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 all live in two Worlds...
...and time is not a clock, but a story.
While this blog intends to address a wide range of subjects, it is mainly, if tacitly, about explaining things through a particular story of the origin of human beings. Generally, modern history is like the last five minutes of the most important movie of your life: only if you know what the beginning was like can you see what is really going on.
Specifically, for example, Karl Marx's Communism is a prominent case of what happens when people try to make the best sense of the present world in its own terms. For Marx, he took some of the centrally sacred things of life (especially the family as the core of society, and the direct economic equity with which the family functions within itself) and used these as a way to criminalize most of the profane things of life (especially the natural economic autonomy of individuals, families, and tribes). Karl Marx was an idealist with a subset of all ideals, but, since he had concluded that there were no more ideals than those he adored, he was forced either to pursue his particular ideals by pragmatic means or to admit to being powerless-and-ignorant. Curiously, the chorus of every ideal that there is, produced when each of them is given a voice, sounds very much like pragmatism to anyone whose ear is familiar only with some subset of them.
Another case of trying to make the best sense of life while taking the present world at face value is Ayn Rand's Objectivism. Rand sanctified the economic autonomy of individuals while rejecting economic altruism as necessarily repressive of a healthy self-interest.
Note the ironic dynamic of genders here,: a woman came up with Greed-and-competition-ism, and a man came up with Communism. Women are most susceptible to being over-used regarding their orientation toward social matters, that is, toward the needs of others; and men are most susceptible to being over-used regarding their competitive, and otherwise non-social, drives. So, the man went the opposite of his normal way, and likewise the woman, but neither for the interest of the other, but, rather, each for their own escape, and this by mere aggrandizement of their ego.
Even the Bible is readily misunderstood by human beings who, despite being Christians, assume that the wisdom necessary for life in the fallen world was likewise necessary for the original world. These particular human beings as easily assume that the Bible is a Complete Idiot's Guide as atheists assume that the Bible is A Guide To Being An Idiot. Either way, humans tend to assume that the Bible is The Authorized Foolproof Version (athiests merely see it as foolproof idiocy).
Both the original and the present worlds can rightly be understood only in terms of the original world (whatever that world was, whether that according to Steven Pinker, or that according to a childlike reading of Genesis 1). That's why the Bible begins with an account of an original world---an account to which Christ sometimes referred when answering the challenges of the religious leaders of his day.
Civilization is not primarily the material and economic things we produce. It is primarily the infrastructure of histori-social, histori-political, and histori-moral wisdom that allows a kind of society able to produce these things. So, the one thing most necessary for preserving civilization is not any of its physical manifestations, rather it is a right understanding (at least in effect) of the world's 'first five minutes.'
Education is the telling of, and the learning from, the true story. So, the 'place of stories' is naturally sacred: the public library. The library is at the very heart of open, or public, education. In a pluralistic democratic society, the library thus naturally has a wide range of competing stories. It was so even in the beginning of Israel, though the kinds of stories allowed were not so vastly different from each other as are those in the public libraries of a secular (studiously clueless-and-narrow-minded) nation.
As for the contentions today over educational matters, human education is sacred (yours, and mine, and thus our respective children’s), not to be subsumed by any narrow interest, whether material and financial profit, legal status, job security, bureaucratic accountability, technical competence, patent rights, private vs. public, state vs. federal, etc.. There is not one narrow interest that, to the exclusion of others, can cause the education of a nation’s children to be better in the long run than can any other narrow interest. This is because, in regard to making any narrow-and-exclusive interest into the singular foundation of overall life-success, there is no long run but into the ground. Not even God ‘plays God’.
.
We all live in two Worlds...
...and time is not a clock, but a story.
While this blog intends to address a wide range of subjects, it is mainly, if tacitly, about explaining things through a particular story of the origin of human beings. Generally, modern history is like the last five minutes of the most important movie of your life: only if you know what the beginning was like can you see what is really going on.
Specifically, for example, Karl Marx's Communism is a prominent case of what happens when people try to make the best sense of the present world in its own terms. For Marx, he took some of the centrally sacred things of life (especially the family as the core of society, and the direct economic equity with which the family functions within itself) and used these as a way to criminalize most of the profane things of life (especially the natural economic autonomy of individuals, families, and tribes). Karl Marx was an idealist with a subset of all ideals, but, since he had concluded that there were no more ideals than those he adored, he was forced either to pursue his particular ideals by pragmatic means or to admit to being powerless-and-ignorant. Curiously, the chorus of every ideal that there is, produced when each of them is given a voice, sounds very much like pragmatism to anyone whose ear is familiar only with some subset of them.
Another case of trying to make the best sense of life while taking the present world at face value is Ayn Rand's Objectivism. Rand sanctified the economic autonomy of individuals while rejecting economic altruism as necessarily repressive of a healthy self-interest.
Note the ironic dynamic of genders here,: a woman came up with Greed-and-competition-ism, and a man came up with Communism. Women are most susceptible to being over-used regarding their orientation toward social matters, that is, toward the needs of others; and men are most susceptible to being over-used regarding their competitive, and otherwise non-social, drives. So, the man went the opposite of his normal way, and likewise the woman, but neither for the interest of the other, but, rather, each for their own escape, and this by mere aggrandizement of their ego.
Even the Bible is readily misunderstood by human beings who, despite being Christians, assume that the wisdom necessary for life in the fallen world was likewise necessary for the original world. These particular human beings as easily assume that the Bible is a Complete Idiot's Guide as atheists assume that the Bible is A Guide To Being An Idiot. Either way, humans tend to assume that the Bible is The Authorized Foolproof Version (athiests merely see it as foolproof idiocy).
Both the original and the present worlds can rightly be understood only in terms of the original world (whatever that world was, whether that according to Steven Pinker, or that according to a childlike reading of Genesis 1). That's why the Bible begins with an account of an original world---an account to which Christ sometimes referred when answering the challenges of the religious leaders of his day.
Civilization is not primarily the material and economic things we produce. It is primarily the infrastructure of histori-social, histori-political, and histori-moral wisdom that allows a kind of society able to produce these things. So, the one thing most necessary for preserving civilization is not any of its physical manifestations, rather it is a right understanding (at least in effect) of the world's 'first five minutes.'
Education is the telling of, and the learning from, the true story. So, the 'place of stories' is naturally sacred: the public library. The library is at the very heart of open, or public, education. In a pluralistic democratic society, the library thus naturally has a wide range of competing stories. It was so even in the beginning of Israel, though the kinds of stories allowed were not so vastly different from each other as are those in the public libraries of a secular (studiously clueless-and-narrow-minded) nation.
As for the contentions today over educational matters, human education is sacred (yours, and mine, and thus our respective children’s), not to be subsumed by any narrow interest, whether material and financial profit, legal status, job security, bureaucratic accountability, technical competence, patent rights, private vs. public, state vs. federal, etc.. There is not one narrow interest that, to the exclusion of others, can cause the education of a nation’s children to be better in the long run than can any other narrow interest. This is because, in regard to making any narrow-and-exclusive interest into the singular foundation of overall life-success, there is no long run but into the ground. Not even God ‘plays God’.
.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Sunday, October 18, 2009
"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.
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.
Friday, October 2, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
God is Subtle
God is subtle. Here are three reasons why:
1) God is everywhere, but His omnipresence never 'pushes anyone off their chair'.
2) God always speaks, but he doesn't talk over anyone.
3) God makes the cosmos function, but His power never prevents anyone from making practical use of the Creation.
That third reason is most interesting to me as both a spiritual and practical man. It says to me two things: One, that God allows us to partake in his glory; and Two, that the physical world is rigged to give God maximum glory. These two things boil down to one great Gift: Human freedom. After all, we are made in God's image.
But, what is God's maximum glory through his Creation? Consider that anything God creates is necessarily infinitely inferior to himself. In other words, God's own glory can never be fully realized in anything he creates. So, I think his maximum glory cannot be in an 'end-state' kind of physical law---a 'Final' or 'Unified' theory of physics. I think God's maximum glory through his Creation can only be by our endlessly-new discovery of an endless depth of physical laws.
Objecting to this idea as a logically impossible 'infinite regress' both mistakes the point, and misses the point. The key to this idea is that the universe was not made for the satisfaction of fallen man at all. It was made for the never-ending wonder-and-use of the original, UNfallen mankind. God's maximum glory in His Creation is thus something which is simply-and-directly God-centric. In other words, it does not presuppose the existence of fallen man, nor of atheism, nor even of Satan (these creatures, rather, presuppose God and his glory). So, it is not a defensive physics at all. It is a purely pro-God view of physics. All God's enemies are simply ignored.
All theories of physics of fallen man tend to be formulated as 'Final' theories, rather than as practical and spiritual ones. By no coincidence, each of these theories has, in turn, had to be revised to account for the new-and-nearby discoveries of things which once were rejected as physically impossible. The question is, does there logically need to be a 'Final' theory? That may depend on your ultimately essential view of God---which, in turn, informs your view of the physical world. Is God basically rationalistic? Or, is He something more? Something better?
Did God make the physical world in order to satisfy the 'fallen' human wish for a means of salvation-by-works (technology, ritual, alchemy)? Or, instead, did He make it in order to satisfy that One Thing which it is said we shall do in the resurrected life: enjoy God forever? Is God's ulimate glory in an algorithm, or in an axiom? Which of the two is more meaningful, more beautiful? And, is a simple algorithm better than a complex one if the latter has far more practical and asthetic potential? Why stop there?
Even the Mandelbrot algorithm pays homage to God.
The way I came at all this was from an unassuming inquiry into the nature of space. What did I know directly about space, and about logic; and what kind of answer could that knowledge give me? I found that it all boiled down to the geometric point, and to what that point implies/presupposes. Einstein would be envious.
Isaac Newton formulated the most practical primitive conception of Motion without claiming a mechanism for gravity. Good thing for him AND us, because, since Newton left the scene, there has been so much effort to find a mechanism. I say there need be no mechanism, even in the face of an 'infinite regress' of physical laws. For what little I know of Newton's work, he may well not even have claimed that he had found the 'Final' theory of the Motions of All Things On All Scales (there seem to be reports that the current theories of physics include odd, and even bizarre, behaviors of subatomic particles).
Now, return to the topic of God's subtlety. Even pagans have a sense that there is, in fact, a certain Something, or Force, which is everywhere, and in everything, but which cannot be found like one finds a blue grain of sand on the beach. You can look and look and never find this Something, yet the 'spiritual' mind seems unable to help but admit that this Something exists.
The spiritual mental framework quite instinctively holds that a certain Something is omnipresent, yet also transcendent.
The mental framework of physical rationalism---or atheism---cannot, of course, readily admit that such a Something exists. But, this mental framework cannot be used to prove that this mental framework is sufficient to understand everything. Some persons simply hole themselves up into a particular-and-favored habit of mind in order never to fall into an erroneous habit of mind that produces increasingly severe errors.
Of course, in holing themselves up in a particular habit of mind, a person tends toward an increasing bias so that they end up rejecting as erroneous things which they later (if too late) are forced to admit are true. This tendency is a fact of the fallen 'human condition'. And, importantly, this tendency is a defensive one, rather than the ably-learning one of the small child of an unfallen world.
