Consciousness: the Human CHOICE.

Monday September 7, 2009 • 38 Comments 

Consciousness The Human Choice (Click here to listen to an Presage Publishing MP3 Audio production)

By John Immel

The challenge before me, in my ongoing quest to address the sources of tyranny, is the dual task of deconstruction and construction.

Responding to historic tyrants and the philosophical bulwark offered by modern day theological and political shills is the process of deconstruction. It takes some effort to unravel what people from antiquity have said and why. And it takes more effort to cut through the intellectual demagoguery and elitism that masquerades as thoughtful, magnanimous wisdom. People need to see that the academic issues are not as cut and dried as those in the ivory tower, or under the miter and simar, would like to pretend.

The process of deconstruction is necessary because so many people don’t even know they are being tyrannized. They suffer the pain of authoritarianism but the historical doctrines tell them the pain is normal, the correct outworking of spiritual “truths.” So the work up till now has been to point to the pain and the ideas driving the pain and say: “uhh…hey… that isn’t the way that’s supposed to be.”

But the other side of this is offering an alternative, a superior synthesis of freedom. People cannot move from…a something to a… nothing. Man is not built to subsist in a moral, ethical, and intellectual vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. Man abhors chaos.

Chaos makes us teeter at the edge of futility. Toil grates on our bones. We make enormous efforts to eliminate chaos. And I am not talking about a messy room and some dirty dishes. We all have some toleration for general disorder; some more than others. But none of us thrive under the pressure of true chaos; a time and space where no outcome is sure, no effort is rewarded, no foundation is firm, and no pain comes to an end.

Man’s hate for moral, ethical, and intellectual chaos drives him to fill in the blanks of cause and effect looking for meaning: looking for a way to order the mental anarchy. And man has proved himself truly creative in manufacturing meaning quite independent of reality, which of course is endless disaster.

I know you, dear Spiritual Tyranny reader, need an alternate synthesis. You need somewhere to hang your intellectual beanie to begin integrating the world so you can have moral clarity in the free pursuit of your life. You NEED that moral clarity almost more than you need air, because without that moral clarity you will lie down and die.

Indeed, if you take the pulse of your despair, you will notice that dejection is directly proportional to the  de-affirmation of one’s life (the moral value and the sum of choices), and conversely, the greater personal affirmation of the value of one’s life, (the moral value and the sum of their choices), the greater the sense of joy and fulfillment. Make no mistake, moral clarity is an essential of human existence:  which is exactly why Tyrants and Despots seek to inculcate the masses with indoctrinated despair. The closer to despair you are, the easier you are to polity.

Up till now, Spiritual Tyranny has been focused on deconstructing and answering the 5 rudimentary elements of tyranny: Dictated Good, Incompetent Masses, Universal Guilt, Abolition of Ambition, and Collective Conformity.

That deconstruction will continue, but today I am shifting gears. Today I start offering a synthesis of freedom.

To that end ….

*******

The Gospel according to John Immel 1: 1

1)  Proximity to truth has nothing to do with embracing truth.

The Gospel according to John Immel 1: 10 - 12

10) My son, consider my words: do not let them depart from your mind. Consider the Religious Fanatic with his eyes out of focus to see truths that only the Elect, the Enlightened, the Predestined can see. If you only REAALLLLY understood his doctrines, you would never believe otherwise: critical review if his dogma is forbidden and the source of your self-deception. He evangelizes you to join him in un-conscious bliss or suffer the wrath of cosmic powers.  11) Consider the Pot smoker: with every inhale, he sucks his mind into a fog. Consider the Alcoholic: with every drink, he gulps down liquid oblivion. Consider the Crack Smoker: every puff, he bends reality into a surreal dream of sexual euphoria.  12) They all have one goal: to blunt the edges of reality. They all deliberately push their minds out of focus. They all medicate against the rigor of consciousness.

Human development travels the path from birth to the rudiments of physical perception, (Taste, Touch, Sight, Smell, and Sound) to identifying that nature of singular things (Doggy, Kitty, Blanky) to conceptual understanding (Dog-ness, Cat-ness, Blanky-ness).

