You have a set of terminal whatabouts

eejoseph, , , , ,

When asked to verify the accuracy of their soundbytes some people see an opportunity to sling accusations at the questioner and/or compare traitors and heroes, felons and innocents, and even Moses to Yeshua. If you compared my sins and crimes to yours  if I confronted you, it would prove you have more than one terminal disease. If you think that there are no incurable diseases you are incontrovertibly in the school and care of an illiterate scholar and a medical quack, certain to wail when the whirlwind of ineffective remedies, bottomless research and development funding, and empty promises of healing stops spinning fatality.

Well, what about dining with strangers and aliens?  No, we dare not.  Well, what about criminal tyrants at the helm of nations and mega corporations? There is nothing to see here. Well, what about God and country as equals?  We swear that there is no power to control our lust for power and curb the exercise of our military. Well, what about the idols we create, and revere daily, weekly, monthly and annually? They might swear that they are idolatry-proof, all because they say they keep the Ten Commandments, or they are convinced that they have checked all the boxes that make them eligible for divine approval. But what about those things that lurk inside both the sinner and the saint? Do you know the thatabout?

What a whirl! Get ready for the last twirl

Empires are typically the result of the forcible gathering of discrete languages, peoples, and nations into a functional whole. That is the principle behind family, village, town, nation. I suppose the expectations are that the rape and plunder of the pirates we love to idolize will continue until every Tom, Dick, and Harry has a kick at the colonial can or empire bucket. Sometimes the bucket comes first, as in the case of Syria trying to overrun Canaan, or even the great Egypt exercising control over trading routes into Palestine and the maritime lanes of global commerce. Note how the successors of Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome are still active in global affairs, without actually calling the shots everywhere, as they did when they each dominated the world they knew. They are going to kick the bucket at the same time. But note how Russia and China have cobbled together a number of Asian and East European nations respectively, with no empire emerging. A quick crash is all there is, and it happens without fanfare. Russia and China are past life support, waiting to kick the bucket because, like the great harlot who thinks herself to be beyond poverty and mourning, these will fall in quick time, and people will not know of the descent of these powers into irrelevance because the narrative of “my crime is no worse than yours” will have lulled the global population into accepting mediocrity as greatness and crime as nationalism and patriotism.

Perhaps the best example terminal whataboutism is the rampant self-talk by the very fractured UK and USA about strength when the only whiff of unity is the conspiracy to rob national treasuries, deny the essential movements of migrants, when in fact they have made their fortunes through the monumental forced migration of peoples and the unequal immigration policies they have encouraged.

It may seem that we can all tolerate one or two limitations on our ability to function, but having more death-dealing companions than we have fingers is pretty much the end of the road physically and the beginning of glory if we absorb the daily cross-initiated dying. We have no authorization to observe musch less decide when one of our fellow travellers no longer feels God’s prompts or no longer accepts the divine judgment on unbelief.

Internal and fatal whatabouts

  • evil thoughts
  • sexual immorality (prostitution, porneia)
  • theft
  • murder
  • adultery (Mark 7:21)
  • coveting
  • wickedness
  • deceit
  • sensuality
  • envy (evil eye)
  • slander
  • pride
  • foolishness. (Mark 7:22)

Terminal whatabouts are essential to the hypocrite’s toolkit. A spiritual physician might say “the prognosis is devastating” and “the patient’s inside is caput”.

I laugh for things for which I also cry

eejoseph,

What makes you laugh?

I snicker, I giggle when a fool thinks a ridiculous proposition is perfectly clear to everyone.  I laugh out loud when I understand  the comedian’s lead  and punch line.  I laugh with my whole body when events fall into place without warning and when nothing seems to work.  I laugh at the person who trips and falls at the same place day after day because they are going to learn the hard way.  I laugh when the rain pours torrentially for forty-five seconds.  I laugh when I hear people say they are lucky to be alive because I know that living is much more than being alive.

Life is funny!

