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September-October 2013         

  

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

- attributed to the Buddha*

 

The most popular place at the mall is the Apple Store, at least by the measure of how many pack themselves into it. There's the clothing shop, a few mill about. There's the ice cream place, a couple stand at the counter. There's even the sports memorabilia stand, with Pittsburgh Pirates key-chains and Miami Dolphins tumblers collecting dust.

But the Apple Store? Packed, every time we walk by. Yes, we ourselves go in there about every other time we visit the higher-end mall.

This last time we went in I caught something I hadn't noticed before. Call me woefully inattentive because I'm sure it's been there forever, forgive me, but along the back of the store was something called the "Genius Bar."

It was really happenin' there. Anything you pondered about your reality augmentation device could be addressed, and after consulting with said geniuses you could straight away move forward on more dynamically riveting reality augmenting. Woo-hoo!

Of course, I always think about the nature of the reality that these folks are peeking at. For instance across the back of the genius bar was a huge screen upon which were splashed definitions of the most relevant but perhaps not-as-understood I.T. terms, you know, jargon like "dashboard" and "interface" but more obscure and relating to the idiosyncratic nature of changing mobile information acquisition.

Even farther from the consciousness of the average info-glomming individual is the stuff of the information. Really, those things that are actually worth knowing about to begin with. Terms like sin, salvation, service, justification, redemption, grace, repentance, agape love. Oh sure I'd say most Christianly-minded people would kind of grasp a bit of what those things are. But what about ungrafted, Catholicist, World System, value extraction, abjuration, sowing, Kingdom? What if the Genius Bar was actually genius enough to put up a few words related to meaningful truth? I'd like to think most actually want to get at that, right? Otherwise what good is a spiffy information bilge pump?

Nah. I've still been thinking about disinformation, the subject of my last home page piece, and the gruesome fact that most people want anyone even remotely considered any kind of powers-that-be to blissfully lie to them. Feeling good about the lie is far more important than genuinely confronting the obvious truth.

I've also considered sticking a lot of things I've learned recently into this version of the Catholicist Nation home page piece extravaganza, but I'm tired. Sorry. I'm not giving up, no, but really, most of what I see and hear and read is the same pap, all the same abject incapacity to see past the nose on your face. Or should I say on your soul because that is what is most important in all of this.

 

In the mix there was Niall Ferguson's The Great Degeneration. I do really like his eloquent exposition of World affairs, and for a moment he splendidly uses the famous quote from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly about shooters and diggers to elucidate the truth that powerful forces (both humans and the institutions they sustain) commit the gravest human sacrifice against those they can place on their altar. Of course Ferguson can't bring it all together with that verity because he's so lost in Cain's vast distance from the truthful things inherent within it, but hey. At least he adds to the overwhelming evidence.

Where he gets derailed is in his putridly typical presumption that government is to blame. "We're overregulated" he screams, and even this treatise is disappointing coming from such a fine writer. The truth is the "great degeneration" happened one time — when you ate the fruit of the tree of good and evil knowledge. No, not when Adam and Eve did, but when you did. Sure biblical expositors love to just lay it on those two, but each of us is guilty of already being horrifically degenerated. All that's happening now is we keep seeing it revealed in all its wide diversity and delightful glory.

Ho-hum.

People like Ferguson regale us with it yet again, just using a bit more rhetorically fancy prose, but it is all the same unless you come to Christ.

When this happens you are now not only eating from the tree of life, but — wow, amazing, what a concept — you begin to see. You begin to realize that Cain does his job as he will; it isn't Cain that's the problem at all, as wretchedly evil as he is. No, it is the sin pustulating through every orifice of World institutional activity. Caesar is just there as God's legitimate instrument of justice through the institutions bathing in Cain's desire for human sacrifice and getting deep into both constraining sin and provoking its expression. The stunner for many is that any organization that signs up with it through agreements like 501c3 non-profit incorporations are merely a vital part of the body of death.

 

Among the other stuff I caught over the last couple of months is this small item from Mark Driscoll's Doctrine, another thing I simply must share. Driscoll is the popular pastor of the Mars Hill Church, and he wrote a book with a colleague apparently to make sure we're all up on the newest hippest version of systematic theology.

He has a chapter on each of the most basic basics of Christian doctrine, and in the one on worship he addresses idolatry a bit. He points out some of the latest kinds of idolatry in a postmodern age, and one of them is this one.

Truth idolatry.

Hmm. Let me think about that one for a minute.

Yes, I think there could be something that is actually "truth" idolatry but only if one of two things are in place. The first is that there is no grace involved, meaning some people ruthlessly spew truthful things with no consideration of when, where, and how those truths are best comprehended. But this isn't really truth idolatry but grace deficiency. Truth is truth, it just is and we're going to see it or we won't, or worse, we'll see it and abuse it to harm others (see last home page piece).

The second is that people betray the principle "knowledge puffs up but love builds up," meaning they take too much pride in what they know. This, however isn't really truth idolatry but knowledge idolatry. I actually think just as bad is something you might call truth conception scarcity. I mean, doesn't it seem more and more intellectual laziness these days results in more and more rank pride about the most egregious distortions of truth?

No, outside of those minor qualifications, there isn't really such a thing as truth idolatry, because in the end Jesus Christ is Truth. If you are authentically worshipping truth, you are merely worshipping Him, which is what those whose faith is in Him do. Sure you can worship a distorted truth, or a misrepresented Jesus (how many of those are there!), but then that's the simplest kind of idolatry isn't it? Worshipping a god you think is god but isn't?

