Thoughts on recent EBT shutdown

Obama promised hope for America.  He said change was coming.  Too bad nobody bothered to ask him what he meant by "change."  It's not the kind of change we were expecting.

Here is where we are:

I got my EBT

Somebody OWES Me!

Obama is going to pay for my gas and mortgage!

Mr. Ghetto - Wally World

Now, check this out:  Tomorrowworld

What is this book they're worshiping?  It's called "The Book of Wisdom."  My wife nailed it.  "It looks like a video targeted at young white guys to spend their money hoping they can hook up with the fairies at the end." Notice that the tomorrowworld youtube site has over 2 million 400 thousand views!  And why are they kissing that book again?  Near as I can tell, it's just a scrapbook of pictures.

Here are some other interesting links to that "New Age Woodstock"

Book of Widsom

Tomorrowworld on Facebook

Billboard Article on American Version September 2013

A participant's view

Here's a quote from the last link:  "As I traveled to each of the stages, I was totally drawn to the DJ’s and how much power they have over the audience.  Almost like a God (in that setting)… they can take you wherever they want you to go. "

Yep.  Exactly like that.  Now I know why the Christians of yesterday instinctively knew that rock music and the accompanying stage productions were bad news:  they are modeled after pagan worship principles.

The Secret History of Rock and Roll

Why I left CCM

Why I've stopped singing in your church

Christian Rock is Pagan

In case you haven't noticed, we live in a post-Christian America.  The culture wars have largely been lost amidst a time of prosperity.  People are not motivated to seek Jesus while things are going so well.  Abortion on demand remains the law of the land.  Known perversions are held up as the ideal:  Greed, Pride, Selfishness. 

I'll bet you thought I was going to talk about homosexuality.  That battle has been lost as well.  While Christians have been distracted by the homosexual issue, the far more sinister ethic of "greed is good" has replaced Christian virtues of thrift and service.

Having a parallel culture of "Christian" music, clothes, schools, etc. hasn't stopped the moral decline of our nation.  When things go south, the unbelievers aren't going to come rushing to the churches saying "you were right."  They are going to ask why we didn't warn them.  I'll tell you PRECISELY why.

501(c)(3) - It's guidelines are contained in IRS Publication 1828 - Tax Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations.  It's mere title should tell us that churches (and the individuals responsible for allowing the church to come under government rule) have sold out in order to keep more of the donated money than they otherwise would have by not paying taxes.  And what does this cost?  Here's a quote from page 5:

A church or religious organization will be regarded as
attempting to influence legislation if it contacts, or urges
the public to contact, members or employees of a legislative
body for the purpose of proposing, supporting, or
opposing legislation, or if the organization advocates the
adoption or rejection of legislation.

Now I wonder why Roe V. Wade is still in effect?  I wonder why the church hasn't had more to say about the U.S. government allowing it's currency to be loaned to it by the private bank called the Federal Reserve?  I wonder why the church hasn't moved to revoke the corporate charters of known environmental abusers such as Union Carbide, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical.  Don't remember why Dow Chemical is bad?  Here is their most famous faux pas, The Bhopal Disaster.  Dow is chartered by the U.S. State of Delaware.  Were there ever any calls from the church for its dissolution in Delaware?  What else has Dow been involved in?  Check out this list:

• Agent Orange Use in Viet Nam
• Agent Orange Use in South Korea
• Violations of the Clean Air Act

This is a simple sample from just 15 minutes of research.  This is only what the public knows about.  What else is hidden?  Dow is just one example in a long list of corporations and governments that have not been held accountable because the church found itself compromised by it's 501(c)(3) status and would not speak out for fear of losing its tax-exempt status.

In conclusion, what do we do?  The individual people have a right to good leadership in the church that will lead them to be actual salt and light in their culture.  I think the only way to help people crippled by a generation of failed government dependency policies known as President Johnson's Great Society, is to abolish those handicapping handouts.

If even the zoo keepers know that feeding the animals makes them dependent, how could our government not understand this?!?

It boggles the mind; unless, it could be ON PURPOSE?

There is much to do.  Most of us, myself included, are landlocked into corporate wage slave jobs.  The church just wants to make more converts while disengaging from society.  For now, Christians who are walking with God and who form the real Church in America must simply prepare and look for solutions to change the mindset of people who will be violent and helpless in case of a shutdown.

We do that one person, one church, at a time.  Here is the best model I've seen so far.

Greek Thought or Hebrew Thought - Pythagoras or Samson?

