Love is Fundamental

 Why do the Ten Commandments exist? Because G-d loves us.

Why do the often sometimes severe punishments exist in the Torah? Same reason.

I am sometimes guilty of regarding other things, such as truth and justice, as the more fundamental parts of G-d's nature, but really the fundamental thing as far as human beings are concerned, is love.

This love is love of humans, not of beasts with human faces, and so it is very concerned with the structures of society and families necessary to make truly human humans. The Jewish word "mensch" is the kind of human meant: a humane human.

To have a happy and healthy world (and G-d who loves us wants us to have that,) you have to have a world of humane humans. Moral humans. So even the sometimes rather strict rules of the Torah are intended to that end: having a happy human society of happy well adjusted ethical humans.

Why does the Torah concern itself with sexual immorality so much? Because the absolute bedrock foundation of building this world of happy humans is stable families. One mother, one father, loyal to and procreating with only each other. Sex is powerful, that is why it is surrounded by proscriptions in the Torah. It can create life, and it can destroy lives. G-d's rules about it are designed to build healthy stable families that produce healthy stable humane humans.

You also cannot have a better world if that world is fundamentally unfair. Some people get acquitted when they are guilty; some get convicted when they are innocent. When that happens, people tend to take matters into their own hands, and that makes for a very unhappy world indeed. G-d was so concerned about this that in addition to prohibitions against false witness and unjust judges, He said that the economy basically of society should be reset every 49 years. Everyone goes back to their ancestral lands and gives up their holdings in the regions of other tribes, every slave is freed. We don't now know how that worked in practice, because if it was ever practiced it was practiced a long time ago.

The Ten Commandments exist for the sake of making societies of happy humans who can fulfill the potential of the image of G-d within them. It sounds as if I am making a relativistic statement but I am not, because there is one truth of the matter and that is G-d's truth.

G-d understands how to make happy societies far better than we do. So when we make various innovations to G-d's laws that are intended to make people happy - well, they don't work. Even if they make the individual happier, they make the society sicker. G-d is no respecter of persons: He wants the whole thing to be good, not just better for a few people.

So for instance G-d's now "controversial" laws against homosexuality: our society embraces homosexuality because we want people to be happy. You're gay, you want to be gay, so be gay and be happy. Makes things easier for you in any case, but not better for society because it erodes the fundamental structure that makes humans humane: families. Sex is a powerful drug, perhaps the most powerful, and as such it will corrupt and destroy society unless it is kept within the bounds it was created for. What was sex created for? To create new humans in the context of a loving family unit composed of one man and one woman. Imagine if heroin were suddenly legal: bodies would be piling up in the streets. Well, sex is more corrupting than that. How many people have suffered and died because of it? How many have murdered in fits of jealousy, and how many died? How many have been driven to suicide by despair? We will never know the total body count on that one.

G-d made sex powerful to make sure that humans would procreate, and to cement the bond between man and wife. Removed from that context, it is a dangerous drug.

G-d isn't just being a prude, He made his rules because He loves us. Because He loves us, He does not want us to live in deteriorating families and societies, and doesn't want us to live a beastlike existence of depravity. To not seek to fulfill the image of G-d within us, is to not aspire to be human. To not aspire to have dignity. To wish to live in a world where human life has no worth except as means to one's own ends. Because He loves us, He does not wish that for us.

People see all the rules, all the do's and don'ts, as fundamental. Non-religious people do, and sometimes religious people do too. They are NOT fundamental. LOVE is fundamental. It is just that to create a better world (and you don't love humanity if you don't want that,) you can't just do whatever you want. There are rules for how you create and maintain that world. It is not loving to be an enabler to sin, even if your intentions are good. It is not loving to the sinner, and it is not loving to society.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

~Deuteronomy 6:5-6

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.
~Leviticus 19:18

The Torah, The Tabernacle, and the Temple

 Part of the problem we encounter when we read the Torah, is that it was written to a people very long ago who lived very different lives. While everything G-d said was according to eternal principles, it was said TO THOSE people. And since G-d has not given any revelation specifically to this generation, we must extract from the particulars of that time and place, the eternal verities behind them.

Perhaps G-d has not given any revelation to this time because we and the generations that have passed for thousands of years haven't listened much to His original Commandments, the greatest of which are indeed relevant for all time and all peoples. The Ten Commandments, the Two Great Commandments, these are indeed relevant forever.

