#which requires an acceptance and respect of the culture's worldview and spiritual beliefs

[bywandandsword]

I signed up for a class on Native American Folklore this semester, mostly because the options of classes I could take were extremely limited. I think the topic is super interesting and I'm not made I'm taking it, it just isn't really related to my area of study

But then, another class I was enrolled in got cancelled, and I was scrambling around looking for a replacement and I was lucky enough to get a spot in a class called North American Environmental History, which will have an emphasis on colonialism and indigenous dispossession. There's also apparently a whole week where we're going to explore how folklore can be used as a source in environmental history and now I'm Intrigued and looking for ways I can incorporate this into my larger research projects

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

What’s really fascinating (or really annoying, depending on your tolerance for confusion!) about the word “witch” as a self-identifier is that it’s embraced by -- and I’m not a sociologist or anything, but this is based on decades of observation and I feel semi-confident about it -- basically three entirely separate groups of people:

Group One uses witchcraft to mean basically any form of Western folk magic, a tradition passed on kind of piecemeal by teachers, books, and the general mechanisms of folklore.  They mean that their worldview is non-materialist, and their magic operates on the general model of like-influences-like and part-influences-whole, and they favor an ad hoc collection of crystals, herbs, divination, astrology, spoken charms, intention/affirmations, and sometimes the loosely defined concept of spirit guides.  They often make explicit connections between witchcraft and art, based on a shared respect for symbolic language and emotional effectiveness.  Because they generally oppose gatekeeping and accept all or most people as witches who self-identify, they’re easily mocked and dismissed as uneducated dilettantes, which some certainly are, but by no means all.  They do have deep historical roots, from Hellenistic Neoplatonism through the early modern grimoire tradition and into Spiritualism and the democratized tradition of folk magic that spread in the US through almanacs, candle shops, popular texts like The Long-Lost Friend, and all manner of professional folk healers and charmers -- but they don’t see the legitimacy of their practices as dependent on those roots, but rather on its personal meaning and usefulness to them.  They commonly embrace left-leaning politics for a variety of complicated cultural and historical reasons, and they are the group most likely to explicitly connect their witchcraft practice to their political beliefs.

Group Two is pretty intensely convinced that the only legitimate inheritors of the term witch are people with a direct spiritual connection to some version of European folk magic, derived from relationships with ancestral and land spirits that they believe as a matter of faith are the same spirits (or basically the same spirits) with whom historical witches were in relationship.  They may or may not conceptualize these spirit contacts as constituting a religion per se; they may or may not conceptualize the more powerful of these spirits as gods.  The core of their practice is contacting these “traditional” spirits through practices that are accepted as equally “traditional,” so they tend to think of themselves as anti-eclectic; this often makes them come across as elitist and kind of douchey, which they -- aren’t necessarily, but can be for sure.  They tend to be secretive, partially in opposition to what they see as a watering-down of these traditional practices, but also because the tradition itself is localized and intimate -- you literally can’t practice with someone *else’s* land spirits, fae, and ancestors, so groups and families tend to teach a small set of core practices, then kind of develop independently from each other.  They often favor incorporating ethnic and regional traditions, including some forms of folk Christianity, such as saint veneration, including angelic and demonic powers in their spirit families, and often share a self-mythology that derives from canonical and non-canonical Biblical stories about the nephilim and antediluvian priesthoods.  Because they quite literally draw their legitimacy from Blood and Soil (or at least the spiritual resonances involved with bloodlines and places), they can vibe a little fashy; though they’re mostly not fascists, this type of witchcraft obviously does attract small-c conservatives with a jaundiced attitude toward the newfangled.  At one point I would’ve said they were largely either apolitical/libertarian or center-right as a group, but a self-consciously leftist, largely anarcho-primitivist strain has emerged recently to shake things up a bit.

Group Three practice an explicitly religious neopagan form of initiatory witchcraft.  They were, until recently, the most front-facing group to claim the label witch, so they have kind of set the terms of debate for decades; they are now outnumbered by Group One, and it’s causing Some Drama, but we’re all managing.  They all kind of come out of the rootstock of Gardnerian witchcraft (with the possible exception of Anderson Feri-based traditions, which seem to have begun independent of Gardner’s work and then merged with it instead of starting with Gardner and diverging, cool, huh?), which was synthesized and systematized in the mid-20th century out of basically an ad hoc marriage between British folk magic a la Group Two and the Golden Dawn, which is its own long essay to explain, but basically think Freemasonry reskinned by the Romantic literary movement.  By no means are all of Group Three directly descended from the Gardnerians, but they are all kind of working variations on a theme in terms of how that “marriage” of folk and ceremonial magic should interact -- they are neither folk magicians nor ceremonialists, but a thing unto themselves syncretized from both.  Because this type of witchcraft was practiced extensively within the US counterculture during the 60s, 70s, and 80s, it has absorbed feminist, environmentalist, antiwar, and civil libertarian values, although the idea of explicitly wedding witchcraft and political action remains a more divisive idea here than it is among Group One, having passionate advocates both for and against.  This group is very comfortable talking about (and to!) deities, and the most likely to think of witchcraft as their religion, including devotion and service to the gods within their practice, although the theological variations are wide in terms of what exactly they think a deity *is.*  When I say they are “initiatory,” I mean in the broadest sense; some strands of this group do still believe that being a witch requires a teacher who then ritually initiates you, but the more liberalized view has become the norm, which is that a self-performed initiation ritual is legitimate.  Still, most of Group Three makes some sort of distinction between the non-initiated practitioner and someone who is A Witch by virtue of having been transformed on a karmic and spiritual level through the power of the gods.  It’s common, though not universal, for this group to take a rather Protestant view of initiation, where it is synonymous with an elevation to the priesthood; witchcraft is understood to be a religion of clergy, where initiating makes you a priest/ess and entails some form of service to deity and/or community.

These are semi-porous categories -- I’m a Group Three witch, but it’s perfectly easy for me to communicate with Groups One and Two, and in fact I’ve learned a lot from them over the years -- and some people have an equivalent foot in two different camps (I find it hard to imagine being evenly balanced between all three, but never say never?)  However, there’s a real fundamental difference between what these three groups think witchcraft is for and what it takes to claim the title.  I’m the hippie-dippy what’s-your-pronoun type, so I have no desire to invalidate any of these groups; their definitions vary, but I don’t see why that means any of them are more correct than the others, words are great, they mean all sorts of things.  I think we’d fight a lot less if we recognized that we aren’t using words the same way And That’s Okay, but that’s just my Gemini moon talking. 

[naturalhairhairgrowth]

Is Religion Even Necessary?

So you have heard them all, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, New Age, etc. etc., a denomination of this, a denomination of that. Every religion at war with each other, fighting over who’s religion is the right religion. So much confusion! There is only one GOD Almighty and not all of these people holding different beliefs could possibly be right, let’s be honest. Every single one of us have blood flowing through our veins, two legs, the same types of day to day challenges, etc. and we will all be headed to the same place after leaving this earth just like we were all put on this same earth together. We all came into this world the same way, from the same GOD Almighty, and we will all go out the same, to either one of two places created by GOD Almighty, Heaven or Hell. (Where will you go?) So let’s get to the truth of the matter. If all religions take away from the Holy Bible, then why not just rely on what the Holy Bible says? Why make our own rules and traditions? Religion is a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements.

So let’s examine things for a moment. Since all religions take something from the Holy Bible then let’s look at the Holy Bible. The KJV (King James Version) Holy Bible to be exact; said to be the best translation, closest to the original, with nothing added or removed as most other translations these days have. There is either scripture missing or added with words that give the scriptures a whole new meaning entirely. Who said we wanted ‘your’ opinion sir, just give it to us straight, right. The Holy Bible gives us the daily instructions (commandments from GOD) that we need to be 'truly’ good people, so the world flows smoothly. Yet people believe religion is necessary for that; have they not taken a look around the world and seen that their way isn’t working?

