America gets no caliphate

June 28, 2020June 28, 2020 eejosephLeave a comment

Poor Falwell and crew! The thinly disguised moral majority was all the time silent on the violence directed against minorities, women and aliens. While many churches and the prominent leaders kept up the propaganda about public morality, they were ignoring lying, respect for parents and Sabbath-keeping. Not a good look for biblical morality. Falwell was no exegete and “biblical” for many evangelicals still means anything found in the Bible they hope to connect to life in America. For crying out loud: the state of Israel is the only entity with the Old Testament as its constitution or main law. The vision that gave rise a Christian America is a nightmare from which recovery is unlikely. The more people keep saying “God bless America” and “One nation under God” the less likely it seems that America will have a caliphate.

Fascism follows law

People have seen what God would do when people are oppressed. We do not need to imagine. Genocide, wild west vigilantism, gun fights, crooked marshals and drunken preachers, do not make a great precursor for a government underpinned by any distillation of biblical teaching. Discrimination and violence are not tools for civilization or spirituality. After 200 years there is no evidence of responsible civic society. American and western governments have deceived the world with words like democracy and rule of law. Law gets into people’s bones and they kill themselves. They have elections and keep up apartheid structures and misogynist beliefs. People excited about law will do what the crowd and the gatekeepers did to Jesus. Guaranteed! We do not have to imagine what they will do to us.

No Christ in the room

Holiness, goodness and equity do not come from law even though the law is those things. This grand triad comes to human lives only through the cross. If you think that the pastor will say the right thing because of his office (as Caiaphas did regarding the death of Christ) you know your lifeline is straw. We have a hard time finding God, much less Christ, in the world’s governments. America has been a captive of defunct ideas – chosen people and the rule of law- and is not a puppet of Russia. Americans and many Christians are essentially fascists, mostly devoted to imperial colonialism, genocidal solutions to social problems, and the superiority of European and Jewish peoples. Just ask their neighbours. Christian government is a $23 coin. No matter how many judges the religious people put on the supreme court and no matter how many Christians are elected to government there will never a Christian caliphate.

Morality without the cross

June 28, 2020June 28, 2020 eejosephadministration of justice, Atonement, Government, law, Morality, righteousness, standardsLeave a comment

Knowing what we have discovered about secular religious power in religious hands we ought to be far more cautious about reinventing the wheel. The trial of Jesus by a religious court provides convincing evidence that injustice can acquire the label and reputation of justice. We can add nothing to the doctrines of Moses or Jesus and mixing the two is bound to result in wasting the two.

You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you. Deut. 4:2,

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, (Rev. 22:18) and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. (Rev. 22:19)
Rev. 22:18-19

Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”
Matthew 9:17

The persecution of the church

In John 5:16 we see the Jews persecuting Jesus, because He was doing good things on the Sabbath. In Acts we see the persecution of Jesus’s disciples continues the church for calling on and preaching Jesus’s name. Perhaps it is James and the Pharisees who are the persecutors of the church. Judaism has never sustained a sense of morality. It only knew how to engage in power plays: prosecuting violators of the law, keeping aliens as second class citizens, and discriminating against women. Perfection and maturity are not the outcomes of law; law lets people know what sin they have committed, it condemns everyone without exception and predicts it’s own demise.

The way and the life

Since Christ personally takes the reins of God’s kingdom from the levitical system complete with a change of law, how can life of the redeemed (the converted) ever be shaped by dead works? Death and condemnation are not affirmed by the ritual law… Death sentences appear all over the law: for incest, sorcery, gluttony, rebellious children and many prohibitions (“you shall not…”) regarding festivals, and food and drink. We could believe that the law has nothing to do with moral behaviour or lifesaving obligations, but how can the cross not be elevated above the hills because of the freedom from death it brings? How can the cross not be the spice that flavors the life it brings if we believe that it does something the law could never do? Where is “what he’s done for others he’ll do for you” when you need one?

The evangelical world rejects the idea that the Law is perfect by rejecting the Sabbath and the rituals for sacrifice and festivals. If the law needs an improvement for the protection of women’s inheritance rights it is neither whole nor perfect. A Jew will rightly not accept the unraveling of the law into moral and ritual. Christians know that defining sin is not what Christ came to do. He came to abolish death and bring life and immortality to light through the gospel. If you think that the gospel is inadequate as a moral standard you will remain excited about pig’s mud, dog’s vomit, and give the nod to oppression of the poor and needy.

Creative cowards

Status June 28, 2020June 28, 2020 eejosephLeave a comment

Identical Twins

June 26, 2020June 26, 2020 eejosephLeave a comment

Sometimes lovers and friends imagine that they are so alike as think themselves to be identical. Because we have developed the habit of joining things in an equality craze there are many unwelcome and identical twin ghosts in our mindscape.

The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.
Psalms 19:7

Law and testimony are synonymous

We all know that creation responds to God like clockwork. Lightning, thunder, rain, solar heat, water vapour and clouds need neither promise nor prohibition. Demons and lepers are equally and readily affected by the divine word. A human, a soul is not in the same class. After thousands of years of reciting what God has to say about what we should be or do we have no evidence that the content of the two stone tablets fulfill any transformative function.

