Just Passing Through

I'm going to make up some lettering for one of my plain t-shirts:

Just say NO
to FLU SHOTS

Of course, I'll replace the "S" in shots with a dollar sign, and the "O" with the skull and crossbones for poison.

Should you not understand my complaint, let me suggest this page and this one, too.

For those to whom it might matter, I'm still around.

This is my "third blog." As such, it garners little attention from me any more. My ministry blog takes up most of my attention. The other, still important stuff I have to discuss shows up on my personal blog. What we have here is mostly a community blogging system, poorly indexed by the likes of Google and the new Bing.

Yet, the friends I have here do matter. There are times when, they too, are relatively silent. Some have disappeared from the scene, and a few new ones have arrived. One of the things I find most challenging is how many people here add tons of visual clutter to their blog page, and how it causes my poor little laptop to bog down. Most of that stuff is activated via ECMAScript (AKA JavaScript), something I have to come to loathe on the Internet. Most of my friends have no clue about such things, and it's hard to make them see how painful they make it for me to visit their pages.

Other friends make it hard for me to visit because of the things they want to share. Perhaps that's another way of saying I'm not sure why they asked to be on my friend's list. It's rude to ask pointed questions like this, but given the things to which I am very loudly committed, things frankly opposed to things some of my friends espouse, I'm puzzled by their interest. It's not like I'm some celebrity. Nor should such wondering be taken as a rejection, because I can't imagine turning away anyone, except for those who aren't genuine in their request. Yes, a bunch of people are just looking for some free advertising for something I just can't support, and I have turned down a few requests. But some seem genuine, yet embrace things I consider wrong. I'm not willing to criticize them for this, because I genuinely do love people. Somewhere between full honesty and etiquette, with the limited conveyance of personality this forum permits, it's hard to know when someone would want or need a more direct response.

Let me apologize because of the time constraints, and offer to all of my friends together the assurance I love you. But having that as my motive doesn't mean I know what I can do to make that love meaningful to you. Given I define "love" as the exertion of the self in seeking the welfare of another, not just some warm-fuzzy-feeling, I find myself stymied here from seeking that welfare.

Some mysteries are never solved on this side of Eternity.

I'm using someone else's computer to post this. I have switched totally to running without a GUI on my own computer. For the geeks, I'm using Lenny without any part of X.org. I'm not going to try to explain why, because I'm not sure it would make any sense to anyone but me.

The point is, I don't have a GUI, only console applications, all plain-text. That means I'm using plain-text browsers. Okay, I have Links2, with graphics on the console, but it doesn't support any part of Javascript, which is necessary for this website. I've tried Elinks with JScript compiled in, but it doesn't work here, either.

Since I can't post here from my own computer, it's unlikely I'll post at all. If you find it important to contact me, try email: ehurst at soulkiln dot org. I'll miss the friends I've made here, but life is full of such changes. It's not likely I'll change back any time soon without a sudden change in my economic fortunes.

God bless you all.

Update: I was wrong, as proved by this edit done from Elinks. Mea culpa. I had done something wrong and didn't realize I was actually able to log in, after all. I have to remember to reload the page manually after login. However, I caution all my friends to bear in mind I see no graphics at all here at MyOpera.

Most Christians aren't really aware of the various covenants noted in the Bible. Indeed, many aren't even aware the term "New Testament" means "New Covenant". A few understand the Law of Moses was a covenant between God and Israel, but aren't aware of the full implications. It wasn't just laws for Israel to follow, but a binding agreement which Israel failed repeatedly. Worse, as time wore on, their compliance worsened. What Jesus confronted in His day was a national leadership who didn't even really understand the Covenant, because they had thrown away their Hebraic culture, trading it for Hellenist intellectual assumptions, which cannot possibly catch the underlying meaning of Moses. Oddly, in their blindness, they still managed to do a pretty good job of understanding the Covenant of Noah, at least superficially.

If you look up the "Seven Noahide Laws" you'll likely find the Wikipedia entry near the top of your search results. This represents modern Jewish scholarship on the Bible passage near the end of Genesis 8, and into chapter 9. I would suggest their current major mistake is thinking Noah falls under Moses, whereas Jesus and the Apostles said the Covenant of Moses ended at the Cross, but taught Noah was still in force, as evidenced by the results of the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15. You'll probably notice the Apostles didn't echo all of the Seven Laws because it wasn't necessary. There were already plenty of laws against murder and theft, and blasphemy was too obvious. However, they did cite three issues because it might be news to Gentile Christians: idolatry, sexual immorality and meat with blood in it (usually strangled).

