The Tanakh and Warfare

In contrast to many recent so called churches and synagogues who declare that G-d is a deity of love only, and so love anyone irregardless of their sin and their open advocacy of such sin, I must ask:

Have you read the Tanakh (the Old Testament for Christians) AT ALL?

I mean, clearly you haven't.

For many "modern" Christians, this pesky little problem (the fact that the Old Testament or Tanakh absolutely and clearly repudiates their moral laxity) is resolved by asserting not only the supremacy of the New Testament but a rather selective reading of the same. This is the fundamental problem of the New Testament and further evidence that it is not scripture, but it is certainly not all the New Testament's fault. Jesus and the New Testament writers were renegades against the Tanakh in their time, in the context of Judaism, but the apostles never contemplated the sort of things that are routinely contemplated in modern Christianity. Gay churches. Abortion churches. Divorce churches. How the bibles in gay churches do not burn into their lecterns I don't know, but it is a fundamental intellectual dishonesty for a gay preacher in a gay church to hold up a Bible as something they are supposed to be following.

They. Are. Not. Following. It.

That this kind of habitual lying is accepted as normal is a phenomenon of the modern world. It would be like me holding up a Quran, reading from it, praising it, and then cursing Mohammed and encouraging people to eat pork. Now, human religion gaining supremacy over divine religion is nothing new. The Jews did it in Jesus' time. Jesus and his followers upheld his human religion over divine religion. It has happened continually since the beginning of the world. It just has reached a new low where people absolutely pay no mind to the book they are pretending to follow.

"All hail the leather-bound wood pulp! We praise the leather bound wood pulp, you need not know what is written on it. What it means is what we tell you! What you want to believe!"

Gaaa.

Which gets us to my main point today. Warfare. Contra Jesus (love your enemies, turn the other cheek,) the Tanakh is full of warfare and courage and faith in the context of warfare. From beginning to end, it is saturated with war. Contra Jesus, if you are following G-d and your enemies are enemies of G-d, it is immoral and weak to turn the other cheek, not virtuous. It is condemned.

There are circumstances, such as in the book of Jeremiah, where surrender is advocated. This has absolutely nothing to do with love of enemies. The Kingdom of Judah had been run by evil and idolatrous kings basically since Solomon, with occasional exceptions. It's destruction was decreed by G-d. It would have been futile to resist. Jeremiah did not advocate LOVING the Babylonians, he advocating SURRENDERING to them because Judah's decline was commanded by G-d. In the case where the Israelites in Sinai were frightened by the reports of the scouts who were scouting Canaan, when they gathered their courage again and decided to fight, Moses said no. They did not have G-d's blessing and would not win. And that is what happened.

Far more common is something like the following: we are vastly outnumbered. G-d tells us to fight and we will win. Despite the evidence of our senses, we fight and win.

The man of G-d as warrior is something alien to modern sensibilities, but definitely not alien to the Tanakh. The Native American warrior Tecumseh typified the attitude of a holy warrior. His words were something to this effect:


"We are determined to defend our lands. If it is His (the Great Spirit's) will, we will be victorious, and if it is His will, we will plant our bones on this land defending it."


Either one was okay by him. What mattered is acting from principle. Freedom vs. slavery. You die free rather than live a slave.

In other words, a holy warrior is not concerned with outcomes. Outcomes are in the hands of G-d. Changing your behavior because of your evaluation of its likely outcome is a godless conception. The godless play at predicting the future: a man of G-d knows better. A holy warrior is concerned with principle. Death or life do not matter nearly as much as acting from right principle. There are worse things than death.

This conception is alien to our weak effeminized culture. It is however crucial to understanding the warrior mindset in the Tanakh. If G-d tells you it is GO time, you go, even if it is one against a thousand. Because the thousand will not have what you have: you are traveling in the will of G-d. You may indeed die, but you will die in G-d's hands doing His will.

How distant this is from any modern faith! How distant from modernity period! Yet this is the truth of the Tanakh. This is the test of many a warrior in the Tanakh: will you trust G-d and fight, or will you shrink from a battle that TO YOUR MIND looks unwinnable? The test of a true godly warrior is whether he is willing to act from principle, in this case divine principle, despite fear. Some warriors, as late as 150 years ago, understood this. Stonewall Jackson was the archetypal holy warrior, whatever you think of his cause.


"Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. Captain, that is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave."

~General Stonewall Jackson

True, easier said than acted upon. Most things that are good and right are hard. They are meant to be. This is a test.

Is Christmas Pagan?

I want to go to some pains to explain that I mean no offense to Christians. I am indebted to Christians and Christianity in many ways.

I am indebted to Christianity because without it, I would likely know nothing of the Tanakh. I am indebted to Christians because they are the last bastion of divine ethics in a country and world rapidly heading the way of Molech. Were it not for Christians, we would certainly be further gone down the path of destruction than we are. Indeed, I firmly believe that G-d has blessed the Christians, despite what I would perceive to be the shortcomings of their creed. I am personally indebted to Christians and Christianity.

This will be an unpopular viewpoint, but I firmly believe that the reason America had so much success from Plymouth Rock onwards is because of the blessing of G-d. The story of the founding of America is a very Biblical story. A cruel people who worshiped false gods and could not even come together in unity in the face of extinction, were supplanted by a people of the Book, however imperfectly they understood it, and however cruel they themselves were. That is a viewpoint that would likely generate a lot of hate in my direction, but I happen to believe it is true. That blessing is now in danger, if it is not gone altogether.

Thus having established that I think having Christians in this country is a very GOOD thing, I now have to explain the ugly truth.

Christmas is pagan because Christianity is pagan.

(Or shall we say, strongly tainted with paganism.)

The idea of a man being god is absolutely alien to the ancient Hebraic understanding of G-d. To say that G-d was EVER a created being, would utterly be blasphemous beyond description. One of the most fundamental of the Ten Commandments is this:


You will not make an image OR ANY MANNER OF LIKENESS of anything that is in the sky above or the Earth below or the waters below the Earth: you must not worship them.

It is repeated multiple times, even in the New Testament, that to worship a created being or G-d in the image of a created being is ultimate anathema.  N E V E R  do it.

Well, a man is a created being. Jesus was a man.

Just to recap, G-D ALONE delivered the Israelites from the power of a man who claimed to be a god. Pharaoh claimed to be a god. The idea that G-d would deliver them from one man to deliver them to another man is ludicrous on its face. G-D alone, YHWH alone, is our salvation and our King.

No man ever was or could be.

The Israelites were delivered from the subjugation of Man altogether, into covenant with G-d's laws not human laws. We have no other king. We need no other king. When the Israelites decide to choose a king in the books of Samuel, G-d denounces that choice but allows them to have their way. Allows them to sin, basically, because that is what they choose. And what sin are they committing? Believing that a man is fit to rule, which overturns the entire salvation of the Hebrew people in Exodus.

They have gone back to Pharaoh, in other words. They have chosen Pharaoh over G-d. David, Jesus, Pharaoh, Solomon, makes no difference. The choice of ANY HUMAN KING over G-d's law and G-d's kingship is sin.

So the idea that Jesus as a Davidic king would be a GOOD thing is wrong-headed. Davidic kings, kings in general, are something that G-d allowed but not something that G-d condoned. He blessed David for Israel's sake, and blessed other kings, but that does not mean that G-d blesses the IDEA of human kings. The books of Samuel makes that clear.

***

One of the highest commandments in the Tanakh is to know and respect this simple statement:

HEAR O ISRAEL: THE LORD OUR G-D, THE LORD IS ONE 

(or, THE LORD ALONE. Both readings are correct. The Lord is One, The Lord Alone, The Lord is Unity, are all technically correct readings of the original Hebrew.)

Simple logic should tell Christians that Jesus was not G-d. Just answer this question: did Jesus die on the cross?

If the answer is yes, Jesus was not G-d because the idea of G-d dying is ultimate blasphemy. G-d CANNOT DIE. To think He could is a stupid, blasphemous and unreal conception.

If the answer is no, that Jesus' death was mere appearance only, then his death was useless because it was nonexistent. An illusory sacrifice is not a sacrifice.

Indeed, the idea of Jesus dying for sins appears to be based on some crazy idea that G-d never forgave anyone their sins before that. In the Tanakh G-d forgave sins many times! Psalmists looked forward to their redemption from death, from Sheol, and no carpenter from Galilee was mentioned. G-d alone would save them. Only G-d could.