Sadly Driscoll mentions none of this. Yes, he may be a fine pastor leading many to Christ and helping many maintain vibrant Christian lifestyles, I cannot judge his intentions. But all he does with his take on truth idolatry is use it to light into people who write things on the web. I have the feeling Driscoll doesn't much care for people misrepresenting things, but I believe constricting truth itself to dismiss them demonstrates too much of a commitment to Cain's legacy through his incorporated obligation. Yes, bazillions of people have their own websites and write all kinds of things, perhaps even some critical of Mark Driscoll.

The question is, however, are those things truthful or not? If they aren't, then let's go look at the truth of things. Driscoll just tells us he doesn't like personally distressing truthiness on the web. That's it. I can't help but keep thinking about the truth of this discovery: that everything is truth, it is just whether we can see it or not, or whether we use it to manipulate the sentiments of others by misrepresenting that truth and in what form.

And hey, how about this:

Whether or not people can even get that truth?

 

Aaghk. It is true: So few get it. Really, doesn't matter whether it is Ferguson or Driscoll, secular or Christian, non-profit or for-profit, Caesar or Cicero they are deaf and blind, the plainly evident truth about their distance from Truth. Hey, Jesus knew that too, so He only spoke to His listeners in parables. Oh that I could do that.

As it is I have this. My web work.

A modest place where maybe I can put a small lamp on the simple life concept that we do all want to feel good about things and we'd like to think that those things are somewhat connected to the truth. We also have to acknowledge  — even knowledge idolaters know this somewhere in their dark souls — that it is impossible to fully know everything, and that we do struggle mightily to find a way to protect ourselves from the most dangerous malicious misrepresenters and disinformation disseminators.

Many just ride along with Caesar, and to their credit it can be very comfortable. Cain's Genius Bar is extraordinarily proficient at messing with our perspective of the Degeneration, as well as The Only Way Out. There are a few who do turn and call on the name of the Lord, the one who is Truth and by whom one can fully be protected from the wiles of the devil and the flesh and the World System.

It is He. It is through Him, and one's belief on Him, one's faith in Him, which is the fully assured way to see, know, understand truth in light of our limited capacity to get things. It is through viscerally getting the whole principle of Righteousness by Him that protects one from what could be called unrighteous behavior idolatry. Really, isn't that what it's about? Trying to get that down?

 

Maybe I'm wrong about the fact it is so few who get this. I hope I am. I always pray that I am because I see so many, so Catholicized. I furthermore simply pray for others that they'd be free, feel joy, and know truth. Maybe I am wrong though and there are indeed many more who do truth, and grace.

Or better,

Live out Truth and Grace.

 

***

For we cannot do anything against the truth, only for the truth.

- II Corinthians 13:8

***

Notes:

  • *That the opening quote is indeed from the Buddha is in some dispute, but then, the beauty of it is that it does require us to deeply respect the truth to know. doesn't it?

  • The line the Clint Eastwood character shares in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is "In this world there are two kinds of people, my friend. Those with loaded guns... and those who dig."

  • I can't help but note that Ferguson's book may be a play on the title of another recently well-received book from David Stockman called The Great Deformation. Stockman uses lots of ink and paper to deftly elucidate the stuff of human sacrifice, but is still in the Radical Selfist camp refusing to see abjuration from all that and repentance in Christ as the most meaningful response.

  • The verse "Knowledge puffs up but love builds up" is from the eighth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, first verse.

  • To identify the terms shared above, I invite you to tour the webzine. For instance, the term Catholicist which is in the very title of the site is defined pretty comprehensively here. The antidote is here.

  • A page with links to all the institutions of Cain's Genius Bar is here.

  • If you can see it, the words on the screen in the photo of the Genius Bar above read, "The smart place to get answers." Ahem. Is there a smart place for people to get answers about what they really want in life? The one that tells them what that agape love is? Not sure... Some thoughts about the grafted church are here.

  • Want the absolute best Bible reading on the Catholicized church, you know, the one with the 501c3 still seeking salvation from the law? Read both of Paul's letters to the Corinthians. Study them intensely, with the Holy Spirit speaking to your heart. You'll see. No worries about how to get there, I have a link there just below. See it there? Click it and be blown away.

  • Finally check out some thoughts about who He is to begin with.

  • (Feb 2015 note: Scanning an earlier home page piece, I found I'd referred to the idea of "truth idolatry." I just felt like pointing out that this earlier mention was completely within the context of how a "truth idolatry" may be considered as such without it actually being idolatry, as addressed in the above piece.)

 

***

November-December 2013

Financialization.

 

This is the buzzword that is scouring the insides of the body economic right now. It is nothing other than the modern propensity to assign value to everything there is for the purpose of assessing potential investment opportunities. With the latest information technology advancements and a mind towards a more progressive state of affairs (whatever "progressive" means for the purpose of being considered some kind of positive thing) it is best to identify the value of a thing no matter how mundane for the best value extraction practice.

In other words, get used to it: Everything is financialized these days.

In fact, former top government dude of some kind Bruce Bartlett caused quite a ruckus with his New York Times piece a while back about the evils of financialization. It pretty much echoed what those speaking through the echo chamber want us to think, that the whole idea of financialization is unseemly, impersonally turning everything into some cold calculating price. Oh that Wall Street is so obsessed with making even flesh and blood people a commodity look at how much of the economy is now consumed by the financial sector. There are professional class arbitrageurs for everything now! And their pay! Yuck!

