Jacob and Laban

Gen 29: 14-15. Upon coming to Laban, Jacob lives with Laban for a month. It is reasonable to suppose that Jacob works for room and board during that time, since Laban says “You shouldn't work for me without pay just because we are relatives.” In other words, if Jacob is working for Laban, and if Jacob gets room and board, then Jacob’s labor is benefitting Laban at least somewhat above, and possibly far above, Jacob’s own keep.

But, when Jacob declares his ‘wages’, they are only the hand of Rachel in marriage after seven years of Jacob’s profitable labor. Laban does not tell Jacob that Laban is going to trick Jacob into marrying Leah, but seems simply to agree to Jacob’s terms. But, what Laban actually says seems to portend the trick, because what is recorded of Laban’s reply is not a simple express agreement by modern thinking, but seems to be an attempt on the part of Laban to make Jacob think that Laban has simply agreed when Laban has, in fact, allowed himself a hidden clause known only to him.

Some commentators suggest that the seven years of Jacob’s laboring for Laban is actually payment for a privilege conferred by Laban to Jacob to try to convince Rachel to agree to marry Jacob. In other words, Jacob has to convince Rachel to agree to marry him as the final stage in a rather complex, if tacit, set of prerequisites that allow Laban to responsibly give Rachel in marriage. By such reasoning, this means that there was opportunity for Rachel---and even Laban, if things turned out too disagreeably in Laban’s mind---to decide to refuse Jacob’s wish to have Rachel to wife. Of course, many modern commentators, so used to the rather lax modern methods of courtship, find the idea that even six-weeks of the profit from a young man’s labor is too steep a price for him to pay merely for the privilege to court a young lady. But, in virtually all but modern days, the formation of stable and prosperous couples (that is, the joining of a man and a woman as the dual core of domestic and sexual partnership, and any natural potential offspring therefrom) was far too important to be left to anything that was remotely ‘casual’.

So, whether Jacob obtained Rachel’s assent some time after the fixed agreement with Laban, or sometime prior, the main point may well be that the price for Rachel’s hand in marriage seems to have been the same either way. And, while it seems to be the maid’s right to refuse her suitor, at some point, as unsuitable to her, the actual beginning of the entire process ideally is a very ‘casual’ or ‘mundane’ association between the soon-to-be prospective suitor and the father of the maid. In the case of the process whose end was the marriage of Adam and Eve, that association was blissfully mundane. The principles of that original process may have been necessary merely because Adam and Eve began to exist as adults, the latter being so because the state of marriage, and the means which that state requires, is the true state of the nature of human beings, so that children ideally merely grow into that state. But, that true state of the nature of human beings has a logical pattern or structure, so that, in a fallen world, that structure is the guide to the process of its replication. And, since, in a fallen world, juveniles by definition cannot maintain that structure, then juveniles must be so directed as to prevent them from acting on the instinct to form any of the final and best parts of that structure until they have learned to maintain at least its critical prerequisites.

Now, it appears that the practice of typical modern parents toward the formation of couples among their children is a practice which reflects the worst that Laban could have done to Jacob and Rachel: encourage them to suppose themselves engaged to become, to some extent, a functional couple, and then, for either or both just and unjust reasons, prevent Jacob and Rachel from attaining that function at the natural or appointed stage in their romantic involvement. Such an encouragement is properly termed ‘Indian giving’: seeming to grant a right which its grantor has no simple intention to grant.