So based on every part of the Tanakh (including Isaiah which is a straw desperately grabbed,) the idea that a man could be G-d or that G-d would ever Himself appear as a man was beyond wrong, it is ludicrious. It's madness.

It is idolatry.

Sorry to say it, but I am bound to tell the truth. Christianity is idolatrous. It is a measure of how bad off the world is now that an idolatrous religion is much to be preferred to the available alternatives. Christianity was founded by pagans, influenced by pagans, and introduced the idea of Jesus as himself G-d (which is never clearly stated in the oldest documents.) All this was the later interpretation of the pagan Roman Catholic Church in the early centuries A.D.

Now, is modern Judaism also an idolatrous religion? As it currently exists, not as it was stated in the Tanakh, YES it is. I'll tell you why.

Rabbinical Judaism regards the opinions of rabbis to be equal to direct statements from G-d in the Torah. That is blasphemy. Rabbinical Judaism reveres the idea of a Messiah, which as I already stated is completely wrong-headed (no human would ever, ever be fit to be king - no king but G-D ALONE.)



So there is plenty to go around for everyone, but in short Christmas is pagan because CHRISTIANITY is pagan.

A Beautiful World

My dream is a beautiful world. A world made beautiful through obedience to G-d's law.

Think about it. A world without theft, where wives and husbands stick together through difficulties no matter what. A world without war or murder. A world where nobody follows the false gods of wealth or sex or fame. Where as long as you have enough to survive, no one covets what another has and you are content. Where parents are honored. Where everyone speaks the truth, and no one lies. Where there is no king but G-d.

While the idea that human beings could be the ruination of the Earth was not dealt with in the Torah in modern terms (pollution, extinction, climate change,) it was dealt with. Care for the Earth was emphasized in such laws as not taking all the eggs from a nest or not cutting down fruit trees even of your enemies in a time of war. Evil people and kingdoms are spoken of as actually contaminating the Earth itself, and this is depicted as a crime against G-d. The Israelites were told that they are tenants and the land is G-d's. There is no 11th Commandment to protect the Earth, but it is implicit in the Ten and in other statements in the Torah. So this beautiful world would not only be beautiful to human lives, but beautiful period.

Now the fact that this world will almost certainly never be THAT beautiful world, is completely irrelevant. Some truths are indeed irrelevant truths, many in fact. A man of G-d does not base his actions on measurements of his odds of success. He does not commit actions based on their believed outcomes. The future is known to G-d alone. Basing the morality or rightness of your actions on their likely outcomes is anathema to a man of G-d, because it is based on the arrogant idea that we can ever predict outcomes or that we are allowed to gamble with ethics. We can't play G-d with the future.  G-d's Law is the rule that a righteous man follows.

The idea that the ethics of an action are determined by their outcome is called Teleological Ethics. And such a concept is hateful to G-d, and it is a black hole from which there is little chance of escape except by the grace of understanding how very wrong-minded and wrong-hearted it is.

And it is only too common. Indeed, some people would be surprised to be told there is any other kind of ethics.

And so the fact that this world will likely never be that beautiful world where everyone obeys G-d's law has no bearing on my actions, heart or behavior. *I* need to do right, whether or not anyone else does. That is my task. And I fall short sometimes: this world is a difficult place for those who try to keep the Commandments. It was meant to be. This is the Enemy's turf, and I am trespassing.  I do not seek to be conformed to this world. That is why I do not measure people's likely responses when I tell them what G-d's law is. I am obligated to tell them plainly. Whether they heed or not is not my department. Usually they don't.

My job is to bring that beautiful world into existence somewhere, in whatever pocket of land that the Lord sees fit to bring me to. My job is also to live that beautiful world now, in so far as I am able. I will speak truthfully, not covet what belongs to other human beings, honor the Lord my G-d and have no other gods, not steal from human beings, honor my ancestors, not do violence to anyone except to protect life, keep the Sabbath Day holy, and not commit any of the varied forms of adultery and sexual immorality. I will seek forgiveness from G-d and reform if I break any of these.

I actually do believe in the existence of this beautiful world where everyone keeps G-d's Law, and I aspire to be fit for it. It's not here, and it's not now, but it is.

I do not want to live according to THIS order of existence, I want to live according to THAT one.

Against Human Rule #2: Poor and Free

I remember, in some past election, some politician talking jobs jobs jobs. Economic growth and jobs. I realized in that instant, how unreal the language of the modern world has become. How deceptive.

Here is the problem with this: no one can eat a job, or live in one (though I guess some have tried,) or breathe a job, or drink a job and be refreshed by it. These are false things that are surrogates for real things. Things that promote life, health and survival, the only true values of the natural world. The "currency" of actual reality. Sure, you can get a job and get money, and then get food water shelter and the rest with the money. But the money won't actually keep you alive, you can't eat it, you can't wear it, it is a poor building material for a house. You get these things indirectly, and mostly through a system of servitude to corporations. Most people are indentured to corporations through the most ingenious system of human slavery ever devised. It is a mental slavery as well as a physical one.

In the previous post I talked about government. Well, that's not the only boss trying to run your life, corporations want to do that also, indeed they are the primary means of shaping your life into a form that serves them AND government. Corporations want to make money off you: in order to do that they want you to be a compliant slave. Ideally, a slave that is ignorant that he IS a slave. Governments want to make money off you too, but mainly in America these days, they want corporations to make money off you. Because the corporations are actually in the drivers seat. Politicians are mere men and women, and those men and women are very fond of the idea of a comfy corporate position or other profitable remuneration after their time in government has ended.

Now, lets switch back to governments for a minute. If the government uses your tax dollars for something heinous and unholy, some terrible war, some terrible transgression against the rights of Man or the laws of G-d, what actually can you do about it? Assuming that people of your opinion are in the political minority, which is often the case with such things? You can't stop paying taxes, the consequences of that are rather dire. Keep that thought in the back of your head as we continue on.

Now, re: jobs. During the Great Depression, did apples stop growing on trees? Did the rain utterly fail to fall? Did the wheat not grow? Yes there was a bit of an ecological catastrophe in the plains states, the Dust Bowl. In the rest of the country, the natural world continued as it had for time untold. Spring and fall, acorn and seed, everything continued just as it had. What did not continue as well was the human world. Jobs. Indeed, somewhere in the great catastrophe that was the Great Depression, somebody somewhere surely starved to death surrounded by food, as that hypothetical city person did not know what wild food was or how to identify and gather it. Were the Great Depression to happen today, people would be even worse off in that respect.

May not, and ought not, we rebel against having our very survival being dictated by the ups and downs of this corrupt ridiculous human system?

The human fake ecosystem of jobs and money is inherently unstable. One reason is, somebody somewhere is always trying to game the system. Human beings themselves strive to bring it down, and enrich themselves. The economic collapse of 2008 was largely due to people making way too many subprime home loans, loans with exorbitant interest rates. While the economy is good and those people dumb enough to take out such loans continue to have jobs and make their payments, it's a great deal for the bank. The theory was that even if people defaulted on their loans, the bank still has the house, so it was impossible to lose. Well, that idea was predicated on the idea that those homes would always have value. In a bad enough economy, nobody will buy them. I have lived through many economic disturbances in my sixty years, and no doubt more and possibly worse will come.

So what we have is an inherently unstable economic system that people depend on for their survival, that system being a system of functional corporate slavery; a government that wants to use you and your tax dollars to further the schemes of their corporate sponsors or commit other potentially immoral acts; and a system of mental and ideological slavery that seems to get worse by the day.

And the solution to all these problems, at least as far as the individual is concerned, is all pretty much the same solution. Get a few acres of land (some place where the property taxes aren't extreme) and some sort of place to live on that land, some means of collecting and purifying water on that land, grow your own food, and disinvest from the cash economy as much as possible. If worst comes to worst, assuming that you are able to make your property tax payments, you will still have food, water and shelter. Government won't be able to tax you much because you won't be making much in the cash economy. Corporations won't be able to get their claws too deep in you because you can more easily just blow them off and go back to your farm. You won't starve, you won't be homeless. Plus, you can do just fine from working part time or temporary, or better yet, working at your own business. You are only minimally feeding the systems that are ruining the world. You may be poor in cash, but will have what you need. Land is the only true wealth, and you don't need much of it. 2 acres can be better than 10. Fewer taxes.

Better yet, your relationships with other people can be more optional and more based on shared values instead of, these are people you have to socialize with, or your co-workers, or your boss. That means, if they all have taken the blue pill, so what? You largely don't need to have them in your life if you don't want to. You won't wind up on the streets if you choose to break off all relations with them, like you might for instance if they were your boss.