Certain foundational assumptions have been hidden from us who grew up in the West, but as Christians.  When reading the Bible, it is important to understand that the writers were Hebrew.  Their thinking was Hebrew.  This affected all areas of knowledge.  For instance, in mathematics, they did not have the concept of zero.  That came later, from India.  It takes a certain philosophical perspective to think of there being nothing.  I suppose early Jewish thought just wasn't capable of that.  They also thought of prophecy in terms of having already been accomplished at the time the writer predicts in the prophecy.  The sentence and verb structure shows the prophecies to be in future perfect tense, as though it will have already happened.  Interesting.

Their poetry is not in rhythmic meter of language, but of ideas.  Hebrew poetry stressed opposites in order to drive home it's point.  I also think that it is a wonderful coincidence that Hebrew poetry can be translated into any language without losing the beauty of the thought comparisons we see in Psalms and Proverbs.

Finally, and the point of the rest of this post, is that Hebrew thought emphasized the knowledge and experience of God above all else.  Their first assumption was God Is.  That's it.  Nothing else was before God and so this colored their world view.

What we need to know is that the Greeks also have a presupposition; namely, that materialistic observation is the only source.  I may be wrong in this next statement, but I believe they thought the earth had simply always existed and this is why nature has been elevated to Nature in Greek thought.  They were always looking though for the first cause.  They see things in terms of cause and effect.  Not so with the Hebrew mind.  God is the first cause and so the first and best effect is communion with God.

From an article I read recently, I learned the following things:

• Worldviews are different, even at the grammatical level
• Hebrew verbs connote movement and dynamic variety
• Greek verbs are static or harmonic

• Greek:  rest, harmony, composure, self-control
• Hebrew:  movement, life, deep emotion, power

• Greek:  words are names and labels only - you haven't reached the truth yet
• Hebrew:  words have power; they are not names only but things

• Greek:  Classification of observable properties; Materialism
• Hebrew:  fundamental character of God in relation to His creation and connectedness of all things

• Greek:  Cause and effect while constantly trying to identify first causes
• Hebrew:  source of causality (God) overrides any other concern

• Greek:  Focus on the group to the abandonment of the individual
• Hebrew:  Focus on the individual's relationship to God

• Greek:  Thinking as the highest virtue
• Hebrew:  Commitment as the highest virtue

 This brings up many questions:

1. How did the early Gentiles come to faith without an understanding of the Hebrew concept of God? 
2. How do other cultures of today experience God without knowledge?
3. If people can come to faith without knowledge of the originating culture, doesn't this strike at the heart of Greek thought that says knowledge is the highest good?
1. As a correlation, isn't this search for truth and knowledge, as the Greeks practiced it -- apart from God -- the original sin?  Valuing knowledge of good and evil over the relationship and presence of God?
4. Why are we taught that heroes are scientists and stoics?  From Pythagoras to Spock, we're taught that the "Rational" man is the ideal man.  I believe that this has led to much error.  It has gone so far that many Christians blindly follow Ayn Rand's Objectivism without realizing she was an avowed atheist and despised Christianity.  There's not much charity in Rand's world.
5. The hero of the Greeks is a stoic thinking man.  The hero of the Hebrews is an Artist:  David.
6. Who would you rather have in a fight?  Samson or Spock?

These foundational assumptions of viewing the world are hidden to us in the West.  The fact of going to school, being controlled by bells on the hour, the idea that rationalism is the highest good are all taken for granted that this is the way life should be lived.  Why aren't these assumptions brought to the surface for scrutiny in Sunday School?  In religious education?  For instance, I've learned that  school as we know it is actually a Prussian invention designed to make people obedient to structure.  In the 1800's, our progressive thought leaders adopted the Prussian system here in America to keep the class system in place (percentages are not exact). 

• Ruling Class - Top 2%
• Artisan Class - Top 5%
• Bureacratic (Management) Class - Top 15%
• Working Class - Bottom 80%

Isn't Theology just another name for Religious Philosophy?  And what is taught in the seminaries?  It seems that it is simply advanced education in Bible survey (no small thing, I know), the denomination's (depending on the seminary) version of accepted philosophy -- Systematic Theology, and Greek and Hebrew language.   I am acquainted with the Systematic Theology of only of Augustine, Aquinas, Wiley, Calvin, Arminius, Van Til, Tillich, and Luther, although I've only ever read parts of each (I have to make a living after all).

The point is that we are learning through a filter and we don't even know there is a filter.  When a pastor pointed out that Matthew was showing Jesus to be the seventh seven according to Daniel 9:25, it was the first time I had ever heard it.  And to be honest, I'll bet most of the congregation was still trying to figure out the math while he was trying to say the experience of God was more important.  I almost missed the central message as well.