The term comes from a misunderstanding between European settlers of North America and its original occupants. The latter assumed that the request was merely to occupy-and-use certain portions of their accustomed terrain, as tenants paying rent or lease to proper land-holders. The Europeans believed that their proposed exchange was understood as the most simple and un-complex kind of exchange, so that they were paying a one-time sum to become the sovereigns over those portions. But, the original ‘possessors’ felt a most simple connection to that land, just as was invoked by God to each tribe of Israel for their respective portions of the land of Canaan. The difference is that the original-established occupants of North America were nearly in stasis in relation to the vastness of the land, so that the land was never improved to support more life despite that those occupants reproduced themselves. With too little connection to the best of the culture of the Old World, those occupants were just getting by. But, they were not meant to be wiped out, only thinned due to the worst of their ways, and so it is: they remain, and are even accorded special status as sovereigns of the lands to which they were driven, because they were observed to be far more enlightened and gentle than were so many of those who commanded their ultimate driving. They had inherited a certain feebleness of body, but also a much more ancient strength of spirit; and who knows from whence the later came? I say it came from the most physically and, or, psychologically feeble descendants of Shem, having alone been driven out of the Old World by the same greedy kind of men who ultimately drove them onto the lands now reserved for them by their all-but-unwitting beneficiaries. They could not tolerate the greed of those like Laban, nor the aggressiveness of those like Jacob, so they alone were driven to the path to the final reserve, and became its original sovereigns. Now the circle is completed, and the feathers proclaim its special glory. And, not long after its completion, the wood of that circle shall burn because of the evil domestic and international ways of the current occupants: a new Rome invaded and brought to its knees, far worse a fate than what those original sovereigns suffered by the more greedy of the European settlers. As to persons, so to peoples: none have a right to put God’s glory even on pause. Many things comprise true prosperity and true righteousness, and anything consistently short of it is doomed even within itself.

So, Laban was doomed until Jacob arrived, and by Jacob was Laban made to increase in one narrow measure of prosperity. But, Laban looked not to the benefit of Jacob at all, except as a merest means to his own aggrandizement. So, Laban determined to gain as much of an inroad to Jacob’s resources as he had any power to do: through both of his daughters. But, since Jacob was already God’s sworn---and most blessed---servant, all of Laban’s contrivances became failures even to keep Jacob’s civil wishes, and Jacob was the true man. It seems to me that what God Himself in the end forced on Laban was to speak neutrally toward Jacob, removing from Laban even Laban’s love of his own pretense of good wishes by civil flourish and generous words: in essence, it seems to my initial reading, God said to Laban, ‘Shut up, you conniving windbag!’ Laban was a type of proverbially dishonest ‘used car salesman’ and ‘contract lawyer’ (and the arrogant, ostensibly 'called', 'evangelistic' preacher and his door-to-door cronies).

So, too, is any set of elders doomed who, by their ways, cause what otherwise would be healthy and prosperous young men and women, young men and women who fear God more than they fear disapproval for failure to attend such elders assemblies, even if those elders suppose that their assemblies are basically just or gracious. A way of knowledge which severely oppresses one, though it moderately enlightens a hundred, is a way which only spiritual vipers can favor. Love does no harm to its neighbor. Some pastors are a complex tangle who have the spirit of Laban. They build little bubbles of prosperity that are doomed to deflate! Woe to those who are faithful to such pastors! They and them shall be burned, and raped, and bled to death upside-down! And upon such men shall the world cast a weary eye, as a drunk looks upon his vomit!

"We don't want him, because he's inconvenient." This is the spirit of abortion in the modern West; parents discarding the life of a child because they don't want the sorrow of caring for him. At least the grief-prone sacrificing of children to Molech had some moral integrity---and the excuse of being superstitious. But, for American Christians who think they are basically good people because they don't abort their children, there is a sin which nearly all of them commit that is more evil than the worship, per se, of Molech: the creation, and abortion, of the homeless poor.

Many Christians point an accusing finger at the gross economic disparities in capitalist America. But, these disparities are predominantly the fault of Christians because America is predominantly Christian. In fact, the economic policies of the U.S. have been designed largely by Christians, and these policies do more than allow the Rule of Greed: they promote it. The basic concept is simple: if you strive, and toil, and sacrifice to make a good life for yourself, then you deserve every penny you get. Never mind that this self-interested strife and deal-making is commonly exactly that. Ideally, 'an honest day's work has earned you whatever rewards the market permits you to get away with.'

But, the fact is that the world already is one of disharmony, mistaken impressions, and general temptations-to-rationalized-wickness. Which means that systematic oppression is a given, like weeds in a garden, ever needing to be pulled. I shouldn't have to quote the Prophets and Genesis to justify this fact to 'Christian' vipers who adore their knowledge of God's 'King James' verbatim. Any policy which discovers a thousand evil doers, if that policy condemns one innocent soul, then that policy is wicked, narrow-minded, and arrogantly ignorant. In a word, it's foolish.