There are more interconnected issues with the modern world and modern life than I have space or energy to discuss. Modern living, despite 21st Century medicine (which as must be remembered is also a profit system) is more and more unhealthy. It is mentally unhealthy as well. More and more people are falling through the cracks or falling off the sane train altogether. City living is eroding the values that our ancestors had: values based on closeness to the land and honest work. You can lie to people and con them out of their money, but your crops are going to die if you don't take care of them. No use lying to them, they won't give you food if you don't work for it. Devoutly religious people, versus Sunday churchgoers, will find more and more of their rights taken away. The system is essentially atheistic; politics has become people's default religion and that is a very disturbing thought indeed because they will start looking to government to solve their existential problems. Government? THAT government? That inept drunken power mad incestuous beast? These problems are interconnected, which means that their solutions are also interconnected.

We are looking at the prospect of a system of human rule over other human beings and nature that puts dystopian fiction to shame. We're already there now, people just don't see it. So cut yourself loose from it as much as you can.


Make Haste From Babylon

Against Human Rule #1: Stateolatry

I am going to start a series about what I consider a critical theme in the Bible: the idea that human rule is inherently corrupt and corrupting. Human rule and human power structures, despite their prevalence through the ages, are utterly unacceptable. This theme extends into the New Testament too, which while I am not a Christian I respect much of the New Testament, and is if nothing else proof that the New Testament writers knew their Tanakh. It is not for nothing that Jesus says that the rulers of the Earth are minions of Satan. This is true even if they truly believe they mean well.

This transcends a criticism of left or right: both leftists and rightists want State power and want to use State power for their own ends. The right has on its side another axis: there are rightist libertarians and rightist statists, but almost all rightists, Republicans in this country, are in fact statists of a different flavor. They are totally okay with using State power for things they consider important. Fascism and Communism are different faces of the same brute lust for State power. Both end in the same ways: in war, want, suffering and oppression.

Before I begin, I want to issue a mea culpa. I used to be a liberal. I have been known lately to either support conservatives or at least criticize liberals more than I do conservatives. This I have done in what I perceived to be self-defense: that is not an excuse, that was simply my thought process. Self defense in the sense of, if the liberals win things will rapidly go to hell for all of us. At least, if they mean any part of the things they say. Perhaps though, it will be a necessary ride into hell for us: perhaps then we will come to our senses. I doubt it though.

Liberals appear to be on an extreme rapid downhill toboggan ride to identitarianism, the restriction of religious rights, socialism and the State-directed redistribution of wealth, utter renunciation of what were originally American principles like individual rights and limited government, and the normalization of sexual immorality, sexual perversion, and abortion. However, I now better understand that all these are the symptoms of a disease that Republicans and Democrats alike suffer from: Stateolatry. The combination of Statism and godlessness. Even a Republican status quo is not a GOOD condition, it is merely better than what COULD happen. Even a Republican ruled America is still statist. It could be heading further in that direction in the various forms of fascism.

What is the antidote to Stateolatry? The rulership of the only One that could rule justly, that could preserve human freedom. The rulership, the Kingdom, of G-d.

We are not talking about theocracy as it is commonly known. Human theocracy is another form of human control organization. It is a statism just as much as any other form of human government. The Kingdom of G-d is the antidote to human control.

Lets start with Genesis. At the beginning of Genesis we see humans using their freedom to steal what wasn't theirs: the apple of knowledge. On the one side, we have human beings. On the other side, G-d. Now G-d did not HAVE to either cut humans loose or indeed allow this action to stand at all. This is G-d we're talking about. He could have used force to make their minds right. He could have reversed time to undo the action. He could have wiped out Adam and Eve and started over. This action did not have to stand. Why did it?

This is something revealing about the nature of G-d. He respects our integrity as beings. He respects human dignity. He invented it. What dignity did we have of our own nature? We were critters made of mud. G-d respecting human dignity is G-d respecting his own, we are an image of Him. And so the human decision, the act of human freedom used for ill, stood. They weren't erased, their minds weren't made right, they weren't brainwashed, they were cast out of the Garden.

There followed from this a litany of human abuses and monstrosities, but also human promises. The Earth was wiped clean except for one righteous family, that of Noah. It is irrelevant whether this is literal history or not: this is spiritual history. These are spiritual origins to the relationship between Man and G-d. Noah prefigures a promised future resolution to the whole terrible human drama: the Earth wiped clean, a fresh start. The Kingdom of the Righteous, in which all the righteous who ever lived on Earth will be reborn into a new Earth. Genesis also shows the origin of G-d's vessel of message, the human Abraham who was found faithful.

We then move to Exodus. Here the Israelites, the descendants of Abraham, are in bondage to a human government, a human god-king. Does this sound familiar? It won't, not in the way I mean, but it should. We have our own sort of god-kings today. This is the painting on the dome of the Capitol. It is a painting depicting George Washington being raised to godhood surrounded by pagan deities:

It's called "The Apotheosis of Washington," apotheosis meaning raising to godhood. This idolatrous piece of shit is in the dome of the fucking capitol building. Every elementary school child should be shown this and someone should tell them, "this is what our government really is." Because it is.

Anyway, back to Exodus. The Israelites cry out to G-d to free them from their cruel overlords. What does G-d do? He not only does that, He teaches them a way to be free from ALL human overlords. A way to be free forever. The one who stands under G-d's Law and obeys it is freed from human law. G-d's laws are like the laws of nature in that they are not subject to craven human desires and lust for power. They simply are what they are.

Now, is that divine law administered by a government? No, you're not getting it. That divine law is the OPPOSITE of government. Sure, the Israelites had their own judges and other people in charge, that is because they wouldn't keep G-d's Law. Indeed Moses was so harried by complaints and lawsuits and criminal cases that he couldn't keep up with them, he had to appoint people to deal with the lesser cases. And so government was born even there. Because people wouldn't keep the Law, not to administer the Law or to create new ones. If they kept the Law, those wouldn't be needed. And what is one of those Laws? Love neighbor as self. If the Israelites truly loved neighbor as self, they wouldn't be transgressing against each other all the time and hence Moses wouldn't need to judge anyone or appoint judges over anyone. This is an ongoing principle of degeneration: if you won't accept the Law, people are going to make themselves judges, which means eventually they are going to make new laws that aren't G-d's Law.

G-d's Law or Human Tyrants: this is the choice before you.

So it is not fitting for anyone to support human tyrants or human government at all. Human government is a disease symptom, not the cure. The cure is to love G-d and obey His Law, and love neighbor equally as self.

The more government is called upon to fix the problems of human sinfulness, the more humans will rely on government instead of upon G-d and doing what is right, and the more that sinfulness will increase. Using government to solve the problem of human sin is like using heroin to fix pain: ultimately you will get dependent and weaker. The difference is that sometimes opiates might be needed medicine (if you break your leg or something,) but government always leaves the people worse off than before they started.

Is it any wonder that the family has eroded and sexual perversions and "lifestyles" have increased? No. As people become more and more dependent on government and corporations, they more and more abandon families and G-d. A family is a burden to being a successful corporate employee. And you don't need loved ones to take care of you when you are old or sick, government will do that. If you have a gay couple or any of the other unwell variations that are possible now, well you both can work and women won't get pregnant (which pregnancy looks real bad on the resume) and there are no children to raise. Better employees! No wonder corporations are getting on the Pride bandwagon. It is clearly in their self-interest. If you are in a hetero couple, well you can ditch the useless kids onto the State schools where they can be taught godlessness and perversion and dependence on government. Is it any wonder that things are degenerating??

The people who are responsible for raising and educating children are PARENTS. Period. Full Stop.

Ah, what a mess we are in.

Now from what I have said, you may think I am in favor of libertarian government. You have not understood. Sure, libertarianism or traditional American limited government policies are a slower-acting poison than Communism, but still poison.

THE ANTIDOTE TO GOVERNMENT IS THE RULE OF GOD.

So I don't say I am libertarian, that would be ascribing to a political philosophy, a theory of human rule. No. I am saying that G-d alone is my king and I recognize no other king.

Now, how does that work out in practice? People always say of anarchism, sounds great but it would never work. What is it you think I am suggesting, that our human government adopt a political philosophy of deiarchy? No. I am suggesting exactly zero government policy or anything else other than it go away period.