One thing that a reader of the Torah must understand is that a great deal of the Torah concerns matters relating to the Tabernacle. These indeed were revelations for that people and time, though the principles on which they were based remain. A very large number of these instructions remain incapable of being fulfilled, because THERE IS NO TABERNACLE. There may be hundreds of thousands or even some millions of churches in the world, but none of them are the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle was a singular thing that no longer exists, nor does it's successor the Temple exist. Nor would recreating the physical Tabernacle or Temple achieve anything. We have very explicit instructions on how to build the Tabernacle (not so for the original Temple,) but building it again would accomplish exactly zero. In order to build the Tabernacle anew we would need two things: a set of instructions to build it (which we have,) and the command to build it (which we have not.) Even if we say that the command to build it is implied, apart from the leadership of someone like Moses who spoke to G-d face to face, such a construction would have no legitimacy. The authority to build it anew is lacking.

And modern people typically think of the Tabernacle as solely a religious structure, because our only analogues are purely religious structures. Churches and synagogues and the like. Prior to the first king of Israel (a development which G-d did not approve of but allowed,) during the periods depicted in the Torah and the Book of Joshua, the priesthood was their GOVERNMENT and the Tabernacle the means through which part of that government was possible. It enabled a system of fines essentially for crimes which were not deserving of death (sin offerings) and also a medical system (the priesthood, who quarantined persons who had potentially contagious diseases.) Moses was both priest in a sense, and also judge and military leader. Some authority over judging less important matters was delegated to tribal leaders, but with the sanction of the priesthood.

The Torah has much information relating to the conduct of that government, which while of ongoing interest is not strictly speaking relevant in the absence of the Tabernacle. We can extract important information from these instructions, but they are no longer strictly speaking executable.

And then after the first kings of Israel came the Temple, for which no specific instructions AT THE TIME are given (Ezekiel gives instruction for the construction of a future Temple in a future age.) And the Temple comes after the kings (again, an idea that G-d did not endorse but permitted.) And this Temple became more and more strictly a religious place as the roles of government were taken over by the kings, and again in the absence of a leader with the kind of close connection to G-d that Moses had. So it is perhaps not surprising that religious observance at the Temple degraded at different times, and the Temple included at various times shrines to other gods. Arguably the religious mandate for HAVING a Temple at all is not as clear as was the case for Moses. It was built by Solomon, who was notoriously soft on foreign paganism at least in his later years. The existence of the Temple is in a sense a subjugation of the Tabernacle to earthy power (the king of Israel) and a reduction to a purely religious role.

In short, if we discard all the accretions of (often idolatrous) human tradition since then, we have the task of reconstructing what those instructions to people thousands of years ago means NOW. This is not an excuse, as it is often taken as, for disregarding parts of the Torah that are perfectly clear. We have to be very careful to make the distinction between interpreting the Torah for our particular age, and misinterpreting it to appeal to our modern desires and biases. So for instance with the prohibition on homosexuality, or cross dressing, there is no valid reason to discard that since it is in no way an issue limited to that time. Some particular instruction relating to Tabernacle worship on the other hand, well that is not currently relevant because there is no Tabernacle. It is literally impossible to execute those commandments.

One problem is that there is no longer one clear authoritative interpretation. Because of this, people seem to give themselves permission to interpret the Torah in ways clearly very hostile to its intent. Many appeal to long-running human churches, synagogues and authorities as providing the authoritative interpretation, but there is nothing less authoritative than human tradition. If we learn anything from the Tanakh, we should learn that. That's the whole point I am making. It is because of human beings changing things to suit themselves that we now lack the direct authority from G-d that existed in Moses' time. G-d clearly lets us screw up, allows us to sever our connection to Him, and we done screwed up. If you stop being people worthy of any contact with the very great holiness that is G-d, you lose that contact. As a result, there has been no successor to Moses for 3+ thousand years. And nope, that successor is not Jesus. Jesus' whole thing is that he said he was the Messiah, something that Christian and Jewish hopes have been pinned on for a very long time, but a Messiah is not G-d. A Messiah is a human king, and as G-d clearly told Samuel, human kings are a bad idea. 

 

And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected Me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking Me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you.