Even in the fallen world, it's better to seek the wisdom of an open-and-humble balance than the wisdom of arrogant defensivenes. The latter potentially results in a further fall into the arrogance of an untouchably tyranical personal Eden, in a fallen world that naturally-and-rightly demands that you equitably share what that Eden has cost them to produce for you. Christians don't need to get uppity with their theories. God is conceived as the 'Ideal Being'. The best and greatest possible. The notion, or thought, is easy to appreciate. But, the concept, or exact reality, can be difficult to formulate. That there are often obstacles to its formulation does not prove that the concept is impossible. As an excerise in intellectual humility, one can say that the obstacles may show only that there may be shortfalls in one's own thinking. After all, how many times, and in how many things, have you run into logical/conceptual obstacles that at first seemed inviolable, only later to find that you had made a conceptual mistake? It has happened to me so many times, and from so early in life, that I never have tried to keep track of them. Few people ever do.
The ideal concept of God includes both His ontological existence outside of spacetime, and His practical omnipresence within it. These are sometimes referred to as God's transcendence and immanence, respectively. Ideally, for the ideal being (God), He created space-time, rather than spacetime having existed as co-equal with God. So, God's ontology, that is, His very being, exists outside spacetime. But, ideally, also, God is omnipresent in spacetime. That is, ideally, God is both transcendent and immanent. By His omnipresence or immanence, God sees all. But, because He also transcends the cosmos, no-one-and-nothing can see Him without his choice. After all, if God made the eye, then God is invisible not because He is hiding behind a tree, but because He was hanging from one. He is invisible by nature, so that He can be seen only as He chooses. Just as importantly, He is everywhere and everywhen in such a way as never to 'occupy someone else's seat' so to speak. That's a humble God. His omnipresence never pushes any king off his throne, or any wanderer out of his tent. In short, God does not get in anyone's way. Everyone is free to be, and to move. On the face of it, the two ideals of omnipresence and transcendence seem unable logically to co-exist. Further, each ideal in itself seems impossible. How can something be present IN space and time and not take up any space and time? Much less, how can something be present everyhere and everywhen without 'butting' everything else out of existence? Both God's omnipresence and transcedence are possible by way of a single, all-but-ignored thing: the geochronic Point. Even the popular current theory of physics entertains the idea of such a point. Einstein's Theory of Relativity calls it the Singularity. But, the Singularity contains physical matter and energy, and need not be quite a true point. In logically considering the true, geochronic Point, however, it can be noted that this Point has no geometric nor chronological extension. It is purely there, as if without actually depending on either extensive space or extensive time for its own existence. In fact, both geometric and chronological Points are indistinguishable from each other: neither of them actually possess the properties of their respective referents. And, there can be an infinite number of them at a given Point, allowing an infinity of them throughout all of space and time. In short, they OCCUPY all of space and time without actually taking up any of space and time. Further, the geochronic Point cannot actually be located in terms of spacetime. You can't pinpoint it between your two fingertips. Nor can you stick the sharp end of a cartographer's tack through it. It cannot even be said that this Point is 'slippery', or 'fine-grained', as if to say that it 'slips through your fingers like liquid-teflon sand'. Oddly, the Point also logically allows that space, time, and matter can be 'infinitely' divided. That is, you can divide space, time, and matter endlessly without ever coming to the end of them, without ever finding the tiniest possible bit of them. In practical and asthetic terms, there is no tiniest possible bit of space, time, or matter; and no end to the ways in which it is organized, and thus to its practical uses. It's practical and spiritual uses need never end; its discoveries need never stop at a 'Final' theory. So, the geochronic Point seems to allow the only, directly theologically positive view of physics. Since the Point has no true referent, but rather all things are in reference to it, then there is not many Points, but one. God is not omnipresent in terms of spacetime, rather, all of space and time is everywhere and everywhen present to God. After all, God is transcendent. All this, if the true Point exists. It seems, at least from some mental framework, that the Point logically can exist, even though it cannot be directly empirically proved to exist. Like an axiom to the axiom's own algorithm, the latter unable to prove that its axiom is an axiom. Or, even like the 'self' to Allen Greenspan's original position of 'logical positivism: "If something cannot be measured in terms of something else, then nothing can be known about it, including whether it actually exists." This Point, as such, cannot be found. Not by you or me. It is not like a blue grain of sand that, by your seeing it as such, is proved to your senses to actually exist. Rather, the Point is so fundamental a Something that thought is possible only by subtlely presupposing it. In other words, like God, the Point does not get in your way. You are free to think.
1) God is everywhere, but His omnipresence never 'pushes anyone off their chair'.
2) God always speaks, but he doesn't talk over anyone.
3) God makes the cosmos function, but His power never prevents anyone from making practical use of the Creation.
That third reason is most interesting to me as both a spiritual and practical man. It says to me two things: One, that God allows us to partake in his glory; and Two, that the physical world is rigged to give God maximum glory. These two things boil down to one great Gift: Human freedom. After all, we are made in God's image.
But, what is God's maximum glory through his Creation? Consider that anything God creates is necessarily infinitely inferior to himself. In other words, God's own glory can never be fully realized in anything he creates. So, I think his maximum glory cannot be in an 'end-state' kind of physical law---a 'Final' or 'Unified' theory of physics. I think God's maximum glory through his Creation can only be by our endlessly-new discovery of an endless depth of physical laws.
Objecting to this idea as a logically impossible 'infinite regress' both mistakes the point, and misses the point. The key to this idea is that the universe was not made for the satisfaction of fallen man at all. It was made for the never-ending wonder-and-use of the original, UNfallen mankind. God's maximum glory in His Creation is thus something which is simply-and-directly God-centric. In other words, it does not presuppose the existence of fallen man, nor of atheism, nor even of Satan (these creatures, rather, presuppose God and his glory). So, it is not a defensive physics at all. It is a purely pro-God view of physics. All God's enemies are simply ignored.
All theories of physics of fallen man tend to be formulated as 'Final' theories, rather than as practical and spiritual ones. By no coincidence, each of these theories has, in turn, had to be revised to account for the new-and-nearby discoveries of things which once were rejected as physically impossible. The question is, does there logically need to be a 'Final' theory? That may depend on your ultimately essential view of God---which, in turn, informs your view of the physical world. Is God basically rationalistic? Or, is He something more? Something better?
Did God make the physical world in order to satisfy the 'fallen' human wish for a means of salvation-by-works (technology, ritual, alchemy)? Or, instead, did He make it in order to satisfy that One Thing which it is said we shall do in the resurrected life: enjoy God forever? Is God's ulimate glory in an algorithm, or in an axiom? Which of the two is more meaningful, more beautiful? And, is a simple algorithm better than a complex one if the latter has far more practical and asthetic potential? Why stop there?
Even the Mandelbrot algorithm pays homage to God.
The way I came at all this was from an unassuming inquiry into the nature of space. What did I know directly about space, and about logic; and what kind of answer could that knowledge give me? I found that it all boiled down to the geometric point, and to what that point implies/presupposes. Einstein would be envious.
Isaac Newton formulated the most practical primitive conception of Motion without claiming a mechanism for gravity. Good thing for him AND us, because, since Newton left the scene, there has been so much effort to find a mechanism. I say there need be no mechanism, even in the face of an 'infinite regress' of physical laws. For what little I know of Newton's work, he may well not even have claimed that he had found the 'Final' theory of the Motions of All Things On All Scales (there seem to be reports that the current theories of physics include odd, and even bizarre, behaviors of subatomic particles).
Now, return to the topic of God's subtlety. Even pagans have a sense that there is, in fact, a certain Something, or Force, which is everywhere, and in everything, but which cannot be found like one finds a blue grain of sand on the beach. You can look and look and never find this Something, yet the 'spiritual' mind seems unable to help but admit that this Something exists.
The spiritual mental framework quite instinctively holds that a certain Something is omnipresent, yet also transcendent.
The mental framework of physical rationalism---or atheism---cannot, of course, readily admit that such a Something exists. But, this mental framework cannot be used to prove that this mental framework is sufficient to understand everything. Some persons simply hole themselves up into a particular-and-favored habit of mind in order never to fall into an erroneous habit of mind that produces increasingly severe errors.
Of course, in holing themselves up in a particular habit of mind, a person tends toward an increasing bias so that they end up rejecting as erroneous things which they later (if too late) are forced to admit are true. This tendency is a fact of the fallen 'human condition'. And, importantly, this tendency is a defensive one, rather than the ably-learning one of the small child of an unfallen world.
Even in the fallen world, it's better to seek the wisdom of an open-and-humble balance than the wisdom of arrogant defensivenes. The latter potentially results in a further fall into the arrogance of an untouchably tyranical personal Eden, in a fallen world that naturally-and-rightly demands that you equitably share what that Eden has cost them to produce for you. Christians don't need to get uppity with their theories. God is conceived as the 'Ideal Being'. The best and greatest possible. The notion, or thought, is easy to appreciate. But, the concept, or exact reality, can be difficult to formulate. That there are often obstacles to its formulation does not prove that the concept is impossible. As an excerise in intellectual humility, one can say that the obstacles may show only that there may be shortfalls in one's own thinking. After all, how many times, and in how many things, have you run into logical/conceptual obstacles that at first seemed inviolable, only later to find that you had made a conceptual mistake? It has happened to me so many times, and from so early in life, that I never have tried to keep track of them. Few people ever do.