Really, all of this naturally emanates from concepts considered in the field of catallactics, which is the study of prices as value assignments in a market, or as the inventor of the term defined it, the science of exchanges. But this is indeed a noble effort come on, why shouldn't we carefully examine the reasons people think what they think when entering a market, any market?

As I've written many times before, there are only two realms from which to think meaningfully about anything, especially about what it is the real value of things. Those two realms:

The World and the Kingdom.

The World is essentially comprised of the United States/United Kingdom (proper) government and all its minions throughout the world (general); the central banking system headed by the Federal Reserve/International Monetary Fund nexus and its minions, virtually every financial management institution on the planet; and the Roman Catholic Church and its minions, namely its orders and all the church subdivisions who do its bidding by being tied to the law through 501c3 contracts and the like.

The Kingdom is simply Jesus Christ, and includes any and all who call on His name with the simple desire to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.

That's it. It's those two.

Elaboration of the two is all over this site, but all I want to do here is briefly share some recent demonstrations of the incessantly gorging magnitude of financialization within the World, and then contrast that with the simplicity of what this "financialization" means from the Kingdom.

Just something of note from each branch of the World.

 

Recently the country was riveted to the frightening vitriol regarding the U.S. budget, and some consternation was had when the federal government was heading full bore at the debt ceiling. The concern: if we can't borrow, we can't spend on promises made by Caesar, and if we can't spend on those things, people are going to get pretty steamed. As the locomotive gained speed, the U.S. Senate held a hearing on October 10, 2013, and brought in Treasury Secretary Jack Lew for his thoughts. Senator Orrin Hatch was one of the inquisitors.

The following exchange actually occurred during that session. Don't worry, it is very brief, but extraordinarily insightful. I'll be paraphrasing, but the portion of conversation transcribed here is almost word-for-word. Go ahead, check it out somewhere it appears, you'll see.

 

Hatch: So what do you think is best?

Lew: We need more certainty and less brinksmanship.

Hatch: All I'm asking is two simple questions: How much and for how long?

Lew: I will be as clear as I can. For as long as you can make it.

 

This is just not even the most elementary Estes Rocket science.

Cain is merely expressing exactly what one distanced from God would say hey, he's been doing it for millennia: "I'll show you I can be my brother's keeper. I'll show you dammit." God did give him seven times the power of any usurper, rebel, or detractor, but He didn't give him an infinite amount of power. Not even Lamech claimed to have as much.

For the U.S. government here to boldly proclaim under oath that they should have, essentially, infinite spending authority, amazes me. In fact, after Lew's answer Hatch said on two different occasions, "I'm still not clear about this." Has this administration gone so far as to test the provision of God as an instrument of judgment against the reprobate? God has hammered brashly presumptive potentates for much less.

 

Then there's Ben Bernanke working valiantly to exercise his signature authority: manage the value assignments of those with no value. He's been doing this for years now employing his "Quantitative Easing" strategy, each month waving $85 billion worth of green rectangular dead-president-adorned sheets of paper in the faces of scared, cowering folk desperate to be told they're worth anything. (Well, not exactly physical sheets of paper, but close enough...)

Last month the financial universe held its garlic pate laden breath as Apache Helicopter Ben almost said he was going to ::gasp:: "taper." Essentially he barely declined to stop keeping it at that expected 85. Whew! The markets responded with a gleeful bump upwards as the lie was firmly demonstrated to remain persuasive enough for now.

Bernanke has issued a sequential series of money spewing er, bond buying, you know, QE1, QE2, and so forth. Some insightfully observe that all this is really just "QE Infinity." A rather accurate assessment of how the World does value assignment, but what is the point?

After ceding control of our financial lives to those who with a wink can clobber the dollar or snatch our livelihood what, we sustain a steady, energetic fury at the most highly visible operatives?

Or hey, against that wildly aggravating impotency what, we just resign to labor in submission to it all and hope the sanctioned deceit allows us to schlurp up even a few drops of the gravy?

Or how about the third take...

That we see and understand the ultimate bankruptcy of World value splattering and turn to Christ who does the only truly meaningful value assignment: His love through His shed blood, from which comes the richest fulfillment in one's soul and deepest enchantment in relationships with others.

 

Then there is the latest from the ecclesiastical branch, where Pope Francis is doing a spectacular job of molding the modern ecclesiastical/religious/spiritual/moral magisterium the Jesuit way ever so humbly fulfilling the duties of Cain's legacy: seduce those without Christ to be fine wholesome folk using the best Sun-Tzuan techniques for full indoctrination of humanist belief and practice.

Recently he visited his namesake St. Francis of Assisi's home town, and he took the occasion to express deep connectivity to the Franciscans' courageous vow to renounce wealth and embrace austerity as a means to greater displays of piety and selflessness.

One may think this particular item doesn't quite fit in with the others. The others are about the System sucking the life from the average World inhabitant, but this this here is about seeking to live in moderation!

On second look you'll catch a good portion of the Company's modus operandi: put on a smiley face to insist you reject everything that God made you to be and gave to you to enjoy. Wealth renunciation is wholly unbiblical. It is mismanagement of resources that God reproves, that's really the issue. On further investigation you'll recognize that exploiting people in this way simply sets up the System for more codependent rescuing no wonder Jack Lew and Ben Bernanke are so prominently featured in the big public assistance show! Never mind the enormous heaps of Roman Catholic wealth backing the wealth deniers, kept on hand for the most magnanimous institutional enabling.