People have formed the Christianity religion, so most people look at the Holy Bible as a Christian religious book, but is this a fact? You will find that the Holy Bible doesn’t mention anything at all about needing to belong to a certain religion or following traditions of men. It speaks against that in fact. (Mark 7:7-9, Colossians 2:8 KJV). Being a Christian simply means to be Christ-like, an actual follower of Jesus Christ; nothing about the religion and traditions they have formed which in most cases do not even match up with the Holy Bible. Must be why most self-professing Christians blend right in with the world. Jesus Christ and His disciples didn’t form any religious group. They simply went around preaching “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:17 KJV), baptizing, healing the sick, casting out devils, etc. They taught the 'Word of GOD’, Who by the way is the Creator of all things, as if His Word isn’t sufficient enough. The bible says “For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” Revelation 22:18-19 KJV. Sounds like serious business. These people may want to think twice about removing and adding words to scripture.

It’s broken down quite simple. Jesus Christ came and died for our sins because all sin has to be paid for, requiring a sacrifice. All we are required to do is show 'in action’ we believe in Him by being baptized in water (full body immersion, not sprinkled) where we will receive the Holy Spirit, which without we cannot get into heaven, according to John 3:5 KJV. We then must walk in “newness of life”; meaning, turning away from sin and walking how Jesus commands us, according to Romans 6:4 KJV. The scripture is clear in Revelation 14:12 KJV. “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus”. So who made up this thing that “we don’t have to keep the commandments anymore”, or that “it’s ok to sin”, or “once saved, always saved”? The oh-so-famous sinner’s prayer is nowhere in the Holy Bible. Yes, that’s right folks, saying a simple prayer will not, I repeat, will not save you!

Have you ever met the over-righteous religious person who has their nose stuck up in the air like they were born perfect and never made a mistake in life? How about the religious person who goes as far as hating others because they see they are in a certain type of sin? How about the religious self-professing Christian who looks no different from the rest of the world; watches worldly TV series, listens to vulgar music, parties, drinks, uses drugs, uses foul language, thinks their own personal opinion on scripture matters, etc. etc. How about the religious person who believes because they show up to church on Sunday (not even the true Sabbath according to GOD -Exodus 20:8-10 KJV) that they will make it to heaven, as if heaven is earned by how many church services you show up to or claiming to be a “good person” in your own eyes. Most of these people never even pick up a bible and read it! These types of people are called hypocrites and satan loves them because they cause others confusion and discouragement; mission accomplished, satan just caused another to walk away from the gospel of Jesus Christ, causing them to lose Salvation.

Let’s look back at the person calling themselves “a good person”. Can you imagine two criminals in court giving the judge their own personal opinions as to why they are a good person and should get away with a crime. That wont work in court with a judge, they will have to pay for the crime; neither will it work with GOD when we face HIM on judgement day. You don’t say the judge isn’t loving because he punished a criminal, you respect his judgment. So why do people say GOD isn’t loving because HE will do the same? HE is the Ultimate JUDGE, THE JUDGE over the judge. We have to play by HIS rules just like we have to play by the rules of this land. So remember; be baptized, receive the Holy Spirit, turn from sin and repent, obey GOD and Jesus, and walk in His ways to make it to heaven.

Too many people are too busy following passions and obsessions in this world; TV series, video games, celebrities, careers, movies, worldly music, school, night life, sports, activities, relationships, etc, etc. Sure, SOME of the things mentioned are fine to do, but for most it totally consumes their entire life, this is all that’s on their mind 24/7 making no time or consideration for their relationship with their Creator. The list goes on and on, satan has thousands of ways to distract us and keep our attention and focus off of GOD and Jesus Christ our Saviour.

The Holy Bible says clearly that satan is the deceiver and the author of confusion (“For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.” 1 Corinthians 14:33 KJV “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” Revelation 12:9 KJV) and he has been appointed hell, he is extremely angry, hates GOD’s creation and wants to take as many of us down with him as he possibly can. What better way to do that than confuse people with a bunch of different religions, leading them away from accepting Jesus Christ. Again, sin has to be paid for, and without Jesus Christ as your Sacrifice you have to do the time, and follow the one you followed in this world (satan) to the same place he is going, hell. So it’s time we wake up, stop being lazy, and read the Holy Bible. There are thousands and thousands of accounts of the Holy Bible being true with prophecy coming to pass, people having near death experiences and actually going to heaven and hell, people having spiritual experiences, seeing Jesus and spirits, receiving healing and miracles in the Name of Jesus Christ, experiencing GOD working in their daily lives, etc. etc.

So now we can see clearly that religion most definitely in fact is NOT necessary. Tell satan he can keep his confusion, GOD’s Word is sufficient for you, that he might be getting over on the majority of the world but no longer over on you! How wicked satan is to deceive us in such a way; not to mention all the other things he puts us through constantly: fear, worry, depression, suicidal thoughts, illness, death, anger, sadness, the list goes on and on. According to 2 Timothy 1:7 KJV “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” Wow, what a wicked devil, is there really any wonder he’s headed to the lake of fire. We can say Thank GOD Almighty for that and mostly Thank GOD and Jesus Christ for His Sacrifice, the Ultimate Love.

[whatisonthemoonarchive]

While some continue to complain about the profound effects of indoctrination into the totalistic worldview of the Moon ideology,  it is puzzling that they seem  unconcerned about the  mind control and ideological indoctrination inflicted from all directions outside the Moon movement on society at large. After all, it is difficult to not notice that a massive world-wide combination of educational institutions, media, the entertainment industry, government agencies, computer companies,  the United Nations and its accredited non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are all involved in the indoctrination of the masses into a totalitarian, one world government ideology. Are the effects of indoctrination in the Moon ideology dangerous in comparison to the effects of indoctrination into the totalitarian one world government ideology?    When considering this, take into account that the totalitarian, one world government ideology promotes and facilitates various lifestyles and practices considered to be sinful according traditional Christian standards, whereas the Moon ideology, whether it be true or not, upholds traditional Christian morality and takes a hard line against sin.

The one world government indoctrination program begins in elementary school with a planned, step-by-step process of replacing the traditional family-taught beliefs, morality, Biblical values and world view with a new way of thinking designed to support the totalitarian world government agenda [see 'Brainwashing in America']   The techniques of brainwashing developed in totalitarian countries are routinely used in psychological conditioning programs imposed on American school children to bring about these results. These include emotional shock and desensitization*, psychological isolation from sources of support, stripping away defenses, manipulative cross-examination of the individual's underlying moral values, and inducing acceptance of alternative values by psychological rather than rational means.

The goal of education is no longer to teach the kind of literacy, wisdom and knowledge we once considered essentials of responsible citizenship.  It is to train world citizens--a compliant international workforce, willing to flow with change and uncertainty. These citizens must be ready to believe and do whatever will serve a  government determined 'common good' or 'greater whole'.  Educators may promise to teach students to think for themselves, but if these state educators continue what they have started, then tomorrow's students will have neither the facts nor the freedom needed for independent thinking.  Like Nazi youth, they will be taught to react, not to think, when told to do the unthinkable.

Are the effects of indoctrination into the Moon ideology really so dangerous in comparison to the effects of the ongoing state run indoctrination into the totalitarian one world government ideology?  

__________________________

*A common method used in training students to reject truth is emotional shock therapy which is described in the following example:  Ashley, a California tenth-grader, heard her teacher announce the following writing assignment: 'You're going to consult an oracle. It will tell you that you're going to kill your best friend. This is destined to happen, and there is absolutely no way out. You will commit this murder. What will you do before this event occurs? Describe how you felt leading up to it. How did you actually kill your best friend?'  Ashley became very upset. Why would her English teacher tell her to imagine something so horrible. 'I don't want to do this.', she told herself and long after she had told this to her parents, the awful feelings continued.

This method of emotional shock therapy has become standard fare in public schools from coast to coast. It produces cognitive dissonance -- mental and moral confusion -- especially in students trained to follow God's guidelines. While classroom topics may range from homosexual or occult practices to euthanasia and suicide, they all challenge and stretch a student's moral boundaries. But why?