The ideal concept of God includes both His ontological existence outside of spacetime, and His practical omnipresence within it. These are sometimes referred to as God's transcendence and immanence, respectively. Ideally, for the ideal being (God), He created space-time, rather than spacetime having existed as co-equal with God. So, God's ontology, that is, His very being, exists outside spacetime. But, ideally, also, God is omnipresent in spacetime. That is, ideally, God is both transcendent and immanent. By His omnipresence or immanence, God sees all. But, because He also transcends the cosmos, no-one-and-nothing can see Him without his choice. After all, if God made the eye, then God is invisible not because He is hiding behind a tree, but because He was hanging from one. He is invisible by nature, so that He can be seen only as He chooses. Just as importantly, He is everywhere and everywhen in such a way as never to 'occupy someone else's seat' so to speak. That's a humble God. His omnipresence never pushes any king off his throne, or any wanderer out of his tent. In short, God does not get in anyone's way. Everyone is free to be, and to move. On the face of it, the two ideals of omnipresence and transcendence seem unable logically to co-exist. Further, each ideal in itself seems impossible. How can something be present IN space and time and not take up any space and time? Much less, how can something be present everyhere and everywhen without 'butting' everything else out of existence? Both God's omnipresence and transcedence are possible by way of a single, all-but-ignored thing: the geochronic Point. Even the popular current theory of physics entertains the idea of such a point. Einstein's Theory of Relativity calls it the Singularity. But, the Singularity contains physical matter and energy, and need not be quite a true point. In logically considering the true, geochronic Point, however, it can be noted that this Point has no geometric nor chronological extension. It is purely there, as if without actually depending on either extensive space or extensive time for its own existence. In fact, both geometric and chronological Points are indistinguishable from each other: neither of them actually possess the properties of their respective referents. And, there can be an infinite number of them at a given Point, allowing an infinity of them throughout all of space and time. In short, they OCCUPY all of space and time without actually taking up any of space and time. Further, the geochronic Point cannot actually be located in terms of spacetime. You can't pinpoint it between your two fingertips. Nor can you stick the sharp end of a cartographer's tack through it. It cannot even be said that this Point is 'slippery', or 'fine-grained', as if to say that it 'slips through your fingers like liquid-teflon sand'. Oddly, the Point also logically allows that space, time, and matter can be 'infinitely' divided. That is, you can divide space, time, and matter endlessly without ever coming to the end of them, without ever finding the tiniest possible bit of them. In practical and asthetic terms, there is no tiniest possible bit of space, time, or matter; and no end to the ways in which it is organized, and thus to its practical uses. It's practical and spiritual uses need never end; its discoveries need never stop at a 'Final' theory. So, the geochronic Point seems to allow the only, directly theologically positive view of physics. Since the Point has no true referent, but rather all things are in reference to it, then there is not many Points, but one. God is not omnipresent in terms of spacetime, rather, all of space and time is everywhere and everywhen present to God. After all, God is transcendent. All this, if the true Point exists. It seems, at least from some mental framework, that the Point logically can exist, even though it cannot be directly empirically proved to exist. Like an axiom to the axiom's own algorithm, the latter unable to prove that its axiom is an axiom. Or, even like the 'self' to Allen Greenspan's original position of 'logical positivism: "If something cannot be measured in terms of something else, then nothing can be known about it, including whether it actually exists." This Point, as such, cannot be found. Not by you or me. It is not like a blue grain of sand that, by your seeing it as such, is proved to your senses to actually exist. Rather, the Point is so fundamental a Something that thought is possible only by subtlely presupposing it. In other words, like God, the Point does not get in your way. You are free to think.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Isaiah 58
Isaiah 58
There Is No Caste System in America; There Are No Oppressed Poor In America; There Are No Homeless Outcasts In America Who Didn't Deserve To Be Cast Out. No One In America Is Ever Misunderstood-And-Oppressed By Their Family, Their Militaristic Church, And Their Greedy Employer, Much Less To The Extent That It Results In Their Being Cast Out And Homeless; None Who Are Nearly Constantly Overwhelmed By The Discouragement Of The Effective Criminalization Of Their Homelessness Per The Sovereign Divine Right Of Those Who Are Well-off Enough To Borrow Money To Increase Their Own Already-Tolerable Lifestyle; None Who Are Endlessly Frustrated, Nor Suicidally Traumatized; None Who Ever Are Desparate Enough To Steal, To Do Violence To The Property-and-or-Persons Of Those Who Are 'Rich' In The Eyes Of The Destitute; None Who Are So Desparately Frustrated As To Blow Up And Start Hitting Things, Anything, In the Hope Of Communicating To You The PROBLEM WHICH YOU, At Least In Effect, DENY EXISTS.
If You Hate The Homeless, Then You Can Thank Your Own Pushy-and-Greedy, Profanely Dog-Eat-Dog Determination, and Your Health, and Your Connections, and Your Neurotypicality Contra Autism Spectrum Disorders, For Your Ability Never Yet To Be So Ruined As Never To Be Able To Help Yourself In The Rat-Race World Of Rats, Of The Normalization Of The Average Per The Profanely Sovereign Divine Right Of The 24/7 Protestant Work Ethic. There is Nothing Sacred, Including Christ In My Shoes, Unless You Knew It Was Him And Not Just Some 'Despicable' Homeless Person Who Has No Way Left In The World, For His Disabilities, Except To Scavenge In The 'Private Property' of Dumpsters. You Would Help Christ In My Shoes If You Knew It Was Him. But, His Point Was Not For You Kiss Up To Him, Nor Even So Much As To Help HIM AS SUCH. Rather, His Point Was For You To Help His Own Family--- Because It Is The Right Thing To Do. God, Who Is Omniscient, Makes It To Rain On The Just And On The Unjust. How Much More Ought You, Who Judge By Appearances, To Do The Same: To Water The WHOLE Field, And LIBERALLY SO, Lest You Fail To Get Sufficient Water To The Few Wheat Seedlings That Are Far Underneath The Shadow Of The Tares. Were I Your Son, Or Were I Your Mother, Or Your Long-Lost Uncle Who Went To War To Defend Your Safety, And If You Knew It, Then Would You Treat Me As If I Were The Lazy, Pot-Smoking Scoundrel That You Otherwise Love To Righteously Believe That I Am? HERE Is What I Am:
Imagine the U.S. Space Program found outerspace suddenly monopolized by a race of extremely friendly star-hopping aliens. And, imagine that these aliens, despite their awesome technological knowledge and power, consistently failed to see just how comparatively flimsy are our own spacecraft. The damage we would suffer from their friendliness would make us head back to Earth and stay there. This is autism.
As I hope is seen in this analogy, autism is not the disability. It is the 'place' of escape; the world of refuge. Like the heightened senses of blind persons, I think autism may be a neuro-plastic compensation for an underlying disability. Moreover, this compensation is of a type allowing a cognitive escape from the external context by which the disability manifests. In other words, autism is a specific type of neurological response to a 'vacancy' in the ecology of the brain; a type which creates a whole inner world out of what is left intact in the functioning of the brain. Nature abhors a vacuum---or, in the words of a character in the Jurassic Park movies, 'Life finds a way.'
The underlying disability of autism is a feebled dynamic autonomy. This is why autistic persons have difficulty facing the normal dynamic stressors that the rest of us take for granted. These stressors are what normal persons know as the substance of living; what stimulates growth and maturation, and what comprises the 'good stuff' of life itself. But, a person with a feebled dynamic autonomy lacks a well-formed, strong, dynamic sense of themselves as differentiated persons in a neurotypical social context. Worse, it is why they must avoid social contact on a normal person's terms. In short, they are unable to negotiate with the too-powerful aliens in the analogy above. It is also why the Sallyl-Ann test does not, in fact, directly test for the autistic person's ability to know of, and about, other minds, and other, independent points of view: the test is conducted by these aliens, these 'gods', and there is often too much damage involved for the autistic person in playing along with the test. Besides, it takes no great energy for him to simply rocket back toward Earth and then let gravity pull the rest of the way him home.
But, given the analogy above, imagine there were no Earth to head back to. The means of escape from the context by which the disability arises has vanished, yet the disability remains. The autism has vanished, but the disability remains. What does this mean? Here's a clue to my hunch: While the incidence of autism is rather higher among boys than girls, the incidence of the underlying disability may not be so disparate between sexes. The fact is that many 'normal' women (and some men) have a hard time genuinely believing that they have a right to have their own needs; they're psychologically so focused on the needs, wishes, and opinions of others. Autistic persons have a similar problem: the inability to stand up as their own persons under the pressure of the personal social autonomy of normal persons. Just like the U.S. Space Program in the face of the friendly aliens. Autistic persons cannot readily afford to admit to gods that they recognize themselves as differentiated persons, lest these gods take too much for granted that 'simply being friendly' will basically solve the problem.
Here is a quote from Motor behavior and the autism spectrum disorders--introduction
Reid, Greg; Collier, Douglas
Palaestra
10-01-2002
Given the array of observation scales for autism developed over the years (e.g., Schopler, Reichler, DeVellis, & Daly, 1980) one might assume that individuals are diagnosed rather easily by trained psychologists or psychiatrists. In general, such is not the case (Wing, 1997, 2000). Enormous heterogeneity of behaviors and developmental profiles make accurate diagnosis very difficult. The difficulty of diagnosis was apparent to one of the authors when it was learned that a local hospital used PDD-NOS most frequently with newly admitted children. Real children clearly did not fall into other diagnostic subtypes, and the more general (and vague) PDD-NOS was deemed most appropriate.
I myself have a very mild case of autism---at least in regard to most things. But, I believe I have the underlying disability in spades. In fact, I'm now very ill, and very homeless, for it. The neuro-plastic compensation in my case seems to be...
...Firstly, a hyper-focus on the feelings and opinions of others (similar to Williams Syndrome), including their feelings/thoughts about/for/against me. My entire sense of reality is forcefully, even violently, changed every two seconds when I find myself in an ordinary conversation, or even when simply as an anonymous bystander in the midst other people's conversations.
...Secondly, a creative intelligence so 'high' that it seems to me able to take up the slack wherever my nearly absent conventional knowledge acquisition-and-retention fails.
All-in-all, I often appear not disabled at all when in social contact with more-or-less socially aggressive persons, especially if I have enough nutritional support despite my severe digestive problems so that I can function well enough socio-cognitively to at least force myself to respond as a normal person. The stellar language ability of Williams people masks their severe general IQ deficit, and all my own abilities masks my severe disability. I cannot be my own person in the face of others, and, given my current state, requires something which I cannot obtain: completely isolation from other people. The more distress I experience from the presence of others, the less able I am to find rest in observing non-humanb life forms, even to the point where I must look away from wild birds, and even bugs. I was the last to know that I was thought of as a budding socio-economic superboy. Only when I was forced by my bowels to seek isolation (despite my wish to continue to comply with other's wishes that I keep company with them) for years did it begin to occur to me, because while in their company I was simply trying to stay both alive and sane at the same time. Their militarism didn't help, either.
Given a multiple of apparently distinct elements, the brain at first focuses on each element as if it actually were inherently distinct from the others (functional distinction). But, when a medical problem is first brought to the awareness of doctors and professional researchers, and also to the public, the medical establishment is at first presented with only a vary narrow subset of all the cases that actually exist in the general population. Of course, doctors are concerned to give an accurate diagnosis for each case presented to them. But, so many of them and their researchers tend to go through a learning process in which they are forced, by stages, to keep reassessing their current theory of the disorder. So, at the first stage, they assume that all the similar elements (autism, aspergers, Williams, Down, etc.) are mutually exclusive, only soon to be forced to 'admit' that some of this was a mistake. each talking/writing as if he or herself had always known the new truth of the matter. This false innocence on the part of the establishment is a source of the most grievous frustration for those of us who have, or are intimately associated with someone with, one of these disorders. I have the disorder, and I can tell you that it is not a neat little spectrum of autism, but an ocean of all cognitive disorders, and that everyone is in that ocean. Simon Baron-Cohen is right about this, although I guess he still puts it in terms of an autism 'spectrum'.
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There Is No Caste System in America; There Are No Oppressed Poor In America; There Are No Homeless Outcasts In America Who Didn't Deserve To Be Cast Out. No One In America Is Ever Misunderstood-And-Oppressed By Their Family, Their Militaristic Church, And Their Greedy Employer, Much Less To The Extent That It Results In Their Being Cast Out And Homeless; None Who Are Nearly Constantly Overwhelmed By The Discouragement Of The Effective Criminalization Of Their Homelessness Per The Sovereign Divine Right Of Those Who Are Well-off Enough To Borrow Money To Increase Their Own Already-Tolerable Lifestyle; None Who Are Endlessly Frustrated, Nor Suicidally Traumatized; None Who Ever Are Desparate Enough To Steal, To Do Violence To The Property-and-or-Persons Of Those Who Are 'Rich' In The Eyes Of The Destitute; None Who Are So Desparately Frustrated As To Blow Up And Start Hitting Things, Anything, In the Hope Of Communicating To You The PROBLEM WHICH YOU, At Least In Effect, DENY EXISTS.