For a terrific exposition of this mentality check out John Bogle's speech to Georgetown graduates entitled appropriately, "Enough." Read it yourself, but do so at your peril when using only the World's lens. Bogle's words stream from a perfect vortex of the three branches (town hall, bank, church) and splendidly elucidate how profoundly a billionaire can move others to renounce their (his?) wealth to more securely enthrone Cain as Supremely Preeminent Brother Keeper.

 

Whenever I converse with someone who I think may be even a bit receptive to talk about these kinds of deepest politics motives underneath the deep politics machinations, I quite frequently get this.

"Do you really believe that?"

Whenever I hear that response I can only see the plain evidence that the Company is still dutifully on the job, still successfully convincing people that idolizing "belief" can make the most brutal truths go away.

In that vein I merely come back with, "That has nothing to do with it what I in particular 'believe.' All I want is to know the truth of things. Are you afraid to go there with me?"

The truths of the raging spiritual warfare are everywhere. They are just not hard to see, they really aren't. Millions of souls are splayed on human sacrifice altars around the globe. The only thing I am about is putting His light on that reality, even going so far as to modestly add to the proposition that those with Christ's name on their lips actually get ungrafted so they could truly sow.

So then, truthfully, everything is financialized, and always has been. Everything has a value assignment, however much that is. The question is, is Cain doing that for you through the World System institutions by way of his operatives with the summary use of the law? Pretty nice if you can get some, but it's just death all the same.

 

Or is Christ doing it with truth?

Grace?

Love?

 

Yeah, sorry, the dying happens now, but then...

 

***

Notes:

  • For my take on catallactics, I have a whole page devoted to it, here. It gets a bit more into the essence of value assignment.

  • A page with John Bogle's speech, given in 2007, is here.

  • A recent blog post gets into the idea of "certainty" taking precedence over truth.

  • Here is a page on the rejection of Christ and Kingdom by 501c3 churches and any ministries choosing to appropriate the benefits Caesar offers. Ideas about being ungrafted are here.

  • And who is it who ultimately pulls the strings? Brief introduction to the Company's head is here.

  • Here is a previous home page piece with some pretext for the above piece, related to the principles by which the most seasoned World financialization experts operate.

  • Conspiracy theorist? Nah, just World System factualist. More on that is here.

  • Some links to the World branches is on this page.

  • For information about Cain and his seven-fold strength, as well as Lamech's claims to that, check out the fourth chapter of Genesis.

  • The Kingdom, for all it may be, is really just Him.

***

January-February 2014

Why do you cry out loudly? Is there no king among you, or has your counselor perished, that agony has gripped you..?

- Micah 4:9

The latest craze enjoyed by all the cutting-edge value assessment wonks these days is the bitcoin, a currency that has its value storage purely in cyberspace. It gets some modest attention because there are a few who believe this is the answer to the stability of value problem for sustained economic interaction. If we can just get the tool out of the hands of fallible or nefarious bureaucrats and put it where it can just be that one, real, trusted, secure, solid, true measure of value, then we've reached the holy grail of standardized monetary accounts!  

Recently some news was made about its introduction in this or that financial arena, I don't know. What I do know is that computer programs and whatever bits that comprise the information within them—even those which can be officially proclaimed to be useful instruments of economic exchanges—are still governed by what fallible and nefarious men do. Furthermore if one website says it can control the issuance of its vaunted currency and thus firmly gird its value, what keeps another group of people from coming up with a website full of their own version of bitcoins effectively sabotaging the value stability of the whole batch of them?

For any value assessment to work you must have one individual making the final decision about whatever value assessment happens to be at that time, for that purpose, applicable to all in an economy. Because things change, and more significantly because the way people perceive things changing, the value of the measure used to assess people's value changes as well.

 

Wow. What to do. But, well, no worries. Smarter wiser more enlightened men have been wrestling with this and getting themselves in the wildest bother over this very thing for centuries and centuries and centuries.

What they fail to grasp is that the one sworn operative who does the ultimate value assessing for World inhabitants is someone they'll most likely be unable to identify, but he is as real and powerful as anyone who's a bit more visible, you know: pope, president, central bank chairman—or soon-to-be chairwoman.

That individual is Cain's top minion, carrying on his legacy of sin management for those who demand his services. And while he does do the legitimate work of assessing value so folks don't get too upset about how their labor is considered, much of the unseemliness of his efforts relate to two common practices.

One, slosh that money all around with grand authority to continue his determined mission of ferociously convincing people he can be his brother's keeper, and two, lie about it a lot, in other words surmise the value of things then turn up the volume on the PR machine so people will buy it.

The crazy thing about this is that he doesn't really have to do much. He's so expertly adept with Sun-Tzu's arts of war that he's already got the program up and running so proficiently that millions summarily execute it with barely a blink. All that stuff with the pope president central bank chairperson? They're just the talking heads of the spiffy show. Plenty of priests and bankers and government officers do the best work as deputized Jesuits performing the very necessary tasks mandated by their unknown superior.

This is fine, all fine and right, it is. But...

 

There is another way.

 

Yes, the other way does have to do with a realm far, far removed from this one. Thing is, so much of what people think is that realm is disguised as a brilliant counterfeit. Looks Christian, walks Christian, talks Christian. That PR machine, it is humming, always has been.

