Kiln of the Soul

The Ancient Near Eastern assumptions about reality is quite different from Aristotle's.

Aristotle posited a man-centered epistemology. In his logic, all the universe, seen and unseen, was a continuum. He did not deny there could be deities, demons, angels, etc. But they were ranged in intelligence and power by increments above us humans. They were simply more of the same, just as creatures below us. There was no clear break, and this universe is all there ever could be.

Again, I remind readers Aristotle knew Jewish scholars, and could not have avoided hearing the Hebrew Scriptures quoted. However, when he published his formal framework for human knowledge, he pointedly excluded the Hebrew viewpoint.

If you can envision a map of the Middle East, and mark out the whole territory of human habitation starting with the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea, down the coast to the corner, then across to Arabia; north to the Caucasus and then drag the whole thing eastward to at least the Indus River, all the peoples in those areas at one time or another held a common assumption there is a parallel universe of sorts, a Spirit Realm which is just out of human reach, and utterly different. So different, it could not be described in human terms. Some of the early civilizations in that part of the world did drift away from this in varying degrees, but at least during the time of Abraham (c. 2200 BC) the known world there shared that assumption.

Thus, when we come to the time of Jesus, we find the teachings of the Pharisees envision Heaven as no more than a really nice place just like earth. Hell was just a little worse than that valley of burning trash south of the Temple Mount. Angels were just a tiny bit different from humans, etc. In their minds, when the Messiah came, He would make the world into paradise for the Jews. It was all mapped out, calculated in some detail, well before Jesus was born. They rejected Jesus because He kept telling them they were missing the whole point, that the Realm of the Sky (the Kingdom of Heaven) was of a totally different nature. It was nothing like this world.

In other words, the influence of Aristotle was painfully obvious. Jesus was pressing the Ancient Hebrew outlook, but they had lost contact with that some generations before. Scripture assumes a sharp divide between this world and the other one, and they were unable any longer to understand their own Scripture.

Eternity is not simply a different brand of similar reality, but a totally other kind of reality. Indeed, it is Reality, whereas this world is a big fat lie.

The fundamental issue is written in human nature: A man is a man when he is decisive.

Not an overbearing controller; that's the Western image. The biblical image is one who knows what he can and must supervise, and how much. He always yields as much as possible, sometimes prodding subordinates to take responsibility, sometimes outright refusing to help. At other times, you can discern they care about something and let them have as much room as they want.

All the more so when the thing in question matters not to you. Even if you are wrong about that, you can't know until you see them make a mess. Don't blame them unless they defy instructions and such, and give them the benefit of the doubt. You are obliged to take charge of those things for which God holds you responsible, as much as it lies within your hands.

For things which honestly don't matter, unless you are quite artful about passing the buck, don't. Instead, engage the whimsy angle. A critical element in being a godly leader is mystery, just as it is a critical element in revelation of Our God. We never know quite what to expect, even when we know for certain He will keep His promises. The actual way in which He delivers is subject to a vast range of creativity we cannot fathom. So, in those things which fall into your lap and really don't matter, engage whimsy, and demand something utterly unexpected. Cultivate a broad range of thinking in your down times about God's sense of humor, and emulate that.

Never hide the truth on things that matter, if the folks you deal with give you a chance to tell them. Pearls before Swine remains a principle we keep in mind, but for those under our shepherd's care, we owe them as much truth as we can tell on things that matter. Still, a small amount of insecurity is the most optimal state for those who follow. Those who lead should understand and embrace their own insecurity about some things.

If you've been reading about Game, you would recognize most of this. A portion of what makes sex work well is a part of what makes every other human interaction work well. Make people always wonder what you are thinking on some things. Most people who aren't leaders will always be worried about inconsequential things. God's way of teaching people what doesn't matter is yanking them around a bit on such things. On things that matter, He has always revealed the whole game plan.

So, be decisive. If they try to push your buttons, turn to ice. You can't simply turn off anger and fear, but the proper response is to push that off into another compartment and become a block of ice-cold stone. You'll have to estimate the best way to respond based on your character, experience and talents, but the starting point is to disengage because the person trying to hurt you has stepped outside the Covenant. For that brief moment, they become an object of pity, at best. But if you lose control of your temper, you have yielded control to them. Anger, rightly used, is the signal to turn wall off the emotions and act on pure logic under the Laws of God. Correction is always served cold.

Sometimes you'll need to instruct, warn, and demand things necessary to carry out your mission. At other times you'll simply leave them to stew in their own emotions. Pray to the Lord for such wisdom, and He will surely put you through the training it takes to get it.

People subject to US legal jurisdiction, or at risk of extradition to that jurisdiction, are permitted under God's Laws to evade, but not actively resist, arrest.