If You Hate The Homeless, Then You Can Thank Your Own Pushy-and-Greedy, Profanely Dog-Eat-Dog Determination, and Your Health, and Your Connections, and Your Neurotypicality Contra Autism Spectrum Disorders, For Your Ability Never Yet To Be So Ruined As Never To Be Able To Help Yourself In The Rat-Race World Of Rats, Of The Normalization Of The Average Per The Profanely Sovereign Divine Right Of The 24/7 Protestant Work Ethic. There is Nothing Sacred, Including Christ In My Shoes, Unless You Knew It Was Him And Not Just Some 'Despicable' Homeless Person Who Has No Way Left In The World, For His Disabilities, Except To Scavenge In The 'Private Property' of Dumpsters. You Would Help Christ In My Shoes If You Knew It Was Him. But, His Point Was Not For You Kiss Up To Him, Nor Even So Much As To Help HIM AS SUCH. Rather, His Point Was For You To Help His Own Family--- Because It Is The Right Thing To Do. God, Who Is Omniscient, Makes It To Rain On The Just And On The Unjust. How Much More Ought You, Who Judge By Appearances, To Do The Same: To Water The WHOLE Field, And LIBERALLY SO, Lest You Fail To Get Sufficient Water To The Few Wheat Seedlings That Are Far Underneath The Shadow Of The Tares. Were I Your Son, Or Were I Your Mother, Or Your Long-Lost Uncle Who Went To War To Defend Your Safety, And If You Knew It, Then Would You Treat Me As If I Were The Lazy, Pot-Smoking Scoundrel That You Otherwise Love To Righteously Believe That I Am? HERE Is What I Am:
Imagine the U.S. Space Program found outerspace suddenly monopolized by a race of extremely friendly star-hopping aliens. And, imagine that these aliens, despite their awesome technological knowledge and power, consistently failed to see just how comparatively flimsy are our own spacecraft. The damage we would suffer from their friendliness would make us head back to Earth and stay there. This is autism.
As I hope is seen in this analogy, autism is not the disability. It is the 'place' of escape; the world of refuge. Like the heightened senses of blind persons, I think autism may be a neuro-plastic compensation for an underlying disability. Moreover, this compensation is of a type allowing a cognitive escape from the external context by which the disability manifests. In other words, autism is a specific type of neurological response to a 'vacancy' in the ecology of the brain; a type which creates a whole inner world out of what is left intact in the functioning of the brain. Nature abhors a vacuum---or, in the words of a character in the Jurassic Park movies, 'Life finds a way.'
The underlying disability of autism is a feebled dynamic autonomy. This is why autistic persons have difficulty facing the normal dynamic stressors that the rest of us take for granted. These stressors are what normal persons know as the substance of living; what stimulates growth and maturation, and what comprises the 'good stuff' of life itself. But, a person with a feebled dynamic autonomy lacks a well-formed, strong, dynamic sense of themselves as differentiated persons in a neurotypical social context. Worse, it is why they must avoid social contact on a normal person's terms. In short, they are unable to negotiate with the too-powerful aliens in the analogy above. It is also why the Sallyl-Ann test does not, in fact, directly test for the autistic person's ability to know of, and about, other minds, and other, independent points of view: the test is conducted by these aliens, these 'gods', and there is often too much damage involved for the autistic person in playing along with the test. Besides, it takes no great energy for him to simply rocket back toward Earth and then let gravity pull the rest of the way him home.
But, given the analogy above, imagine there were no Earth to head back to. The means of escape from the context by which the disability arises has vanished, yet the disability remains. The autism has vanished, but the disability remains. What does this mean? Here's a clue to my hunch: While the incidence of autism is rather higher among boys than girls, the incidence of the underlying disability may not be so disparate between sexes. The fact is that many 'normal' women (and some men) have a hard time genuinely believing that they have a right to have their own needs; they're psychologically so focused on the needs, wishes, and opinions of others. Autistic persons have a similar problem: the inability to stand up as their own persons under the pressure of the personal social autonomy of normal persons. Just like the U.S. Space Program in the face of the friendly aliens. Autistic persons cannot readily afford to admit to gods that they recognize themselves as differentiated persons, lest these gods take too much for granted that 'simply being friendly' will basically solve the problem.
Here is a quote from Motor behavior and the autism spectrum disorders--introduction
Reid, Greg; Collier, Douglas
Palaestra
10-01-2002
Given the array of observation scales for autism developed over the years (e.g., Schopler, Reichler, DeVellis, & Daly, 1980) one might assume that individuals are diagnosed rather easily by trained psychologists or psychiatrists. In general, such is not the case (Wing, 1997, 2000). Enormous heterogeneity of behaviors and developmental profiles make accurate diagnosis very difficult. The difficulty of diagnosis was apparent to one of the authors when it was learned that a local hospital used PDD-NOS most frequently with newly admitted children. Real children clearly did not fall into other diagnostic subtypes, and the more general (and vague) PDD-NOS was deemed most appropriate.
I myself have a very mild case of autism---at least in regard to most things. But, I believe I have the underlying disability in spades. In fact, I'm now very ill, and very homeless, for it. The neuro-plastic compensation in my case seems to be...
...Firstly, a hyper-focus on the feelings and opinions of others (similar to Williams Syndrome), including their feelings/thoughts about/for/against me. My entire sense of reality is forcefully, even violently, changed every two seconds when I find myself in an ordinary conversation, or even when simply as an anonymous bystander in the midst other people's conversations.
...Secondly, a creative intelligence so 'high' that it seems to me able to take up the slack wherever my nearly absent conventional knowledge acquisition-and-retention fails.
All-in-all, I often appear not disabled at all when in social contact with more-or-less socially aggressive persons, especially if I have enough nutritional support despite my severe digestive problems so that I can function well enough socio-cognitively to at least force myself to respond as a normal person. The stellar language ability of Williams people masks their severe general IQ deficit, and all my own abilities masks my severe disability. I cannot be my own person in the face of others, and, given my current state, requires something which I cannot obtain: completely isolation from other people. The more distress I experience from the presence of others, the less able I am to find rest in observing non-humanb life forms, even to the point where I must look away from wild birds, and even bugs. I was the last to know that I was thought of as a budding socio-economic superboy. Only when I was forced by my bowels to seek isolation (despite my wish to continue to comply with other's wishes that I keep company with them) for years did it begin to occur to me, because while in their company I was simply trying to stay both alive and sane at the same time. Their militarism didn't help, either.
Given a multiple of apparently distinct elements, the brain at first focuses on each element as if it actually were inherently distinct from the others (functional distinction). But, when a medical problem is first brought to the awareness of doctors and professional researchers, and also to the public, the medical establishment is at first presented with only a vary narrow subset of all the cases that actually exist in the general population. Of course, doctors are concerned to give an accurate diagnosis for each case presented to them. But, so many of them and their researchers tend to go through a learning process in which they are forced, by stages, to keep reassessing their current theory of the disorder. So, at the first stage, they assume that all the similar elements (autism, aspergers, Williams, Down, etc.) are mutually exclusive, only soon to be forced to 'admit' that some of this was a mistake. each talking/writing as if he or herself had always known the new truth of the matter. This false innocence on the part of the establishment is a source of the most grievous frustration for those of us who have, or are intimately associated with someone with, one of these disorders. I have the disorder, and I can tell you that it is not a neat little spectrum of autism, but an ocean of all cognitive disorders, and that everyone is in that ocean. Simon Baron-Cohen is right about this, although I guess he still puts it in terms of an autism 'spectrum'.
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Saturday, March 8, 2008
The Anthropic Puzzle, and the Nature of Human Epistemology
Imagine you find a twenty-four-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle in a thrift store. You assume it is twenty-four-thousand pieces because that's what it says on the box---and it's a huge box. The only other thing on the box is a picture of a man. There are no explanations.
The price tag sticker on the box says "2 cents". When you look inside the box, you see only a bunch of normal-sized pure black puzzle pieces that shimmer in the light. Despite the large number of pieces, you find this puzzle compelling. You estimate that its assembled size would be about 144 square feet---not too big for your living room floor.
So, out of an odd curiosity, you buy the puzzle and take it home. After all, it only cost you two cents. As you begin laying out the pieces on the floor, you notice that they all are randomly shaped on two opposing sides, while the other two sides are shaped like normal jigsaw puzzle pieces.
A few months later you have assembled enough groups of the pieces to realize that there is nothing random about the 'random' sides of the pieces: the puzzle is just a really huge border outlining the shape of a man. But, there is still something about this puzzle that puzzles you. Eventually, you get a hunch. You get working.
Your hunch is right: the shimmering quality of the pieces are parts of a faint hologram when laid out in a grid, with each piece simply abutting adjacent pieces. The hologram is of the words "You asked for it: my two cents."
At this point, you take a trip back to the thrift store to ask the employees, and hopefully also the owner, about this puzzle. You want to know who made it, and why. Strangely, every employee you find is identically reticent in their answer. They all reply with a shrug and say, "It's just a puzzle." This gets on your nerves.
Weeks go by before you finally track down so much as the store owner's phone number. It's an unlisted number---which increases your irritation. You call him up, your hands shaking in frustration, and you beg him to tell you about the puzzle. He replies simply, "It's just a puzzle". You explode.
You scream through the phone at him, demanding that he explain why everyone who knows about the puzzle keeps giving that same non-answer.
He replies that "that's the whole point: it's just a puzzle: the actual world is already assembled, and you're down in it."
"I'm down in it?", you ask. "What does that mean?"
He replies, "From your perspective, the actual world is highly topographic, and you are not able to look down on it. The only thing you can look down on is the puzzle itself----like a paper map of the world, it's not the actual world down in which you live. If you want to understand the world, you have to understand your relative position in it. You have to be willing to look up."
After a few moments of silence, you ask him, "Who made the puzzle?"
"You did." he says.
"I mean, who made the pieces?"
He hems and haws for a bit, and then says, "Why..., do you want your two cents back?"
The price tag sticker on the box says "2 cents". When you look inside the box, you see only a bunch of normal-sized pure black puzzle pieces that shimmer in the light. Despite the large number of pieces, you find this puzzle compelling. You estimate that its assembled size would be about 144 square feet---not too big for your living room floor.
So, out of an odd curiosity, you buy the puzzle and take it home. After all, it only cost you two cents. As you begin laying out the pieces on the floor, you notice that they all are randomly shaped on two opposing sides, while the other two sides are shaped like normal jigsaw puzzle pieces.
A few months later you have assembled enough groups of the pieces to realize that there is nothing random about the 'random' sides of the pieces: the puzzle is just a really huge border outlining the shape of a man. But, there is still something about this puzzle that puzzles you. Eventually, you get a hunch. You get working.
Your hunch is right: the shimmering quality of the pieces are parts of a faint hologram when laid out in a grid, with each piece simply abutting adjacent pieces. The hologram is of the words "You asked for it: my two cents."
At this point, you take a trip back to the thrift store to ask the employees, and hopefully also the owner, about this puzzle. You want to know who made it, and why. Strangely, every employee you find is identically reticent in their answer. They all reply with a shrug and say, "It's just a puzzle." This gets on your nerves.
Weeks go by before you finally track down so much as the store owner's phone number. It's an unlisted number---which increases your irritation. You call him up, your hands shaking in frustration, and you beg him to tell you about the puzzle. He replies simply, "It's just a puzzle". You explode.
You scream through the phone at him, demanding that he explain why everyone who knows about the puzzle keeps giving that same non-answer.
He replies that "that's the whole point: it's just a puzzle: the actual world is already assembled, and you're down in it."
"I'm down in it?", you ask. "What does that mean?"
He replies, "From your perspective, the actual world is highly topographic, and you are not able to look down on it. The only thing you can look down on is the puzzle itself----like a paper map of the world, it's not the actual world down in which you live. If you want to understand the world, you have to understand your relative position in it. You have to be willing to look up."