'But', the ignorantly self-centered capitalist ideal goes on, 'if everyone in America acted with so much virtue toward the opportunities which their economic freedoms as Americans afford, then everyone in America would be able to support themselves and their families.' (It's accurately called the Sovereign Divine Right of the Protestant Work Ethic and Private Property.) 'No one in America has a right to complain of being poor or oppressed.'

This is the ideal which most Right Wing American Christians implicitly believe, even if they speak favorably about giving to the poor. No one can accuse them of being scrooges, like the angry, cartoon faces of Dick Cheney. They smile at you, from behind arrogant eyes, and they're in love with their ability to judge a poor homeless begger by his smelly cover or by his ability to look them in the eye. Only one thing do they need, in their own minds, and that's whatever little thing they've taken greedily to be The Key to discerning the state of a person's eternal soul. No one has the right to hate their arrogant guts, nor to honestly be intimidated by them. If you're timid, or frustrated, in regard to them, then that's your fault, caused by your sin, since they are pastors who arrogantly represent Christ to you.

The American Christians of the extreme political Right, such as Mike Reagan and Dinesh D'Souza, in effect equate the evil of greed with having a 'scrooge'-like character. And, since they don't have such a character, they're not greedy. But, if they're not greedy, then how do they explain their negative (or positive) views of the vast economic disparities in this country? If they find fault with those disparities (which they generally don't), then what fault could there be in the view that 'every American can be financially healthy if only they would 'stop their moping, and get out there and promot their own interests in the market' ?

To the not-so-few Christians who find basically nothing wrong with those disparities, I say two things: One, the next time you have a child who is so disabled that you end up loosing your house, your health, and your marriage to the 'self-disciplined', 'ruggedly individualistic' strain of paying his medical bills, by all means continue praising the right of the beneficiaries of those disparities to never even look your way. Two, Jesus must have been a fool to say things like "this generation has robbed God of His tithes and offerings", and "Neither this (blind) man, nor his parents, sinned; but, if you do not repent, you shall likewise become as he."

Most American business owners, investors, and home buyers are Christian, as are most other Americans who have a plentiful, and legally-welcome, lifestyle. In other words, in America, Christians rule. Therefore, the majority of the problems faced by the increasing numbers of the homeless in America are directly tied to the Capitalistic practices of American Christians (Capitalism, with a capital 'C'). And, this is not just 'capitalism' in some general, private sense. It's an evil pervading every major industry, and every major ministry, in America: the medical/pharmeceutical establishment, military contractors, agriculture, education (including private, Christian education), the 'wedding' industry, electric utilities, the Police and Sheriff, the Criminal Justice System (a.k.a. Penitentiary System), etc..

Whether it's India or the U.S.A., the cause of gross economic disparity in a country is not by the failure of the disadvantaged to strive greedily for 'success'. It's by the failure of the advantaged to abide by God's economic, social, and ecological laws. In the predominantly Christian U.S.A., this means that most Christians who have a marked economic advantage have it at the expense the poor-and-poorer. And, it doesn't end there: Virtually every pastor of a church who is so advantaged, and who doesn't occassionally, by merit, ask the homeless poor into his own home, is even more guilty.

Unless these pastors change their ways, they, too, shall become outcasts. They shall be harrassed by secular/capitalistic Law Enforcement for having no place to exist. They shall have no one who---like they are now, with a home and a good income---will take them in. There is only so much that the police, and the medical establishment, can do for an ever-growing number of victims of crime and illness; and the same applies for the private organizations that minister to the homeless. They do not have the resources to take sufficient care of more cases than what resources they have. Most homeless shelters are far more filthy, and far more crowded, than the place where Jesus was born. The Police, as strained as they are to keep order for the society which is lead by these pastor's paying constituents, do not owe these pastors personal body guards when the pastors become convinced---without evidence sufficient to pull the police off their general duties---that their lives are in immanent danger. Likewise, official homeless shelters do not owe them a place to sleep at night should they ever find themselves without an 'earned' one of their own.