Kingdom rule is lived out, directly, by those who belong to it. We don't need permission from the government for it, and they wouldn't give it if we did. We refuse to play. The government may force out obedience to certain things but never our consent. We must not consent to politics at all period. We must live out every second of every day the truth:

G-D ALONE IS OUR KING


Now, I am not saying it is easy. I get sucked into politics a lot, because I see things that are absolutely scandalous and massively wrongheaded and I say

WAIT A DAMN MINUTE, HELL TO THE NO

...and maybe some of the Republicans are also saying hell no too, and so I say, well, I like them better. Everyone wants to belong, to fit in with their own. To imagine that there is a "their own" to belong to.

But actually I am being seduced. I am participating in a contest for raw human power, between those who practice the milder forms of insanity that I became used to in the past, versus new batshit loco gaga zany-brained forms of insanity. But it's all bad, and both Democrats and Republicans are committed to the dominion of human Statist power. Both have pronounced their own kind of fatwas on the rule of G-d.

I admit I have a problem with this sometimes. I'm only human, I look around for someone in this wide world who is sane, and over there are some Republicans who look half-sane and say they love G-d, and I think, well that is better than Mr/Ms/Mx Bongo Silly Party over there, but it's kind of a trap. I am missing the deeper point. Republicans at their best are slow gradual death, Democrats are rapid death, but both are death. It's like boiling a frog: do you want to turn up the heat so gradually that the frog does not notice they are boiling, or do you throw the 40,000 BTU burner on max and boil that puppy straight away? Either way, at the end you get a boiled frog. It may be possible to imagine a form of conservative government which is so relatively innocuous an evil that it might almost be excusable, but realistically power always seeks more of its own. Power seeks more power. The people you get in power are not good people or wise people, but people who want power. I used to hate the Tea Party, but the one thing I truly admire about them is that their main strategy seems to be throwing a wrench into the gears of government repeatedly in the hopes of stopping it altogether. That is almost an objective I can get behind. Of course, really, they only throw wrenches into the machinery until they get their way. If obstructing government period was their one and only political objective, I could almost support them.

So, I struggle with refraining from throwing support behind those I disagree with the least, against those I disagree with the most. Like I said, I sometimes feel that supporting the Republicans is justified purely for the sake of self-preservation. But truly I should not support any of them, or involve myself with human power conflicts at all. My only King is G-d. I must learn to live out that belief better.

Elisha's Bones

When the body touched Elisha’s bones,

the man came to life and stood up on his feet.

2 Kings 13:21

Now there is a curious little story in 2 Kings 13. Elisha was a prophet, the successor of Elijah. In the area where Elisha's body was buried, Moabite raiders used to raid every Spring. A burial party had come to bury someone in nearby graves, and spied these raiders. So in fear, they tossed the body into Elisha's grave and ran.

When the dead man touched Elisha's bones, he returned to life.

Now this is the sort of passage that a lot of people would scarcely even pay attention to. Some miracle in some long gone time when people were superstitious. A modern person would tend to skim over this part to find some more relevant moral passage later on.

However, this passage troubled me for a long time. It does not say that G-d raised the man from the dead, because then the bones would be irrelevant. If G-d wanted to raise the man, or even keep him from dying, He could have done so long before the funeral. G-d did not raise the man directly, the bones raised him.

This is the sort of thing one could pass over easily. "The bones raised him, G-d raised him, whatever." Indeed the power could only come from G-d originally. I think though that it is a mistake to pass over this, because this in context with Elisha's life and Elijah's is telling.

G-d delegates power to those He wishes to. He then holds them responsible for the power they have been given, but it has legitimately been delegated to them. And they are responsible for how they use it. They use that power directly, themselves, because it has been given to them. Even to their bones.

We see in Samuel, G-d in no way wanted Israel to have a king. G-d should be their king, as indeed G-d should be the king of us all. However G-d found a way to use their weakness, and brought forth David to whom G-d delegated power. Arguably that power is still delegated to David, or rather to his unnamed future successor King on David's behalf.

We see this idea of inheritance in Exodus: G-d decides not to destroy the Israelites, for the sake of one long dead. For the sake of Abraham. For Abraham's sake, he does not wipe them out and forget all about the Hebrews.

From which we can draw another conclusion: sometimes G-d does not delegate power to someone because of their own merit or His closeness to them, but because of someone else. Before Elijah was swept up in a whirlwind. G-d delegated Elijah's power and more to Elisha.

Elijah was swept up in a whirlwind, he was removed from this Earth by G-d directly. He was taken alive into heaven. Only one other person in the whole Tanakh left the Earth in that way: the patriarch Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. That's pretty rarified company. Elisha was not swept up by G-d, he got sick and died like any other man. 2 Kings 13 explicitly says he got sick and died. Yet Elisha is said to have performed twice as many miracles as Elijah. G-d gave him a double portion of power for the sake of Elijah.

I don't think Elijah was much of a people person, so it may just have been that Elisha got out more. You don't get as many opportunities for performing miracles when you are living in a cave shaking your fist at the evil works of Man. ;) I definitely relate more to Elijah myself, I am not a people person either. I am trying to fix that in certain senses, but it's slow going.

So getting back on point, G-d did not raise that man directly. He delegated the power to Elisha, and Elisha raised that dead man, even though Elisha himself was dead. 

The realities of human nature are all too clear in the Tanakh. Humans are susceptible to sin and they are usually more than susceptible. They revel in it. Humans are double-hearted and selfish, liars and violent. As Psalm 14 says:

The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind

to see if there are any who understand,

any who seek God.

All have turned away, all have become corrupt;

there is no one who does good, not even one.

~Psalm 14:2-3

Given this fact, why on Earth would G-d delegate power to any mortal? Is that not a terrible mistake?

G-d delegates power because this was always His intention from the beginning. Man was intended to be the prince of the Earth in a similar way to how G-d is king over all. That is part of the meaning of the statement that we were made in G-d's image. We were meant to govern Earth, rule it benignly, to uplift the world of plants and animals and waters and earth through our wise governing. Clearly that has worked out very poorly, but that was always the plan and still is. We were meant to be gardener-kings or perhaps gardener-guardians would be a better term. Considering how evil human kings usually are, perhaps the latter term. However, humility and meekness is so great a virtue in part because humans on the whole are incapable of using power wisely. At least the humble do not err.

Which brings us to another reason why power is delegated. G-d also sometimes delegates power because a man with power who does not fear G-d is a man who is bound for his own destruction. He delegates power to someone to facilitate their destruction. He hands them the rope to hang themselves with. Success in life does not always mean the approval of G-d, sometimes it is G-d giving you the opportunity to destroy yourself. The examples are too innumerable to count. Kings, dictators, titans of industry, famous people, rich people. Their power and success is the preamble to their destruction. Sometimes he delegates power to punish someone or to allow the powerful to punish someone. One might assume that King Nebuchadnezzar was not a particularly holy man, but G-d gave him power that he might punish Israel. The Tanakh is full of such instances.

So it was the bones that raised that man, it was Elisha who raised him, even being dead. He was legitimately delegated power and was legitimately liable for how he used it. Let us all be very certain before power or success or money touches our lives that we fear G-d; only then can we use such power for blessing. It is not for nothing that it is said that the Lord blesses the meek. It is often better for us to be powerless or to not use power than to have opportunity to be destroyed by power.

But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy peace and prosperity.

~Psalm 37:11

Stoned

When you look at the large number of offenses in the Torah for which the penalty is death, a number of questions arise. First off, is faith in G-d not meant to be beneficial to us? It's a happy thing, right? Why is it that from the outset, from the Torah onwards, the religion of Abraham puts on a scowl? Depictions of people being blessed and happy seem to dwindle into insignificance compared to depictions of G-d's wrath. Perhaps because we so infrequently merit the blessing.

It is not without some justice that believers in orthodox (small o) Christianity and orthodox Judaism and Islam are often viewed as repressive, violent, unduly strict, legalistic and even hateful. This is a severe family of religions, religions of rock and desert. A religion of stone.

First off, I think it is important to clarify: faith in and obedience to G-d does not exist for the sake of our happiness. I firmly believe that faith and obedience is rewarded by blessing and joy, but that is not the same as saying that this is it's purpose. To some degree the purposes may be inscrutable, but part of the purpose is to have relationship with the Lord. Love, in this sense, really does make the world go round.

With that quibble aside, why do the religions descended from Judaism (Judaism, Islam, Christianity) often appear strict, fun-hating, judgmental and violent? Is it not some part of the goal to be united and happy and enjoy those good things that life has to offer?

The fundamental crux of the problem is a disagreement on the priority of sin.