After a few moments of silence, you ask him, "Who made the puzzle?"
"You did." he says.
"I mean, who made the pieces?"
He hems and haws for a bit, and then says, "Why..., do you want your two cents back?"
Labels:
555 words,
anthropology,
cosmology,
epistemology,
theology
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
He Was, Too, Just Doing His Job: What Spiritual Leadership Is Not
I want here to ask one of many questions about a particular kind of pastor regarding his oft claim to have been called to be a pastor. First, I must describe the kind of pastor I ask about:
Before he became a 'pastor', and before he even began studying to become a 'pastor', he was not inclined of himself to minister to people's spiritual needs. In other words, when he was, as yet, 'merely a Christian', he was not particularly inclined to 'spiritual service' until he got the idea of 'becoming a pastor'. ^^^Furthermore, the core of this pastor's concept of 'being a pastor' was (and still is) that he had something to say and wanted people to hear it and assent to it. In other words, he had opinions that were itching to be heard, and specifically heard by an audience who would be loyal to his 'leadership' as the official spokesman for The Smallest Details Of The Truth of God's Word As He Saw It. ^^^Finally, this pastor had, and still has, no natural inclination to treat others as fellow human beings, much less as friends, unless he already thinks or knows that they believe, and do, exactly as he believes and does regarding everything that he is uptight about which the New Testament letters mention for being faithful members of a church---namely his church. In other words, his fellowship with a particular person is something that he has the special authority to grant or reject based on his presumptions as to what this person believes because of how that person reacts to his 'ministry'. After all, he speaks the words of Truth [as did the uptight pharisees], so he feels that if this person rejects fellowship with him, then he presumes that this person is also rejecting fellowship with the Truth.^^^I should here mention that my very sanity was in question until I had spent years NOT attending, years spent alone trying to understand what was the truth about me and why I did not want to attend; years spent trying to sort out my fear of divine damnation for not being able as a small child to welcome the 'evangelistic' arm-twisting of my elders that supposedly resulted in people 'getting saved' ('Repeat after me' or else we will hound you for life as unsaved and needing to submit to our salvation machine, including, afterword, playing a cookie- cutter 'I'm saved!' 'new believer' 'witnessing' frenzy).^^^I had never officially-and-formally 'said the Sinner's Prayer'. The few times that I found myself being asked 'when I got saved', I was simply terrified of them lest they find out that I had not 'said the Sinner's Prayer', because I knew that if they asked me to do so, I would have been unable either to do so or to convincingly play their 'I'm saved!' new believer frenzy.^^^I could not begin to understand why I did not want to kiss their holy asses in 'saying the Sinner's Prayer' if they asked me would I like to. I felt very internally conflicted; that, even though I always felt and knew that God loved me as his child, somehow God must have decided to reserve me for damnation because I knew that I would be unable to submit to these 'spiritual leader's' requirements to their satisfaction.^^^I was unable to be truly welcomed as a fellow Christian by my own biological father because he believed that I was not 'saved' since he had never seen me with a 'lifted load of sin', nor heard me 'happy in Christ as a new believer' as he had been. So, I grew up being occasionally reminded, in effect, that I was not welcome as a fellow Christian in ant Christian gathering: I had no 'witness' to being 'saved'. I knew that if some officially 'saved' person thought that I was not saved, then I knew that I had no way to prove either to him or to myself that I was, since I had never either officially 'said the Sinner's Prayer' or went through an 'I'm saved!' new believer's frenzy.^^^I felt I was doomed to be damned, because I neither had ever 'said the Sinner's Prayer' nor wished ever to begin what I knew would be a never-ended struggle with these 'spiritual leaders' to 'get me truly saved' by repeatedly putting me through their Salvation Machine and seeing what I acted like when I came out the other side of it. I could never pull off a 'new believer' act, because I was put under the impression by these zealous 'spiritual leaders' that 1)salvation is an officially overseen formality, 2)the initial proof of salvation is a 'new believer' frenzy on the part of the new believer, and 3)the highest proof of salvation is a radically changed life.^^^So, I had no words, acts, or 'feeling of assurance' to prove either to myself or to these 'evangelistic pastors' that I was saved. I was terrified, traumatized, every time the subject came up. I still am, but now only by these sick-and-twisted uptight vipers, who, at their 'righteously' presumptuous whim, can simply send me into that inescapable dark trauma again and again. From the pulpit, without ever directly getting to know me as a human being. As if I can never be tenderly treated like he treats his own adopted son unless first I become what I, in fact, can never be: his own 'pastorly' reflection.^^^So, my question is, does this kind of pastor warrant anyone's loyalty as a genuine spiritual leader---much less the loyalty of those he mistakes as rebellious for their endless refusal to 'attend church.' My own answer is simply that I have no fellowship with vipers who are full of their own sense of their ability to 'discern' people through 'The Plain Word Of God'. The fact is that I have never, in my life, had a genuine spiritual leader when it counted. And, I'm not the only one in my shoes, not by a thousand. I know some quite personally who are in basically the same fix. Some directly related to me.^^^So, Preacher Boy, if you ever read this, know one thing: there is a price on your head in the court of Heaven. Because, it is against such as you are that the feebleminded have the best defense attorney in that court. You do not cause me to sin, which would be a small thing compared to what you do cause: you cause me to lose all sanity by the dread of your falsely discerning sternness. My question to you is, which sin of these of your two would be worse for you to commit? You are like your father and grandfather, a viper. You adore your ability to 'discern' individuals, and your father presumed for his own selfish position as a 'pastor' that I was his sheep. Me, Superman. You, like your father and his father, count sheep in the worst way: by simply presuming both to know a sheep for who and what he really is, and then to count him as yours: a mere sheep underneath you as his Head. Step down or be cursed. Walk away.^^^Preacher Boy, not you, not your father, and not his father, was ever called to be a pastor. Because you smash and scatter the feeblest sheep when they do not stay in lock-step with the dumbest-but-strongest like yourself. You are simply a man with an opinion as to what everyone is about, based on what you are about in your own twisted, 'Biblically' [self-] 'righteous' heart. You look to the heavens with only one eye, the other eye always fixed firmly on those over whom you most presume to rightfully-shepherd-if-only-they-would-submit. So, what you see in either image has no depth. Like what must have been the way of the early-model replicants never seen in the Bladerunner movie: No real memories, just programs.^^^How is it that you did not know that you shall judge angels, until you heard that the Bible says so? You still didn't know even then, you simply accept it as 'revealed truth' because 'God said so', and so you did not see the implication of the Apostle's question. To you, it was merely like a computer program that you have the duty simply to accept as true because the Bible asserts it. Like the following assertion of your own:
"Our mission centers around this question: Where will you be 10 minutes after you die? "
http://www.towncenterbaptist.com/?content=message
^^^Preacher Boy, not every kind of 'centered-around' is good just because the thing being centered around is good. The Sabbath and the Tithe were very 'centered around' by the Pharisees. And marriage is neither synonymous with, or created by, the sex act, because, among less evil things, rape is not marriage by any means. And, if you think that you or your father has never raped anyone simply because you and he have never intended to do so, think again. The effect of your self-adoringly 'ordained' and 'Biblically' puplit-centric 'ministry' speak louder than any truthful words you can mouth from it. The error of secular state incorporation to which the Church has commonly submitted 'itself' is not the disease, it is a final symptom. You are the disease.^^^False spiritual leadership always ends up admiring its sense of 'discernment' so much that, generations of 'pastors' later, nothing so insignificant as secular incorporation of the Church is particularly worth worrying about either way. You strain at a legal gnat and swallow a spiritual camel. The first man, Adam, was a pastor, but he did not presume to call down a miracle of blessing upon his 'special' words uttered from a pulpit. That's partly because he had only one certain thing around which his ministering could be centered: his own life story and for which all his listeners found themselves in a fallen life in a fallen world. And, partly because he had not inherited the notion of being a 'pastor' which you have, a notion within which you think you are so rich because you can simply judge every act and evidence according to the mere words of a book that you worship in place of God.^^^To you, like to your father, being a spiritual leader is about interpreting everything everyone does by looking at the mere words in that book. If the book neither states or actively implies an exception to a rule that it does state, then you feel that you are in the right to simply come down against anyone who fails to abide by the merest words of its statement. You do this all for maintaining your own 'pastorly' position. So, the spiritual wolves against which you love to preach (many of whom are not as you accuse) are saints compared to you, because you are a viper in a long line of vipers.^^^Your only grace, Preacher Boy, as a 'pastor' is that, unlike your grandfather, you see no good in throwing hymnals at dozing attendees. I wrote your father once, but he did not reply. So I wrote him again, and again, and again. And, still, he never stooped down to me, never sought me out as a fellow human being to find out what makes me tick. Because he was too busy 'working in the Word'. Too busy thinking within the tidy box of his self-adoringly 'called-to-be-a-pastor' presumptions.^^^No, Preacher Boy, your father had a sense that he was a sinner alright. But, a lack of that sense is not what being a self-righteous pharisee is quite entirely about. He was still counting sheep and preparing to 'feed' them, so he did not at all know the few feeble ones for what they were: feeble. He was perfectly content in his official, 'ordained' position to mistake them for supermen and over which he loved to feel that he was so recognized-by-God-as-being-among-the-very-elect-in-wisdom as to be these supermen's spiritual leader. He simply presumed what they were about by way of 'what is warranted': no direct knowledge necessary, no inquiry required. Just 'preach the Word'. As if everyone is just like you, and only that some will not submit to the 'Word of God' from your pulpit.^^^Do you think that by 'being a pastor' of the Word of God you have more grace of wisdom than anyone who refuses to submit to you as their pastor? If you don't think it, yet you still feel, act, and 'discern' as if you have such grace. As if by 'being a pastor' you have a corner on a kind of grace that you feel is available only to those who are 'saved' by way of your self-centered 'pastoral grace'. I'm here to tell you that there are only two kinds of grace, and that you have almost none of either: saving grace, and common grace. I am the thief on the cross; and you, like your father and his father, are a pharisee who presumes that this thief cannot be counted righteous unless he goes to Christ through you or someone like you. You viper. I will not call you for need of a pastor. You will call me for need of your life.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Still Counting Sheep: Heathen Spirits in the Name of Christ (Atheism Doesn't Get Any Worse Than This, Preacher Boy)