Most people travel this path without too much fuss and feathers by the time they are about 12.  The human race survives because–for the most part–this base level growth is instinctual. Human beings can survive with this developmental threshold, but only barely.

The rudiments of this stage are expressed simply. To be hungry means to eat. To be cold means to seek warmth. To be angry means to hit. To be sad means to cry. To feel aroused is to have sex. These are all powerful drives by necessity to fill humanity with the essential ambition to survive in a dangerous and inhospitable world. The downside of this developmental threshold is it holds people in bondage to the senses.

People at this developmental stage are driven by momentary felt needs unable to see the cause and effect of their wants, drives, and actions. The world is no bigger than the pain of hunger, the bite of cold, the drive of sex, and the fear of survival.

What lies beyond is a hazy…something…that cannot be defined because the momentary physical pressures take all of their meager focus. So overwhelming are these physical forces to the un-strengthened psyche that man is almost impotent in using his mind for much else. He is driven by a binary existence: pleasures are to be sought and pains are to be avoided. The result: man is oblivious to the broader systems shaping the time and space in which he exists.

This is the developmental threshold of animals. And as it turns out, animals are better equipped to survive because their physiology is adapted to their environment.

Human beings must adapt their environment to themselves within hours, and in some environments minutes, to stay alive.

For man to THRIVE, he must find the lever of his own existence. All humanity has this lever because it is how we were created. Like all levers, it is a tool for use at the discretion of the user. This lever to alter Man’s world, for the benefit of his life, is the capacity to “See” what cannot be seen and take actions towards creating that reality.

This lever is the power of abstraction.

Select animals demonstrate similar ability, but Man possesses a LIMITLESS ability to ABSTRACT. Man has a limitless ability to project beyond his senses and see a reality that can be created by his declarations, intentions, and actions. This is the source of fire, the wheel, and sliced bread. Without this ability, we would still be in caves with lifespans in the teens and infant mortality rates close to 70%, eating our bacon, lettuce, and tomato separately.

“Be Fruitful and Multiply, Rule and Subdue the Earth…”

Contrary to historic, simple-minded, interpretive Church tradition, this is not a command limited to breeding like rabbits. These are the first words to hit human ears. And with these words, God set forth the intended course of human existence–the foundational metaphysical reality for man’s eternal future. With those words, God breathed into our very DNA the power to realize we were even created with DNA. Within those nine words is all the requisite ambition, empowerment, intention, expectation, and justification for every action that man would ever need to carry out the global mission.

It is no accident that the creepy, crawly, flying things teeming on the face of the earth and swimming in the deep, do not have this power of limitless abstraction. This is the foundation of our charge to rule and subdue. Ruling and subduing requires the ability to abstract. How can one know the best course of action without the ability to see cause and effect of multiple factors that have not taken place? How can one command an outcome without knowing the dynamic tensions of the systems he seeks to enforce?

Only a consciousness able to see beyond the moment, to extrapolate cause and effect of infinite factors is truly qualified to rule. Only a consciousness able to suppress momentary wants can see the power of saving capital and planning its most effective use. Only an individual created in the image of a god with those qualifications is eligible to justly tame the chaotic and rule the un-subjugated.

But here is the dirty little secret of human existence. The power to abstract is accessed by CHOICE. Just like the muscle power to lift ten pounds is accessed by choice, so is the power to project beyond the rudiments of the physical moment. All humanity is faced with this fundamental decision to turn their minds on…or not. Said another way: the choice before all men is to be conscious…or not.

Levers are really nothing more than a focus for energy. Consciousness is the energy of the human mind. Consciousness is the choice of bringing the mind to bear. The lever of this focus is the power to abstract: to see what is not and act as if it is.

Man must choose to move a thousand pounds by focusing on the muscle set holding a crowbar. So also man must choose to see the cause and effect relationship between actions and consequences.