A very well-received book is The Poverty of Nations, written by Wayne Grudem, an eminent theologian and a giant in the evangelical world. He joined Barry Asmus an economist of note, to elaborately proclaim that if poor rotten bad countries would just do the things the Bible says to do, then everything would be ever-so nice. Forgive me, I do speak extraordinarily sardonically about this kind of effort, merely because a new primer on the beneficial effects of the free market, the simple protections of private property, the wonderful pretense of democratic governance, and a dozen other splendid things just doesn't really say a whole lot that's different. These are the things the World System should be doing anyway to make things, well, nice.

But they don't make people live.

Only Christ can do that. And while nice things are nice, they are completely, thoroughly, abjectly meaningless unless they are connected to Christ. The instant you join well-meaning scholars like Grudem and Asmus to tell any administrator of any System polity, "Here's what you need to do to try to make the World more like the Kingdom" you declare him lord over you and your affairs. You empower him to exercise routine disassessment of your value, and as such you become a vibrant part of the institutional enablement of human sacrifice.

Grudem, Asmus, and millions of well-meaning Catholicists are naïvely oblivious to what Cain's dutiful agent is really all about. He isn't really interested in making the best society. He'll humor these guys, be cheerfully ingratiating—he's been doing it for millennia—then he'll turn around to keep the grotesque cycle churning: provoke evildoing then constrict it, provoke-constrict, provoke-constrict, in perpetuity for the slew of people who ask him to do it.

Or, it could be Grudem and Asmus are willfully doing their bidding as the deepest covert operatives there could be—hey, the best Jesuits are the kindest, sweetest, sharpest-dressed Christians on the planet. Wouldn't put it past them. What better channels to feed their insatiable hunger for legitimacy than to engender more rebellion against the ordained powers-that-be.

It is one or the other. They're either egregiously clueless or they're exceptionally clued in. Whichever one it is, they are on the payroll of those who erect sensationally spectacular façades obstructing the entrance to the Kingdom.

 

Another book out I'd been reading is Infiltrated. I was very interested in this because it was written by evangelically minded Jay Richards, who's made a career of going to the mat in boldly defending a Christian world view in the public square. This book gets deep into the causes of the great recession of 2008 and beyond. He spouts the typical conservative line that it was about government enabling shoddy lending practices particularly in the housing market, and if we all just told those dastardly government people what's what about what then everything would be back to being pretty nice right here in this country.

Ighck.

The key problem here is again the myopic dismissal of the fact that there are two governments, the World's and the Kingdom's. Richards' approach is not as much Christian as it is Catholicist. What's the difference? It isn't that complicated.

Richards says what most Catholicists say, essentially, "U.S. government is generally wholesome and righteous, but there are these baaad elements in it and we've just got to fix 'em, so get going all of you people-in-a-democracy and make some waves!" Richards smartly articulates the way the World behaves, then offers all kinds of suggestions for how to get in there and tell them what they should be doing. For the Catholicist that's customary procedure—the System is all there is, so let's jump through lots of hoops to get people being good!

The Kingdom dweller knows this: That the government is through-and-through evil to the core, and it is supposed to be in order to accomplish its task of merciless prosecution of those who do evil. He knows as a follower of Christ he is to pray for those who do their work there and understand how God uses it for His ultimate purposes, but he must be extraordinarily careful about how he enlists in its service lest the power of the gospel is emptied of its rich impact. The better way is to be sold out to Him, live your life from the Kingdom, and sow into others' lives so they'll be not just good but alive.

 

One last book I really like is The Physics of Wall Street. While not directly connected with any religious considerations like the ones just mentioned, it tries to get at the core of what's what by introducing the idea that if we could get at genuinely accurate value assessment scientifically, mathematically, then yeah!

Nice things all around.

It's actually kind of a crack-up. Author James Owen Weatherall does get into some of the turgidly arcane thinking behind a fiercely Feynmanesque enthusiasm for finding that elusive formula to just damn well know what the hell value is. The farthest he gets is something called gauge theory, designed to utilize scientific principles to get a better feel for some generally accepted conception of the value of a thing, but alas, just having a theory with the nifty word gauge in it doesn't make it anything.

What's even more amusing is his introduction of the "New Manhattan Project," as if the product of such an ambitious program would be like the discovery of handy uses for nuclear energy, only for economics. He writes wistfully about an actual meeting of all the top economic minds, you know, all those Nouriel Roubini types, those guys everyone likes because they just seem to know so much about economic things. At this meeting they were going to go right at it, take their zealous focus on getting at the gauge and then find it, conversing and schmoozing and hobnobbing about it, and... and then... AND THEN...

Nothing.

They got nothing.

They got nothing because they don't understand. They don't know God. They don't know the only fully accurate pure value assessment there is, Christ and the expression of His love for us.

All of them, the whole bunch of supposed experts to whom we bow, we gaze at all of them convinced they know what's best, and yet, nothing happens outside of the standard World activity: try really hard to make rotten people feel a bit less rotten. That's really it.

That Other Way, the One That Is Christ? How foolish to believe that there is any other way, really. He has everything as it is. Those highfalutin quants in the Wall Street skyscrapers, trying to portend the next bubble in fearfully rapt anticipation?

Guess what.

Everything is a bubble.

The whole thing is one big God-held bubble.

It is all God's and you only have anything you have now because He said so. He could pop it in an instant, and someday He will. In the end everything melts. How many fools still think they can take it all with them. Even more brainless is the refusal to grasp that you're now being basted on the human sacrifice spit by those very people convincing you they've got your back.