 ~1 Samuel 8:7-8

What is needed is a sincere, earnest and self-critical examination of the Torah. Self-critical, not in the modern sense of doubting everything and believing in the supremacy of science, but in the very Biblical sense of understanding the general corruptness of human motives. Doubting our own motives. WE are the limitation, our lack of holiness has damaged our relationship with G-d for thousands of years. We have to start from that point, of understanding how far we have screwed up. And I sense no will for that at all in the general society, or anyone really.

Churches say how they have the answer (or at least that Jesus is the answer, which implies that they have the answer too.) Oh really? Ask G-d to make a rock gush water, like Moses did. See how far you get. Ask G-d to bring down fire from the sky, as Elijah did. See how far you get.

You just have slightly less bad faith than atheists and heathens.

Religious folks somehow get the idea that asking questions is the enemy. Asking questions can be, if the questions are asked from bad faith. If they are asked from a place of doubt. If what you are really doing is passively-aggressively saying that modern people are always right and ancient people are backwards and stupid. Modern people are many things, but right or wise are rarely those things.

I have no doubt at all whatsoever that G-d exists. I also have no doubt at all whatsoever that we human beings have been continually damaging our relationship with Him, to the point where confusion clearly prevails on the Earth. Because WE don't really want Him, He doesn't force us to want Him. His truth does not manifest to us. His holiness is absent from us.

We need a spirit of reconstruction, those of us who do love G-d. We need a full recognition of how badly we screwed up, and to roll up our sleeves and get to work understanding G-d's ways, not our human traditions about them. And not what we would like them to be. We also have to redouble our efforts to become holy people. In many cases, we have to make an effort to begin with, since churches often teach a doctrine of cheap grace. We will never understand the Torah or G-d's will aright unless WE are right, which means fulfilling G-d's commandments to be a holy people.

How can we do that if we don't even understand G-d's teaching to us? The essentials are very simple. He has laid out a very simple roadmap for us.

Keep the Ten Commandments

Try to keep the two Great Commandments (these are harder.)

Avoid all such other things as G-d clearly warns about in the Torah. Avoid sexual immorality, G-d repeatedly warns against it.

And that's how you should start. 

Aaron and the Prophets

 Something in the Torah that resonates with me over and over, is when Aaron, (the High Priest of Israel,) two of his sons offer profane rituals at the Tabernacle and are consumed by fire, and G-d tells Aaron words to the effect of:

You are not allowed to cry. You may not mourn. You are not allowed.

Israel as a whole could mourn for them, but Aaron was forbidden to. On one level that's like, holy crap, the dude just lost his sons! Have a heart, Lord! But it becomes more and more clear to me.

Aaron was the High Priest of Israel. Moses wasn't, Aaron was. And yes there were ritual purity issues relating to mourning, you don't bring death into the Temple, but I believe it's more than that.

We are told that G-d is a jealous G-d. He doesn't share. He is fiercely passionate, which may offend some people's idea of what god is supposed to be, but according to the Tanakh He is. Aaron was supposed to be the person who represents all of Israel before the face of G-d. He cannot have divided loyalties in his heart. G-d must have all of him. And these two men, who happened to be his sons, defamed G-d's holy place. As a father, his response surely must have been

"My sons! My sons are dead! G-d killed my sons!"

As High Priest, his response could only be "they have desecrated the holy Tabernacle and now they have died. If they had not died, I would have had to kill them myself."

And you see that story repeated in the lives of the prophets. People having to put their feelings aside, even their very acute feelings, to represent G-d. If something is dearer to you than G-d, He tends to point that out to you.

Jeremiah, he didn't want what happened to him. He wanted to be a family man. He didn't choose to spend life being spit on and warning people in vain against a fate that he knew was about to happen to them. Imagine that for a minute. You know that the Babylonians are about to open a can of whupass on your whole beloved nation, and your job is to warn them, in vain. Why? So that they have been warned. So that they have to actually make the choice to get annihilated rather than submit to what G-d was telling them. So that they could seal their fate, and Jeremiah had to be an instrument in that.

Jeremiah arguably didn't want any part of any of that. He wanted to settle down and raise a family and not be the object of ridicule and persecution. He was chosen. Which on the one hand is, OMG, you are a prophet of Almighty G-d. Pretty cool dude. On the other hand, in any kind of material terms, pretty sucky. 