Since consciousness is not automatic, since the focus of the mind necessitates choice, freedom is at the foundation of truly human experience. By definition, the ability to see alternate paths of action, the power to see abstractions, necessitates the ability to choose a course of action.

Without this foundation, everything is determined by forces that are never impacted by human input. Such determinism renders man an ill-suited animal in a bewilderingly hostile environment. Such determinism blatantly dismisses the essence of the divine charge: “Be fruitful and multiply; rule and subdue the earth…”

Proverbs 4:20 and 21

20My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings.    21Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart.

Hebraic Canonical Wisdom literature is filled with exhortations to intentionally focus on wisdom, to bring to bear the mental faculties. Proverbs exhorts that finding the cause and effect of prosperous, righteous, and just existence is a self-appointed task that requires an endless commitment.

What must we focus on? The answer is the reality that is all around: the reality that is in the streets.

Proverbs 3:20 to 22

20Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets:  21She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying, 22How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?

Here is the Immel translation: Wisdom stands in the road screaming, “HEY STUPID, HOW LONG ARE YOU GOING TO STAY STUPID? Hey simpleton, how long are you going to stay preoccupied with the taste, touch, hearing, sight, and smell of your existence?”

Wisdom is the stage of integrating perceptions with moral and ethical principle and effective creative action. The senses are sources of information but they are not able to provide the foundations of truly human action. The senses are to be informed by refined truth. Wisdom is found merely by paying attention to the reality screaming from the street.

But here is the rub. What did I say in the Immel Gospel? Verse 1: Proximity to truth has nothing to do with embracing truth.

How many men held flint and steel in their hands and never intentionally produced fire?

How many of them watched sparks fly from the collision of flint and steel before one bright boy finally made the connection of CAUSING that collision near some leaves and twigs?

How many of those bright boys went away disgusted because they didn’t focus on the reality that the twigs and the leaves needed to be dry?

The above are all rudimentary understanding that humanity has possessed for thousands of years, but they are all abstractions–the ability to see what is NOT and act as if it DOES –required to create fire at will. The moment one man mastered these abstractions and taught it to others was the moment all humanity benefited forever. This is the manifestation of being fruitful: this is the divine mandate to rule and subdue in action. Man mastering his environment for his own appointed purpose.

Humanity benefits only as long as they continue to openly display wisdom. Again, proximity to truth has nothing to do with embracing truth.

Wisdom stands in the streets blaring its benefit and people walk by it like coins on an American Street. Wisdom is all around. Wisdom is noisy. Wisdom is demanding action. Wisdom is demanding attention. Those who refuse to focus on its voice miss wisdom’s instruction.

About the age of 12, man (of average intellectual ability) is confronted with foundational abstractions. Algebra is the first foray into numeric abstraction where the human mind is asked to live the concrete of “This many…” as the toddler holds up three fingers to substitute the variable X.

With enough effort, the human mind can use the language of Math and the rudimentary abstractions of Algebra to travel the path through Geometry, pre-Calculus, and Calculus. From these increased levels of abstraction, man is moved from the cave to the log cabin, to the skyscraper, to the cars we drive, to the moon. The world was created a dangerous, inhospitable place. Man’s job is to make it otherwise. The only limitation that man endures in this pursuit is his will to persist in the work of understanding.

I submit that ethics, religion, politics et al. are nothing more than the language of philosophical abstraction: the philosophical algebra necessary to grasp the nature of human existence and the subsequent cause and effect of righteous outworking.

But like many students in Math class, people trip over the FOCUS necessary to excel at abstractions. The pressure of consciousness begins when the young psyche is faced with the cause and effect of its own existence: the necessity to work, to create, to plan–save capital so they can create–so they can prepare for the divine mandate and order chaos. The limitation that the young mind endures is his will to persist in the work of understanding.

Here is where man dies. He intentionally exchanges truth for a lie. The result is always pain. But instead of remedializing his understanding of truth and forcibly rejecting lie, Man fights truth and brings more pain.