However, those three do a good job of covering things. I wrote elsewhere:

The first and most obvious requirement is withdrawing completely from pagan idolatry. This is translated variously in English texts of the New Testament, but it was more than just food. Paul makes it clear later it's not the physical reality but the perception of the watching world. There is one true God, and our loyalty to Him is undivided. Joining in pagan celebrations would compromise the impact of that witness. There were no details listed, but it was left to the conscience of the individual believers in their communities scattered around the world to prayerfully work out in each context what that required.

The issue of sexual purity went back before Noah. We who have seen the thread of revelation know God has consistently condemned sex outside the provision of lifelong commitment to building a family. This is easily tied to the call for civility and social stability, if not the very fundamental threat of compromise in the soul by the flesh. It's a special case of idolatry deserving special mention. If we have to start arguing about various sexual appetites for something outside the husband-wife pairing, we are already on the wrong ground. God granted only one provision for human sexual appetites, and there is absolutely no fundamental right to sex, much less any particular fallen desires for sex.

Meat with blood is paired with strangling as a single item. This is not a matter of what goes in your mouth, as Jesus noted, but of what comes out of your heart. Blood is a spiritual symbol going back to the Garden of Eden. It symbolizes the gift of life itself, and taking it lightly is the primary symptom of evil. It was the sin of Cain, and of Lamech, and clearly points back to the command we shall love and respect others equally with ourselves. Taking life is very serious business. It is required to keep civilization alive, but remains a heavy burden on government, not a privilege. Those who find it easy to harm others are the greatest danger to all human life. But that's not enough; a casual disregard of lower forms of life is also dangerous. Noah kept kosher long before it was codified in the Law of Moses, but the Lord said humans could eat anything they found edible. Animals were distinctly lesser beings, but God forbade under Noah anyone eating meat without draining away the blood, because it symbolized our acceptance of this still active Covenant of Noah. Nature itself will rebel against us if we do not obey and adopt the strict respect for life.

I suppose most Christians could accept this much once they are exposed to it. It's covered pretty nicely when Jesus said the whole Old Testament could be summed up in complete devotion to God and giving others the respect we want for ourselves (Matthew 22:34-40). What they may not grasp is just how poorly we keep that seventh item from the rabbinical list of seven: We do not have a just judicial system. That is, by biblical definition, we have a hideously corrupt government, from top to bottom. Our so called "civil culture" would draw vociferous condemnation of those who understood Noah's covenant best. We might be able to read the translated words, but the ancient biblical concept of justice is utterly foreign to most people born in the West. Need I remind people: That ancient culture is the one Jesus taught as fundamental to understanding what God requires.

You might well understand the penalties God threatened against Israel under the Covenant of Moses. You'll also note Moses applied to Israel only. However, you may not realize Moses was a particular instance of Noah. The Law of Moses was a specific application of the Laws of Noah in the case of Israel -- that people, that land, that time. Noah is a broader, general covenant still in force today. The various blessing to Israel for obedience, and the various curses for defiance, were all one singular package of promises implied by the Covenant of Noah. Do what Noah says and you can expect nature itself to remain pretty orderly -- "season upon season" is the phrase. This is symbolic language telling us God will direct Creation to cooperate with our needs in obtaining reasonable prosperity, health, and security. Those are summed up in the meaning of the word shalom.

So here's the point: If you and I as individuals follow Christ, we pretty much fulfill Noah, but we need Noah as an example of what it means to follow Christ. On a broader level as nations with governments, our failure to observe the Covenant of Noah guarantees we are doomed. Nature itself will fight against us. Our leaders will not be able to make the right choices. So to the degree there is global warming or global cooling, and to the degree either of them threatens us, it is not simply the mechanics of human pollution, nor the random swings of earth cycles, but the holistic reaction of Creation against our sins. Even the very idiocy of tyranny swallowing the Western nations is the result of our failure to observe Noah.

This stuff is not a secret. It's been there in plain sight for thousands of years. Our intellectual culture conditions us not to see it, but it's still possible to figure out the minimum necessities. We have refused. We are in serious trouble.

Because things simply did not come together as I had hoped, I did what I could. My expertise in Linux generally, and CentOS particularly, is using it and making it work for me. The other thing I do is write about it. So I've written a series of lessons targeted at the ordinary home PC user who has decided they just can't keep using Windows. It's not really a sales pitch, and I don't do very much advocacy. Instead, I offer it as one alternative which is very real, a fair contender against the rest, by making the instructions something most do-it-yourself types can understand and execute.

The series appeared first on my other blog -- Just Passing Through -- with the first in the series starting here. The series will also be published on the webzine I write for, Open for Business. There are eight lessons, and the last is an introduction to the advanced topic of rebuilding a software package to make it work differently.

So instead of a meta-distro off of CentOS, I have simply written how to tame it for a different use.