'[Our objective] will require a change in the prevailing culture--the attitudes, values, norms and accepted ways of doing things,' says Marc Tucker, the master-mind behind the school-to-work and 'workforce development' program implemented in every state. Working with Hillary Clinton and other globalist leaders, he called for a paradigm shift--a total transformation in the way people think, believe, and perceive reality. This new paradigm rules out traditional values and biblical truth, which are now considered hateful and intolerant. (See "Clinton's War on Hate Bans Christian Values") All religions must be pressed into the mold of the new global spirituality.  Since globalist leaders tout this world religion as a means of building public awareness of our supposed planetary oneness, Biblical Christianity doesn't fit. It is simply too 'exclusive' and 'judgmental.'

Immersing students in imaginary situations that clash with home-taught values confuses and distorts a student's conscience. Each shocking story and group dialogue tends to weaken resistance to change. Biblical absolutes simply don't fit the hypothetical stories that prompt children to question and replace home-taught values. Before long, God's standard for right and wrong is turned upside-down, and unthinkable behavior begins to seem more normal than the Christian tradition that formed the basis of western civilization.

But it takes more than a twisted conscience to produce compliant world citizens. New values must replace God's timeless truths, as described in the following example:

 Matt Piecora, a fifth grader from the Seattle area, was told to complete the sentence, 'If I could wish for three things, I would wish for…'  Matt wrote 'infinitely more wishes, to meet God, and for all my friends to be Christians.'  Matt's wish didn't pass. The teacher told him that his last wish could hurt people who didn't share his beliefs. Matt didn't want to hurt anyone, so he agreed to add 'if they want to be.'  Another sentence to be completed began, 'If I could meet anyone, I would like to meet…'.

Matt wrote: 'God because he is the one who made us!' The teacher told him to add 'in my opinion.' When Matt's parents saw his work, they noticed the phrases that had been added to Matt's sentences and asked,  'Why did you add this?'. 'The teacher didn't want me to hurt other people's feelings,' he answered. 'But these are just your wishes…'  'I thought so, Mom.'  Matt looked confused. Later, the teacher explained to Matt's parents that she wanted diversity' in her class and was looking out for her other students. But the excuse didn't make sense. If the papers were supposed to 'express the students' diverse views,' why couldn't Matt share his views? Didn't his wishes fit? Or was Christianity the real problem?  'I try to instill God's truths in my son,' said Matt's father, 'but it seems like the school wants to remove them.'

 He is right. The old Judeo-Christian beliefs don't fit the new beliefs and values designed for global unity. The planned oneness demands 'new thinking, new strategies, new behavior, and new beliefs'  that turn God's Word and values upside-down and no strategy works better than the old dialectic (consensus) process explained by Georg Hegel, embraced by Marx and Lenin, and incorporated into American education during the nineteen eighties.  Directed group discussion based on the dialectic (consensus) process is key to the transformation. Professor Benjamin Bloom, called 'Father of Outcome-based Education', summarized it as follows:

'The purpose of education and the schools is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students.  ....a large part of what we call good teaching is the teacher's ability to attain effective objectives through challenging the students' fixed beliefs and getting them to discuss issues.'  Matt's last comment was especially threatening to the teacher. His statement, 'God made us' is an absolute truth. It can't be modified to please the group. Therefore it doesn't fit the consensus process -- the main psycho-social strategy of the new national-international education system designed to mold world citizens.  It demands that all children participate in group discussions and agree to: · be open to new ideas · share personal feelings · set aside home-taught values that might offend the group · compromise in order to seek common ground and please the group. · respect all opinions, no matter how contrary to God's guidelines · never argue or violate someone's comfort zone

First tested in Soviet schools, this mind-changing process required students in the USSR, China and other Communist nations to 'confess' their thoughts and feelings in their respective groups. Day after day, trained facilitator-teachers would guide these groups toward a pre-planned consensus. Opposite opinions or ideas -- 'thesis' and 'antithesis' -- were blended into ever-evolving higher 'truths'. Each new truth or 'synthesis' would ideally reflect a blend of each participant's feelings and opinions. In reality, the students were manipulated into compromising their values and accepting the politically correct Soviet understanding of the issue discussed. Worse yet, the children learned to trade individual thinking for a collective mindset. Since the concluding consensus would probably change with the next dialogue, the process immunized them against faith in any unchanging truth or fact. This revolutionary training program was officially brought into our education system in 1985, when President Reagan and Soviet President Gorbachev signed the U.S. - U.S.S.R. Education Exchange Agreement. It put American technology into the hands of Communist strategists and, in return, gave us all the psycho-social strategies used in Communist nations to indoctrinate Soviet children with Communist ideology and to monitor compliance for the rest of their lives. Today, American children from coast to coast learn reading, health, and science through group work and dialogue. Most subjects are 'integrated' or blended together and discussed in a multicultural context. Thus, fourth graders in Iowa 'learn' ecology, economy, and science by 'real-life' immersion into Native American cultures. They role-play tribal life and idealize the religion modeled by imaginary shamans. Seeking common ground with the guidance of a trained facilitator-teacher, they share their beliefs, feelings, and 'experiences' with each other. They might agree that 'there are many gods' or 'many names for the same god' and compare the exaggerated spiritual thrills of shamanism with their own church experiences. Which religion would sound most exciting to the group? The consensus would merely be a temporary answer in a world of 'continual change' -- one of many steps in the ongoing evolution toward better understanding of truth -- as defined by leaders who envision a uniform global workforce and management system operating through compliant groups everywhere.     http://www.inplainsite.org/html/mind_control_in_schools.html

[ghostmoor]

I think I’m about ready to dump all this info out into the world now

Click & Yeva were originally RP characters tied to a central location so where they came from wasn’t hugely important, and they only very briefly saw any use, but I still love them both a lot and since I’ve been reshuffling all my other storylines I decided to put some actual work into where they live/come from (also because I hate just making stuff Vaguely Nonspecifically “Tribal” w/ no real structure). This is the result of that. My constant hunger for worldbuilding is insatiable and Oddworld provides a such nice framework for doing that

More info under the cut! This got really long

OVERVIEW

SO, Dep Mudaaya: the tree-singing people, named for their use of chanting to bend the plants of the jungle they live in to their will. As of right now, their existence is very uncertain. There’s only a couple of colonies left, and they don’t really have any non-Mudaaya neighbours nearby to connect and potentially revive their breeding populations with. On top of it all, they’re under constant threat of loggers trying to encroach on their forests. They’ve been able to keep them at bay long enough to weave the trees into barriers tough enough to navigate that they’ve slowed industrial progress to a crawl, but now they’re basically caught in a stalemate.

Still, they’re mostly trying to carry on as usual, although tensions rise with every death that occurs, knowing that there’ll come a point where there are more deaths than births.

ASTROLOGY

They have a complex social structure, with folks divided up into eight different social classes based on role (above), and then further by their hatching time (janpa), which is akin to a horoscope of sorts and is said to influence personality and mindset. There are two primary alignments:

ra-jan, sun-born; open with their words and affections, and good at empowering the masses, but with a tendency to be naive, oblivious and myopic, sometimes making very careless mistakes. They flourish in environments where people are emotionally satisfied and happy, or where they can make them feel that way, but their advice tends to be broad and generic and they struggle to handle more nuanced, personal problems, both their own and others’. Their appropriately sunny personality makes them suited to occupations that need an optimistic mindset, a good leader, or someone to inject some goodwill into a situation.

cha-jan, moon-born; usually very in touch with the complexity of emotions, they bear a strong sense of empathy for others. They tend to be a little reserved, and calculate their moves very carefully, sometimes overthinking things to a fault. They like to take time to reflect on things, and are awful at making impulsive decisions. They’re also realists, and despite their empathy, they can rub people up the wrong way by telling them what they need to hear when it’s not what they want to hear. They’re suited to jobs that require a lot of careful thinking, careful speaking, and careful acting, and an ability to see a situation from many angles.