These pastors, and other leaders, with all their wealth, much of it gotten by the 'honest' toil of making the truth into printed merchandise, shall fall down and beg; they shall demand what is rightly theirs as human beings, and shall not be given it. No one, in that day, can or will give it to them. Only when they are outcasts, and when not even their rich constituents take them into their homes, they shall understand their error.You greedy fools, you pastors, and you other Christian spiritual leaders. You say in your hearts, "The more comfortable we are, the more of God's love we feel. We tithe, and we offer, so we do not rob God." But, you do rob Him. And, you oppress Him. You shall BE oppressed. You ignore. You shall BE ignored. You abort those who cannot help themselves in the face of you. You shall be aborted. You hate God's Law, though you claim to love it. Your lives are all-but-bankrupt, and your gain is STILL at other's unjust expense. The Bible tells pastors to warn the rich, lest the rich trust in their riches.' "But," you say, "We do not trust in riches." But, you lie. And, your pastors lie. You all say the same things: "Let us get worldly blessings for ourselves by tithing. God loves us because we manage to feel comfortable within our comforts. We work hard to make sure we do not lose the comfort of enjoying our comforts. We work to make sure we have plenty of time to rest, to relax, to go on vacations, to not ever find ourselves without a place to legally exist. We shall never be harrassed because of our disease. We work hard to keep from losing our comforts, our masses of security and unemployment insurance. Because of all these comforts, we need never intend even to think of sharing them with the distressed. We love to preach sacrificial giving, because we want a church that is vibrant so we can continue to live well. But, we will not sacrifice our own garden of Eden."

You lie, and you rob God. Though you speak kindly of God and His poor, you do not love to give God what belongs to Him. You indifferently abort Him and His poor. So, you shall become poor, and none shall help you. Your heart shall fail, and none shall restore it. You shall be driven out as scoundrels, and no one shall defend you. Because you have forgotten God, though you claim to obey Him, you shall be forgotten. The whole world shall turn against you, and those with the power to relieve you shall pity you from a distance, who are safe while you are afflicted; they shall not seek to give you relief; they shall pity you from a distance. They shall say within themselves, "She does not suffer", or "She shall find help." From a distance shall your helpers mock you. They shall love themselves too much, exactly as you have taught them to do. Their service to your needs shall be to them a career, or a role-play, not a sacred duty. In private they love themselves only. You shall not be a Church to them, but a casefile. A casefile the help for which they lack the resources. "The more you have saved your life, the more of it I took away, because you robbed me" says the Lord, the God of the Holy host of angels."A distressed man who has nothing yet gives what he has to his distressed fellow; But you have not given to me", says the Lord; You trust in your life and not in me, though you sing my praise. I shall let your trust fail, and your lives be taken away."

There were many true believers in Enoch's day, yet only Enoch was taken out of the troubles that came.

The Two Worlds of Adam: an Incomplete Introduction

How do we reflect---or fail to reflect---the glory of God? What IS the glory of God?

Another way to ask these questions is to ask what is a caste system, and what is the sacred? Here are some answers:

The greed of the last three generations in America has lead inextricably to the problems of the present one. Every moral problem of, and every cultural evil faced by, the current twenty-something population is the necessary result of the set of the various forms of greed by which the last three generations have enriched themselves. Culturally and biologically speaking, there is not only no free lunch, there is no low-cost lunch. You get what you pay for.

And, if you, the reader, are a lower-middle-class person with a load of debt, and you don't think you've been enriched, think of this:

If Warren Buffet, with all his wealth, were in the lowest ten-percent of earners in America (so that the other ninety percent made many hundreds more billions than he already makes), he might easily feel he is in the 'just-barely-making-ends-meet' category. The reason he might feel this way is because, like every other fallen human being, he is under the Curse. The Curse is an objective state of poverty the effects of which we all are subject to feel deeply. The problem is not that we feel it, but what we do with it. Do we act selfishly, naively, defensively? Or, do we genuinely and thoroughly reflect the glory of God? The culture of the next four generations depends on it.

About seventy years ago in America, there began a new, higher plateau of commissive and ommissive greed; a new normal of naive, and otherwise misguided, self-interest. (See Joshua Harris "I Kissed Dating Goodbye"). Near the front of this 'New Greed's' advance into society was Ayn Rand, former lover of the former FED chairman, Alan Greenspan, and founder of what was then considered a cult of economic greed. Rand held that economic greed was a virtue, and that economic altruism was a vice. This was part of her radical new philosophy she called 'Objectivism'. She wanted to liberate individuals from the oppressions committed by basic institutions of social values, beginning with the family. She had identified certain evils with which she herself had been oppressed through these institutions, and proceeded to condemn the very kinds and instances of such institutions as contrary to the nature of the individual. Karl Marx did an exactly analogous thing, in regard to an opposite set of evils and their associated institutions.