Yesterday is not today

eejoseph

The story of David slaying Goliath is a gripping narrative of war, cowardice, courage, and national deliverance. There is however no believer, oldest or youngest, who is going to deliver the people of God from the enemy.  David’s victory was not a personal victory over any of life’s problems.  David was not overcoming a personal vice or passion.  There should be though one unlikely hero who delivers God’s people from the power of the devil, sin and death.  Only the Nazarene can fill up the shoes of the little Bethlehemite.  Yesterday’s heroes do not cut it today, and despite a popular song about “what he’s done for others he will do for you” and despite an avalanche of faith to see impossible things happen no-one has seen an amputee grow a new limb, and we do not have reliable documentation of the blind seeing and the dead coming to life. I do not know how to explain that the miracles of the Bible are not happening today in the 21st century with any regularity or confirmation of the genuineness except to say yesterday is not invading today.

We can say “Christ the same, yesterday, today and forever” until moons are all blue

It may be a comfort to many people to simply have nothing change as the centuries roll by, but the wish to keep Mosaic Law, patriarchal traditions, and primitive practices alive is just wish wasting.  All around us are the contradictions of advances from donkey to tractor, from stonings and floggings, from lynchings to principled courts of justice, and from male supremacy to gender equality.  Perhaps the most dramatic movement is in the field of education.  The insistence that women and girls need no formal education crashes head-on into the rapid increase of highly educated girls and women.  In the wake of a close analysis we find that Christ preincarnate, Christ crucified, and Christ exalted are quite different.  Each of these marks of divine being and interest appropriately defines unique features of divine life.

Already delivered

There is a believer who thinks that he or she will bring victory to the Church.  The stark reality is that since the Lord Christ went back to glory we have not cleaned out a single hospital of sick people, we have not prevented the false prophets and their sickening doctrines from making shipwreck of countless souls.  There is one passage from 1 Samuel in the New Testament, and that should tell us something about what was important to the writers of the New Testament.  Just think how many times you’ve heard a sermon based on 1 Samuel with the goal of bringing to life one of Yahweh’s interventions.  Try as they might, the power-tripping prophets of the modern era seem incapable of stopping their testimony of miraculous intervention and seem unwilling to ascribe the lasting victory of the Church to Christ and him alone.

Courage is the least common denominator

The people in the ancient record were always encouraged to be human and humane, because they could not become what we are able to become through the gift of the Holy Spirit. “Be strong” is often translated by the Greek ischuo, katischuo, or enischuo. Another term that defines this requirement is  andrizomai ανδριζομαι.  The Hebrew word chazaq חזק means “be strong” or “strengthen”.  This is entirely within the human capacity, especially when God commands it.  They could not become sons of God.  God is definitely not doing for us what he did for the ancients.  We are not them.  They were not what we are.

The age of strong men and women

Joshua alone tells the sons of Israel “You are not able to serve Yahweh”, and his own distinction places his as the one who delivers the descendants of Abraham to Canaan.  Why would his era be denied an iconic rating?

“Be strong” – exhortations in Joshua’s experience

This personal exhortation to be strong –  chazaq – חזק – has no prominence in the Five Books of Moses until Joshua. The verb is used from Genesis to Deuteronomy for other situations and actions.  If the verb was spread out across the OT books the rate would be 1 per book (1.34).  Joshua has four times the average.  The connection of the term to Joshua personally is a clue that something critical exists in the Messianic revelation.

What’s in a name if not something we are?©️

God obviously has a remedy for sin, but what does he have for people making a mockery of his name? God’s has a primary interest in maintaining his name and reputation.  We too have names, but what is a name if it is not something we are? The question (what ‘s in a name…”) appears in Smoky Knows, a song by Kyu and Ganjy (hence the ©️ alert).  Woe is one way of describing the fate of the pretenders, but people who think they have a lifetime to get their act together are deceiving themselves.  God’s “today” is extremely precise, unrelenting and mysterious.  It could be twenty-four hours, seventy weeks, 120 years, 3½ years, or 0 minutes.  “Time’s up” happens to everyone, and that was the premise of the revelation of God’s Son to the world. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 3:2, NASB), and the saying “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15, NASB) show that there is no such thing as “all the time in the world”, and the urgency surrounding the Lord’s parousia in glory has not changed the offer of repentance since New Testament times.

