we are worthless at it, but wish we weren’t so powerless to do good. He made it clear it wasn’t a matter of performance, but of desire. This does not repair all the damage we do, but it does keep us in the clear from God’s perspective of active enforcement. That we willingly seek to clean up the mess is on-going proof of our confession we aren’t perfect.

But some of that perfection is well within our reach.

Why do we find ourselves so easily turning to oppressive governments? Why do we not learn the lessons of history generation upon generation? Even if we set aside the very obvious fact certain “powers that be” do their best to prevent us knowing the real story, and when some of us actually get our hands on the real story, we still have a problem with this basic principle of love=law. It’s not just the occasional error here and there, but a false orientation. There will always be bullies seeking an excuse to walk on others, and we will never get rid of them while the world remains fallen. We provide them the perfect excuse when we fail to observe the law of love.

We allow the behavior of bullies to become the target of our anger. That’s okay, because a part of God’s requirements in the Covenant of Noah is any government and laws must be just according to His standards, and there is an implied duty to reject a government which rejects God’s standards. So rising up against the bullies of this world is not a sin in itself, because they can be murderous, and deserve to die for their crimes, as God commanded Noah must happen. The burden of executing that justice falls on the entire human race. Such a high standard is extrapolated into the basic commandments Jesus discussed with that fellow that day. But when we allow that anger to affect how we treat others, we are in danger of our own judgment.

Carrying a gun is not a risk to other people unless you handle your gun poorly. Safe gun handling is a bigger threat to bullies than to anyone else. Refusing to pay taxes is a risk only to bullies. That they do some good things with that money does not excuse confiscation of property for all the other purposes which are unloving. The state apparatus which protects only itself and its prerogatives is evil by definition. But running a stop sign is a risk to everyone. Some actions are not merely defiance of the bullies; they defy the principle of love itself.

The burden upon you and I is to evaluate each day, sometimes every step of the way, whether our actions constitute love. When the demands are competing, we cannot simply favor ourselves willy-nilly, we have to decide what really matters. If we never think about it in the first place, we have already failed to love. Failure to love is a blanket failure of all laws. That means the bullies have won. We have no moral standing to oppose them. If you are going to rise up on moral grounds, on the love=law principle, you have to show some good faith effort to observe it yourself.

Very often, your recalcitrant observation of that principle is itself the ultimate act of rebellion against tyrants.

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