I wrote a paper in Nazarene Bible college that argued for intensive Sunday School training for all parishioners. I have yet to see people coming out of graduate work with Christian degrees in Christian Education implementing these programs.  We don't know what we believe because from the very beginning, we're taught by our Greek Western schools first principles that deny God and exalt Materialism (that's the philosophy of Materialism and Observation, not in the Economic sense).  We're being handicapped and don't even know it.  I feel fortunate I've been led down a path to start having my eyes opened to these things.  There are some good programs in place that I do visit on a regular basis, but I'm sad that these are para church ministries whose ideas are not coming from the pulpit or Sunday School.

Stand To Reason
Reasonable Faith
Colson Center
Think Christianly
The High Calling
Institute for Creation Research

So, it's no wonder that faith isn't "taking" to the last 2 or 3 generations.  They don't have the tools to understand.  We are trained in Greek thought that values the Technocracy above experience with God.  The assumptions are in every book and every textbook.  I can't read a popular non-fiction book without running across it.  Here are three examples.

The Shallows:  What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains - The book has a quote that says "The greatest thing that Evolution has bequeathed to us is the ability of the Human Brain to reform itself."  It gives credit to the creation instead of God.

Guns, Germs, and Steel:  The Fates of Human Societies - The entire book is predicated on an evolutionary understanding of man's development.  I've started it twice and can't get to the author's conclusion because I believe his first assumptions are entirely wrong.  They leave out God.  They leave out the Biblical understanding of the Flood and how it affected migration patterns.  I've had that book for five years and can't get through it.

Servant Leadership:  A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness - This was written by a long time IBM executive, Robert K. Greenleaf.  It has a forward by Stephen Covey, a known Mormon.  While Greenleaf is a bit more magnanimous, Covey (like Oswald Chambers, Norman V. Peale, Napoleon Hill, and more recent names like Tony Robbins) pulls principles directly from the Bible and then discards God while trying to say these things will work for everyone.  I'm reading the introduction and getting more and more incensed at the arrogance of Covey.  They are re-packaging God's ways and selling them as their own.  And we know that while God does bring the rain on the just and unjust, He doesn't just bless indiscriminately.  You must bow the knee to Christ to be given the gift of the Holy Spirit.

I will admit that my own search for truth is leading me evermore to that next book, that next article, that next documentary that would bring me closer to knowledge, closer to the truth.  And I see that trap for what it is.  I see my own part in the original sin.  I'm wondering if the reason I'm trapped by that is because of my Western Aristotelian thinking.  How do we elevate God back to the center?  How do we get over our idea of Bible Study as the highest good instead of worship of God in Christ?  Even elevating the Bible above God is wrong.  I believe the answer is to get closer to the presence of God through the laying down of all this Western pursuit of perfection, efficiency, and knowledge through the senses only.  What we need is a true spiritual awakening.  Find God first, then get equipped with the Apologetics and Philosophy to combat the erroneous assumptions of our day. 

I'll leave you with a pithy quote from the article.  Actually, maybe I'm revising it a bit.  It was from Abraham Joshua Heschel in his book, G-d in Search of Man:  A Philosophy of Judaism, 1955, p. 216:

"Thinking without roots will bear flowers but not fruits"

I love this because look what our Technocracy has wrought.  We don't steward the Earth's resources well.  We don't treat our fellow man well.  Our business leaders follow Machiavelli instead of Jesus.  The very first principle taught in school is Materialism in our secular society.  The church has abandoned its people by not equipping them with the tools to combat that pernicious and destructive philosophy.  Worse, the people don't even know they're being poisoned.  Kids grow up, compare what they were taught in school with what they were taught in church and then come to the conclusion that because God can't be "proven" in a Materialistic way, that it must not be "true."  We've missed the point of what "true" really means in that case.  We have failed God and failed our children. 

We are so busy combating the symptoms of cultural decline (abortion, substance abuse, homosexuality) that we don't even see that the pillars of our faith have been co-opted by the Materialists and the Secularists.  They are building our children in their image because they have replaced our foundation of God with their foundation of Man.  The process takes awhile, but just look at Barna and Pew polls.  We are going the way of England and Europe.  Christian faith is waning even while the people are clamoring for some type of spiritual sustenance.  In a recent interview, Russell Brand claimed that what we need is a spiritual awakening.  He's a known devotee of Eastern philosophies.  He doesn't follow Christ.  Yet here is Russell Brand advocating for a spiritually led society.  He stated that he wants to do away with the barriers between church and state.  He knows that we are starving, suffering, and failing without it.