However not only prophets had to do the Aaron thing, putting aside love for nation and family and even the people you love most. The Torah states that even if your own brother or mother, even your wife or husband, entices you to the service of other gods, you must kill them (presumably legally according to the laws of ancient Israel, which means you would have had to have another witness besides yourself.) You yourself must cast the first stone to stone them to death. Your most beloved, you must pick up a stone in front of an angry mob with stones and throw the first stone at them which will result in their deaths. 

That's hardcore.

That begins to show what it really means to put G-d first. Most people, even most believers, actually don't. I am not judging that at all, it's hard, and I do think that despite what I have said here so far that G-d really is merciful and doesn't expect people to make quantum leaps in holiness and godly focus. Like, try, try your best. That's the first thing, just try. If you can do baby steps, do baby steps.

But I think that if you do try, one day you may find yourself in the position where G-d says like He did to Aaron and to others, "I want ALL of you." No divided loyalties.

"You are MINE ALONE. You do not belong to other people, you do not belong to anything else, you belong to ME ALONE."

And do not imagine that is all cupcakes and ice cream, that there are no sacrifices. There are indeed incomparable compensations, but not without cost. Measure the cost.

And I am beginning to see what that is like.

You will become an alien on your own planet. You will be different. When you make contact with other people, it will be clear that they are not on that wavelength. I try to reach out to other people, this blog is me reaching out to other people. I don't want to be alone, a square peg in an ocean of round holes, any more than any other human being does. But this is my reality. I AM a square peg in an ocean of round holes. He is a jealous, an impassioned G-d, and He does not share. 

 

“I the Lord am your G-d who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods besides Me."

~Exodus 20:2

America Is Over

 America is over, friends.

A lot of people can't believe that Biden got legitimately elected President. Now I am not saying that there were not irregularities. Probably there were. But it wouldn't have mattered.

Americans have made a choice, and that choice was made clear as day when someone who calls themselves a preacher invoked false gods on the floor of the Federal Congress. I say Federal Congress, there's nothing American about it anymore. And then they said, "Amen and Awoman."

I believe, and I have seen it long before now, that America is ripe for judgment. If G-d - the real one, not the Hindu ones - ever had a covenant with America, that covenant is OVER. And what happens when a nation breaks covenant with G-d, the only G-d? Judgment comes.

The godless are going to trammel this country for years to come, and there is no easy fix for it. There is no smiling solution that makes it magically go away. Trump isn't going to suddenly arrest Biden and Schumer and Pelosi and all the rest of the criminals in the federal government and lock them away. A lot of conservatives have been engaging in delusional thinking and wish-fulfillment.

What happened when G-d judged Israel? It was destroyed. But first the godless were allowed to revel in the fruits of their victory. They are allowed to fill the cup of their abominations to the brim. In this case, they are going to kill more babies. They are going to destroy more freedoms. Twist the laws of G-d AND Nature. They are going to do everything that is in their evil, evil hearts to do.

And they are, evil. Very evil.

And nothing but the very destruction of the country will stop them. And ultimately it will come to that, but we have a long dark road before we get there. Darkness is falling.

One of the things they could do is use the vaccine as a loyalty test, to see who is loyal and who is not. So they can target those who are not. So they can punish them.

DO NOT under any circumstances get the vaccine. If they can demand that they push a needle full of mystery goo in your arm, they own you. 

I'm sorry, I am rather of the opinion that G-d owns me. I would rather be on their list as the sort of person to be quietly shuffled off to the camp, than on their list of obedient slaves. Slaves of true dark and profound evil.

If you happen to have a big tank or a tanker truck handy, you might want to fill it with gasoline now because one of their prime objectives is the Green New Deal. Which means very little except the price of gas will skyrocket and a whole lot of people will be out of work so they will be clamoring at Washington's back door for more handouts. And of course, more draconian controls of people's behavior and whereabouts. They've been telling people to stay in their homes for 8 months, what makes you think it will change? They will stay in their homes, unemployed, looking for their dole checks in the mail.

Which of course means eventually the US Dollar won't be worth wiping your arse with. The Environment thanks you. Die peasants.

I have been saying it for a long time now and I am still saying it: America will be judged. It will be judged for its godlessness, its murders, and all the other abominations. It will be judged for abortion.

THAT FUTURE CANNOT BE AVOIDED.

If you keep trying to paint a smiley face on that, the only thing you will be doing is losing the opportunity to prepare yourself for the big fat smelly deuce that is going to be coming down the sewer pipe in the coming years.

Recognize it now: America as we knew it is done.