There are two secondary alignments, rarer by virtue of being born in the transient period between day and night, held as intermediaries possessing valuable traits of both personality types, and potentially possessing other special abilities due to these intersections.

sa-jan, dawn-born; sun-dominant, they possess the optimism and strength of will from the sun, and the strong sense of empathy from the moon. They make for excellent, if somewhat volatile and occasionally stubborn, negotiators and tacticians, and are often considered to have high potential to set new social precedents, or to revolutionise some aspect of life. At their absolute best, they become iconic figures of love, protection and perseverance in their tribe’s history through their actions.

dhu-jan, dusk-born; moon-dominant, they are ruled first and foremost by their mind and emotions, but carry the impulsiveness and somewhat short-sighted nature of the sun. They are often considered eccentric, not only overthinking things but acting out their quirky plans and odd interpretations of things. They tend to be a bit more emotionally distant than moon-born, though not through lack of trying. Despite their flaws, they are considered to be deeply connected to and cognisant of the spiritual plane, and excellent practical problem-solvers due to their lateral thinking ability.

On top of personality traits, there are various other natural phenomena and specific religious concepts which each different alignment is associated with.

They follow a lunar calendar, with specific cultural events at certain intersections of moon phases, such as all full or all new moons landing on the same night, and ascribe significance to various other specific intersections, deeming certain moon phases to be prime time to perform certain acts or rituals.

SOCIAL ROLES

Eggs are raised in nurseries in the central hub of the colony by sun-born parichakar, and if they hatch a worker, remain in the nursery for a year or two before they’re handed off to a willing gharavali parent. They’re then raised in that sub-village, where they’re taught basic life skills and allowed to explore their options before picking a class to become, around the age of 5 or 6, at which point they may then again move to live with a different guardian, depending on local norms/personal choice.

If an egg hatches a drone or queen, they automatically have their class assigned to them and are raised into that class from birth. Once they’re older, they form the Sambandhar, effectively a sort of party of ambassadors who travel around both their home colony and others, discussing politics, infrastructure, and just doing general reconnaissance on how things are.

Pracharanee remain part of the Sambandhar for life; ranee are often out of it by their pre-teens, but it depends on when they are called up to take on a breeding role. Parichakar-in-training are also part of the Sambandhar, learning how to play host, developing strong social skills, learning to navigate politics, and gaining a wider worldview that makes them better companions and advisors to the queen and better at raising well-balanced children.

In the times when they weren’t fretting over keeping their colony alive or worrying about what happens when a Mudaaya maharani dies because they weren’t short on replacements, some ranee would opt to renounce their role and remain part of the Sambandhar indefinitely, effectively adopting a pracharani’s role minus the breeding. Referred to as sambhalanee, opinions range from quietly tolerant to openly accepting.

There’s also the chodanur, ranee or pracharanee who abstained from breeding and being Sambandhar participants entirely and took on a worker role, which were seen similarly - though maybe judged a tad more harshly - to sambhalanee. They’re essentially the same concept as the northern idea of worker-queens and drones.

Workers moving between worker-dominated roles is usually permitted; it’s common for older muds to retire to a less physically demanding role. Non-parichak workers taking part in the Sambhandar is typically prohibited, though there has been debate over this in recent generations as the breeding population dwindles in numbers. Even prior to this, there were a few workers who did successfully participate on the grounds that it would be no different for them to be a pracharani from a rani being one.

RELIGION

Dep Mudaaya don’t worship a single, ultimate, unifying god, but they do believe in a universal force that dwells not only in the mortal life of Oddworld, but also facilitates the existence of various deity-esque entities, spirits and supernatural beings. They’re animistic, believing that all things carry this life force, akin to the concept of a soul. Some of these beings are free-willed and self-governing, while others act out the will of larger, more powerful spirits.

It’s this life energy that mudokons can channel through chanting and ritual means to influence the world around them. Anyone can learn to harness it to some degree, though in order to truly master the skill and fully comprehend the spirit world that exists parallel to the corporeal one, lifelong training and honing of the skill is necessary, hence the existence of shamans and their apprentices. When a being dies, this life energy returns to the universal pool from which all things gain their energy. Ghosts and spectres are the result of that energy being pulled back to the corporeal world, but having no body to return to.

The two things they worship universally are the sun and the moons, given that the celestial bodies are so important to their society, but beyond that, it’s kind of a free-for-all. Most natural phenomena are commonly represented: wind, rain, and the seasons, either as a collective unit or individually. Temples and shrines dedicated to the land, vegetation and revered animals such as the manterine are also commonplace.

Sometimes whole branches will pay respects to a particular force or entity; sometimes just one village; and sometimes even individuals or cohabiting “family” units will put their faith in a being or force that’s important to them personally. There’s a spiritual entity for every occasion in their belief system, so numerous that some will be entirely unique to just a handful of people.

[eksbdan-blog]

New Post has been published on https://passingbynehushtan.com/2019/05/29/christ-vs-the-hermeneutical-death-spiral/

Christ vs. the Hermeneutical Death Spiral, part 1

The Hermeneutical Death Spiral

I have a problem: I’m a Christian. As a Christian, I am constantly being compelled to silence by those who are religiously attached to a world and a kind of thought that is violently opposed to Christ.

Now, that does not seem to be a very good problem statement for an article with the stated intention of bringing to light unaddressed ones. Nearly every Christian worldview apologetic you will read will speak about, for example, the various solutions to the increasing passivity of believers against and increasing certainty of the street that the Christ is losing to science. Although on the surface my complaint seems the same, mostly about the Church having to function righteously despite an ever-increasing onslaught of anti-biblical theologies, it’s not.   Here, it’s not in the same way as Christ intended it to be, silenced in the static of meaning that is the world’s language that can never speak of it. Lost in its meaning of “theology.” Lost in its understanding of “world.” Lost in its avatar of “Christ” which is now everyone who is well-intentioned, loves cats and wants to save the rainforests. Anyone acclimated to the world’s default modes of communication will take for granted as true the accepted ultimate definitions of its keywords.

Those ultimate definitions, however, if they are framed within the cultural ethos, are no so ultimate. If one can accept that how something hides most completely is in plain sight, in hermeneutics the rules of meaning are defined essentially as lying within a statement, a philosophy, an opinion, an intuition. Hidden and waiting to be fleshed out. Not defined by the very perspicuous attractions of the human heart which make mundane things exalted and exalted things mundane.

There is my introduction to hermeneutics. It’s everything. Its the battle for meaning, yes, but as a Christian, it should be the about the war fought against the powers of obscurity, culture, intellectualism, human organizations, the love for strife, puzzles, and industry. Hermeneutics in Christianity is supposed to be the establishment of what has been given to us, not made by us, concerning meaning. But we have become absorbed into the flotsam and jetsom of LifeWay Christian Store consciousness. Have you ever heard the phrase “we’re screwed?” This is about how “screwed” we are, because of our fallen hermeneutical method.

My opening problem statement is about Christianity and its hermeneutics, which is the story about its establishment and fall, and a fall in which we now live and call Christian and don’t know it because it has no meaning, no hermeneutics. It’s about what is now our fierce fight not against poor spiritual vision in which we must constantly strive to improve, but a striving for a world with a permanent dark glass in which we are to see that beatific vision, keeping it locked in only imagination and possibility. It’s not about the unbelievers, this hermeneutics in which Christianity has agreed, but those “religiously attached to a world and a kind of thought that is violently opposed to Christ” whose method of meaning deludes them into thinking they are his champions.

My message is that nothing you can believe about anything and disagree or agree with another about has anything to do with whether who is true or false, or whether we are true or false in our hearts, by what is being said, but true or false by whether what is being said is informed or misinformed by one unstated fact and phenomena that the NT writers took for granted and which alone frames the spiritual context of all meaning. Say something wrong and it can be changed and made right. But get the main thing wrong and nothing but a special and miraculous act of God can be done about it. How ironic and unexpected, but strangely appropriate, that in our hundreds of years in writing libraries of books on Christain hermeneutics, sure that the problems and solutions to the correct reading of the sacred texts have to do with bad procedures, attitudes, and presuppositions, all along the problem and solution was not there. It was in the meaning first of the fundamental, biblical ground to the meaning of “Christian hermeneutics” which we have rejected, and which subsequently tainted, fatally, every attempt to get at transcendent meaning.

Meaning, and real Christian hermeneutics, has been hiding in plain sight. We have missed it because obscurity is our true love, not Christ, and because of that fact, not in spite of it.