Today, most people in the developed world still reject Rand's reversal of traditional, implicit, humanistic values. But, to reject the notions of greed-as-virtue and altruism-as-vice does not equal a genuine acceptance of their opposite: greed-as-vice, and altruism-as-virtue. This is because of the basic nature of the world in which we all must live: a world in which toilsome effort is required of a society in order for it to have a lifestyle above that of mere subsistence-at-best. Rand recognized that this fact of life was true for each individual as such. And, unlike Marx, she understood that it was inherently connected to the sacredness of individual autonomy. While Marx consciously identified the social and economic values of the natural family, Rand's emphasis on the individual had the deeper (but for her, unintended) perspective: families are made up of individuals.

But, deeper doesn't mean right. Rand's model of the world was simply the lesser of two evils. While it could be sustained longer, this has come, like Marx's model, at a cost. Neither Marx nor Rand had the full view, and there was a reason why. They both rejected that the nature of the present world implicitly presupposed a different world. They both thus were left only with the present world as a standard by which to judge its own problems. This, in effect, is the problem for all of us.

We all live in two worlds: the Real, and the Ideal. So, we would do well to know what they each actually are. Further, we need to keep them together with us so we can use each to help better understand the other, and thus our own lives.

Many Christians consider the story of Genesis 1 and 2 to be a useful myth. But, much of that usefulness is missed by thinking of the story as a myth. After all, even while believing it is a myth, many of its most important values can be seen only by thinking of it in literal terms. This is because seeing those values merely by analogy to what we know of in the present world depends on what we do know of in the present world. If all we know of, and if all we focus on, about the world is greatly imbalanced, then to mythologize the story likely will not correct the imbalance. There is a myth about sailors falling off the edge of the world, but it is useful only as analogy since there can be no such literal edge.

We naturally grant that a human-made myth will not likely show us much of any value, even if it is a story about human origins. And, most of us are prone to ignore any mythical story in favor of things which, right or wrong, are far more spelled out for us.

So, if the Biblical story of Adam and Eve is literal, and if we take it as a 'useful myth', then we complicate the initial problem when, in the natural course of our needy inquiries, we conclude as basically right a set of things which happen, in fact, to be a combination of both right and wrong ideas. Once a society takes any such impure set as normal, then the ugly snowball of blindly-pragmatic 'wisdom' keeps rolling down the mountain, compounding the speed with which it both accumulates such 'wisdom' and rejects the sacred scriptures as antiquated-at-best.

God created a man alone at first. This show many things. One thing is shows is that the individual has a primary value which cannot be subsumed to another individual, nor to the wider society. Another thing is that the individual needs companionship with his or her own kind, specifically of a fully mutually complimentary nature.

So, in creating a man alone, and only then creating a woman, God introduces the principle of social balance. This is contrary both to Rand and Marx, who arrived at their respective extremist views by having rejected Adam's story as superstitious myth.

Now, with the man and woman both created, we can say many more things about what it shows. Here are just two: God made one couple alone, and stopped, showing the primacy of the family to the wider society. It is the man-woman unit that produces all of human society. This means that the man-woman unit, and the manner of its formation, is paramount in the development and continuance of the good society---of a wise human culture.

Ayn Rand and Karl Marx fell off the edge of both the real and the ideal worlds. They rejected basic truths as myths, and made their own myths to fill the vacuum. They each ended up without either the true Real world or the true Ideal world. They were not just opposite extremes on a spectrum. They literally were two worlds apart.

But, in our day-to-day lives as Christians, it is not enough to consciously accept the claim of a literal, original, unfallen, world. In those same day-to-day lives, we do not automatically put its values into effect (see Focus On The Family's 'The Truth Project'). It takes effort. It takes sacrifice. It takes understanding. This effort and understanding is the essence of religion.

Never mind the traditions of pompousness, selfishness-driven peer-pressure, and other vices with which theistic pulpit-practice today is often imbued. Religion is not mainly theistic, nor mainly preaching. It is mainly human---a simple, humble recognition of the sort of 'boat' we all are in. The fact that a belief in God is most naturally associated with the integrity of the natural family, and with the sacredness of its autonomy, is simply an indication of the character of the God which the family presupposes. The most functionally healthy family, in terms of its individuals, gravitates toward, if not necessarily exists within, the worship of such a God. A flawed view of the family, society, and civilization necessarily leads to a flawed view of God. Adam worshipped God before Eve was made, yet such individual worship is incomplete, and Adam knew it.