Happiness that is based on a disordered understanding of reality is a happiness that is bound to be turned into misery. Without a reasonably true understanding of the actual reality of the world and ourselves, joy is baseless and unstable. From this point of view, sin is a road map. This is where you actually are, this is where you ought to be. A correct understanding of sin is meant for our construction, not our destruction.

In order to lift you up, G-d must first make you understand that you are low. You think you are kings of the Earth: you must know that you are an infant abandoned by the side of the road, kicking in his own birth blood. And this is something we definitely don't want to understand. We want to think that we rock, we are champions. And we may be by a human understanding. You think Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos does not count himself as a lord of the Earth, an uncrowned prince of the planet? They do, of course they do. They look at the work of their hands and say, "we can do anything." Who can limit us? Who can say no to us? We mold the future with the power of our own minds.

But G-d made them and G-d could unmake them.

Why is the Torah full of "no's" and "do not's?" Is the future G-d means for us a "no?" Of course not. We must encounter and grapple with the "no" in order to become the "Yes." It is not our behavior that G-d is jealous over, but we ourselves; that we not become evil but become good. The Commandments are not meant to scold you, they are meant to change you. These "religions of stone" are not meant to make you stone, they are meant to make you soft, to unclog your ears and reverse the fossilization of your hearts.

The instructions of Moses were indeed severe. You have to bear in mind two things though:

1. The Israelites were meant to be a nation of priests and so the rules on them were harder than the rules on anyone else.

2. Barbaric and nomadic peoples, such as the Israelites of 3000+ years ago, would not have understood or respected any penalty short of death. What, they are going to put them in prison as they wandered the desert? What prison?

And now we are in an inverse situation from the ancient Israelites. Everything is yes. Be gay, change your gender, be atheist, have an abortion? Yes yes yes yes. Unless you murder (those already born,) or assault or steal or defy the government or break traffic laws, the answer is yes. Of course, to modern people, the religion of Abraham is the religion of "no." That is not what is intended.

I wish I could tell you of the "Yes" that G-d has put in my heart. Yes to peace, yes to care and consideration, yes to respect, yes to life, yes to harmony. But I think modern ears are not well attuned to such a "yes."

 I will give you a new heart

and put a new spirit in you;

I will remove from you your heart of stone

and give you a heart of flesh.

~Ezekiel 36:26

They will be my people, and I will be their God.

I will give them singleness of heart and action,

so that they will always fear me and that

all will then go well for them and for their

children after them. I will make an everlasting

covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them.

~Jeremiah 32:38-40

(I speak of Christianity, Judaism and Islam together in this. Anyone who knows me would probably know that I don't regard these three as equals, but they are equally threatened by corrosive modernity. A devout traditional American Christian now has more in common in terms of moral values with Muslims than with liberal Americans or even sometimes liberal Christians. An Orthodox Jew probably has more in common with a traditional Christian than with secular Jews. It is now past time to put the family squabbles in the Abrahimic religions aside. This is not because there are no significant differences: I for instance don't believe Jesus was G-d, a big difference, and I don't particularly believe Muhammad was a prophet. Nor do I believe in Rabbinic authority, which among other things washes me out of the mainstream Jewish camp. But in the context of a secular world that more and more wants us not to exist and certainly wants to push us to the margins, we have more in common than ever. Don't bicker over what we don't have in common, reinforce what we do.)

Climate Change and Hedonism

Some years ago I decided to forgo an automobile for a bicycle. My reasons for using a bicycle for transportation had little to do with climate change, although that was something that made me feel good about the change.

My main reasons were that I had little money, I was tight with the money I had, and I knew from past experience that automobile ownership was a hole where money goes to die. I also could sense myself becoming weaker physically with age, and had come to believe that physical health and strength was to be valued above most things. I had suffered a heart attack back in 2007.

I also had a somewhat anarchistic world view; something so entangled in regulation and licenses and mandatory payments such as insurance, registration and inspection was surely to be avoided. Those were moments in my life and dollars out of my pocket that I did not feel were worthwhile. So I got rid of them. I did not feel that abandoning automobiles was a particularly spartan thing to do because while bicycles were less convenient and slower and sometimes caused discomfort in such things as climbing hills (of which there are many around here,) I knew that riding bicycles were good for me and they were blessedly cheap and free of hassles. If I got pulled over, which really doesn't happen, I knew that I wouldn't have to worry whether my insurance was paid up or my inspection up to date.

Those kinds of hassles are the hassles I like least in the world. I would infinitely prefer to be puffing up a hill on a bike than receiving car insurance premium notices in the mail, or hassling with passing an inspection. To heck with that shit. So I got to be a cheap bastard and avoid regulation I hate, and as a bonus here I am going to turn 61 in a month and I am in pretty good shape and pretty happy, which a bike ride definitely helps with. Your body was meant to be used, was meant to be worked. It doesn't do right when it is not. Comfort and physical ease is not always your friend. In fact it is very often your enemy.

All of which is just a preface to my main point, that the desire for physical distractions and entertainment and pleasure and comfort and convenience and new experiences and superfluous possessions are the real main causes of climate change. A hedonistic philosophy of life, in other words.

Why do automobiles clog the freeways around here? Most people aren't going more than 15 miles to work and back, though some do. It's convenience and comfort, though I personally regard traffic jams as the least comfortable of things. If we turned over most of the in-city streets and freeways over to bicycles, we would not only have less pollution but we'd probably arrive at work at the same time as we usually did before in the traffic, albeit much sweatier. While I am on the topic, that's another fucked-up thing about our society. Humans sweat. Humans stink. And yet people are often expected to show up at work as if they lived in a year-round 50 degree temperature. Perfect little arctic snowflakes.

F0ck that, I am a man. I sweat. I stink. Deal with it.

Why are the factories of the world pumping out shit at record paces? Is most of that stuff a real augment to functional life, or more of the useless consumer crap we surround ourselves with? I am not innocent on this either, but everything we buy has to be made and transported, and that takes resources and pumps carbon into the atmosphere.

Why do we have all this endless meat and milk production, with its cows and sheep and chickens pumping methane into the air through their butts? Because we like these foods, far more than we need these foods. I like them too, I gave up on being vegetarian. I like meat. But I think if I were to eat it every day or every other day, I would be eating it far more than I had any need to. And there are a ton of Americans who eat meat every day, from the bacon at breakfast to the steak at dinner. Industrial agriculture of all kinds is one of the greatest contributors to environmental destruction, and it dominates the land all across the world and in America particularly. Our herbicides destroy native plants while our insecticides destroy insects and birds and our waterways.

And why is it? Because we demand it cheap and we demand it tasty and we demand it now. Meanwhile obesity and diabetes are at record levels.

Why do we have this bucket list mentality when we retire? Like, I have to travel the world or at least the country when I retire to fill out my list so I can die a fulfilled man. Right. And all those air miles add up in terms of gallons of fuel consumed, not to mention highway miles which are now even less efficient than air travel. And of course you are going to be eating out, which probably involves environmentally damaging foods and also isn't usually very good for you.

I don't know about you, but in my retirement I am going to DO things, build things, construct a life for myself that is both more ecologically sensitive AND better for my physical and mental health and peace of mind. And freer of the kind of pointless humiliating hassles that I hate. THAT is a retirement worth doing. I am planning on living, not on filling out a list of what I have seen and consumed before I died.

This, for the lack of a better word a hedonistic worldview, is what is destroying the planet. And it is not an American phenomenon, it is happening all over the world. This sickness is destroying all things everywhere.

Can you legislate against it? I don't see how, not in the big picture. Sure politicians can put a big carbon tax on fuels and risk political suicide. That is how the Yellow Vest protests in France got started. Can you legislate against meat? Can you legislate against travel? Can you tell the farmers not to use pesticides and herbicides? The turmoil in our food prices and food availability were that to happen would not be pretty at all. Can you ask the poor to bear the brunt of all these changes, because they are the ones who are going to be devastated when milk is $7 a half-gallon.

What we need is a moral and philosophical and spiritual revolution, not a legal one. Not exactly a new Puritanism, though at this point there is something to be said for the Puritans. Rather a joyous choice in favor of spending less money and growing better food and buying things for our needs rather than our self-absorbed entertainment or idle status seeking. We need a revolution for more meaningful work. I do not know how a person can be fulfilled in their work if their job is building crap cars or selling crap insurance or fake weight loss machines. You want to know what I would consider fulfilling work? Building a great useful bicycle. Building a hoe or shovel that is durable. That's useful work.