The Divine Trickster

The Greek god Hermes represented many things. The trickster. The master of boundaries. Of trade and sports. But if you were to settle on one it would be something like “divine trickster” in his role as messenger to Man from the God’s. The Greek word hermēneuō means interpretation or translate. Hermeneutics is usually spoken of as around biblical texts and retains this original meaning in an assumption that there is an upper, immediately comprehensible layer to the text and a deeper one which requires an application of hermeneutical rules to reveal and understand. This is because it was written in another time, language and culture by a certain individual.  But no less because of the belief that if God were the author and meant the Bible for all times, he both bridged the cross-historical problem and then used his sacred symbolism as the bases on which to reunite all those who search for the truth to agree on it once it is found in that symbolism. We will see that in time the meaning of “Hermes the divine trickster” came to be understood much like Christian hermeneutics: far more locked into a past, little understood, antiquated and spiritually ignorant culture than an example of how God’s hermeneutics, not man’s, is the first order of business.

Hermes brought the word of the gods to man, but this part implies something that we have entirely lost in the highest notion of what it means to interpret and derive meaning from another if both parties are ontologically, radically different. In the case of both man and God, the reason that rules of interpretation are codified is that one understands himself much easier than we may understand another. Hermeneutics stresses listening to another, and whether man or God, this other is a foreign source for which we are required to exercise some care, reflection, and effort to fully understand if we care, and not operate under naive assumptions about him. The Greeks could stop here in their efforts to understand the gods because the gods were so much like them.  Not in Christianity and Judaism. Here, hermeneutics is not in the service of men to other men or supermen, or even man with respect to “God’s word,” since that phrase is constructed in a way that makes it just as fraught with divine but ultimately false conceptual gods. Hermeneutics is supposed to be about finding first what God ultimately values and his chosen method of communication, God’s hermeneutics, which he expects man to find, accept and learn through some level of effort in a display of a love of Truth.

I want to speak of Hermeneutics in a way that has been implied but never taken seriously and worked: Hermeneutics in our first responsibility of grasping what God’s rules of meaning might be for us, by which we are obliged to know, before we start talking about what are our found rules of meaning for understanding God. It’s a lot like a talk on sacred symbolism: are symbols only man created objects, creative, finite, perhaps “unreal,” changeable and cursory, or are they not fundamentally something that God creates, like the physical universe itself, for us to understand him? Doesn’t hermeneutics have to be something God created and revealed, something found and applied before it is something that we make and apply? And doesn’t it have to be a fact before it is taken seriously and forms the basis of a theory, a method?

If we were still in the time of Homer, our divines of present and past could be excused to remain like the Oracle at Delphi, who, by enveloping themselves in the sacred smoke of the bottomless pit before them, would fall into an ecstatic trance and begin babbling incomprehensible messages from Zeus to be translated by an accompanying priest. Something perhaps about the outcome of a war, whether good fortune would be the result of a business trip or whether a certain woman would be a good wife. Our hermeneutics could be justifiably locked into the same pattern, out of which we gain nothing but confidence that our carnal affairs would in the future be in order, but we are not supposed to be so helpless today. We are supposed to have a real, testable message from a real objective God, not one out of the very rich imagination of man. The need for the babblers is supposed to be over, replaced by a divine hermeneutic in the minds of honest men from which to resolve all meaning that matters, a meaning which is supposed to be much more compelling to the mind and heart than denounced and discarded.

The black hole of Delphi is covered and graded, and a barbecue pit and cabana set up over it. The smoke is, if it appears at all, would only be an artistic expression of praise and prayer in what is a quiet place of contemplation. That is, to us that are Christian who know and believe that a real revelation, not a fantasy, has been given, which makes symbols cursory carriers of meaning and not meaning itself. To the others in the church, the struggle, the naivete, the Mysterium, the hermeneutic of darkness can never be allowed closure when the Oracle is still in full operation and continuously expanded into a spiritual theme park, where each worship ride even ideas are represented, alongside one for rocks, feelings, reason, and Zeus.

The purpose of this article is to establish what is fundamentally wrong with Christian theology, what is wrong with ourselves, what we have thrown away that God thought essential, and by such action why we have become sure that a spiritual empowerment of ourselves has taken place while it is really more like drinking a slow poison. Hermeneutics is at its heart, and especially the biblical idea of “fulfillment.” This is our theodical starting point. Everything else is a mere side interest.

Words Mean Things. God’s Word Means Things Higher.

What I mean by “anti-biblical theologies” and “thought violently opposed to Christ” is by no means henceforth revealed in my initial problem statement. It requires some hermeneutics because it’s designed to imply more and surprise you when my intended meaning is revealed. But what is supposed to be more surprising is not necessarily my meaning, but the way that we carry around an almost unbreakable assumption about having to favor how the world expects us to think of the highest possible value instead of favoring what is before us that is quite obviously of an infinitely higher value. Of course, I am not speaking of communication in mundane affairs, but language meant to communicate what is expected to be the great questions of existence. Not “what is the best interpretation for greasing of the spiritual skids of a cultural ethos.” Nearly all of that aims not for a view of the spiritual except through the cultural lens first. But for a religion that is supposed to be transmitting a message from an alien world and Person, taking “Jesus is Lord” as “Jesus is master, sovereign, the decider of men’s souls,” or any statement that that could come exclusively from culture, is a religion promising heaven but giving only what the culture could produce on its own.

“What?! You’re saying that Jesus is not Master and Judge?!” Oh my no. I’m saying  quite the opposite, that his mastery and means of judgment go far beyond the natural and disposable implications of our understanding of “master” and “judge.” Its hermeneutics, you know. It’s all about hermeneutics.

You may think I’m shooting blanks so far, but what I have just done is shown the root of the problem of evil.  Simply, it’s hidden in a divine parable, exposable only by divine hermeneutics,  because we deliberately hide it from ourselves, addicted to anything except that which exposes us.

Please go to the next page…

First Hint: What only God Can Do and What Man Can Do.

Christ is against that “world thought paradigm.” Nothing is startling about that kind of antagonism. That paradigm is just the common, culturally influenced way of understanding the world and using language to communicate it. But that is the real problem that the statement hides. Since we as Christians believe that his antagonism in this is not entirely borrowed out of the fevered brains of wandering tinfoil hatted conspiracy theorists, but supernaturally transmitted by God, I think I am compelled to think that a transcendently communicated problem should be as unique and remarkable and unexpected as the mind and person of its alien origin and to who it is meant to address as an influence of alien origin. Is “the world is against God” supposed to be taken as a great revelation that man would never have obtained without God’s special intervention by the incarnation? Is “have faith in God and you will be saved” supposed to be an example of the ultimate teaching and warning of God that waited thousands of years until Christ came? Is “we are saved by Christ’s work on the Cross” or “a person is saved by works and faith,” where “work” is, well, what Christ did by dying and a “faith” which is, just, umm, faith, supposed to be revelatory, startling and utterly impossible to have come from the minds of unenlightened men?

We don’t have that strangeness and unexpectedness upfront here by the expectations of a certain opaque and common and man-made and motivated hermeneutic, but if we begin thinking about it as a potential for meaning in the service of a real revelation, our hermeneutic is controlled by a divine source, not our puny brains.

Christ is against the world thought paradigm, but “Christ” and the “world thought paradigm,” if they are themselves examples of that world thought paradigm, are not gateways to our understanding of Christ, and then gateways to what really constitutes the “world thought paradigm” of ambiguous or optional meaning, either. The power of autonomous ideas and those ideas, which defines that paradigm, need not have originated exclusively by an objectively, transcendent Christ and outside of the world thought paradigm. The ideas are potentially converted to meaning, but if converted only by an act of pure choice and not guided by a compelling transcendent influence they are by definition only symbolic reflections only of a human conversion ability and priority. If there was any idea unexpected and foreign enough unsuited to that insular kind conversion, the act of conversion itself would have its character that is a reflection of the unusual as well. But on its face, neither the task of conversion of symbol-to-meaning that is being asked to perform is any more transcendent than what is being asked to convert. Unless, of course, we presume the conversion of idea to meaning is being asked by a demonstrated, revealed Christ of history entirely outside of mans’ natural noetic influences.