Ayn Rand rejected both God and family because she had never seen much of the true forms of either. At fault was the greed of the modern Christian Church. If the Church exists----and it does---and if its true believers comprise the overwhelming ratio of the total U.S. population---and they may---then what, in God's name, is going on? Tell me, if you can, what is sacred, and why? Do not tell me that it is defined as 'anything that God says is sacred'. Tell me what you know in yourself as to what it is. And, then, tell me what it has to do with the original world?

Signs and wonders have an end---a purpose; they are not an end unto themselves. And, God does not approve of their being copied by superstitions the forces of which are generally available to every human being regardless of world-view. In other words, everyone has spiritual imagination. There's a right---and a wrong--way to live in the world. Miracles mentioned in the Bible were always for a point; they were never implied as a way of life. The way of life was first spelled out to the children of Israel---and is they who shall best live it out during the beginning of Christ's Millennial reign. It is they who, even now, keep some of the basic parts of it---contrary to the practice of popular Christianity. This is, in fact, one of the justified objections of orthodox Jews to Christian evangelism of their members: If you run down God's laws in both lanes on a two-way street, you have no business driving a car. Please get a taxi.

The Orthodox Jews are not without their God-given advantages. The sooner the 'Popular Christianity' Christian understands this, the better for everyone. You can't save souls whom you naively give good reason to reject your claim of Divine authority. The orthodox Jews do, in fact, have spiritual imagination, yet popular Christianity thinks they are just idiots who can't tell traditionism from their left foot. They know that it is YOU, the 'Popular Christianity' Christian, who are the idiot regarding certain very important things. After all, as you well know, God does not play favorites; he swears allegiance to no one, including those who live righteous lives by their own standards.

Spiritual imagination is how Ayn Rand freed herself from abuses committed in the name of altruism. Spiritual imagination is how Karl Marx freed himself from abuses committed in the name of individual economic autonomy. It's how everyone can see some error---and that error's associated truth---for what it is. But, with Rand and Marx as prime models of its singular effectiveness, spiritual imagination is not enough. That's why God is merciful, even unto the third, and fourth, generations of those that fear him and know his laws.

Most people today fall nearly in the middle between the extremes of Rand and Marx. They thus feel that they have a balanced view. The problem is that their exact position between these extremes is, in fact, ultimately random. In other words, they are naive. And, naive is no place to be in a basically disharmonious world. Think of the 'Happy Days' TV series: it was the epitome of socio-sexual naivete. My own dad took its culture for granted as being normative. He once wondered aloud why God 'designed human beings to become sexually mature so many years prior to attaining the social maturity necessary to handle it?' If you don't have even a hunch that this question is basically flawed in its understanding, then I may not be able to enlighten you by any amount of words.

Fortunately for me, my dad had a far more wise view of certain other facets of the fallen human life, and of human origins. It was from my inheriting of his belief in the literal Biblical story of Adam and Eve that I've learned by far most of what I know today, in all its complexities. In fact, I am even sane today only because of it, since I grew up with invisible socio-cognitive disabilities which effectively made me the prime prey of the greed of the modern, rationalistic, predatory, Christian Evangelical movement which Charles Finney championed-and-lived-to-regret-without-seeing-his-basic-mistake.

My dad knew almost nothing of what I know. He never could have imagined how deep the insights possible from the literal, Biblical model of human origins. But, he paved the way for me. And, what I have to tell you here is that the principle of sacred service---including, but not limited to, the tithe---has for so long been too-shallowly taught even by its best spokesmen. The result is everywhere: good, naive, Christian people who feel that the what, when, how, how much, and to whom or what is charitably rendered is ultimately a matter of personal sentiment; that what a person gives to the service of the sacred is rightly defined in terms which, in fact, Ayn Rand would have abided: a personal indulgence. Even that most tragically superstitious figure, 'Mother' Theresa, seemed to know this much. There is no such thing as a 'sense' of the sacred. Love is not a feeling, it's an act of your will.