Too many preachers think of themselves as pastors, as spiritual leaders, as under-shepherds. Too many of them adore themselves in quoting scripture from behind a respected pulpit, such as:The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'But, atheism is not primarily a denial of God. It is primarily a denial of how people ought to think of, and treat, each other in the face of the invisible God. It is the spirit of heathens, which is primarily self-admiration in the face of visible fellow human beings. Many Christians are atheists, or heathens, in effect, because of how they think of, and treat, strangers who they target for 'soul winning', and because of how they think of, and treat, children in the name of education. Adam did not learn spiritual leadership from a self-admiring preacher boy with a dogmatic, 'Biblical' attitude.If thought (or discernment) is defined as the ability to recognize something, then this is not enough to know anything in the first place. You need to be able to identify something to begin with in order to be able 're-cognize' it when you see it again. And, that's the very problem, because even if thought is defined (i.e., identified) as the ability both to identify and to recognize things, then a computer can, in effect, think. The question is what criteria is to be used to identify whatever it is that is being identified. The wrong criteria will result in partial, or primary, or even complete, misidentification.So, what is needed for actual thought is an actual sensibility, a sense about things, whether the experience of the red of a rose, or the observing of one's own thinking (qualia and metacognition, respectively). A sense about things might alternatively be called imagination, or awarness, or sentience. Sensibility is something which neither radios or computers have, because these objects are only objects, only machines; they are nothing more than glorified hammers; there is nobody 'in there', there is no 'little man inside the radio'; they cannot actually identify anything, they can only simulate for us what we 'identify with'. The same goes for books.An 'educational process' that consists primarily of being spoon-fed a Primary Document to identify-and-recognize, and according to prescribed criteria, does not produce an educated mind, it produces a programmed mind---a brainwashed mind. And, if the victim of such brainwashing arrogantly welcomes it as THE TRUTH, then that victim's mind becomes preoccupied with a sense of its ablity to 'discern' both facts and spirits, both conditions and intentions. The less such a 'discerning' person knows about the differences within different people, the more such a person feels sure of his own ability to 'discern' other's through that Primary Document.Imagination---a sense about things---is the core of thought. To learn anything for real, you not only need the ability to identify-and-recognize things, you also need imagination. And, I hope you recognize that imagination includes an awareness of the black expanse of personal ignorance and solely from which new knowledge is gained. Wanting to know something implies ignorance, and every baby is born with the natural action of 'searching' for things to discover, things that are new to him. We can search inside things that we have never explored before, or inside things with which we are already acquainted. This natural act of 'searching' for things to discover (or identify) is the root of effective thought, because it implies sensibility. Computing machines do not actually search, we simply make them function in ways that automate a presentation of raw information. The crowds of little 'bugs' you are currently looking at (what Tarzan called the letters of these words) is simply raw information.Notice that I said the NATURAL act of 'searching' for things. But, this natural act can be prevented or corrupted if the person is routinely and arbitrarily imposed upon to 'pay attention' to something else. And, the 'something else' can even be nothing more than the effort to comply with an impatient and presumptive demand that he initiate a search. This is human thinking turned into a chore. An even worse implication about this is that chores can often become things you do simply to get them done and out of the way. Worse still, the compliance to the command to initiate a search is degraded by an order of magnitude if the searcher is imposed upon to identify new things according to prescribed criteria. In this way, a person's efforts to learn---to search for things---becomes hijacked.A child sometimes needs guidance in understanding things, especially in regard to wisdom in an evil world. But, this does not mean he must be treated meanly just to make sure he doesn't one day end up rejecting what we tell him. To hijack a child's effort of searching is to treat the child as if his mind were little more than the Mars Rover commanded by NASA. This kind of teacher-to-child relationship presupposes that the child may rightly be 'tested' constantly such that the 'testing' attitude of the teacher toward the child makes the child self-conscious in an uncomfortable way: a micro-managed, breathing-down-your-neck-even-when-the-teacher-is-absent feeling.Such hijacking is not a natural human relationship, especially if it is heavy-handed, or even if it feels heavy-handed to the child from past abuse (analogous to having a very raw wound that someone handles as if there is no wound, so that the pain is out of proportion to what the handler intends). This unnatural relationship is compounded when the teacher, at least in effect, equates thought with expression---especially with preconceived forms of expression. Such a teacher may think that the child's relative inability to articulate his thoughts about certain ideas means that the child only poorly understands those ideas. The teacher can articulate her own thoughts about those ideas comparatively well, so she assumes that her own thoughts about those ideas are right, especially if the child has no ready and articulate objection to her expressed thoughts.To hijack a child's mind like this is to make an effective claim to essential dominion over the child (Genesis 1:28)---just as if the child were a robot made to serve its human maker. Don't presume to represent my maker to me, preacher boy. Atheism doesn't get any worse than you. In fact, you can be worse than an atheist because only the Truth, not a lie, can be misused. Only the Truth misused can truly rape feeble-minded souls.God's Word was made for man, not man for God's Word. That's because it's not sufficient in every sense of sufficient. Only God is that sufficient. Even God's Word, in the book of Revelation, says that there shall, in the future, be two prophets of God who shall prophecy. Don't you know that the Last Fact in a list of Facts is not synonymous with the Last Truth, and that the Last Truth in a list of Truths is not synonymous with the last word?You, Preacher Boy, are not a pastor, much less a suitable one. You are a vending machine from hell. The ability to carefully prepare highly proprietary slop, and dump it in a feed trough, does not make you a pastor when, regardless of your success in getting most of your sheep to stand and eat it, you condemn as stubborn what is, in fact, another man's sheep that is both very ill from this heathenized slop and was born without legs. This one sheep, that you thought was a strong one of your own, which you thought to show off to other shepherds as proof of your 'blessing of superior discernment'; that God would give you, of all shepherds, such a sheep.So, what about the fool? I have just one thing to say, and it is not to him. Rather, it is to the preacher who claims that since he has the Word of God, he has the automatic discernment of God: You are a viper dancing to your own charm.
Posted by Daniel Pech at 11:57 PM 0 comments
Labels: 1333 words
Before he became a 'pastor', and before he even began studying to become a 'pastor', he was not inclined of himself to minister to people's spiritual needs. In other words, when he was, as yet, 'merely a Christian', he was not particularly inclined to 'spiritual service' until he got the idea of 'becoming a pastor'. ^^^Furthermore, the core of this pastor's concept of 'being a pastor' was (and still is) that he had something to say and wanted people to hear it and assent to it. In other words, he had opinions that were itching to be heard, and specifically heard by an audience who would be loyal to his 'leadership' as the official spokesman for The Smallest Details Of The Truth of God's Word As He Saw It. ^^^Finally, this pastor had, and still has, no natural inclination to treat others as fellow human beings, much less as friends, unless he already thinks or knows that they believe, and do, exactly as he believes and does regarding everything that he is uptight about which the New Testament letters mention for being faithful members of a church---namely his church. In other words, his fellowship with a particular person is something that he has the special authority to grant or reject based on his presumptions as to what this person believes because of how that person reacts to his 'ministry'. After all, he speaks the words of Truth [as did the uptight pharisees], so he feels that if this person rejects fellowship with him, then he presumes that this person is also rejecting fellowship with the Truth.^^^I should here mention that my very sanity was in question until I had spent years NOT attending, years spent alone trying to understand what was the truth about me and why I did not want to attend; years spent trying to sort out my fear of divine damnation for not being able as a small child to welcome the 'evangelistic' arm-twisting of my elders that supposedly resulted in people 'getting saved' ('Repeat after me' or else we will hound you for life as unsaved and needing to submit to our salvation machine, including, afterword, playing a cookie- cutter 'I'm saved!' 'new believer' 'witnessing' frenzy).^^^I had never officially-and-formally 'said the Sinner's Prayer'. The few times that I found myself being asked 'when I got saved', I was simply terrified of them lest they find out that I had not 'said the Sinner's Prayer', because I knew that if they asked me to do so, I would have been unable either to do so or to convincingly play their 'I'm saved!' new believer frenzy.^^^I could not begin to understand why I did not want to kiss their holy asses in 'saying the Sinner's Prayer' if they asked me would I like to. I felt very internally conflicted; that, even though I always felt and knew that God loved me as his child, somehow God must have decided to reserve me for damnation because I knew that I would be unable to submit to these 'spiritual leader's' requirements to their satisfaction.^^^I was unable to be truly welcomed as a fellow Christian by my own biological father because he believed that I was not 'saved' since he had never seen me with a 'lifted load of sin', nor heard me 'happy in Christ as a new believer' as he had been. So, I grew up being occasionally reminded, in effect, that I was not welcome as a fellow Christian in ant Christian gathering: I had no 'witness' to being 'saved'. I knew that if some officially 'saved' person thought that I was not saved, then I knew that I had no way to prove either to him or to myself that I was, since I had never either officially 'said the Sinner's Prayer' or went through an 'I'm saved!' new believer's frenzy.^^^I felt I was doomed to be damned, because I neither had ever 'said the Sinner's Prayer' nor wished ever to begin what I knew would be a never-ended struggle with these 'spiritual leaders' to 'get me truly saved' by repeatedly putting me through their Salvation Machine and seeing what I acted like when I came out the other side of it. I could never pull off a 'new believer' act, because I was put under the impression by these zealous 'spiritual leaders' that 1)salvation is an officially overseen formality, 2)the initial proof of salvation is a 'new believer' frenzy on the part of the new believer, and 3)the highest proof of salvation is a radically changed life.^^^So, I had no words, acts, or 'feeling of assurance' to prove either to myself or to these 'evangelistic pastors' that I was saved. I was terrified, traumatized, every time the subject came up. I still am, but now only by these sick-and-twisted uptight vipers, who, at their 'righteously' presumptuous whim, can simply send me into that inescapable dark trauma again and again. From the pulpit, without ever directly getting to know me as a human being. As if I can never be tenderly treated like he treats his own adopted son unless first I become what I, in fact, can never be: his own 'pastorly' reflection.^^^So, my question is, does this kind of pastor warrant anyone's loyalty as a genuine spiritual leader---much less the loyalty of those he mistakes as rebellious for their endless refusal to 'attend church.' My own answer is simply that I have no fellowship with vipers who are full of their own sense of their ability to 'discern' people through 'The Plain Word Of God'. The fact is that I have never, in my life, had a genuine spiritual leader when it counted. And, I'm not the only one in my shoes, not by a thousand. I know some quite personally who are in basically the same fix. Some directly related to me.^^^So, Preacher Boy, if you ever read this, know one thing: there is a price on your head in the court of Heaven. Because, it is against such as you are that the feebleminded have the best defense attorney in that court. You do not cause me to sin, which would be a small thing compared to what you do cause: you cause me to lose all sanity by the dread of your falsely discerning sternness. My question to you is, which sin of these of your two would be worse for you to commit? You are like your father and grandfather, a viper. You adore your ability to 'discern' individuals, and your father presumed for his own selfish position as a 'pastor' that I was his sheep. Me, Superman. You, like your father and his father, count sheep in the worst way: by simply presuming both to know a sheep for who and what he really is, and then to count him as yours: a mere sheep underneath you as his Head. Step down or be cursed. Walk away.^^^Preacher Boy, not you, not your father, and not his father, was ever called to be a pastor. Because you smash and scatter the feeblest sheep when they do not stay in lock-step with the dumbest-but-strongest like yourself. You are simply a man with an opinion as to what everyone is about, based on what you are about in your own twisted, 'Biblically' [self-] 'righteous' heart. You look to the heavens with only one eye, the other eye always fixed firmly on those over whom you most presume to rightfully-shepherd-if-only-they-would-submit. So, what you see in either image has no depth. Like what must have been the way of the early-model replicants never seen in the Bladerunner movie: No real memories, just programs.^^^How is it that you did not know that you shall judge angels, until you heard that the Bible says so? You still didn't know even then, you simply accept it as 'revealed truth' because 'God said so', and so you did not see the implication of the Apostle's question. To you, it was merely like a computer program that you have the duty simply to accept as true because the Bible asserts it. Like the following assertion of your own:
"Our mission centers around this question: Where will you be 10 minutes after you die? "
http://www.towncenterbaptist.com/?content=message