Pain is the pre-warning of pending death. Pain is the symptom of ill. Pain is designed to point man away from his actions and words and intentions. But instead of focusing on the wisdom before him, Man seeks to escape reality. This escape takes two forms:  medication or evasion. It is here that man shows his love of darkness. It is here that man first seeks to absolve himself of the responsibility of his reality, evading the content of the cosmos before him, refusing to act on the divine mandate: “Be fruitful and multiply; rule and subdue the earth.”

The result is profoundly consistent: chaos reigns and prosperity never comes: man becomes unfruitful; man does not multiply. Man fails to work and by failing to work at his mandate of creation fueled by the power of focus, he begins to disintegrate, and the disintegration always ends in the same place: dust to dust.

I tell you the truth against the many historic voices having perpetuated a lie. Man’s death is a choice: Man has his back to the truth and feels it press into his spine, hears its drumming voice in his ear and CHOOSES to ignore its counsel. He refuses to look at the ongoing cause and effect of creation and see its order and appropriately respond to what his senses clearly show him.

Unchecked, man descends down the intentional path exchanging the truth for a lie until he lands in the muck of his own depravity: a condition of sensory addiction so consuming he forgets his place at the head of creation and ruts with the very creatures he was sent to govern. He commits the ultimate moral atrocity by prostrating himself before whatever image he chips out of stone.

This disastrous indolence produces endless psychic pain. To escape the pain, man self-medicates in an endless cycle of debauchery. He utterly fails to understand the cause and effect of his own torment. He fails to understand the life pressures upon his sensory existence are the byproduct of his own choice. Man’s bondage is self-imposed until he becomes a prisoner of flesh so tyrannical it bleeds over into all forms of despotism consuming the world in rivers of blood.

The Gospel according to John Immel 1: 12

12) They all have one goal: to blunt the edges of reality. They all deliberately push their minds out of focus. They all medicate against the rigor of reality.

In a twist of incomprehensible evil, religion has become the advocacy of Zen nothingness, of thoughtlessness, consciousless-ness, selflessness, reducing man to a mindless automaton blown about by every wind of his base drives. These twisted doctrines condemn him for failing to cultivate life beyond the flesh-driven stage and simultaneously rebukes him for seeking his own intentional awareness. No teaching can be viler than dogma destroying the roots of his God-given mandate: “Be fruitful and multiply; rule and subdue the earth…”

As said above: ruling and subduing requires the ability to abstract; a consciousness able to see beyond the moment, to plan, to extrapolate cause and effect of infinite factors. Only an individual with these qualifications can be eligible to justly subdue the chaotic and rule the un-subjugated.

Here is the source of Spiritual Tyranny. Indeed, here is the source of all bondage–people who refuse to raise their consciousness to prevail over life’s rigor.

Here is the source of your bondage. Somewhere on the life path you forfeited the responsibility of focus: the responsibility of intention. You want to drift through life avoiding the pains of consciousness. Yet, inexplicably, the pain persists. You turned off the apparatus of limitless abstractions and drugged the mind into a haze. Somehow you came to believe that somewhere in a blank, nothing, self-emptying existence the pains and the worries and the pressures and lusts would all disappear. Maddeningly, the pain worsens the closer you get to that zero, selfless “spiritual” vacuum. The spiral into dissatisfaction and despair seems to gain momentum with every passing day.

Do you want the psychic pain to stop? Are you sure? Because no one else can do it for you. It requires work. It will feel uncomfortable against the flesh that you have either pampered or starved into miserable wreckage. It will require you to get strong. It will require you to use a muscle you’ve not used often: or worse, excused yourself from the responsibility. Do you want to have the life that you always believed God provided?

Here is how you start. Engage your mind and turn on the developmental stage of abstraction. This is the lever of your fruitful, multiplying, ruling, and subduing existence.

Exercise what it is to be truly human: CHOOSE to be Conscious.



Dear Christian Chicken Little

Monday January 19, 2009 • 27 Comments 

You’re scared and you don’t know why. You remain scared after so many years have gone by. And now, finally, after all these years, you are reading the stories: they differ in detail but the elements, the arguments, and the outcomes are eerily, unnaturally similar.

