Sayyid Qutb

To be genuinely religious is to  be  an extremist, in the eyes of the World. I am a religious extremist: I happen to be a largely peaceful one.

This is sort of a counterpoint to my previous post, and in it I will be talking about something that I don't usually talk about: the viewpoints of an Islamic scholar. An Islamic scholar who, intentionally or unintentionally, inspired a generation of Islamic militants and terrorists.

Now, I don't think that Muhammad was a prophet. I follow the Torah and the Tanakh. But you can listen to all sorts of people and take what is good from it, and I happen to think some of what Qtub said was actually good. So, lets take it as given that I think Qutb was genuinely an insightful guy, if misguided in certain respects.

What I am going to talk about is the mistake he made, and consequently the mistake that those who followed his teachings and engaged in violence and terrorism made.

(Well some of those were probably just plain bad people and didn't need a reason but lets assume for the sake of argument that guys like Ayman al-Zawahiri and bin Laden were just trying to follow Qtub's lead. Qtub was dead, executed, before they became particularly active, so he wasn't around to lead or teach them.)

What was the mistake I am referring to?

Qtub and at least initially guys like al-Zawahiri were operating on two fundamentally contradictory assumptions. One, that countries that describe themselves as Muslim are not actually Muslim and that "Real Islam" is, if not extinct, severely moribund. This is because of Jahiliyyah, ignorance, a world system of spiritual darkness. And second, that these fundamentally secular "muslim" people in fundamentally secular countries following man-made laws would, upon being reintroduced to "Real Islam," rise up against their secular leaders and institute rule by G-d's law alone.

Now this contradictory assumption is based on the fact that Muhammad did in fact rapidly conquer the original world of Jahiliyyah, the pagan, Jewish and Christian world in which his movement was founded. So they might say the light of the Quran wowed the people and gave Muhammad & Co. a degree of success and conquest that would seem improbable. The force of the Quran alone, so this thinking goes, conquered that part of the world. Thus, it could do it again.

However, the people that Muhammad converted, did not believe they were already Muslims. This if you will is an additional level of Jahiliyyah that Qtub did not account for. Therefore his followers' attempts to overthrow secular rule and institute Shariah law alone, instead of spontaneously arousing a movement from the populace, failed miserably.

An example of this is the attack on foreign tourists at an archeological site. Now, people say that at least some people in Muslim countries were dancing in the streets when 911 happened. IF that is true, it is because America was viewed as a geopolitical enemy. Not a religious one. America supports Israel: most Muslims do not like Israel because of their treatment of the Palestinians. When terrorists attacked European tourists at an ancient Egyptian archaeological site, the Egyptian people on the whole were furious. Why?

For a very secular, Jahiliyyah reason: tourists brought money. Many livelihoods were dependent on tourists. The Egyptian government and people as one condemned the attack and condemned others that followed just as vociferously. It was these attacks that turned the Egyptian people AWAY from Islamic fundamentalism, not TOWARD a Shariah state. Their plan to inspire an uprising utterly failed. Indeed, before the US government turned them into a sort of hero for some, Al Qaeda was really sort of a sad discredited organization on the downturn.

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What lessons can we draw from this? No sane person thinks that killing random European tourists was morally acceptable, and it certainly wasn't useful. If Qtub's idea was radical devotion to Shariah, al Zawahiri's slaughter of innocents isn't in accordance with it. Qtub himself may or may not have been involved in trying to assassinate Egypt's secular leader (that's why he was executed,) but that's a military target. Not a civilian one. Of course Qtub was accused of plotting even more dire things than that, but for those things we will never know where Nasser's propaganda ends and Qtub's own thought and actions begin. He was accused of plotting to flood the entire lower Nile valley, killing untold people. Did he actually plan that? We'll never know for sure. My guess is that he did not.

Okay, lets forget about Islamic militants. Lets take a more sensible example from militant Christians. When Paul Jennings Hill killed an abortion doctor and his bodyguard, was that a morally acceptable action? In my opinion, yes. Laudable even. He killed a person to prevent them from continuing to kill innocent people.