The transition to such a world would require that each of us, aside from a reduced number of people in cities, own some land. The reason for this is that our economy feeds on these vices, this vacuous consumptive nature of the citizenry. Were everyone to suddenly become the inverse of hedonistic little consumers, the economy would tank. If I grow food, I am less dependent on whether you do. If I make things, I might not need you to make things. If I provide my own water and energy, I care much less whether someone else does. If I am more self-sufficient, I am less hurt if the economy deflates to a more sustainable level. So yeah, if we all were to suddenly become more sane and responsible citizens, the economy might tank. In other words, the economy would decrease to the level of our need, not our greed and self-absorption.

It is impossible to imagine such a revolution, even on a small scale, without a belief in G-d. But it doesn't have to be my G-d or your G-d, Christian Jewish Muslim Bahai or Zoroastrian might all work. It would have to be a G-d who cares about human behavior, a G-d of morality. Because in my experience the antidote to nihilism (which hedonism and excessive consumer behavior is driven by tacit nihilism) is prayer.

Pray, then you won't need drugs. Pray, then you won't need alcohol. Pray, and you won't have to stuff yourself with food until you are obese and ill in order to fill the void of your life. Ultimately the solution to our environmental crisis, as with so many of our other problems, is G-d. Prayer and a morally scrupulous life, questioning one's own life choices as a spiritual value, when spread across a population could be far more powerful than any government regulation.

And that second part, questioning your own moral choices, is something that so many religious people have a problem with. Religion that only makes you feel good and doesn't make you do good is of no use and is a false religion.

The problem is, making it spread. Our consumer ideology is a powerful alternative religion, and attention spans are not getting any longer.

Show me your ways, Lord,

teach me your paths.

Guide me in your truth and teach me

~Psalm 25:4-5

And I brought you into a plentiful land

to enjoy its fruits and its good things.

But when you came in, you defiled my land

and made my heritage an abomination.

~Jeremiah 2:7

A Stiff Necked People

Okay, so I went to a Judaism forum and said I was a convert to Judaism. Which, as someone who believes in the Torah and Tanakh and tries his best to put that into practice, I think I should be entitled to call myself.

Whereupon they accused me of being a Messianic Jew or some variant thereof (a believer in Jesus) who was trying to snatch their congregation away from them!

They said I was in no respect a convert and that if I ever wanted to be one, I would have to uproot my life and move to New York or somewhere that a Jewish community exists and get properly processed by a rabbi. Meaning in their mind, not a Karaite rabbi which would be the kind of Judaism I would belong to, but Orthodox or Conservative or something. Karaite Jews aren't Jews, to them. The fact that they are every bit as much children of Abraham and Jacob as they are I guess means nothing, since the Karaites don't conform to their belief that the word of rabbis is equivalent to the word of G-d.

Now, you get all sorts of people on the Internet, and the immediately hostile reaction to me on this Judaism forum might not have been something I would get on every Judaism forum, but it is instructive.

We all like our little boxes in religious matters, and don't like people bending the boundaries of our boxes. Or at least traditionalists are that way. To those Jews, I was not a practitioner of Judaism however much I obeyed the Tanakh. Christians have their little boxes too, I went to Christian Forums which I used to frequent as a Christian and they have all sorts of position statements that you have to sign off on now to post in any of the Christian areas. So I won't be posting anything there.

Christianity the proselytizing faith is now the faith that walls itself off. And who could blame them? There's a lot to wall yourself off from. At least their New Testament tells them to proselytize. The Orthodox Jews are like, "G-d is ours, f0ck off."

I have a little box too, it's just that nobody is really in it but me. It is not so much that I initially wanted to define Orthodox and Conservative Jews out of my box, but they want to. And I will take them at their word and be liberated by it: I have no part with them. I am not their co-religionist. No rabbi's word, however wise that rabbi is, is of the same weight as the Tanakh. The Talmud and the "oral law" is a book of opinions and should be taken as such.

I have ideological differences with Muslims, but how different are they in terms of what they do? They don't observe the Sabbath, true, but in almost every other way we are far more alike than not. Their dietary rules are essentially the same as in the Torah, they believe in more or less the same moral rules. In terms of life practices and moral beliefs I have more in common with them than I would with a lot of Christians. Given the abundance of Orthodox Jewish practices and beliefs that are nowhere in the Tanakh, I might have more in common with Muslims than I do with Orthodox Jews. Aside from, you know, Muhammad and the Quran. I am not with them on that. So whatever the similarities, they are in their box and I am in mine.

So as of right now, nobody is in my box but me. Nobody I know of, anyway.

"No one I think is in my tree,

I mean it must be high or low."
~Strawberry Fields

So, earlier today I put on my tallit (prayer shawl) and asked G-d, "what am I?" If observing the Tanakh does not make me a Jew, what then am I? And I was led to the passage where King David had to reluctantly make war on his son Absalom, who was trying to usurp him as king. Now killing Absalom was the last thing David wanted to do, and in fact he ordered his men to "be gentle with Absalom." But he also ordered his men to fight them and put down the rebellion. And, well, David's men won and Absalom was killed despite the order. And David was beside himself with grief. To the point where his commander had to come and tell him essentially, "hey you are being a huge downer, here the men won this great battle and you act like you would trade all of these loyal men to get your son back. You value the traitor more than these good men who would die for you."

And at the time I had no idea what this meant as an answer to my question, but I think now I know.

G-d's true children are those who heed what G-d says. To be called Jewish doesn't matter, to belong to G-d matters. The one who does what G-d says, is a true son of Abraham and no others are. Absalom was a false son however much a biological son of David he was, he was a rebellious and treasonous son who violated the command to honor his father. 

A true child of G-d, a true son of Abraham, would not place the opinions of men on the same plane as the commandments of G-d. So call me whatever you'd like, as long as you call me "belonging to G-d."

And do not think you can say to yourselves,

'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you

that out of these stones God can raise up

children for Abraham.

~Matthew 3:9

Inconsistent

With apologies to the author of Matthew 5:17, there are a whole bunch of ways in which the teaching of Jesus as presented in the gospels, and the teaching of G-d in the Tanakh (Old Testament,) are inconsistent or contradictory. In other words you must choose: either disregard the teaching of G-d in the Tanakh or disregard the teaching of Jesus. For most Christians, they choose to disregard the Tanakh or else not resolve the inconsistency. In other words, the word of G-d then is nullified, and the word of Jesus now is the new rule. Did G-d change his mind? Far be it from us to think so.

Here is a very small real-life example: imagine someone who committed a grievous sin, I mean a really pretty bad one. This person has shown no repentance before the Lord and they don't believe in Him anyway. Such a person wants to re-establish a relationship with me. What should I do?

According to the New Testament I should forgive and befriend them. 
According to the Old Testament, I should STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM THEM.

The Old Testament displays a theory of evil, that evil is like a contagion. This contagion should be given zero quarter. Destroy It. Deuteronomy 17 says it twice: purge the evil from among you. In that context, the command was to kill the one who commits it. Elsewhere in the Tanakh, it says that the righteous man should physically stay away from the unrighteous.

Blessed is the one

who does not walk in step with the wicked

or stand in the way (path) that sinners take

or sit in the company of mockers,

but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,

and who meditates on his law day and night.

~Psalm 1:1-2

Rather unchristian of them, isn't it? ;) Jesus overtly sat with sinners. Of course even if you assume Jesus could not be corrupted, that would still be a bad example according to the OT. His disciples, who are presumably not as incorruptible, are there with him.

Is the Old Testament, the Tanakh, right in saying that evil is contagious? I am sure that each of us could supply examples from their own life. It is not for nothing that careful parents tell their children, "stay away from that one, he is a bad influence." Even if we intend no evil, the unrighteous who we are hanging out with will want to do unrighteous things, and will want to involve us in those things. Evil is contagious, we will tend to want to do what our friends do and ultimately may think as our friends think.

*******************************************

Okay, another example of contradiction. Jesus says to "love your enemies." Indeed the Tanakh is not totally a stranger to this idea: Jonah reluctantly goes to Nineveh to preach to them about their evildoing. Jonah doesn't want to save them, but G-d does. Note the context of this however:

1. Jonah is going to THEM, they are not living among the Israelites.

2. Jonah is a prophet and protected by G-d and indeed on a mission from G-d, so he is unlikely to be corrupted by the Ninevites. Indeed he hates the Ninevites, but G-d has compassion for them.

G-d does want to save all people from their sin, but He also performs emergency surgery to remove corrupting people from the presence of His own so that His people will not be corrupted. You may indeed experience this in your own life, as I have. You can see that in spades in the book of Joshua where the action commanded by G-d is complete destruction. Not because G-d enjoys killing sinners, but to keep the Israelites from being contaminated by the Canaanites. As it happens, that plan does ultimately fail (because it depends on human decision and human will) and the Israelites wind up living with and being corrupted by the Canaanites.