People (like you) who did what they were told, listened to Pastoral counsel, gave over profound amounts of personal transparency, and admitted flaws as a matter of doctrinal course.

People (like you) who found themselves required to obey counsel that was flawed, even catastrophically dangerous, or ridiculously heavy-handed.

People (like you) who bought into the Matthew 18 ethic as the essential conflict resolution process only to find that when called to account SGM leadership, replaced transparency with a stonewall of authoritarian posturing, ruthless character assassination, and a machine dedicated to personal marginalization.

People (like you) describe the aftermath with blunt similarity: profound confusion, heartache, and despair.

A variation of the same refrain lingers in the air melancholy and ominous. They are your words too: “I thought I was crazy….”

Your breath freezes in your chest: realization dawns bright and slashing like a knife across a matted wound: “I’m not alone!”

Yet what does this mean? What can it mean? The reality that there are others, many, many, others with the same story isn’t satisfying. It brings up so many pains, so many hurts, so many confusing feelings — feelings that you thought were long buried, long dealt with, but are most emphatically not reconciled.

The force of emotion is frightening. Have I really not forgiven? Am I still guilty before a Holy God for failure to live up to yet another standard? The experiences with Sovereign Grace Ministries was harrowing enough the first time around do I dare go back into that head space–that soul-crushing heart space? Maybe it is best to just leave well enough alone. Maybe it is best just to let bygones be bygones. Forgive and FORGET! Walk away. Don’t think about it. Besides, the fear, I can’t shake the fear.

The fear is sooo deep that the mounting evidence of Sovereign Grace Ministries’ catastrophic bankruptcy of judgment and practice still does not free you to utter a harsh word aloud.

You read the Bible for comfort and find only words of condemnation. You hear the pastoral voices drumming through your head, the accusations of sinfulness and pride, and pride and sinfulness. You measure your life against the SGM yardstick and find yourself endlessly short. You cannot throw away the yardstick because you accept the premise that it is a “Biblical” standard. Your ever-present, nagging, pressing, hurting, foreboding suspicion is that the departure from Sovereign Grace Ministries is ultimately a failure of yours, not a failure of theirs. That is what they told you to believe and that is what still dominates your mind.

Yet, you cannot find the path of reconciliation. If you could have, you would have. You loved them. You devoted your soul to the calling. You abandon yourself to the church passion.

If method existed to resolve yourself to the despicable treatment, you would have long since reconciled yourself ultimately back into their good graces. Indeed, you walk into every church with the desperate hope that all this will be SGM without the name and the oppression, only to find the people infused with every social ill SGM railed against. This seems to prove the assertion that every church has its problems: and the concurrent thought–maybe SGM isn’t really so bad.

Yet you cannot find the path through the suffered wrongs, the twists of logic, the exploitation of personal boundaries, and the subtle, soul-crushing condemnation.

You read the blogs and you shake and you weep for the tyrannies that you see on the printed page, and  for yourself. And you wonder why it happens. You wonder how it is possible. How can this evil persist? How can people let it happen?

And then you remember your own fear. Your own utter inability to say out loud what happened to you: to tell your story, to make yourself and your pains plain. You find your eyes traveling skyward in the silent hope that it is not really falling. And prayers laced with admitted sinfulness cascades across your lips. Hopefully, God will withhold his justifiable wrath for the list of sins attached to your soul. You hedge your bets, staying quiet;  if you refuse to call for justice and righteousness, that will keep you out of God’s mind, away from the path of the boogieman of bad.

So you sit inert in the torment of your fears. Filled with conflict between the injustice and your own impotence. Left to ask one question: how can someone (else) let this happen?

I’m going to tell you how it is possible. I’m going to tell you the fundamental reason, and it really isn’t all that complicated. I am going to point to the foundational thought of your fear. It is the heart and soul of Sovereign Grace Tyranny’s manipulation. It is the heart and soul of ALL Spiritual Tyranny.