All that talk about having a stable measure of value is only about ways to mitigate human sacrifice. Anxiety reigns no matter how much gold you pile up in your mattress or what the Federal Reserve does with its money spewing. Buy bonds, not buy bonds? Should you hold, sell? What about cybermoney, yeah, that's something!

Doesn't matter in the end.

There is a limit. I like to call it the Brutal Reality Limit.

Some people just call it death.

 

A few weeks ago I watched some of an old Hawaii Five-O episode. As I watched Jack Lord play the role of Steve McGarrett, top crime investigator law enforcement dude, I thought about how impressive this guy is at thinking things through and going after the bad guy. Really, this guy is good. Watching him operate I've always felt robustly content with the confidence he'll get that guy no matter what.

Then I thought, where are the Steve McGarrett's of the Kingdom? Where are they? Where are those who can think deeply and act courageously from the bounty of the gift God gave them to advance the Kingdom? You don't have to be a CSI genius, just do your thing the way God wants you to do it, and join with others who're doing their thing.

See what happens.

The Wayne Grudem's and Jay Richards' of the evangelical world—I know of so many more—would blow people away with their Christ-like vision and Kingdom-oriented industry. You could watch them, they'd be a hundred times better than Steve McGarrett, they really would.

Think about it. The Kingdom Steve McGarrett, circling around in his office intensely pondering the case, his underlings Danno and Chin Ho absorbed in his insightful unveiling of the situation.

"Gentlemen, let's go over this again. The World puts on a smiley face and works hard to make people good and wholesome, but look around. Still—people behaving as rotten as ever. We've tried being a part of the System, talking nice to it, paying it a lot of our hard earned money in tribute, making it seem like we're with them, but all that does is make us as much a product of the brutality of law, its merciless enforcement, all the pathetically fake grandstanding about it—from everywhere, churches, schools, businesses, media.

"If we are truly Christ's, why don't we behave like it? All of us? Why don't we fully arrange the expression of His truth and grace from a place that's totally different from the World? Taking the entire breadth of what He's given us, empowered us to do by the very strength of The Spirit, and captivating people with the overwhelming charity and rapturous joy that is His? Do the things we know are righteous, that stuff we anxiously try so hard to tell the World to do, and do it instead from the Kingdom?  What would you say if we tried that?

"All right then, here's what we need to do..."

Can you imagine being in that office? Can you imagine thousands of those offices filled with followers of Christ courageously saying those things and acting on them? Today much of it can even be communicated and organized in social media networks.

Sadly, most of those offices and networks are empty. All the Wayne Grudem's and Jay Richards' choose to wallow around in the World. I imagine there is a divine purpose for all that. Cain's agency does serve its ruthlessly severe function, and I guess use of the finest looking Christians is an indispensible part of it.

Thing is...

 

There is just That Better Way.

 

***

And it will come about in the last days that the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains. It will be raised above the hills and the peoples will stream to it.

- Micah 4:1

***

Notes:

  • For those who are eager to discover who that one individual is, the one pretty much running everything on behalf of World inhabitants, take a peek here.

  • This page gets into how churches are simply Cain's helpful law enforcement organizations instead of the richly compelling sanctuaries of Truth and Grace. For those who'd argue for cobelligerency, a mentality that runs through the kinds of treatises from Grudem and Richards, I address that here.

  • Here is a page with the blueprint for abjuring the World System. The gifts God gave us to do His work are listed at the end of that page. And here is a home page piece from last year with some thoughts about the numbers of Christ-followers actually doing the Kingdom stuff.

  • Some may object to my critique of the brazen worldliness of the best Christian thinkers. I address some of that here.

  • A terrific piece that elucidates the contemptible bankruptcy of the World's value assessment practices is by the Financial Times' Izabella Kaminska, and I simply can't neglect to direct you to it. It is here.

  • In a piece I wrote on the graphic novel Watchmen, I included an inventory of all the cool things we'd like every country to do, kind of what Grudem and Asmus write about. Nothing new. That virtually every country doesn't really ever do those things very well and never has should tell you something.

  • How the World enables human sacrifice? That's here.

  • A great passage with what God thinks about understanding and knowing Him is in the ninth chapter of Jeremiah. For a bit more on the ultimate destiny of this creation, check out the end of Peter's second letter.

  • The Best Way.

***

 

 

March-April 2014

 

This particular home page piece, "On Bullying," has its own page. You may link to it here.

 

***

 

May-June 2014

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand.

- from the fifth chapter of Hebrews

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

- Thomas Carlyle

The best comic strip out there now is Pearls Before Swine, and one of the latest featured Rat and Goat climbing the holy hill to meet the one who effectively reigns over all modern-day tribal interests.

I always suspected as much. Willy, the Word Decider is indeed dutifully ensuring that our inalienable right to be righteously unoffended is fully protected.

The passion for keeping people unoffended has reached epic proportions with the latest outrage about an NBA basketball team owner telling his girlfriend that he'd rather she not hang around with folk he particularly dislikes, to the extent that his punishment is a mighty declaration of comprehensive ostracism from all NBA oriented things. Never mind that this owner and far too many of the ferociously offended ballplayers themselves are brazenly notorious for sexual exploitation that would make Wilt Chamberlain blush.

No one says a thing about it.

But that's kind of the point. There are all kinds of rotten things people are called which are perfectly acceptable for common usage. Don't like those who speak boldly about the truths that U.S. President Barack Obama's natural citizenship status is at best questionable? You're looking for a "birther." Don't like those who speak articulately about the 9/11 attacks birthed from the womb of American deep politics? You're hunting down a "truther."