Context: You are a Christian. You know serving Christ could at any moment end your life. Short of that, obeying His calling and commands can result in the loss of property, family, health, and a lot of other things. You stand ready to continue obeying and following Christ to the Cross itself. In your heart, you have already taken up your own cross.

We know the New Testament forbids active resistance to human government authorities. That is, insofar as said government does not demand something contrary to your convictions and mission. You aren't being defiant, but answering to a higher authority. Yet in most things, we do not resist. Most of us know what God means by "subject yourself to human authorities." With the confidence of a child of God Almighty, we face the certain abuse which comes.

But, under the Laws of God itself, we are also permitted to notice some things. The prophetic voice notes:

1. There is an unacceptably high probability any encounter with law enforcement personnel will result in unjustified abuse. In terms of operational mindset, the typical cop views all civilians, at best, with benign neglect. Too often it is with a certain amount of suspicion and hostility. If you give evidence during any encounter of insufficient deference and/or fear, you will likely be abused. They do not regard any civilians as equals.

2. Should there be a move to take custody, it won't matter how compliant you are. It is almost guaranteed you will be handled with unconscionable roughness and falsely charged with resisting. (As a former policeman myself, I assure you when there is a dispute about the facts in court, the officer is probably the biggest liar.) Allowing yourself to be pummeled will be written up as assaulting, as if your face struck his fists with malice. This is now routine in so many places, the exceptions are becoming rare.

3. These changes are the direct result of federal policy moves which I first detected in the late 1980s as calls for change in police philosophy and "professional standards." Federal publications and professional journals promoted this movement. A group of movers and shakers very high up in authority consciously planned and encouraged a shift to make police brutality the new normal.

4. Judges now make very little reference to the actual US Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights. In an Orwellian shift of meaning, the words which any grade school child should be able to understand now mean almost the opposite of what the dictionary definition would imply. For example, given the long and numerous precedents supporting the right of Jury Nullification, judges routinely imprison jurors for daring to use it, or even mention it.

5. The likelihood of being confined in a private prison is unacceptably high. Anyone who bothers to research just a few minutes will realize how utterly evil this trend is. When the entire motive for all decisions is extracting the maximum profit from the operation, you can be sure "prisoner welfare" is nothing more than a set of limits against which the management will shave and cut corners to the extent they can avoid prosecution themselves. The primary protection of prisoner welfare is how much the government can afford to invest in oversight, which invariably consists mostly of lying on paperwork. So, for example, if the highest charge comes from housing prisoners who merit solitary confinement, every possible excuse will be imagined for placing anyone and everyone in solitary.

For those who are not Christians, strictly by the Laws of God, any resistance they can offer is justified. The reason for this is the pretense of accountability, of holding the approval of those governed. The status of things has changed, and our own federal government has chosen to act as a hostile occupying force, but has been unwilling to admit it openly. Do not be surprised if non-believers revolt. It's justified by the standards of the historical documents of national founding. On a human level, it counts as a covenant broken.

For followers of Christ, let your convictions rule. I say you would be justified if you can escape, but you need to consider all that goes with that. Not in the sense of probabilities of success so much as what is required to fulfill your calling. Success as humans measure it means nothing in the Kingdom. Search your own heart in prayer and be at peace with your choice. Even some measure of passive resistance may be appropriate, but it's really up to you.

Clarification: What's the point? No human government which fails to obey God's Law can be trusted. Too many Christians make this hideous and heretical mistake that somehow a part of the government (military, for example) is somehow uniquely good and virtuous. That's blasphemy. Cynicism about the entire range of government activity is altogether godly. Obey when it seems the Spirit leads that way, but don't ever let yourself imagine anyone using government authority is good or righteous by virtue of their position. Do not revere any government official or function. Please shed this mythology about the US Constitution being a Christian document, nor the Declaration of Independence. They are both Enlightenment documents, fundamentally contrary to Scripture as well as unjust in many details.

Humans are beset with an eternal search for any god but God.

We have a story of a child in North Carolina attending a pre-school program. It's just like school, but it's for kids not traditionally old enough for formal education. The difference is academic (pun intended), in that neither is academic in the larger sense. But this particular little girl brought a lunch from home. It was packed according to the mother's ability to persuade her daughter to eat. Technically, it did meet the standards. That is, it didn't include anything the child was likely to throw away, wasting money. Some inspector at the school decided it did not meet the federal standards (they always put the stupidest ones in authority) and forced the child to accept a school lunch tray. There was a threat to force the parent to pay for this, too, though the child ate almost nothing on the tray. Notice something: The client of this bureaucratic idiocy is not the child, nor the parent -- it is the federal bureaucracy above it. The program claims to serve the interests of the children and perhaps claims to serve the parents, too. That's where the claim to legitimacy arises, but it's all a big lie. The only client being served is some other branch of this self-contained bureaucracy.