We are talking about hermeneutics? Take the word “anti-biblical” in my theodical problem statement. Do I mean the Catholic version, the Protestant version, or the Jehovah’s Witness’s version of “anti-biblical?” The Universalists and the atheists also have theirs. Am I speaking of the pedestrian or academic sensibility on the general subject of theodicy? Why would we automatically assume that they are in error or not only by comparison to one of the other operational and accepted modes? Because they are all sufficiently transcendentally opaque, prosaic and innocuous so that nothing of unexpected lethality jumps out from God at us. They are our world. What man has come up with, the choices he has presented us, are everything we have to work with. There are no alternatives but what our consensus says there are.

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Who is the Word, Them or All of Us? The Theodicy  of Ideas

It’s time for us to face the fact that every single problem we have, far from our number of opportunities and a dearth of clever men to tackle them, is that although we claim to use biblical ideas because they are found in the Bible, we do it in a way that is not exclusively dependent upon a demonstrable transcendent, biblical premise to give those errors their final resolution, and one that is quite remarkable and unexpected, not prosaic, not common. Because of that we, hermeneutically, are part of the “world thought paradigm.” Christ is against the world thought paradigm, and to the extent that Christ can be shown as a transcendent fact and not a dream, the world thought paradigm, the evil that opposes him, is all of our horrible “starts with an idea, not with a premise” approach to theology that renders every biblical notion we put our hands on bromidic, of general definition, and puerile. Face it, we have fully come to believe that we will be saved or know God by the worship of insular and idiomatic ideas, not through the inspiration from miraculous historical facts that could only have been made by a Supreme Being outside space/time.

Please be advised that when I say that the real Christian thought is not convertible to something common is not to say that it is a reality so compelling that it can’t be denied or reused for something counter-purpose. I mean an original transcendent idea makes it uniquely inefficient to fuel a mundane converted use. We don’t have one, at least not one in common use.

Our problem with this puerile and opaque use of biblical ideas, like a “faith” which means faith in theological statements, conclusions and propositions, and Christ who is the Son of God but not necessarily exclusively through the prophets, but through a vision, a dream, or any reason we so wish, goes back to the Greeks and beyond into the pagan talismanic religions. We are obsessed with the independent power of concepts that can originate exclusively out of the human mind to transmit true knowledge, thinking of them as having an independent existence, such that the power of the idea alone is sufficient to carry whatever content it holds. It was, in fact, necessary and understandable for a long time in the absence of a real revelation, a real demonstration of an objective divine being, but, as I have said, it’s not supposed to be after the Cross if, in fact, we believe that the “Cross” is not convertible to a purely human concept of prosaic understanding like “love,” “death,” and “sacrifice.”

Atheists can say the same about Christians, putting themselves as the light bearers in a dark world in which theism reigns. My opening sentence need not exclusively imply the problem of a good God and creation in which evil exists, making it subject to conversion for the use of anyone who might take “God” and put themselves in his place and take “evil” and put their antagonists. The entirety of the thought may be so coopted because of the way the words used in an unqualified sense. That is why you can’t use it, or anything like it, to lead an investigation into Christian hermeneutics. It’s a non-transcendent language.

But ideas are not the problem. Its autonomous, creative, self-indulgent, unmiraculous ideas. If I accept, for example, the seemingly counter-cultural idea of a theodicy where the evil that kills the good mind is necessarily grounded in the independent power of the concepts “God,” “goodness”, “evil,” “perfection” and “people.” Well, their definitions are not the problem. Ideas are no problem. Using them is not a problem. The evil religious object of use is the ideas, and the evil idea, that is so because it is not beholden to anything but us.

If the “good” is, however, not the autonomous concept, but could otherwise only be an autonomous divine demonstration which demands and projects those concepts into the world for its mere representation, then this is the theodical solution. If not, the whole theodical question is irrational if we expect one. This implies a theodicy based on the good and evil of fundamental divine ideas, where the divine is not imperfect in the sense of a being, and evil is not evil in the sense of physical phenomena, but good and evil in the sense of truly good divine ideas which do not dictate but serve what has been divinely dictated. We might then rephrase the theodical problem like this: why do good, divine ideas suffer by the presence of evil tyrannical ones, or, if there is truth out there, why does it seem so hard to find, keep unmolested, and challenged by what seems so many attractive mundane alternatives?

The subject of theodicy is not why do bad things happen to good people, which is a philosophical statement. It begins with “bad,” “things” and “good,” which concepts make up the statement. And, no, I am not about to say exactly what true concepts ground the statement, because concepts themselves are statements. That would be asking to define a concept by another concept. I would ask: what grounds presumably divine concepts in divine premises? Whatever they are, these are the true masters of “bad,” “things,” and “good.”

Now, if you’re writing a book on Christian theology or church history, what better ground to the subject of the outworking of its errors than addressing the issue of what is driving the cultural, rational and systematic forces that encourage them? The persistent theme of the solitary pilgrim in a hostile world, rejected by the crowd, crying in the wilderness for righteousness, persecuted by the world but beloved of God, is not a significant direct point of contact with what is supposed to fundamentally inform our search for theological truth in that world because they are not divinely qualified, but only have a potentiality of divine starting place.

The right assumption is that the world, defined as the vast majority of the working modes of theology, is in a state unconverted by revelation and hostile to Christ. It would be best for us to start at the point of skepticism about our commonly accepted fundamental working ground instead of jumping in to build on the shifting sand (Matthew 7:24-27) of religious ideas. But we don’t. We are not these theological pilgrims, but something else entirely.

When we read this, as fully acclimated residents of this world, we are inclined to automatically make certain unconscious assumptions about what is a Christian, who is Christ, what is a Christian in a secular world, who are supposed to be his champions and what are the faith’s true systems of thought. This is where my problem begins: our chosen working assumptions and their motivations, not the belief that results from them that we like to call “doctrines.”

Where do our assumptions about genuine Christianity, and its antagonists, really come from?  What qualifies, in the true Christian worldview, as the secular world and the spiritual world of Christ? After all, if I say I have a problem being a Christian in a world violently opposed to Him, I think the most crucial question for me before saying that my irritation is grounded in reality is whether my informed affectations driving it are not more rooted in allegiance to the oppressor instead of the truly oppressed. It’s not only about consideration of “presuppositions” as a general rule of hermeneutics because presuppositions are also the result of both premises and conclusions. It’s more about what specifically prior and foundational loves and key biblical phenomena which are thought not exclusively the product of the human mind compelled a general presupposition about my condition. Indeed,  telling ourselves that the quality of our “presuppositions” is at the root of our delusions or clarity is to little effect in telling us anything about whether we are right or wrong unless there is true, revelational and specific content in our general “presupposition” container.

What if our working understanding of Christian thought for the past 1800 years, and therefore anti-christian thought, is its conflation with whatever the zeitgeist thinks it is, with the resulting dysfunction of the Church being its increasing detachment and alexithymia toward the original consciousness of its founder? I’m not talking about the content between the general categories of “Christ” and “Antichrist,” “sin and “righteousness,” “faith” and “unbelief,” “power” and “weakness,” “rich” and “poor,” “hate” and  “love.” But it is hardly controversial to say that since “Christ” is a singular entity, of a single transcendentally transmitted document, then no matter how much we use general categories to lead us into discussions about their nature and importance, if these are also generally grounded in essentially philosophical categories then we can’t possibly use them as starting points to reliably lead us to anything specific about Christ or what he is trying to tell us which is not philosophy, but essentially showing us transcendence. If we could, we would be those within the secular zeitgeist, not without, and therefore the oppressor, not the oppressed.

I might restate this here: The problem is simply that here, in the physical and philosophical conceptual world into which we are born, there is a great amount of personal reward gain by engaging some belief which starts with a fundamental belief, not a fundamental premise, where “premise” is not rooted in that which is not of that world and could never come from it. In our opaque philosophical world here, where all ideas are only products of the mind and therefore can benefit that same mind which loves only insular things,  the work of truth is wrongly defined as that first of “subject” and then to “object,” man to the world, man to idea, of person to his desire, attraction, need and want, or benefit. But the good and not corrupt version is the antithesis,  the notion of what is true to truth.