You can see an explicit command to that kind of removal of the wicked in Deuteronomy 20:

However, in the cities of the nations that the

LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance,

you must not leave alive anything that breathes.

For you must devote them to complete destruction —

the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites,

and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has

commanded you, so that they cannot teach you

to do all the detestable things they do for their

gods and cause you to sin against the LORD your God.

~Deuteronomy 20:16-18

This is severe surgery indeed, and one should not think that the Lord was unmindful of the hurt and death that He was commanding, nor was He without care for these condemned people. This was surgery, cut off the arm to save the patient. G-d knew that His people the Israelites were weak and would be tempted into sinful Canaanite ways, as indeed ultimately happened anyway.

So, love your enemies? That is an expression that can lead to confusion. You can certainly find the command not to be wrathful or obsessed with your enemies, Psalm 37 expresses that especially beautifully. But usually people think of loving your enemies as inconsistent with destroying your enemies. The Israelites are not commanded to love the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. They are commanded to wipe them out totally.

But also, punishing your own enemies doesn't matter. Punishing who G-d commands you to, IF he commands you to, matters. The good king Josiah learned the consequences of going against G-d's will by attacking the Egyptians who he was not commanded to kill. The Egyptians killed him. They were his enemy, but they were not G-d's enemy. Heed the words of Psalm 37:

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him;

fret not when men prosper in their ways,

when they carry out wicked schemes.

Refrain from anger and abandon wrath;

do not fret—it can only bring harm.

For the evildoers will be cut off,

but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.

Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more;

though you look for them, they will not be found.

But the meek will inherit the land

and delight in abundant prosperity.

~Psalm 37:7-11

I could mention many other examples where the teaching of Jesus contradicts the teaching of G-d in the Tanakh. The Sabbath for one: the Torah and the Prophets teach us to respect the Sabbath. Jesus never says one good word about the Sabbath or observing it. It is possible that technically he never broke the Sabbath either, but he certainly never said anything good about observing it. This is one of the Ten Commandments, it is not a small matter.

Jesus ignored the ritual requirement to wash hands, which in addition to just being poor hygiene, was a ritual significant to many Jews. Does the command to wash hands before eating exist in the Tanakh? Not to my knowledge, but certainly washing your hands does good and not doing so does no good and might make you sick.

While the Gospels present no situation where Jesus was munching on bacon, he dissed Jewish dietary laws. While I am pretty sure that eating pork in the present day is perfectly safe, this was not true until relatively recent times. When Jesus was alive, eating pork could have had unhealthy effects. It was an invitation to trichinosis. The pigs could easily have eaten human corpses which would have potentially transmitted diseases. Jewish dietary laws existed for very good reasons: human health. Shellfish, can you imagine eating a clam out of the hot waters of the Red Sea? That would be an invitation to death by shellfish poisoning. Only eat fish with scales? Most fish without scales, like catfish, are garbage-eating fish. That is not at all the healthiest thing you can put in your mouth. G-d gave the dietary laws to help us, to keep us healthy. Jesus dissed them and never said anything good about them.

Jesus in fact said very little about the Ten Commandments. You never see Jesus warning his disciples about lying, for example. According to John I think it was, Judas stole from the money bag which Jesus did not take him to task for. You never see Jesus telling his disciples to honor their parents, actually the opposite.

Jesus in fact sometimes seems almost exactly like a Greek sophist or perhaps a Socrates: he subverts peoples' understanding of the Tanakh and rarely supports it. The statement, "what goes into your mouth does not contaminate you but what comes out if it" is almost textbook Greek sophistry. It totally ignores the purpose of the dietary laws: to keep you healthy. He only points out inconsistencies or loopholes in Sabbath observance, never supports the observance of it. G-d in the Tanakh promises prosperity to those He loves: Jesus says to give it all away to beggars. Which, we are commanded to charity for the less fortunate: Jesus subverts that into a command to totally impoverish ourselves.

Jesus cannot be understood except as a critic and rebel against Judaism. He doesn't complete the law. He subverts the law. Now, many of these criticisms are very clever, and no doubt many of his criticisms against the religious people of that day were spot on. The Jewish priesthood and authorities were likely often corrupt, as were many who supported them. That the infamously evil King Herod financially supported the rebuilding of the Temple speaks volumes on the toxic combination of temporal power and religion. The fact remains though that you cannot resolve the differences between what Jesus teaches and what the Tanakh teaches. Jesus uses the Tanakh to subvert the Tanakh. The Tanakh is consistent within itself, with very minor deviations. The New Testament is not entirely consistent with the Tanakh (though the highly excellent James, brother of Jesus, might be seen as the exemplar of what Christianity might have been without Paul.)

However, be that as it may, we are all in debt to that renegade Jew because without his Gentile followers, the Tanakh would not have spread throughout the world and to non-Jews as it has. Christianity is like a virus but for a good cause: it spreads throughout the world with an outer shell of falsehood (a triune god, god who became a human, cheap grace, no harsh rules like circumcision or dietary laws,) but within is the genetic code of the truth, like a package of DNA. Because the world hates truth and would not accept it if it were expressed plainly, it would not have spread on its own. Jews are terrible at proselytizing, and in fact generally don't do it at all. Instead, because the Tanakh is wrapped in the more palatable coating of the New Testament it can spread. It is thanks to it that someone like me could have discovered the Tanakh at all. No doubt that is exactly what G-d intended. That Greek sophist of a heretic made the Bible the most popular book of all time, and in it is the Tanakh, which teaches us an alien code to the teaching of Jesus. It is amazing that Christians do not see the contradiction between the New Testament and the Tanakh, but also thank G-d for it because they keep the Tanakh spreading throughout the world, like a cuckoo in the robin's nest.

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To my Christian brothers and sisters I say this: contrary to popular opinion, G-d expects us to think and to think hard. He expects us to question the questionable. We must think and question with a godly mind, a mind of faith, but we must do so. We must not fear the traditions of men but only fear G-d.

Answer me this: can G-d die?

Who then died on the Cross? Jesus did. Not G-d. Jesus was not G-d. If you say that Jesus did not die on the cross, then your plan of faith fails because then Jesus did not die for anyone's sins. If you say Jesus DID die on the cross, then he was a man and his death is no more effective than any other mans' death.

Moreover, since when was sacrifice ever required for the forgiveness of sins? Since when was Jesus required for the forgiveness of sins? G-d forgave all kinds of people in the Tanakh. When David was forgiven, what was required of him to be given that forgiveness? Repentance. Not sacrifice.

When I kept silent,

my bones wasted away

through my groaning all day long.

For day and night

your hand was heavy on me;

my strength was sapped

as in the heat of summer.

Then I acknowledged my sin to you

and did not cover up my iniquity.

I said, “I will confess

my transgressions to the Lord.”

And you forgave the guilt of my sin.

~Psalm 32:3-5

Jesus hadn't been born yet when David was forgiven! So much for the idea that the cross is needed for forgiveness!

Indeed Isaiah 1 states exactly this most eloquently: what G-d requires is a repentant heart. Blood sacrifice does not get sins forgiven: G-d will be merciful to those who truly repent.

Stop bringing meaningless offerings!

Your incense is detestable to me.

New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—

I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.

Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals

I hate with all my being.

They have become a burden to me;

I am weary of bearing them.

When you spread out your hands in prayer,

I hide my eyes from you;

even when you offer many prayers,

I am not listening.

Your hands are full of blood!

Wash and make yourselves clean.

Take your evil deeds out of my sight;

stop doing wrong.

Learn to do right; seek justice.

Defend the oppressed.

Take up the cause of the fatherless;

plead the case of the widow.

“Come now, let us settle the matter,”

 says the Lord.

“Though your sins are like scarlet,

they shall be as white as snow...

~Isaiah 1:13-18

So reason with me, Christian brothers and sisters. How is the man Jesus OR his death necessary to the forgiveness of sins? The Father forgave David directly.

Moreover, is not the idea of G-d being a man directly in conflict with the Second Commandment? It says, do not represent G-d as a created being! A man is a created being! Moreover, in the book of Exodus who was G-d rescuing the Israelites from? A man who called himself god (Pharaoh.) Did G-d in the Tanakh ever say that he was coming as a man? That seems like an important thing for Him to have mentioned. A passage from Isaiah is quoted, but that quote in fact refers to Israel as the suffering servant, not a particular man. Indeed the Jewish people have suffered beyond all reason for thousands of years. There is nothing in Isaiah 53 to indicate that the suffering servant is G-d. Indeed, the suffering servant is afflicted by G-d.