Also, I can't resist mentioning this federally approved food included "mechanically separated chicken." That is, all the inedible portions of chicken carcasses slurried in a big blender, then squeezed through a strainer, treated with ammonia. This poisoned residue is mixed with fillers and binders to make it hold together in lumps, squished into little patties, breaded and seasoned, then served up as "chicken nuggets." Safe and nutritious! The government says so, largely because the industries who do make this nasty stuff has bribed/threatened the officials into saying it's all good. Oh, and these chickens are all GMO, raised in total darkness and mostly unable to walk properly, eating only what the growers allow them to eat, which bears little resemblance to their natural diet.

But let's assume for a moment someone can present unassailable scientific proof a certain diet is truly the most effective way to eat. That's one of the chief claims of this Paleo Diet promoted in some circles. Whatever a scientist can claim makes no difference if God recommends something else. Aside from the impossibility of obtaining meat untainted by the practices of modern industrial meat production, the people promoting this diet refuse to entertain the possibility it's not what God wants for everyone. Oh, it works so well; it must be a revelation from God! Does it not occur to them God might have plans which don't include things scientists value? Do they not understand faith is frequently at odds with what humans think is rational? Science is not God, and God is not a mere scientist. Just because you can prove something with science does not make it good and right. In the long run, just about anyone who claims to be an authority figure with the power to compel compliance is most certainly going to hurt you.

We are weighed down with a vast horde of stories about police abusing people. How about the cop who lied, claiming someone was dragging him with their vehicle after trapping his arm in their rolled up window? A witness saw it all, and nothing of the kind happened. The officer stood outside the vehicle making obscene demands of the driver. When the driver rolled up the window and started to drive away, the cop simply shot her to death through the window, then lied about the threat to his safety. As a former cop, I'll tell you: When there is a dispute over the facts, it is statistically more likely the cop is lying. Serving and protecting the public? Bah; they are serving the officials above them who are all completely unaccountable, because the system itself is designed to prevent citizen input.

Of course, democracy assumes people know what's right. Humans are fallen, and are at their worst when acting via herd instinct. Trying to sense the wishes of the majority seldom points to what's good and right, simply because when herded together is when humans are most vulnerable to deception and manipulation. By reducing the individual humans to some imaginary "electorate" the officials have succeeded in turning them into a single object to be ignored until they get in the way. Ever notice how bureaucracies struggle to keep their constituents from having a clue what they are actually doing internally?

Democracy is a notion arising from a pagan culture, and makes it impossible for God's Laws to be honored. So even the claim modern public education was born of that obscure first law requiring it ("The Old Deluder Satan Act") does not excuse what's going on right now in American public education. The school system and the bureaucracy it truly serves is more deluded and Satanic than the thing that old law presumed to fight. God's Laws presume a tribal society ruled by elders who are blood and covenant kin of those they rule. Without that personal bond, there is no justified authority on earth. The entire modern concept is founded on depersonalizing government, which does not make it objective and fair, but only makes it inhuman and inhumane. Whatever flaws there might be with a tribal elder government, it's the best the human race could possibly have.

Any human authority is a poor substitute for God, but the secular State is a direct defiance to God. History is replete with rulers and organizations relentlessly presuming the prerogatives God said were His alone. Prophets, be sure to declare the truth of God's Word and His Laws regarding such things.

This is a prophetcraft post; it's not simply politics.

About a century ago, Western Allies paid for a thug to cross Germany in a sealed train and sent him to Imperial Russia. In a relatively short time Lenin destroyed the imperial government, slaughtering and terrorizing millions of innocent people in the process. This horror was only topped by his successor.

Today, the same bunch of Western Allies, along with Israel, have sent other thugs into smaller countries to do the same thing to them. Egypt? The "revolution" failed, and the same thugs are still in power. The Allies sent in Islamist extremists to hijack the revolution. Libya? The whole point was to create a bloodbath and prevent any stability, to make it like Iraq. Syria? All of the killing is either the work of terrorist snipers randomly shooting anyone, or outright lies made up because numbers sell. And we are funding the same terrorist actions in Iran, hoping for a result similar to Libya. Someone who was there can describe it for you.

Satan came to lie, steal and kill.

The worst part is lying about it. Orwell would blush at some of blatant lies we are being told today. The purpose is to force them to open up to the most unspeakable massive theft of resources. Another purpose is to create utter chaos for the people living in those countries, and wanton bloodshed is simply "collateral damage."

This is a vast moral evil, the works of Satan himself, under the cover of politics.