This fallen belief is set up so that the first clause represents a person or fact (subject) who is in moral and qualitative relation to a material or intellectual world (object) which intrinsically has its same moral or qualitative potential, a person (subject) which is a state of being equal to what it most supremely loves (object).  This idea is supposed to be impossible for theology since the presumption of Man seeking, finding and confronting transcendence is that the world is a real and current state unsynchronized with an ultimate idea state. Sure, how can we imagine it not the case that a subject that is essentially a present and demonstratively transcendent one is something that could never reveal or be revealed by anything evidential which is not of its same quality? How then are we to assume that a non-transcendently based subject is to demonstrate his ultimate integrity by a subject that is the same as himself? If the Bible, we believe, at least in practice, is a document in which there is no specific, scripturally perspicuous ground acting as this divine “subject,” and not one vital, incorrigible theological vital center, only declarations off a dizzying number of possible and general ones, such as “faith,” “ righteousness,” “zeal,” “work,” “covetousness,” “God,” “Heaven”, etc.,  all of which are worthy of our attention or not only through a lot of mental work and equivocation as we search to fill them with any scriptural content we can glean, by what justification are we claiming the Bible to be a revelation from a personal God? We must, in our twisted estimation, begin with a two-dimensional proposition that is capable of independent emergence within the same opacity as what it will hold and present.

Here is the unstated Christian idea put yet another way that is never asked: When are people not essentially the equal of what they inhabit, but are morally obligated to reject, and when are they are obligated to adopt that rejection as the greatest conceivable rejection of a claimed truth? Part of what is being rejected here is also paired with a choice about what is ultimately important and what we think is our essential positive equal that we are to go after instead.

This Christian idea is supposed to be that people are not essentially food, clothing, atoms, galaxies, concepts, philosophies, logic, and beliefs. I think that this is a theological universal and a true one. That we are the superiors to ideas, containers, but not concent or meanings, which are to demand representation by the concept that we control as a moral act.  The moral act is forming ideas, which competently represent meaning, by a superior to the idea, which is not another concept and not its unfulfilled meaning.  We are supposed to be made for higher but hidden things, its identification, and love, from which we are to be obedient in forming good ideas that hold meaning. The ideas are supposed to be made so they look as much like this our superior as we are. We command ideas to fall in line with us, but since man is himself an idea awaiting the fulfillment of meaning “us” is not an “us” alone and unfulfilled in a world of confusion and death.

If we did not believe that ideas were not essentially our equals or betters, they, not meaning, would be human consciousness’s only real dictators to whatever superior spiritual content of meaning humans should choose to make for them to hold, and this is our theolidcal condition of our own making. Subject made gods and God made a subject, but with respect to hermeneutics.  If ideas were otherwise and we were their subjects, the decision of content would be made for us, not by us, by what they are assumed to be the equal of, which is from where and from whom they came. If not God, then they are cruel masters indeed, as so are we their cruel subjects.

We are the masters of ideas, but depend on them for meaning even when we know we really worship them as gods. It’s an uncomfortable habitation, a confusing state, a state of constant uncertainty, pain, and work. It’s a deathtrap that guarantees that the parts of the person that inhabits it as an equal or even as a superior will not survive. It’s not supposed to be a state that we love, who take up an industry that seeks to make it comfortable and long-lived, ameliorable to us.

You may disagree with the principle of objective, basic morality, or you may be instantly inclined to interpret it in such a way as to think, far from the root problem of the Christian mind, that Christians are the only ones that affirm its truth. I don’t care. It is my task now to “red pill” you as to the true state of the Christian problem with biblical epistemology and hermeneutics, how we still live in a theological container of our own making but which we value more than God, and how it is that we can call ourselves Christians while confidently, boldly and without conscience read the Bible and essentially declare it it a cookbook for various curry recipes by which practice has made us spiritual master chefs in a transcendent Indian (or French, or British, or Thai, et al.) cuisine, with our salvation coming by eating its exclusive consumption. No, this is not hyperbole, as absurd as the analogy might appear. The extent to which we misunderstand Scripture and call it understanding is the precise distance this exact belief is from the true biblical message of evil in the world that afflicts the good, the spiritual consequences of that misunderstanding being deadly and final.

I have a problem. I’m a Christian living in a world that is anything but. The irony seems to be that it is also not a world without brilliant minds, millennia of work, great ideas and compelling narratives of amazing heroes of body and mind. It’s not a world without choices. It’s not a world without reasonable choices. On the contrary. But it is still deeply, violently, irredeemably antichristian, especially the Christian version, a world where, as the King James so eloquently renders, “judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. Yea, truth faileth, and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey: and the LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment.”

Please see these articles:

Head and Heart: John 14:1-12: Having Jesus In Your Heart But Not In Your Head

What is the Word of God?: A Prophetic Think Tank

[casonblog78]

Thoughts on thoughts

Our thinking exists as a part of the human construct. Further, it attaches to numerous scientific understanding and intellectual abilities.

Logic, psychology, cognition, epistemology, philosophy, neurology, anthropology, as well as a relevancy to other behavioral and spiritual understandings.

From Eden to Los Angeles, from the caves of Lescaux to Misliya, Israel, to East Africa around 2.4 million years ago, violence of one sort or another has played a part in our existence and character as human beings.

Denying it exists as a basic trait, attempts to reframe the belief that we are all essentially people of the original sins of Adam and Eve. 

In recognizing our core traits, we define them as either useful for human interaction and progress or discreetly deal with repressing or eliminating them… Repressing or denying them only delays their ability to burst on our environment with angst, anger and destructive force… Dealing with them more positively, must by definition engage the work and grace of forgiveness and distancing of their effect from our character and behavioral response to challenges brought by others and the situations of consequence of the darkness of others. And THAT requires the presence of faith.

It isn’t our desire to be obedient but our constant relationship with His will that determines whether we act and think more adequately as productive, compassionate people… Although, we recognize and over time become climatized to habits of respect and properly acceptable behavior with others, we retain what our cultural and intellectual development has taught us about our presumed superior status and our worldview.

It is not authentic enough to believe that our status as however we see ourselves is superior and therefore able to ALLOW or GRANT others the benefits and opportunities to improve their own lot in life. But the world in which we live, assumes that we are created with a responsibility to remove the barriers to those benefits and opportunities that hinder or bar inclusion in the rights of man granted by God, and at least in our nation, promised to protect by the Constitution. 

Though viewed from different vantage points, the language of the Creator and the Constitution is clear. The argument isn’t simply about good guys, smart guys and other presumed freedoms of perception… Intellect is a basic for all .. using it for good is a choice. Determining what is good is in a nationalist, supremacist, authoritarian setting isn’t an issue...It is known and recognized as an outlier of normalcy and responsible citizenship in God’s Kingdom and the United States and much of the human component of our planet.

Claiming we are not racist when we by every statement and indication of common attitude speak to support its darkness and deceit damages one’s image as worthy of respect of intellectual ability to process the relationship between what we believe about ourselves and what is seen and purely evident by all others… That is NOT the same as believing what you know to be true or more likely authentic in science, technology and spiritual validity in the face of traditional intransigence. That is innovation, inventiveness and openness to learning and using God’s will to derive value from our resources and encounters.

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Kevin Costner Wishes His New Movie Redefines Exactly How People Think Of Nationality.

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The Cultural Impact Of Worldview & Apologetics, Part 5

Sadly though, this is the age of extremes.  On the one hand, there are Christians that no doubt find Disney classics such as “Snow White”, “Sleeping Beauty”, and “Pinocchio” too racy for their tastes. And on the other, there are those professing to be Christians that cannot adopt quickly enough the popular fads and affectations of any particular moment.  One prominent example of overeager accommodation to the spirit of the time is the Emergent Church movement.  

If one is to chastise the Evangelical and Fundamentalist wings of Christianity for overly embracing social conservatism as epitomized by the Republican Party, to remain consistent one would also be required to enunciate an admonishment against the Emergent Church’s headlong  rush into what could probably be described as countercultural liberalism.  Realizing the sway postmodernism has over Western society and the power of its methodology to expose potentially hidden hypocrisies and inconsistencies, advocates of the Emerging Church believe that the wiser course may be to surf the postmodern wave on a Christian board than to firmly plant one's feet and fight against the tide.  