Think. Think righteously, think with faith, but think clearly. The triune god is not clear and not true. G-d as a man is not clear, indeed it is against the Torah. The doctrine of salvation through the blood sacrifice of a man-god and only through that, is contrary to the Tanakh and indeed deeply wrong. There are clear counterexamples everywhere. G-d did not want us to live in a spirit of confusion and contradiction but clarity. There is no G-d but G-d, and he is One and not in any way three. Only G-d is G-d, only the Father is G-d.

Man the Outlaw #10: You Shall Have No Other Gods Before Me

"I am יְהוָ֣ה your God,

who brought you out of the land of Egypt,

out of the house of bondage.

You shall have no other gods before Me."

~Exodus 20:2-3

Virtually no gods of the ancient world were exclusive. They were in fact part of a pantheon, a Mount Olympus of sorts full of gods. Deities had families, they had power struggles within those families. Very often the fathers of the gods got sidelined for their promising new children, as happened to the Mesopotamian god Anu and the Hittite god Ouranos. The primordial pre-Moses Hebrew deity El may have indeed been their version of Anu and Ouranos, or at least absorbed some part of that role. And before Moses and indeed after as recorded in the Tanakh, most Israelites consorted with lots of other gods despite the prohibitions against it in the Torah.

Many scholars believe that Judaism was not originally monotheistic but monolatristic: that it was not so much that other gods didn't exist as they were forbidden to the Israelites who owed a unique debt to יְהוָ֣ה. Regardless, pretty early on at least among the priests of יְהוָ֣ה in Jerusalem, it was not so much believed that other gods are just forbidden so much as they are unreal, only wood and stone, unliving. Not potent. Not real gods at all. The punishment in the Torah for idolatry was no slap on the wrist: banishment or death.

Nevertheless it is clear that a "culture war" waged in Jewish lands between this strict interpretation and other much looser interpretations until at least the late 6th Century b.c. and quite possibly much later than that. If you look at the books of 1st and 2nd Kings, the majority of the kings of Israel and Judah were pagan-friendly to varying degrees and sometimes far more loyal to foreign gods than their own. As early as Solomon, from the time the first Temple was built, pagan idols cohabited in it. Solomon himself, son of David, was no stranger to foreign gods.

Great reformers such as the prophet Elijah and King Josiah of Judah very often had to pave the road of their reforms with buckets of blood and gore, because the common people were clearly fond of these other gods and actually not at all loyal to the Lord and wouldn't be short of blood and fire. The belief in the Lord seems as if it could have been easily extinguished altogether. Rulers like Ahab and Jezebel certainly tried. Indeed it seems an act of divine intervention that the Torah and the worship of יְהוָ֣ה continued to be preserved at all.

All of the above is by way of explaining that the religion of the Torah and Tanakh is an extreme religion. It is not user-friendly, people didn't like it. From the instant that the Israelites entered the promised land they totally blew the G-d of Moses off and did their own thing. As I mentioned, the majority of the kings of Israel and Judah were pagan-friendly so while Moses might have put the death sentence on idolatry, it wasn't often carried out. Indeed few of the commandments in the Torah were carried out. The monotheism of Moses is severe, it is strict. G-d's way or the highway, if by the highway you mean death. It was unpopular even among the Jews. Why should such a severe religion ever catch on at all?

At the very beginning of Exodus 20, G-d places His claim to respect. He, uniquely, acted to save them. The Canaanite gods of wood and stone didn't save them. The Egyptian gods sure as hell didn't save them. So G-d's claim to be respected is mentioned up front: G-d frees. G-d saves. G-d parted the Red Sea and destroyed Pharaoh's armies. Try getting your wooden idols to do that.

What is more, He offered something revolutionary to them. He didn't merely free them from one captivity so that they could create some other decadent human kingdom of their own. He tried to free them from captivity to their fellow human beings altogether. Initially no human king was envisioned for Israel, G-d Himself would be their king. Keep the Commandments: then you would not need a king. Of course they didn't, but that was the plan. A nation governed by divine law, not men. The Lord G-d of Israel was utterly unlike any pagan deity, He was revolutionary and unexpected. He freed them and then gave them a plan to keep them free. Being human, of course they fell far short of that.

And of course, the problem with pagan deities and polytheism is, it's all so vague and indeterminate. Why should you believe in Thor rather than Brahma or Asherah or Molech or Odin or Zeus? Why would you believe any of them existed rather than something else? It's all rather wishy washy. Whether you believe or pay attention to one versus another comes down to pure superstition or the traditions of your ancestors.

In contrast, the G-d of Abraham inserts some clarity in the situation:

1. He is One (there is only one real G-d, all others are figments or demons or other things that should not properly be called gods.)

2. He is indefinable and transcendent (there is no arguing over whether your god has one eye or two or a pointed hat rather than a round one.)

3. His instructions are pretty clear and precise and not open to a lot of human invention (although of course humans have interpreted and reinterpreted and misinterpreted everything since it was written, but that's because that is what humans do.)

4. No other gods are G-d.

5. He is active and supporting (you will have much more well-being in your life because of His involvement in it.)

6. He strongly dislikes human innovation in religion. It's what He says, and He has been saying the exact same thing for 3000+ years.

So just on a super basic level, polytheism doesn't make a lot of sense. Monotheism does.


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Still, I don't think I am capturing with my words the importance of that second part: no gods but G-d. No gods before Him. In order to understand it, we have to bring in that unpopular concept from the second Commandment: G-d is jealous. G-d is impassioned. G-d cares. Why?

The worship of other gods is inherently idolatry, because you are either worshiping a created being (in the sense that gods were often considered celestial objects or heavenly entities) or a thing that is not a thing at all. Or you are cutting out the middlemen of pagan idols and worshiping carnal things directly. And what does that idolatry bring? The celebration of our basest nature. Food becomes our god, sex becomes our god, money becomes our god, fame becomes our god, drugs become our god. These are the gods that humans will choose, more often than not. Indeed the Calvinists believe that on our own we cannot choose otherwise, that every act of turning towards G-d is an act of divine intervention.

This was not the purpose for which we were created. Idolatry is the subversion of the spiritual man in favor of the carnal man. G-d's intention was for the harmony of Man's spiritual and earthly nature. We were intended, in fact, to be the intersection where heaven and Earth join harmoniously. Earthly overseers and divine children both. G-d cares because he has definite intentions towards us. He has a plan. He intends it to be carried out. None of your wishy washy modern religion here,

He is a jealous G-d.

Why did that plan fail? Because it some sense it clearly did. Does G-d plan things that fail? Well for starters, in the long run it won't fail. But G-d wished for us to be free to choose, He is treating us like free beings not serfs, and so all paths good and evil are open to us. Evil brings curses and death, goodness and love of יְהוָ֣ה leads to health and life, but it is yours to choose. You are free. In the end, G-d will sift the wheat from the tares and those who are approved by Him will live in the Kingdom.

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Ultimately, I cannot tell you what is in my heart and mind when I read Exodus 20:2-3 so I cannot explain this commandment to you. My desire to explain this commandment to you must fail. I can tell you of the history of religion and the history of the Jewish people. You can read the Torah any time you like, but I don't know if that will open anything to you. While I don't admire the Muslim prophet Muhammad and don't believe he even was a prophet, I do admire the Muslim purity on one topic: there is no G-d but G-d. There was always ever only one G-d and he opened His ways unto Moses on Mt. Sinai and He alone is G-d and there is no other.

The Eternal our LORD was never a man and could never die, on a cross or otherwise. To suggest otherwise is blasphemy. I understand, there's a lot of it around, but it still is.

If you want to meet Him, crack open a Bible (or better yet a Tanakh) and dig in, and pray that He opens your eyes. There is reading enough and wisdom enough to last you a lifetime.

When I first started studying the Old Testament in earnest, honestly it offended me. It will offend you too. It will offend the sin in you. Like most of us, I was so immersed in modernity and our relativistic ways that I could not see it truly, I only saw atrocities and religious hard-asses stoning people. It will require a revolution in your sensibilities and your understanding of the world. It did for me.

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל 'הוה אֱלֹהֵינוּ 'הוה אֶחָֽד׃

Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad

Hear, O Israel: the Lord your G-d, the Lord is One.

~Deuteronomy 6:4