^^^Preacher Boy, not every kind of 'centered-around' is good just because the thing being centered around is good. The Sabbath and the Tithe were very 'centered around' by the Pharisees. And marriage is neither synonymous with, or created by, the sex act, because, among less evil things, rape is not marriage by any means. And, if you think that you or your father has never raped anyone simply because you and he have never intended to do so, think again. The effect of your self-adoringly 'ordained' and 'Biblically' puplit-centric 'ministry' speak louder than any truthful words you can mouth from it. The error of secular state incorporation to which the Church has commonly submitted 'itself' is not the disease, it is a final symptom. You are the disease.^^^False spiritual leadership always ends up admiring its sense of 'discernment' so much that, generations of 'pastors' later, nothing so insignificant as secular incorporation of the Church is particularly worth worrying about either way. You strain at a legal gnat and swallow a spiritual camel. The first man, Adam, was a pastor, but he did not presume to call down a miracle of blessing upon his 'special' words uttered from a pulpit. That's partly because he had only one certain thing around which his ministering could be centered: his own life story and for which all his listeners found themselves in a fallen life in a fallen world. And, partly because he had not inherited the notion of being a 'pastor' which you have, a notion within which you think you are so rich because you can simply judge every act and evidence according to the mere words of a book that you worship in place of God.^^^To you, like to your father, being a spiritual leader is about interpreting everything everyone does by looking at the mere words in that book. If the book neither states or actively implies an exception to a rule that it does state, then you feel that you are in the right to simply come down against anyone who fails to abide by the merest words of its statement. You do this all for maintaining your own 'pastorly' position. So, the spiritual wolves against which you love to preach (many of whom are not as you accuse) are saints compared to you, because you are a viper in a long line of vipers.^^^Your only grace, Preacher Boy, as a 'pastor' is that, unlike your grandfather, you see no good in throwing hymnals at dozing attendees. I wrote your father once, but he did not reply. So I wrote him again, and again, and again. And, still, he never stooped down to me, never sought me out as a fellow human being to find out what makes me tick. Because he was too busy 'working in the Word'. Too busy thinking within the tidy box of his self-adoringly 'called-to-be-a-pastor' presumptions.^^^No, Preacher Boy, your father had a sense that he was a sinner alright. But, a lack of that sense is not what being a self-righteous pharisee is quite entirely about. He was still counting sheep and preparing to 'feed' them, so he did not at all know the few feeble ones for what they were: feeble. He was perfectly content in his official, 'ordained' position to mistake them for supermen and over which he loved to feel that he was so recognized-by-God-as-being-among-the-very-elect-in-wisdom as to be these supermen's spiritual leader. He simply presumed what they were about by way of 'what is warranted': no direct knowledge necessary, no inquiry required. Just 'preach the Word'. As if everyone is just like you, and only that some will not submit to the 'Word of God' from your pulpit.^^^Do you think that by 'being a pastor' of the Word of God you have more grace of wisdom than anyone who refuses to submit to you as their pastor? If you don't think it, yet you still feel, act, and 'discern' as if you have such grace. As if by 'being a pastor' you have a corner on a kind of grace that you feel is available only to those who are 'saved' by way of your self-centered 'pastoral grace'. I'm here to tell you that there are only two kinds of grace, and that you have almost none of either: saving grace, and common grace. I am the thief on the cross; and you, like your father and his father, are a pharisee who presumes that this thief cannot be counted righteous unless he goes to Christ through you or someone like you. You viper. I will not call you for need of a pastor. You will call me for need of your life.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Still Counting Sheep: Heathen Spirits in the Name of Christ (Atheism Doesn't Get Any Worse Than This, Preacher Boy)
Too many preachers think of themselves as pastors, as spiritual leaders, as under-shepherds. Too many of them adore themselves in quoting scripture from behind a respected pulpit, such as:The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'But, atheism is not primarily a denial of God. It is primarily a denial of how people ought to think of, and treat, each other in the face of the invisible God. It is the spirit of heathens, which is primarily self-admiration in the face of visible fellow human beings. Many Christians are atheists, or heathens, in effect, because of how they think of, and treat, strangers who they target for 'soul winning', and because of how they think of, and treat, children in the name of education. Adam did not learn spiritual leadership from a self-admiring preacher boy with a dogmatic, 'Biblical' attitude.If thought (or discernment) is defined as the ability to recognize something, then this is not enough to know anything in the first place. You need to be able to identify something to begin with in order to be able 're-cognize' it when you see it again. And, that's the very problem, because even if thought is defined (i.e., identified) as the ability both to identify and to recognize things, then a computer can, in effect, think. The question is what criteria is to be used to identify whatever it is that is being identified. The wrong criteria will result in partial, or primary, or even complete, misidentification.So, what is needed for actual thought is an actual sensibility, a sense about things, whether the experience of the red of a rose, or the observing of one's own thinking (qualia and metacognition, respectively). A sense about things might alternatively be called imagination, or awarness, or sentience. Sensibility is something which neither radios or computers have, because these objects are only objects, only machines; they are nothing more than glorified hammers; there is nobody 'in there', there is no 'little man inside the radio'; they cannot actually identify anything, they can only simulate for us what we 'identify with'. The same goes for books.An 'educational process' that consists primarily of being spoon-fed a Primary Document to identify-and-recognize, and according to prescribed criteria, does not produce an educated mind, it produces a programmed mind---a brainwashed mind. And, if the victim of such brainwashing arrogantly welcomes it as THE TRUTH, then that victim's mind becomes preoccupied with a sense of its ablity to 'discern' both facts and spirits, both conditions and intentions. The less such a 'discerning' person knows about the differences within different people, the more such a person feels sure of his own ability to 'discern' other's through that Primary Document.Imagination---a sense about things---is the core of thought. To learn anything for real, you not only need the ability to identify-and-recognize things, you also need imagination. And, I hope you recognize that imagination includes an awareness of the black expanse of personal ignorance and solely from which new knowledge is gained. Wanting to know something implies ignorance, and every baby is born with the natural action of 'searching' for things to discover, things that are new to him. We can search inside things that we have never explored before, or inside things with which we are already acquainted. This natural act of 'searching' for things to discover (or identify) is the root of effective thought, because it implies sensibility. Computing machines do not actually search, we simply make them function in ways that automate a presentation of raw information. The crowds of little 'bugs' you are currently looking at (what Tarzan called the letters of these words) is simply raw information.Notice that I said the NATURAL act of 'searching' for things. But, this natural act can be prevented or corrupted if the person is routinely and arbitrarily imposed upon to 'pay attention' to something else. And, the 'something else' can even be nothing more than the effort to comply with an impatient and presumptive demand that he initiate a search. This is human thinking turned into a chore. An even worse implication about this is that chores can often become things you do simply to get them done and out of the way. Worse still, the compliance to the command to initiate a search is degraded by an order of magnitude if the searcher is imposed upon to identify new things according to prescribed criteria. In this way, a person's efforts to learn---to search for things---becomes hijacked.A child sometimes needs guidance in understanding things, especially in regard to wisdom in an evil world. But, this does not mean he must be treated meanly just to make sure he doesn't one day end up rejecting what we tell him. To hijack a child's effort of searching is to treat the child as if his mind were little more than the Mars Rover commanded by NASA. This kind of teacher-to-child relationship presupposes that the child may rightly be 'tested' constantly such that the 'testing' attitude of the teacher toward the child makes the child self-conscious in an uncomfortable way: a micro-managed, breathing-down-your-neck-even-when-the-teacher-is-absent feeling.Such hijacking is not a natural human relationship, especially if it is heavy-handed, or even if it feels heavy-handed to the child from past abuse (analogous to having a very raw wound that someone handles as if there is no wound, so that the pain is out of proportion to what the handler intends). This unnatural relationship is compounded when the teacher, at least in effect, equates thought with expression---especially with preconceived forms of expression. Such a teacher may think that the child's relative inability to articulate his thoughts about certain ideas means that the child only poorly understands those ideas. The teacher can articulate her own thoughts about those ideas comparatively well, so she assumes that her own thoughts about those ideas are right, especially if the child has no ready and articulate objection to her expressed thoughts.To hijack a child's mind like this is to make an effective claim to essential dominion over the child (Genesis 1:28)---just as if the child were a robot made to serve its human maker. Don't presume to represent my maker to me, preacher boy. Atheism doesn't get any worse than you. In fact, you can be worse than an atheist because only the Truth, not a lie, can be misused. Only the Truth misused can truly rape feeble-minded souls.God's Word was made for man, not man for God's Word. That's because it's not sufficient in every sense of sufficient. Only God is that sufficient. Even God's Word, in the book of Revelation, says that there shall, in the future, be two prophets of God who shall prophecy. Don't you know that the Last Fact in a list of Facts is not synonymous with the Last Truth, and that the Last Truth in a list of Truths is not synonymous with the last word?You, Preacher Boy, are not a pastor, much less a suitable one. You are a vending machine from hell. The ability to carefully prepare highly proprietary slop, and dump it in a feed trough, does not make you a pastor when, regardless of your success in getting most of your sheep to stand and eat it, you condemn as stubborn what is, in fact, another man's sheep that is both very ill from this heathenized slop and was born without legs. This one sheep, that you thought was a strong one of your own, which you thought to show off to other shepherds as proof of your 'blessing of superior discernment'; that God would give you, of all shepherds, such a sheep.So, what about the fool? I have just one thing to say, and it is not to him. Rather, it is to the preacher who claims that since he has the Word of God, he has the automatic discernment of God: You are a viper dancing to your own charm.
Posted by Daniel Pech at 11:57 PM 0 comments
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Monday, February 11, 2008
Still Counting Sheep: Heathen Spirits in the Name of Christ (Atheism Doesn't Get Any Worse Than This, Preacher Boy)
Too many preachers think of themselves as pastors, as spiritual leaders, as under-shepherds. Too many of them adore themselves in quoting scripture from behind a respected pulpit, such as:
The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'
But, atheism is not primarily a denial of God. It is primarily a denial of how people ought to think of, and treat, each other in the face of the invisible God. It is the spirit of heathens, which is primarily self-admiration in the face of visible fellow human beings. Many Christians are atheists, or heathens, in effect, because of how they think of, and treat, strangers who they target for 'soul winning', and because of how they think of, and treat, children in the name of education. Adam did not learn spiritual leadership from a self-admiring preacher boy with a dogmatic, 'Biblical' attitude.
If thought (or discernment) is defined as the ability to recognize something, then this is not enough to know anything in the first place. You need to be able to identify something to begin with in order to be able 're-cognize' it when you see it again. And, that's the very problem, because even if thought is defined (i.e., identified) as the ability both to identify and to recognize things, then a computer can, in effect, think. The question is what criteria is to be used to identify whatever it is that is being identified. The wrong criteria will result in partial, or primary, or even complete, misidentification.
So, what is needed for actual thought is an actual sensibility, a sense about things, whether the experience of the red of a rose, or the observing of one's own thinking (qualia and metacognition, respectively). A sense about things might alternatively be called imagination, or awarness, or sentience. Sensibility is something which neither radios or computers have, because these objects are only objects, only machines; they are nothing more than glorified hammers; there is nobody 'in there', there is no 'little man inside the radio'; they cannot actually identify anything, they can only simulate for us what we 'identify with'. The same goes for books.
An 'educational process' that consists primarily of being spoon-fed a Primary Document to identify-and-recognize, and according to prescribed criteria, does not produce an educated mind, it produces a programmed mind---a brainwashed mind. And, if the victim of such brainwashing arrogantly welcomes it as THE TRUTH, then that victim's mind becomes preoccupied with a sense of its ablity to 'discern' both facts and spirits, both conditions and intentions. The less such a 'discerning' person knows about the differences within different people, the more such a person feels sure of his own ability to 'discern' other's through that Primary Document.