There are many better stories than giant-slaying

Storytelling around the David and Goliath episode is penny cheap.  The church faces no giant that is not already dead or openly displayed as a leashed canine.  So what is the point of giant-slaying if it has no typological venue in the cross of Christ?  Do Christians not have the power to throw mountains into the sea? When that fails do they not fast and pray? When that fails after three times do they not have the intelligence to say “God’s grace is sufficient”?  Furthermore giants can just as easily be killed by courageous soldiers as they can be killed by a shepherd boy with a sling. Saul of Tarsus and the leaders of the Jewish establishment were the closest thing to the church’s Philistines.  They used violence and the church did not. One has to go to the People’s Republic of China to see this kind of warfare and hostility in play.

The works of the devil are destroyed

Do the children of God need someone to tell them what a virtuous life looks like?  Of course they don’t, and thinking that they do is where deception rears its head. Listen to John talking about the victorious life.   “Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” (1 John 3:7-8, NASB)

“And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.”

Colossians 2:15

The yesterday of the eyewitnesses of the Christ does not expire or fade.  God alone speaks things into existence, and if we speak a thing that does not exist, we have to wait to find the material, then go and put the parts together. We have forgotten that human pomp and pride also gets laid in the dust when the day of release comes. 

“For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another.”

Isaiah 48:11

“For indeed what had glory, in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it.”

2 Corinthians 3:10

I move quickly from reading ancient texts to accurate interpretation.

eejoseph,

What’s a secret skill or ability you have or wish you had?

When I was reading the Church Fathers I repeatedly ran into Greek words which I realized were perfectly familiar to the original audiences as well as to the first disciples.  My fascination turned to bubbling joy a few years later when I started acing and kept acing every quiz and exam over six semesters of biblical Hebrew and Greek.

Nowadays when others whip out their favourite commentaries and authorities I am both content and productive with the simple unparaphrased sentences. I do little or no beating ’round the bush.

51st state!  Ha ha ha!

eejoseph, , ,

Where Canada sits as the 25th year of the 21st century advances is way too precious a platform to be frittered away on corporate and individual greed, malignant attitudes to vulnerable people and migrants.  Canada has a record with similar lines to the US’ dismal government corruption by politicians and genocidal policies towards First Nations people.  The huge number of families that are separated by the 49th parallel are not sufficient to turn Canadian hearts to Washington or to whatever temporary capital the hosts of the bewitched nation might name. When the wickedness of American greatness begins to bruise and abuse Americans many of them may very well turn northwards for relief.  In any case being a sibling to Georgia, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, or Mississippi is most unattractive, and trading with the US is going to be the hard limit of necessary ties.

Take that back, mogulfelon

It is not surprising that a failed mogul and convicted felon in the United States’ government does not seem to know how states are added to the Union. Some people are desperate to show that crime pays.    A president has a shelf life, so his ducking the law is short-lived.  We may never hear the mogulfelons say “I am sorry” or “I was wrong”, and if they never do they can expect to have lots of solitary time to think about the meagre proceeds of crime.  Something else he does not seem to know, is if you steal from people in plain sight you are going to pay the price.

The helping God and one common memorial

eejoseph, ,

The Battle of Mizpah is immortalized more in a lovely song than in the stone Samuel erected to commemorate the Lord’s answer to the people for deliverance from the Philistines. The prophet was not engaged in mere iconography: he wanted to declare something of the undercurrent. By erecting a stone and naming it he might have simply instituted a memory. Instead he clearly wanted to proclaim something profounder. When Samuel drew out the meaning of Ebenezer (Help-Stone) he referenced the Lord’s help up to then. ad-hennah, the Lord has been helping us, with the perfect tense of help (azar) pointing to the way things were, as contrasted with a help event.