Yahweh’s Torah converts life? Yahweh’s testimony wisens up the gullible? I state these as questions because we do not know which part of Moses’s five great books actually converts a person or which testimony delivers wisdom to simpleminded people. These twins do not seem related to grace and mercy’s salvation. Bearing in mind that a transfer from death to life is the major conversion that human beings need we hold our breath for the next outrageous “Judeo-Christian gospel” recommendation.

The fable of the perfect law has been thoroughly debunked because the law is known to have made nothing perfect and is not capable of doing so. That is Jewish testimony. There is no maturity to be had from submitting to it. Submitting to it confirms the childish stage of kingdom development. People who have read the material to learn what to do have learned what not to do and watch themselves do what it prohibits. The last place to look for personal perfection is the law, no matter how much noise is made or how many books are published to praise law and obedience.

The law says “kill the accused”

The date when the perfection dawned cannot be found. Year after year they cleansed the laundromat and returned to their broken lives. The law was killing people en masse.

Yeshua says set them free.

So where do life and wisdom really come from? The Son of God, exclusively.

For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
1 Corinthians 1:21

but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
1 Corinthians 1:24

The schizophrenic take the cake

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; A good understanding have all those who do His commandments; His praise endures forever.
Psalms 111:10

Perfect law is insufficient especially when Christ shows up

I still have to see the circumstances under which a ministry of condemnation and a ministry of life get identified as twins.

Watered down to vanity

The standards of justice have been a word game for most of my short life and the biblical record shows an early departure from philanthropy and hospitality. The biblical narratives show that even when cautions abound about the treatment of servants and foreigners the oppression permeated society all the way to the exile of Judah. Humans have been more interested in their finances than in the liberties provided in law (Jeremiah 34:8ff)

The fallout of getting the Gentile mission under way was the absurd attempt to turn the church into an imitation of Judaism. Paul talks about it as a “thing sneaked in” while Peter talks about it as “a dog returning to his vomit for seconds”. The lives of Gentiles are valuable without comparison to Jewish lives. The lives of Africans are valuable without comparison to other lives.

“All lives matter” is the opening salvo from people who want to deny the fact of their own virulent cowardice and are ready with talking points that do not address their own fingers dripping with the pie of superiority and discrimination. Next on their agenda is “blame the victim”: Black people are responsible for their plight. Perhaps there is a story about the oppression of White people by people of African descent.

We can imagine that these “All Lives Matter” activists were never “Black and Proud” and were never convicted about the abuse of Black people. Listening to them talk about blackness is not a great use of our time. If they had the liberation of Black people on their front burner they would generate a set of proposals instead of finding fault with various expressions by leaders of Black Lives Matter. They are the hot air outfit; mercenaries for the misguided evangelical caliphate.

When we say “Girls deserve to be educated” and you tell us “Boys deserve to be educated” whose side are you on?

There is no fear in love

The idea that anyone in the body of Christ is responsible for documenting the believer’s faith is a dragon breath inspiration. Along with “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.” there is a lot of open hostility to the freedom from the law that Christ represents. How very simple it would be for Christ and the disciples to have said what appears in Malachi 4:4 instead of broadcasting a) that time had run out b) the arrival of God’s kingdom and c) the building of the church! Even if they did the opposition would still run its propaganda and ignore the numerous divine acts of generosity and compassion performed by the Saviour. I find no evidence that believers ever injected “Show me your faith” into their interactions with each other. James is out on a Pharisee limb. It is a Christless meditation that drives the perceived debate about people needing ANYTHING IN ADDITION TO FAITH TO BE SAVED. Shame on the dragon driven folks who pretend that James is arguing “SHOWN TO BE JUSTIFIED”. He clearly asks “Wlll faith save?”. We are certain that the only people that God saves are the people who believe on His Son. The other propositions are oil on salvation’s waters.

Knowing whom we have believed

Please spare yourself the doublespeak about fear and the beginning of wisdom. That construction is not related either life or wisdom. Moses is an exceptional example of a terrified person. Whatever works the believers need had better be aligned with God’s work. Does anyone really think bishops and deacons have a guide book or a checklist to the works of the new life in Christ? The newborn child of God is equipped to think and do God’s will. Whatever happened to “Hush already about knowing the Lord!”? Everyone begotten of God knows God.

Secondhand witnesses, wolves and copycats.

Who is it that engages in this kind of harassment of the church? Wolfy people and secondhand believers. The minute our faith is redirected from Christ to the human agent (preacher, teacher, evangelist) we are in danger of being overpowered and wounded. Without having worked out the salvation that came to our house we have no testimony.

Second hand witnesses

And the man, in whom was the evil spirit, leaped on them and subdued all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.

Acts 19:16

What we know is that the evidence of whose we are is the very Spirit that God gives to those who committed their all to follow Christ. Human announcements about new children are often out of sync with the rejoicing in heaven. Our hearts know who occupies. What people have to say about what the believer should look like shapes only up to our own thoughts. If we think that God does not have a template for each life we will end up pursuing robotic and superficial values.

The mystery of those begotten of God

The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

John 3:8

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Life is Fun, But Not a Joke

One grain of salt that refuses to be trampled.

Author: eejoseph