Imagination---a sense about things---is the core of thought. To learn anything for real, you not only need the ability to identify-and-recognize things, you also need imagination. And, I hope you recognize that imagination includes an awareness of the black expanse of personal ignorance and solely from which new knowledge is gained. Wanting to know something implies ignorance, and every baby is born with the natural action of 'searching' for things to discover, things that are new to him. We can search inside things that we have never explored before, or inside things with which we are already acquainted. This natural act of 'searching' for things to discover (or identify) is the root of effective thought, because it implies sensibility. Computing machines do not actually search, we simply make them function in ways that automate a presentation of raw information. The crowds of little 'bugs' you are currently looking at (what Tarzan called the letters of these words) is simply raw information.
Notice that I said the NATURAL act of 'searching' for things. But, this natural act can be prevented or corrupted if the person is routinely and arbitrarily imposed upon to 'pay attention' to something else. And, the 'something else' can even be nothing more than the effort to comply with an impatient and presumptive demand that he initiate a search. This is human thinking turned into a chore. An even worse implication about this is that chores can often become things you do simply to get them done and out of the way. Worse still, the compliance to the command to initiate a search is degraded by an order of magnitude if the searcher is imposed upon to identify new things according to prescribed criteria. In this way, a person's efforts to learn---to search for things---becomes hijacked.
A child sometimes needs guidance in understanding things, especially in regard to wisdom in an evil world. But, this does not mean he must be treated meanly just to make sure he doesn't one day end up rejecting what we tell him. To hijack a child's effort of searching is to treat the child as if his mind were little more than the Mars Rover commanded by NASA. This kind of teacher-to-child relationship presupposes that the child may rightly be 'tested' constantly such that the 'testing' attitude of the teacher toward the child makes the child self-conscious in an uncomfortable way: a micro-managed, breathing-down-your-neck-even-when-the-teacher-is-absent feeling.
Such hijacking is not a natural human relationship, especially if it is heavy-handed, or even if it feels heavy-handed to the child from past abuse (analogous to having a very raw wound that someone handles as if there is no wound, so that the pain is out of proportion to what the handler intends). This unnatural relationship is compounded when the teacher, at least in effect, equates thought with expression---especially with preconceived forms of expression. Such a teacher may think that the child's relative inability to articulate his thoughts about certain ideas means that the child only poorly understands those ideas. The teacher can articulate her own thoughts about those ideas comparatively well, so she assumes that her own thoughts about those ideas are right, especially if the child has no ready and articulate objection to her expressed thoughts.
To hijack a child's mind like this is to make an effective claim to essential dominion over the child (Genesis 1:28)---just as if the child were a robot made to serve its human maker. Don't presume to represent my maker to me, preacher boy. Atheism doesn't get any worse than you. In fact, you can be worse than an atheist because only the Truth, not a lie, can be misused. Only the Truth misused can truly rape feeble-minded souls.
God's Word was made for man, not man for God's Word. That's because it's not sufficient in every sense of sufficient. Only God is that sufficient. Even God's Word, in the book of Revelation, says that there shall, in the future, be two prophets of God who shall prophecy. Don't you know that the Last Fact in a list of Facts is not synonymous with the Last Truth, and that the Last Truth in a list of Truths is not synonymous with the last word?
You, Preacher Boy, are not a pastor, much less a suitable one. You are a vending machine from hell. The ability to carefully prepare highly proprietary slop, and dump it in a feed trough, does not make you a pastor when, regardless of your success in getting most of your sheep to stand and eat it, you condemn as stubborn what is, in fact, another man's sheep that is both very ill from this heathenized slop and was born without legs. This one sheep, that you thought was a strong one of your own, which you thought to show off to other shepherds as proof of your 'blessing of superior discernment'; that God would give you, of all shepherds, such a sheep.
So, what about the fool? I have just one thing to say, and it is not to him. Rather, it is to the preacher who claims that since he has the Word of God, he has the automatic discernment of God: You are a viper dancing to your own charm.
The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'
But, atheism is not primarily a denial of God. It is primarily a denial of how people ought to think of, and treat, each other in the face of the invisible God. It is the spirit of heathens, which is primarily self-admiration in the face of visible fellow human beings. Many Christians are atheists, or heathens, in effect, because of how they think of, and treat, strangers who they target for 'soul winning', and because of how they think of, and treat, children in the name of education. Adam did not learn spiritual leadership from a self-admiring preacher boy with a dogmatic, 'Biblical' attitude.
If thought (or discernment) is defined as the ability to recognize something, then this is not enough to know anything in the first place. You need to be able to identify something to begin with in order to be able 're-cognize' it when you see it again. And, that's the very problem, because even if thought is defined (i.e., identified) as the ability both to identify and to recognize things, then a computer can, in effect, think. The question is what criteria is to be used to identify whatever it is that is being identified. The wrong criteria will result in partial, or primary, or even complete, misidentification.
So, what is needed for actual thought is an actual sensibility, a sense about things, whether the experience of the red of a rose, or the observing of one's own thinking (qualia and metacognition, respectively). A sense about things might alternatively be called imagination, or awarness, or sentience. Sensibility is something which neither radios or computers have, because these objects are only objects, only machines; they are nothing more than glorified hammers; there is nobody 'in there', there is no 'little man inside the radio'; they cannot actually identify anything, they can only simulate for us what we 'identify with'. The same goes for books.
An 'educational process' that consists primarily of being spoon-fed a Primary Document to identify-and-recognize, and according to prescribed criteria, does not produce an educated mind, it produces a programmed mind---a brainwashed mind. And, if the victim of such brainwashing arrogantly welcomes it as THE TRUTH, then that victim's mind becomes preoccupied with a sense of its ablity to 'discern' both facts and spirits, both conditions and intentions. The less such a 'discerning' person knows about the differences within different people, the more such a person feels sure of his own ability to 'discern' other's through that Primary Document.
Imagination---a sense about things---is the core of thought. To learn anything for real, you not only need the ability to identify-and-recognize things, you also need imagination. And, I hope you recognize that imagination includes an awareness of the black expanse of personal ignorance and solely from which new knowledge is gained. Wanting to know something implies ignorance, and every baby is born with the natural action of 'searching' for things to discover, things that are new to him. We can search inside things that we have never explored before, or inside things with which we are already acquainted. This natural act of 'searching' for things to discover (or identify) is the root of effective thought, because it implies sensibility. Computing machines do not actually search, we simply make them function in ways that automate a presentation of raw information. The crowds of little 'bugs' you are currently looking at (what Tarzan called the letters of these words) is simply raw information.
Notice that I said the NATURAL act of 'searching' for things. But, this natural act can be prevented or corrupted if the person is routinely and arbitrarily imposed upon to 'pay attention' to something else. And, the 'something else' can even be nothing more than the effort to comply with an impatient and presumptive demand that he initiate a search. This is human thinking turned into a chore. An even worse implication about this is that chores can often become things you do simply to get them done and out of the way. Worse still, the compliance to the command to initiate a search is degraded by an order of magnitude if the searcher is imposed upon to identify new things according to prescribed criteria. In this way, a person's efforts to learn---to search for things---becomes hijacked.
A child sometimes needs guidance in understanding things, especially in regard to wisdom in an evil world. But, this does not mean he must be treated meanly just to make sure he doesn't one day end up rejecting what we tell him. To hijack a child's effort of searching is to treat the child as if his mind were little more than the Mars Rover commanded by NASA. This kind of teacher-to-child relationship presupposes that the child may rightly be 'tested' constantly such that the 'testing' attitude of the teacher toward the child makes the child self-conscious in an uncomfortable way: a micro-managed, breathing-down-your-neck-even-when-the-teacher-is-absent feeling.
Such hijacking is not a natural human relationship, especially if it is heavy-handed, or even if it feels heavy-handed to the child from past abuse (analogous to having a very raw wound that someone handles as if there is no wound, so that the pain is out of proportion to what the handler intends). This unnatural relationship is compounded when the teacher, at least in effect, equates thought with expression---especially with preconceived forms of expression. Such a teacher may think that the child's relative inability to articulate his thoughts about certain ideas means that the child only poorly understands those ideas. The teacher can articulate her own thoughts about those ideas comparatively well, so she assumes that her own thoughts about those ideas are right, especially if the child has no ready and articulate objection to her expressed thoughts.
To hijack a child's mind like this is to make an effective claim to essential dominion over the child (Genesis 1:28)---just as if the child were a robot made to serve its human maker. Don't presume to represent my maker to me, preacher boy. Atheism doesn't get any worse than you. In fact, you can be worse than an atheist because only the Truth, not a lie, can be misused. Only the Truth misused can truly rape feeble-minded souls.
God's Word was made for man, not man for God's Word. That's because it's not sufficient in every sense of sufficient. Only God is that sufficient. Even God's Word, in the book of Revelation, says that there shall, in the future, be two prophets of God who shall prophecy. Don't you know that the Last Fact in a list of Facts is not synonymous with the Last Truth, and that the Last Truth in a list of Truths is not synonymous with the last word?
You, Preacher Boy, are not a pastor, much less a suitable one. You are a vending machine from hell. The ability to carefully prepare highly proprietary slop, and dump it in a feed trough, does not make you a pastor when, regardless of your success in getting most of your sheep to stand and eat it, you condemn as stubborn what is, in fact, another man's sheep that is both very ill from this heathenized slop and was born without legs. This one sheep, that you thought was a strong one of your own, which you thought to show off to other shepherds as proof of your 'blessing of superior discernment'; that God would give you, of all shepherds, such a sheep.
So, what about the fool? I have just one thing to say, and it is not to him. Rather, it is to the preacher who claims that since he has the Word of God, he has the automatic discernment of God: You are a viper dancing to your own charm.
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How is it that you do not know that you shall judge angels? The reason you don't know this, Preacher Boy, is because you do not think, you simply 'believe what the Word of God says' as if it were flowery incantations of purest revelation. Rape and the marriage act are quite alike in form, but are as far apart in spirit as any two things can be. The Gospel is the same way, which means that discernment is based not on evidence, but on knowledge.
We all die eventually, so capital punishment---a kind of war---is simply to cause the guilty to meet his end sooner, and to remove his care from the righteous. God's mercy is founded primarily not on His character, but on the fact that He has the character to recognize, and to act in solidarity with, those who find their lives difficult---including those who find themselves mistaken for the 'Superman to Superman' by those who love to wield Holy Kryptonite. The one who murders the body is not the most guilty, it is the one who, in hasty and self-aggrandizing use the Word of God, rapes and murders the soul. Nothing can make the soul more unwhole than those who use the form of the Truth as a weapon against what are, in fact, Unknown Soldiers.
We all die eventually, so capital punishment---a kind of war---is simply to cause the guilty to meet his end sooner, and to remove his care from the righteous. God's mercy is founded primarily not on His character, but on the fact that He has the character to recognize, and to act in solidarity with, those who find their lives difficult---including those who find themselves mistaken for the 'Superman to Superman' by those who love to wield Holy Kryptonite. The one who murders the body is not the most guilty, it is the one who, in hasty and self-aggrandizing use the Word of God, rapes and murders the soul. Nothing can make the soul more unwhole than those who use the form of the Truth as a weapon against what are, in fact, Unknown Soldiers.
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2008
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