Don't like those who speak clearly and cogently about the crime of one abusive individual committing a sodomous act against a wounded and confused individual of the same sex? You're after a narrow-minded bigoted homophobic Neanderthal. The pursuit accompanied, of course, with the gushing anxious assurance you're protected by the certified zeitgeist construction company.

Because we must make sure everyone is properly classified to assuage any fears that anyone would hurt someone by stepping outside the boundaries of the political correctness safety zone, an entire Willy the Word Decider industry is devoted to registering and rationalizing the proper derogatory language. It is so easy to call someone a racist now that many find themselves prefacing everything they say with "I'm not a racist!" Ever notice?

What's more, if there are "truthers" and "birthers" and "backwoods bucktoothed Neanderthals," then the good wholesome people better make sure exactly who should be called what is effusively trumpeted so we'll all make sure we've got things straight or, ahem, should we say, inclusive if you're not exactly, you know, straight.

 The most notable of the first such authorized labels was LGBT, which seemed to cover it pretty well, for a while. Then people said there's got to be a "Q" in the mix for those who're questioning things. But then what about those who may be considered out-of-the-ordinary but shouldn't be, so let's add another "Q" for queer so they're considered acceptable as they should be. But then what about...

It seems the most acceptable classification now is LGBTQQIAAPS which must now be so resolutely ensconced into the good wholesome people's nomenclature that it is pronounced by the letters in the acronym. Yes, there is apparently an individual who is a luggibteekiyapps the most inclusive person of them all! That "S" at the end of it, by the way, refers to "straight", so now we're all inclusive! Are you a luggibteekiyapps? You can't help but be! Splendid!

Of course, this begs the question.

What is the point?

For one thing, it really isn't to begin with. If all sexual proclivities are to be included for the most thoroughly inclusive inclusivity, then where is the extra "P" for polygamist? Another "P" for pedophile? The "N" for necrophiliac? What do you have against them? Or does the "P" already there, for pansexual meaning you fall for anyone and anything include them?

It is easy to see why such sanctimonious proclamations are reviled. They should be, they're idiotic. But it isn't because we don't or shouldn't classify people in our minds to try to understand them better. We do and we should. There is a place for that. It's just, from where do you take your cues about the classifications?

Those who justifiably sneer at those who foist them upon us and seethe with grave animosity at the attempt to change their sentiments are just as viciously spiteful as the thought police deputies. They're just as fearful about being tarred with an unjust label as those doing the labeling.

Don't mess with my natural autonomously selected sentiments.

Ahh, the blessings of a raging culture war. I mean, how twisted is that —  it's bad to be a truther, but good to be a luggibteekiyapps.

 

Those who live by the Kingdom, on the other hand, have an insightful understanding of why all of this is happening. By trusting in the only One who has the power to save them from the oppressive weight of having to live up to the authorized brandings, they no longer obsess over which is which — Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, this kind of person or that kind of person — check it out in the third chapter of Galatians. It isn't that our minds aren't cogitating reasonably about these distinctions, it naturally does so. It is that to Christ they are far less important than what we do with Him and with others with whom we have to do based on His love.

Those living only by the World have no conception of this kind of freedom. They engage in a postmodern tribalism derived from the natural desire for an individual to belong, and since postmodern theory categorically posits that the only reason people do anything is to exert power, then it follows that those attached to the most powerful are the most accepted.

I want to be accepted!

Who then are the most powerful to whom World inhabitants gravitate?

God knew about this phenomenon millennia ago. He established the World Power Hegemony early in man's existence, when Cain made manifest the first temporal exertion of power by sacrificing his brother in a futile attempt to appease a God who'd summarily send him out of His presence to exert seven-fold power over all other human sacrificers. All World activity power commissions are acts of human sacrifice over those who'll allow them to be put on the altar.

Every one of the virulently incessant maneuvers employed to establish positions of the most lucrative power exertions are simply the insanely depraved culture war skirmishes. It is an innate feature of a World inhabitant to rage and rail in such an environment because gratification for the reprobate soul can only come through human sacrifice. Frequently unsatiated, it is a never-ending quest.

"Let me be my brother's keeper, let me be my brother's keeper!  Which brother can I find to bend him and break him into my image..."

Or even better, baste him and bake him into a nice roast beast.

Funny, there is an entire organization that is presently assigned this very task. It is the extremely fervent and breathtakingly proficient militant operation holding the mantle of Cain's legacy, deftly using Sun-Tzuan arts of war to seduce World brokers into doing its bidding on behalf of the most devoted extractors at the price of the loudest, brashest power wanna-bes. How ironic that when people blame "society" for its ills, it is indeed the Society which is making these things happen, very deliberately, very purposefully, and very authoritatively. Why do you think Jesuit-trained Pope Francis declared, as he did recently, that he takes full responsibility for the child sex abuse scandal?

How do they do this?

It is simple. The Society of Jesus dominates the two most influential institutions, the academia and the media. Look closely at where all the certified classification terminology originates. It is fabricated within the humanistically entrenched university system and given the most pronounced broadcasting through the World megaphone led by august mouthpiece organizations like The New York Times. It is thus programmed into the psyche of a populace slavering over the most hypnotic highs from embracing and in turn being embraced by The Grand Glorious Crusade For Redressing The Nobly Righteous Grievance.