Did it accomplish a damn thing in the big picture? Is America more likely to outlaw abortion now than before he did it?

Absolutely not. So should he have done it? I would argue, no. Which is to say, it was not an effective means to what should be our shared end, eliminating abortion altogether.

According to the Torah, the whole community was supposed to enforce the Law. If someone was convicted of a crime that carried the death penalty, the whole community stoned him. In that context, it was obligatory for a community member to stone that person. It would have been immoral for them not to. Neither was one stone likely to kill someone. The community killed that person. That's the very reason why stoning as versus some other execution method was commanded.

That condition, the whole community enforcing the Law, does not exist in America and especially not as regards abortion. Should an abortion provider be stoned to death? Yes. Is it obligatory for ME by myself to stone them to death, in the absence of such a religious community and their shared obligation to uphold the Law? No.

In the previous post, I said that a "ends justify means" morality is immoral. If you justify an action by its intended end, any action could be considered moral. True moral action is motivated by principle. No end can justify the taking of a life. Some principles can. So for instance, if I am on a liferaft in the middle of the arctic ocean, and we are running out of food or taking on water, pushing my fellow passenger off the boat is still murder. It is not murder if HE was trying to push me or someone else off the boat beforehand.

Just as much however, the lack of viable ends can justify the lack of action, if that action is not obligatory. So in the stoning example above, the community stoning the person is obligatory and you as a community member taking part in that action is obligatory. Where the community does not exist, the action is not obligatory. It may be laudable, as Paul Hill killing that abortion doctor was laudable, but you are not an immoral person if you do not do it. There, ends can take precedence because the action is not morally required.

Suppose shooting kids in schoolyards was the law of the land. You could legally hunt kids in schoolyards. Would it be laudable if I were to shoot the shooter? Absolutely. Am I morally required to shoot the shooter? Absent a direct individually-binding commandment from G-d Himself, no.

Qtub's fundamental mistake was to underestimate Jahiliyyah. It is ironic that the person who made that concept relevant for the modern world (or at least the modern Islamic world) did not truly understand it. While I am not the person to recommend readings from the New Testament, he should have read the last few chapters of the Gospel of John. In it, Jesus says that SATAN is the ruler of this world.

The supposedly Muslim population of Egypt, they weren't slaves to Jahiliyyah against their will. They wanted to be secular in outlook, while hanging on to selected parts of Islam. They wanted Jahiliyya, just as the overwhelming majority of humans on Earth want Jahiliyya.

In a world absolutely dominated by Jahiliyya then, including human law allowing what G-d's law condemns, the most constructive actions are to

1. Wait on G-d's action. Jahiliyya inevitably leads to destruction as it is anti-life in the long run. Destruction can sow the ground for new growth. That destruction is not ours to create, it is the inevitable consequence of fighting G-d's law. We must prepare as if that destruction is imminent, whether it is or not.

2. Build a core community that accepts G-d's law and does not participate in the Jahiliyya-version of religion like modern Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Instead, it would be based on G-d's word in the Tanakh alone. Qtub believed, correctly, that the word of G-d must not be taken merely as a subject of intellectual or cultural curiosity or interest, but like the commands of a commanding officer in war. A community that takes its lead from the Tanakh alone, not from cultural Judaism or cultural Christianity, would be a serious enough endeavor for several lifetimes.

Thus actions like those of Paul Hill, though commendable, are not either required or useful. How much less the actions of those like Eric Rudolph in the Olympic Park bombing which both violated G-d's law in its action (killing innocents) and was at best not useful for moving the country towards those goals he believed in. You don't get to kill innocents to prove the point that killing innocents is immoral. He broke G-d's law. It is ironic then, that while Rudolph is cooling his heels in Supermax, Hill was executed.

"Forget it Jake, it's Jahiliyya." ;)

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.

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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