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,

Tune my heart to sing thy praise…

Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I’ve come

The Ebenezer of verse 12 in this 7th chapter of Samuel’s second book is the capstone rising from the fear the Hebrew people experienced in the 7th verse. Often it takes discomfort or concern to bring us to seek God’s help. The Christian understanding of help brings us to a more circumscribed help experience. Help is resident and needs no intermediary. The Holy Spirit is in us to help us assimilate the totality of divine reliability – guide us into all truth.

Help-Stone
Ebenezer, (Hebrew eben – ezer)

The Ebenezer experience is triggered by the sons of Israel became afraid of the Philistines.

יִּשְׁמְעוּ֙ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל וַיִּֽרְא֖וּ מִפְּנֵ֥י פְלִשְׁתִּֽים׃

In their changing conditions, facing the Philistines, the Israelites deemed themselves in need of prayer. “Do not cease to cry (za`aq, זעק) for us” they implored Samuel, “we need Yahweh to save us from the Philistines’ hand” (vs. 8). Samuel’s response is to combine a young lamb as a whole burnt offering with his cry to God. We do not know what he said, but the book records that the Lord answered the cry.

Dire straits

As long as we do not think we can create or depend on parallels of an Ebenezer experience, when we have not really reached a place of dire proportions. The sons of Israel were without the ark of the covenant for seven months, and it was not returned from Philistine hands as a result of an Israelite offensive. The Philistines were massing for an attack on the Israelites. A more dire and fatal condition could not be imagined for the Hebrew people than to have the visible symbol of divine presence in the hands of their enemies. Even in circumstances like these God is responsive.  He answered with thunder as the Philistines advance to attack.

My Help-stone

A help-stone, if we want to find a parallel in our lives to the Mizpah-Ebenezer episode, it would be great if we could first  acknowledge where we are.  Then, in raising up a memorial, acknowledge God’s role in being our present help, that is, present and helping long before any crisis.

What lamp, what feet, what path, what light?

eejoseph,

Psalm 119 is a poster for throwing things against the wall knowing most will stick.  I, for one sure that this is not David who is doing the throwing. Check the last words of David and you will see that not even a word hints at the Sinai covenant (2 Samuel 23).

The lamp that might have occupied the first place in Israelite thought was David’s descendant.  This is due to the promise of perpetual succession.

‘But to his son I will give one tribe, that My servant David may have a lamp always before Me in Jerusalem, the city where I have chosen for Myself to put My name. (1 Kings 11:36, NASB)

If you think you are alive or have been successful because you took every precaution and checked every box, you are welcome to that world.


So many in the Christian faith are hanging their hats on perfect performances, as if the leaders in right thinking have said that heading down that road is a waste of time. Making sure we check the boxes for commands, statutes, and judgments, will settle into a space where love is forgotten or deliberately set aside.

Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path. (Psalms 119:105, NASB)

Lit ways that fail

There was never a law, or combination of law that made a person or nation righteous.  Ask yourself what righteousness exalted ancient Israel and what body of law or wisdom will result in the exaltation of modern states.

What can we label as light from the Bible that has set captives free or loosed the fetters of oppression. 

Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be! For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. (Galatians 3:21, NASB)

The failure of law is especially evident when the terms of ancient Israel’s civics have no place in enlightened or even mature communities.  Does Jerusalem have peace?  We can assume that people are not going to church and mosque to learn how to derive the full benefits of light.  So ask; keep asking.  What lamp, what feet, what path what light?  Yeah.  What word?

Carnality, Appetite, Sex, and Attitude

eejoseph, , ,


Here’s an attempt to look into the links between salvation or wholeness and the brokenness of humanity especially as it is perceived in general media and specifically in religious environments.  It is a good idea to  define some of the terms before we dive into the connections that exist.  The New Testament uses carnality (the carnal person’s attributes) to define man’s wayward and unenlightened attitudes and behaviors, but it is popularly used to define behaviors confined to the body.  Now that analysis is surely inadequate, because the body’s functions are either out of or under control, so an attitude of anguish or despair will appropriately come from our own efforts.