The Jesuits are experts at manicuring the most delightful rent-seeking avenues and maintaining the most spectacular rent-pumping facilities. Notice there is really no longer any meaningful discourse, just name-calling. Find the rent-girding institution that looks the most muscular, shimmy up to Cain's good-buddy proprietor, and have at it. Careful thinking about Biblical principles is dismissed as fairy tale folderol carried on by — here we go again — crazy superstitious fundamentalist ignoramuses.

It is done, again with God's permission. That too is simple.

Kind sweet malevolent people hiding behind the most stridently benevolent tribal creeds need constraints, and Cain does his job of providing them, manipulating them, and ultimately enforcing them so ruthlessly that some who want their eyes opened to it will see it, and turn to Christ. Sadly, so many don't open their eyes — they've got them shut real tight. Many of them shiver and scrunch inside the most Christian looking non-profit tax-exempt church organizations. They think they'll remain sufficiently plucky there, because they've got their little World power plot to hold and cherish and defend.

No. I'm afraid they're just being tenderized.

It is standard procedure: many of the most severe penalties, indeed those resulting in actual physical internment, come from the worst Word Decider word usage violations. Hate crimes laws are in the books to stay (the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled them constitutional) and always rigorously considered when prosecuting.

Think about it. Jesus was convicted on the basis of a hate crime law. What did the dominant religious tribe call Jesus? For those who insist "Hey! There you go! Religion there, it's guilty!" the truth is all tribal offense exploitation is religious. Atheists and humanists across the spectrum seem to enjoy bragging that they are the most tolerant and inclusive and all the rest of it, but they too are in a tribe with Their Own Jesus and an imposing list of word usage offenses, just like all the others.

Through this swirling cloud of dust and debris, they simply cannot see the One who is Freedom.

 

In C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia story The Magician's Nephew, the lanky crotchety Uncle Andrew finds himself in Narnia at its inception. He is so intractably obsessed with his own power retention that this place is excruciatingly harrowing. In fact, he can't even recognize that the animals here talk, and when they speak to him it is just the noises and grunts animals ordinarily make in our world. The animals graciously extend their helping hands, but he only sees them as wild beasts bent on assaulting him.

When people habitually live by this fear and go to the silliest extremes to ingratiate themselves to the most smiley power brokers, they often end up doing quite foolish things. I think of this one popular song, I've heard it a number of times in various places, I don't even know the name of it. But it takes a line from Elton John's Your Song, "You can tell everybody..." then follows it with, "I'm the man I'm the man I'm the man." After listening to this I thought, hmm, I'd heard a while ago that the disaffected wanted to fight the man. Huh? Which is it? Do you want to be the man or fight the man?

 How about if you gave up trying so damn hard to keep from being distressingly perplexed by a world that wants to drag you on the altar of their human sacrifice by strapping you to the benighted disconception about what's really going on? What do you think would happen if you put your ears, your eyes, your mind, and your soul in the hands of Christ?

I'll tell you what will happen. He'll make it so you can hear the beautiful music of the Kingdom. You'll see the glory of a God who loves with His life. You'll understand the wonder of a vibrant relationship with the One who made you. You'll experience the rapturous reality of reveling in the embrace of the One who is your true Father.

And wow, the most wonderful thing about that...

It is available to anyone classified as human.

 

Otherwise, hey, no worries.

Willy the Word Decider is right there to keep you attentive to the brutal power voices blasting through your skull.

Sometime before you're stripped, sliced, and your value extracted.

For some time.

I guess there's that.

 

*** 

 

Notes:

  • Don't think human sacrifice takes place right now as a matter of habitual practice? Here's a page with a little more explanation and an expansive catalog of examples.

  • The way in which Christians cower in their little God clubs and by their hapless impotency empower the Word Deciders to do their worst is here.

  • That tease quote from Hebrews? Please, I encourage you to read the entire book. Simply consider the old Hebraic law the same as today's World System codex there and you've got a terrific treatise on the richest abjuration. Notice Who the focal character is, you can't miss Him.

  • That stuff about the Society? Here's a bit more on their impact.

  • And what about me? How am I immune from the labeling crimes I so censure? "Catholicist"? What's with that? I confess, guilty as charged. I wrote a home page piece a while ago about it. It is here for your consideration.

  • How did God set the Agency of Cain in motion? Carefully read the fourth chapter of Genesis.  And check out the first chapter of Ephesians for the striking contrast to the World, detailing both the concrete provisions of freedom enjoyed by Kingdom dwellers and the power of Christ to crush the powers and principalities who reign in the World.

  • (April 2015 note: Recently top White House advisor Valerie Jarrett issued a memo through the Obama administration urging passage of a federal law prohibiting parents from seeking therapeutic help for their children having same-sex attrractions. She referred to such individuals as "LGBTQ+", which again, means what exactly? The absurdity of labeling someone something they are supposed to be with a label that veritably has no definition is not only extraordinarily obvious but terribly dangerous. But then, remember, her true superior is not the U.S. president, but someone pulling both of their strings to mold society as he wishes on behalf of the millions of reprobate World inhabitants.)

  • (May 2015 note: Just came across this page listing the different "gender identities" afforded you on Facebook. The stratospheric idiocy of this is just mind-boggling, it really is.)

 

July-August 2014

 

This particular home page piece, "On the Reality of Meaningful Scientific Inquiry," has its own page. You may link to it here.

 

 

***

 

 

 

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All photographs inserted were taken from the web. Forgive me for not including attributions.

I make no money directly from this web effort.

Thanks nonetheless to those who posted them so I may reproduce them here.

Thank you.

This page was originally posted by David Beck at yourownjesus.net on November 4, 2013