This foundational thought is the foundation for the Shamans of old, the child sacrifice by Molech Priests, the power behind the witches’ Evil Eye, the gargoyles of the Middle Ages, the underlying threat for the Charis-costal “Touch Not God’s Anointed,” the energizing force that kept David Koresh in the comfy embrace of adolescent girls and cult wives, without a word of protest from fathers or husbands. This foundational thought is the Demagogues of Dictated Good tool of extortion. This foundational thought is essential for the philosophical premise that Man is a sacrificial animal. This foundational thought is the lake that feeds the rivers of blood throughout all Religions in history.

Before I tell you what this is, I am going to tell you a story. I want you to know that this is no academic muse but a realization that was lived in the face of real life, soul-sucking pressure.

It had been three days since I’d last talked to my father. I am standing in the Potomac Police station and for the first time I let myself say my suspicions. “I think my parents have been killed.” I vividly remember how I started crying and how the police department went silent. I expected my parents to arrive at my house some three days prior.

What started as a few curious phone calls back to family and friends and parental cell phone, to account for their tardiness, slowly turned into an ongoing campaign to contact law enforcement in every city from their home town to my place in Potomac, Maryland. From calm, affirming conversations with my grandmother and sister and aunts, to endless prayers and frantic mini trips to check all the potential places they could have ended up.

Day three and four of their absence were grueling exercise in patience between updates and very long nights spent pacing the football field at Churchill High School praying for every good outcome and blessing I could think. But I had a nagging dread that I struggled to shake: something bad had happened to my parents. As the human mind tends to do, I started trying to create cause and effect with the unfolding events. The timing was too spooky to describe. I had very recently distributed one of the early copies of Blight in the Vineyard, detailing my interaction with then CLC/PDI pastoral “care.”

My commentary is scathing now, and so it was then. In the foreword of Blight in the Vineyard, I wrote these words to sum up my relentless critique.

Some will suggest that my frank, open commentary is just eloquent vindictiveness. The following begins my response.

“I have indeed inveighed sharply against impious doctrines, and I have not been slack to censure my adversaries on account, not of their bad morals, but of their impiety. And for this, I am so far from being sorry, that I have brought my mind to despise the judgments of men, and to persevere in this vehement zeal, according to the example of Christ, who, in his zeal, calls his adversaries a generation of vipers, blind, hypocrites, and children of the devil… The ears of our generation have been made so delicate by the senseless multitude of flatterers, that, go soon as we perceive that anything of ours is not approved of, we cry out that we are being bitterly assailed; and when we can repel the truth by no other pretense, we escape by attributing bitterness, impatience, intemperance, to our adversaries. What would be the use of salt, if it were not pungent? or of the edge of the sword, if it did not slay?”

Just a week or so before my parent’s disappearance, I received a letter rebuking me for my “eloquent vindictiveness.”  How could I dare speak against these “Men of great character?” It was the stiffest admonishment to date, a capstone on a list of judgments against my character and conduct, and another event in a growing list of church “friends” scrambling to the shadows deliberately distancing themselves from me, for fear that my “deleterious influence” and my disfavor would rub off on them.

My paranoia ran away with me on those long nights. Breathtaking fear gripped my soul. Was it true? God was disciplining me through events perpetrated upon my parents? My mind was a tidal pool of torment as I heard the words condemn me:  “God opposes the proud.”  Was I proud to reject the treatment that I’d suffered? Was I arrogant for presuming to take action and voice my criticisms? On and on the doubt and the questions churned inside me until finally I came to a resolve.

This is what I said. “I refuse to be tyrannized. If the New Birth, and the Adoption of Sons, and the manifestation of the Holy Spirit is not sufficient for you to speak to me as a man…if you have to kill my parents to get my attention, then you murdered your Son for no reason and humanity is lost. If you have a problem with what I did…you need to talk to ME!”

Actually, I shouted those words at the top of my lungs: dogs barked and doors opened.

God’s words came back to me that night: “John, your parents are fine. You will see them tomorrow. What do your fears really say of me?”