Emergent Church leaders such as Brian McLaren hope that the postmodernist impulse to examine and in most cases set aside the cultural assumptions often below the surface we are not aware of will assist believers to get back to the earliest expressions of the Christian faith that existed before it was institutionalized as a socio-cultural edifice. McLaren views the impact of modernity upon the Church as having been especially deleterious.  

Fundamentalists not that familiar with the direction in which McLaren takes his analysis might initially think they have found an ally in McLaren.  However, in many respects, McLaren is harder on those one might categorize as conservative Evangelicals than he is on the shortcomings of the contemporary world.  

According to McLaren, modernity in the West has fostered the desire to conqueror and control all of the structures of reality from the physical to the epistemological through the process of scientific analysis and classification. The result has been to mechanize all of existence (including human beings) to the point where the souls encountered by the Christian and the resulting relationships are not seen as ends in themselves worthy of care and nurture but rather as strategic stepping stones simply along the path to accumulating conversion statistics (230).  

Concerns raised by McLaren regarding authenticity are quite valid.  Even for those that have been Christians for years and even decades, it is easy in a megachurch setting to feel like little more than a statistic used to justify the next phase of the building expansion while in a small church it is easy to come away with the sense that one is not welcome unless one is in complete enthusiastic agreement on nonessentials if one is an average pewsitter.  However, there are a number of dangers that result from the Emergent Church's posture against dogmatism.  

According to McLaren, the modern age was marked by a quest for certainty and absolute knowledge (230). In the Church, this has manifested itself in the tendency to insist upon an exclusivity of belief that points out the deficiencies of competing faiths and emphasizes the superiority of Biblical revelation.  Of this approach to matters of theology and religion, R.Scott Smith writes, “In that process...faith tends to be treated as a rigid belief system that must be accepted instead of a unique, joyful way of living, loving, and serving (230).”  

Ideally in a world accepting of and at peace with the Gospel, that would be how Christ would be introduced to those hungering to have their sins forgiven and life more abundantly. And though the Christian must always strive to show as much respect and kindness to the unbeliever as possible, neither can it be ignored that the world has been so warped by sin that Satan is always on the prowl seeking those whom he may devour.  There are those out there that are wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing seeking to infiltrate the church for the sole purposes of destroying it.

There are things that are just plain wrong.  Both clergy and possibly even more so the laity must be on guard against them.

If the Christian does not possess an existential certainty  that makes the leap of faith from the ledge of high factual probability, though one does not attend to secure salvation one can think of a number of more enjoyable ways to spend Sunday morning.  A number of these would include remaining in ones nocturnal raiment rather than slipping into the most uncomfortable garments likely hanging in one's closet.  More importantly, if one is to be of the mindset that it is improper to point out where other faiths and creeds do not measure up to Christianity, how are the young to protect themselves when these competitors attempt to lure them away? For especially when (as in the case of Islam) these outlooks have no qualms about insisting upon the superiority of their own practices and dogmas.  

To the Christian fatigued by some of extremist Fundamentalism's rules which in some circles extend to no facial hair on men despite there being no Biblical mandate for such a grooming preference, the care free times of the Emergent Church with its disdain for systematized doctrine may sound like a relief.  However, once the prospective adherent delves deeper into the movement, disillusioned Fundamentalists may discover they have merely exchanged one form of excessive control for another.  

R. Scott Smith writes in his analysis of the Emergent Church that Brian McLaren believes, "modernity has emphasized inordinately the autonomous individual ... Likewise the church has perpetuated this individualism to the detriment of the body of Christ (230).”  This assumption is itself in need of careful examination.  

If by this McLaren means that under the banner of modernity that many an individual has abused the freedoms of the contemporary world to ignore those behavioral restrictions given to us that a percentage find stifling or  inconvenient, he could very well be correct.  Yet in a Time Magazine profile naming him one of the nation‘s most prominent Evangelicals, McLaren did not seem all that concerned about the growing support for gay marriage and homosexual intimacy.  To McLaren, lamenting the advance of individuality means something else entirely.  

For example, in an interview broadcast in June 2010 on Issues Etc. with Todd Wilken, McLaren kept emphasizing that Jesus did not so much come into the world to live the sinless life that we could not, die in our place as the penalty for our sins, and rise from the dead so that we might enjoy eternal life with Him in Heaven. To McLaren, the traditional Christian emphasis of Christ’s work of reconciling the individual to God in preparation for eternity is secondary to establishing God’s Kingdom here on earth.  

To McLaren, the transforming power of Christ is not so much about the changing of the human heart one individual at a time on a level imperceptible to merely human eyes. McLaren believes that such shifts in consciousness or perception (to borrow New Age and postmodernist phraseology) need to be societal or planetary. However, such a revolution would not so much turn the world into one giant campus extension of Bob Jones University or Pensacola Christian College campus with well intentioned busybodies armed with rulers measuring to see if young men's haircuts are short enough, young ladies' hemlines long enough, and a respectable distance kept between the two sexes as they perambulate down the street.  

Things would, more likely, come to resemble a form of religious socialism where the morality of an economic decision would not be determined by how well it benefited the individual or by how closely it adhered to the explicit dictates of Scripture but instead by the criteria of how it  benefited the overall group, predetermined oppressed classes such as ethnic minorities, and whether or not the decision adhered to the consensus of the community. McLarenite Emergent Church types have often condemned how those on the Evangelical Right have long served as the dupes of the Republican Party; however, those enunciating such criticisms have turned right around and snuggled up with Christian leftists such as Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo who have little problem with homosexual domestic partnerships or professed Communists such as the Sandinistas of Nicaragua.  

In every direction the Christian turns, he finds adherents of every conceivable worldview gaining ground throughout Western civilization and around the world.  Constantly bombarded by these competing perspectives, after a while the mentally fatigued believer can grow so weary that it is easy to throw up one's hands wondering what is the point in even trying anymore. Often it is concluded that the best strategy would be to cordon ourselves off in a Christian subculture in the attempt to preserve sound doctrine and their family's spiritual purity.  

Though that might be a noble sounding justification, it is often not the case.  Often on the grounds of aspiring to a simple "just give me Jesus" kind of faith, many believers shut down their minds all together to the point of where they do not only fail to familiarize themselves with the knowledge of their adversaries but also fall into appalling ignorance of Christian things as well.  

William Lane Craig points out in the essay "In Intellectual Neutral" that, on tests of generalized knowledge (think of the Jaywalking segments from the Tonight Show), Christian young people faired little better than their unbelieving counterparts.  Of these findings, Craig  concludes, "If Christian students are this ignorant of the general facts of history and geography then the chances are that they...are equally or even more ignorant of the facts of our own Christian heritage and doctrine...If we do not preserve the truth of our Christian heritage and doctrine, who will learn it for us (5)?"  <p>

Thus, when the Christian disengages from what are snidely referred to these days as the "Culture Wars" as if our way of life was somehow not worthy of preserving or fighting for, he does not succeed so much in keeping himself from deeds he considers impure such as heated disagreement and argument.  Rather the result of such surrender is ultimately the erosion of our civilization if Christians do not rise to the challenge in a variety of venues ranging from government, academia, and even the new social media such as blogs and podcasts.  If such happens, those trapped by the blinders of secularism may never otherwise be exposed to these ideas and concepts.  

As a neglected discipline in many Christian circles, it becomes an easy temptation for those enthusiastic to promote a more intellectually rigorous and vital expression of the faith to downplay more existentialist manifestations of it.  However, if anything, one thing that can be adapted from the Emergent Church movement is the need to be consistent and authentic in regards to how our lives should reflect closely the things that we say.  

In Ecclesiastes 1:9, scripture assures that there is nothing new under the sun.  Sean McDowell in the essay “Apologetics For An Emerging Generation” insists that, despite the complexities with which the issues dress themselves when confronting the inhabitants of the contemporary world, the young continue to ask the same but profoundly deep questions that they always have (260).  

Therefore, it remains essential for the Christian to remain grounded in the foundations of the faith as well as familiar with the assorted challenges always arising to undermine the faith once delivered unto the saints.

By Frederick Meekins