Carnality and immorality are more than sexual misdeeds

Carnality comes from Latin, carnis, FLESH or MEAT.  Gee, perhaps one day someone will tell us that human beings are not flesh and bones, but something else.  How can people cling to saying we were all threatened by being flesh and are stuck with carnality, but we might be inspired by the caterpillar who goes from having many legs to having two wings in a most dramatic fashion.  I suggest we humans have an equally dramatic transformation, with receipts.  A couple of men have disappeared from the planet and the speculation has run all the way from (a) they are on some other world that has not been subjected to the judgments and fleeting fortunes of planet earth, to (b) these guys are basically with God.  “With God” is already a fantastic fact made possible by the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Fellowship or intimacy with God is already at maximum for any flesh, and there is an intimacy that awaits when flesh gets transformed.

The pervasive appetite denial

You may have noticed that some foods have the characteristics of the forbidden tree.  A food item is to be expected to be eaten freely .  See the “eat eat” of Genesis 2:16.  When an  item looks good, and has added benefits beyond assuaging hunger a pleasure is clearly in view.  People who spend most days fasting have little appreciation for the gift of appetite.

APPETITE is closely related to and expressed by the terms that define a person’s life (chayyah), being (nephesh), and belly (koilia).  Good luck on having any kind of personhood without a functioning stomach, soul (conscious being) and life force.

When the woman saw that the tree was GOOD FOR FOOD, and that it was a DELIGHT TO THE EYES, and that the tree was DESIRABLE TO MAKE ONE WISE, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. (Genesis 3:6, NASB)

Mixing justice and harems

In the wider sense we find carnality attached to drunkenness, drug abuse, and sexual acts outside of marriage, and gluttony.  In this regard we should note that having an “appetite” does not mean engaging destructive desires.  To claim that we have no appetite means we are trying to be God.  There is, for example, latent mutual desire for cohabitation between males and females, and yet in some circles a woman is expected to be the target of desire.

Sexual wellness and ignorance

A lot of religious rhetoric and propaganda comes out of sexual imaging, and it is not as if the rhetoric and propaganda acknowledge that sexual desire and experiences (good and bad) and part of the fabric of the human race.  Did anyone ever think that without sexual desires fulfilled there’d be no future?  Without sexuality we would all disappear, presumably leaving the planet in the hands of robots and droids.

All up inside your religiosity

Misogyny is probably one of the more irrational attitudes that has been around for so long as to make it seem normal.

Attitudes are the seedbed of behaviours.  So let’s realize that the proliferation of criminal acts all over the globe tells us that people are not guarding their attitudes.  A good attitude takes the time to notice the world around us, takes the time to intervene appropriately, in short, cares about more than me, myself, and us.

It is said that appetite triggered the perennial human crisis

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. (Genesis 3:6, NASB)

The narrative does not talk about appetite as hunger and thirst.  The couple in Eden could not be hungry.  The forbidden tree had unusual fruit.  Curiosity seems to have gotten the best of Adam and Eve.

  • the woman saw that the tree was good for food
  • it was a delight to the eyes,
  • and that the tree was desirable to make one wise (Genesis 3:6a, NASB)

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. (Genesis 3:6, NASB)


I would hate giving us another list, so let’s just try to have an attitude that we can be proud of and I am sure we will find ourselves at home.  The title spells out casa, Spanish for home🏠 .  No matter how hard we try, by rant or rave, all the puritanical resolutions – from Muslims, Christians or Jewish believers – we are going to learn to adopt a healthy respect for the squeaky wheels.  These are the carnal, greedy, sex-starved and sex-bound and low esteem persons for whom no boundaries exist in God’s agenda for humans to be at home with him.