I know… the irony here is too much: an overt advocate for rational objective truth claiming a conversation with God. But hey, that is no more ironic than advocates of Kantian philosophy bemoaning the lack of intellectuals in the world, or Calvinists railing against the lack of moral character in humanity.

Day four waxed long, as minutes refused to become hours. Police were beginning to coordinate an effort between  jurisdictions across three states; a hunt was about to start in earnest. I was on the phone with law enforcement when my parents walked through the door.

They were indeed fine. My mother said that for three days she’d had a nagging thought to call me but the cell reception at Gettysburg national battlefield prevented a signal, and she’d forgotten when they’d been near a land line. Ten years ago, to my parents, cell phones were a curios extravagance to be kept turned off at all times. As it turned out, my father’s memory of meeting times and dates was dramatically different than mine…or my sister’s or my grandmother’s or my aunts, for that matter. My Grandmother had a lot to say about that later.

“What do your fears really say of me?” Excellent question this. One that I have spent the last decade, give or take, unraveling in my own mind.

Main Entry: ca·pri·cious
Pronunciation: k&-’pri-sh&s, -’prE-
Function: adjective
1 : governed or characterized by impulse or whim: as a : lacking a rational basis b : likely to change suddenly
2 : not supported by the weight of evidence or established rules of law -often used in the phrase arbitrary and capricious -ca·pri·cious·ly adverb -ca·pri·cious·ness noun

3: determined by chance or impulse or whim rather than by necessity or reason; “a capricious refusal”; “authoritarian rulers are frequently capricious”; “the victim of whimsical persecutions”

Dear Christian Chicken Little, here it is. The source of the fear and the starting point of all Spiritual Tyranny–The gods are capricious. Shamans the world over, since the beginning of human existence, have sold this idea to the masses. Demagogues of Dictated Good use divine capriciousness as their primary extortion tool.

Only one way exists to deal with people: Force — Ideas or Violence.

The force of ideas is the power to persuade, to aim an argument at someone’s head. Assuming they are capable and interested in thinking, truth has an amazing capacity to bear itself out.

Violence is the point of a sword or the point of a nail, robbing a man of his choices, ultimately robbing his mind, his capacity to think, rendering him vacant, empty, mute, and robotic, without consent or embrace. Extortion is really force, aimed at a valued hostage.

In spiritual matters, the force is always the disposition of divine pleasure and the hostage is always the future state of one’s soul. Refusing to obey the shamans is always met with roaring, hazy coercion, or quiet foreboding implication. Demagogues of Dictated Good love to let their flock stew in the terror of their own minds, filling in the disaster and retribution by the endless gremlins of bad. Demagogues of Dictated Good predict all manner of misadventure at failed compliance to their considered opinions. They beam magnanimous smiles as reports of disaster affirm their assertion.

God help us when the Demagogues of Dictated Good join forces with history’s Hitlers drunk on bloodlust and despotism: combined, they use fire and sword to enforce “GOD’s” will. The result is the carnage of the Aztecs, the immolation of  Witches by the Catholic Church, or the endless string Islamic adolescent suicide bombers.

To appease the  capricious God, Man is laid with his throat bare for sacrifice. Mystic Despots proclaim Human life cheaper than trees. Mystic Despots use force to subordinate Man’s well-being below the lives of snail darters, or snakes, or cats, or whatever other twisted figure he chips out of stone to compel humans to prostrate before.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, your fears, your torment hinges here. You believe God is capricious: that He does not deal with men rationally, with knowable intentional purpose, but perpetrates upon them pain, and suffering, and hardship, beating them about the head and shoulders for daring to aspire to…much of anything. You believe that God only deals with man by force. You believe that His primary method of communication is piteously drubbing man about the head and shoulders with the circumstances of life.

You are inclined to object, telling me that it isn’t capriciousness but mystery:  “His ways are above our ways; His methods past finding out….” He loves us, whatever the great mystery of His knowledge, His purposes and motives are love.

Yes, I know. Capricious implies that God is unloving. Mystery makes it sound so much more benevolent. But that intellectual distinction is really no distinction at all: it amounts to the same thing. “You don’t understand me!” Whack! “You are sinful” Whack! “I love you!” Whack! “You are confused!” Whack!

Capriciousness eradicates cause and effect wisdom and understanding. Capriciousness destroys the concept of values and obliterates a standard of measure. And so does the fictitious appeal to God’s manifold mystery.

It is in this valueless, cause-and-effect vacuum that the Destroyers rise. The Destroyers are the Demagogues of Dictated Good. They thrive because YOU believe only THEY can bring order to divine will. Because YOU believe  THEY are uniquely qualified to point out the cause-and-effect of God’s intent. Because YOU believe they are the REAL source of value.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, your fears, your torment hinges here. Until you believe deep down in your soul that God fully intends for you to know His intention and wishes you no ill will, that He conceives no arbitrary harm against you, you will forever cower before Him like a medieval villager before the Gargoyles.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, I can preach endlessly of hope, and freedom, and faith but the words will fall dead on your ears.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, I can point out to you that proportional justice i.e “… an eye for an eye…” is a God idea. I can point out to you that specific justice i.e. “… if an Ox gores a man, you shall kill the Ox…” is a God idea. And yet many of you read my thoughts about my parents suffering for my temerity and genuinely believe it a reasonable execution of divine justice and judgment.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, I can point out that “God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble…” doesn’t have ANYTHING to do with submitting to a pastor. And you will not hear me.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, I can tell you that the Gospel was the proclamation of an anointing that set people free from sickness, pain, emotional bruising, economic bondage, and raised the dead; that the function of the New Covenant was for the express purpose of giving all of humanity access to the Blessing of Abraham and the Covenants of Promise. But when you hear the word Gospel, your mind speeds down the path of the cult of death that has become the worship of the cross. To your mind this means that we are all, like Jesus, sacrificial animals.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, I can tell you that man’s natural state is pleasure and blessing and you will cringe at the temerity and selfishness, and wonder how long God will allow me to persist in heresy.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, I can tell you that the Destroyers have always risen as a result of your LACK of Ego. They rise when men are not fully defined selves with the ability to identify wants and desires and aspirations, with the expectation that naming them too God, their Father, aids and abets the fulfillment of the very same. They rise when men Lay Down their Minds and quit defending themselves. You will hear my words and think them full of all manner of presumption, too wonderful, or too selfish to be believed.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, I could try to explain the error in the doctrines that make God capricious, but your eyes will glaze over with yet another theological conversation and you will justify your lack of intellectual focus because a capricious God does not really need rational  understanding or any explanation for His actions: so why does it really matter? Your excuse notwithstanding, that does not change the fact that a choice stands before you.

The same choice that has been before humanity from Adam’s rebellion till now: how does man deal with the fear that plagues his soul? Run and hide–try some feeble effort to cover up? Or run to God and see how He fixes the problem. I can say this with certainty. Man was not a sacrificial animal then. He is not one now.

I am not offering a panacea. No single magic prayer exists. Utopia, a place without hardship or life’s challenge, does not exist.  One cannot escape the rigor of life by bunkering in a church, submitting to a pastor, or reading my blog posts.  An entire air castle has been built in your mind founded on one premise. No quick fix to your fear exists, because the fortification is built deep in your soul.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, I am only putting my finger on the source, the foundational premise.

If God is NOT capricious, that means He IS interested in making His will, His purpose, His intentions known. From this foundation, it is profoundly easy to destroy the house of cards the Demagogues of Dictated Good have built.

So maybe start with a prayer, low and quiet, of your own timid choosing.  Or maybe you start with what I said:

“I refuse to be tyrannized. If the New Birth, and the Adoption of Sons, and the manifestation of the Holy Spirit is not sufficient for you to speak to me as a man…if you have to kill _________  to get my attention, then you Murdered your Son for no reason and humanity is lost. If you have a problem with what I did… you need to talk to ME!”

Dear Christian Chicken Little, then run outside to see if the sky is falling. I promise you it will be right where you saw it last.



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