Heart Problem

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I grew up in a neighborhood where there were a lot of Mormon kids.  (In fact, my high school graduation was held in the nearby RLDS temple, where that branch of Mormons supposedly believe Jesus will return to earth).  I was a pretty superficial Baptist Sunday-School believer (and had a string of Baptist Sunday-School attendance pins to prove my superficial faith was of long standing . LOL).

I had as little theological understanding as it took to get by.  Even so, when I learned what Mormons believed about God, I can remember thinking, "HOW CAN THEY BELIEVE THAT CRAP !?!?"

That bothered me a lot.  It's always seemed to me that (in the words of a much-later TV show) "the truth is out there:" manifest, and impossible to miss.  So that incredulous question stayed in mind.

I refined the question a bit during Watergate, when my parents were obdurately convinced that Richard Nixon hadn't done anything wrong, and everything was the result of his enemies' maneuverings to "get" him.  (That mindset has been dusted off and pressed into service by Trump's followers.)  But the question became a bit more focused, and a bit more personally tormenting in those circumstances: "why do my folks believe those lies ?"

Chewing on that question was like chewing on beef-jerky; it got larger.  It wasn't just my folks, and not just Nixon's lies.  There was a distinct period when the one question about life that I couldn't escape, and always seemed to come back to, was "why do people believe lies ?"

I really can't say that finally getting the question right was the reason I finally got an answer: but the two seem roughly contemporaneous in my memory.  "Why do WE believe lies ?" seemed the only honest question.

Taking a philosophical perspective on life and its questions has its value.  It also feeds our tendency toward a flattering self-image ("Look at me, I'm a philosopher").  Worse, it gives us a bit of safe personal detachment from life and its questions.

By the time I got to "the right question," I was, and knew I was, a Christian...not a philosopher.  I'm sure that fact had something to do with getting the question right, since Jesus identifies Himself as "the Truth," and the Spirit of God as "the Spirit of Truth."  Any question about truth, especially about the absence of Truth, is Personal with Jesus.

As a Christian it seemed dishonest to frame questions safely, to not involve me personally; and to look for safe answers.  Jesus didn't.

 The answer I ultimately came to was not at all what I'd call "satisfying:"  But I'm certain it's the hundred-percent true one, and the only one there is : "because we WANT to."

Believing lies isn't really a problem of our cognitive processes, our intelligence and knowledge.  It's a heart problem, that we DESIRE to believe lies.  Jeremiah 17:9 says our heart is desperately wicked: that would explain why we want to believe lies.  It also says our heart is "deceitful above all things:" our heart makes us desire lies...and itself lies to us.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Choose This Day Whom You Will Serve

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I've been hearing a lot about the Republican tax-cuts.  We all have.  It's doubtful anyone who has listened to a radio or a TV in the past month is unaware of the matter.

In one way, it's not at all a "spiritual issue."  Other than general scriptural admonitions (such as Romans 13:8's "Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another..."), there are probably no specifically "Christian" issues involved; at least, not in the way that the political manipulators make issues "Christian" issues today.

But of course no human thoughts or deeds are ever truly "non-spiritual."

I know very little about financial matters; especially governmental financial matters.  But it looks to me like all the evidence is that the Republicans' "middle-class tax-cut" will primarily benefit the already-wealthy, and corporations.  That's the finding of the non-partisan Congessional Budget Office, whose job it is to tell Congress (and us) how their legislation will play out in financial reality.

The Republicans' plan seems very similar to Republican Governor Sam Brownback's 2012 tax-plan for Kansas, and predicated on the same "conservative" theory.  That theory is that if businesses pay less in taxes (Brownback eliminated corporate taxes altogether), they will use their increased wealth to create more jobs, and we will all benefit from a stronger economy.

That theory hugely failed in Kansas.  It essentially bankrupted our state.  And every citizen of Kansas suffered because of it, in cuts to our state's education-system, roads, and health-care.

They say that true insanity is doing the same thing again, and expecting different results.  By that rule, Republicans are insane.  I'm not.  If the Republicans impose their failed "tax-cut" theory on America ...if it passes the Republican Congress, and is signed into law by the Republican president who's been demanding it...I expect it will do unimaginable damage on our country, the way it did to Kansas.

I could be wrong.  I'm little knowledgeable about financial matters, especially governmental financial matters.  I can only go by the realistic financial analysis of those whose job it is to do realistic financial analysis, and our experience of Kansas' disastrous tax-cut "experiment" (as Sam Brownback called it.

If the Republicans' "tax-cut" becomes law, as it now looks like it will, and proves as disastrous as it seems it will, we'll probably see a great many people turning against Trump and the Republicans.  No doubt that will include many of their "Evangelical base" who have overwhelmingly supported that faction and its candidates for 40 years.

I'd have to understand such economic "repentance" a profoundly spiritual event.

It seems very few of the "Evangelical base" have turned against their political deceivers because they teach evil.  Because of Reagan's doctrine of rebellion ("Government IS the problem"), for example; or the anti-Christ Mormon spirit Mitt Romney worships; or George W. Bush's blasphemy that "the ideal of America" is the light of the world; or their continual lying (who'd Jesus say is "the father of lies" ?), like the current president.

The "Christians" who comprise those politicians' "Evangelical base" have shown no discernment, and no fear of offending God, in their willlful disobedience to Him when His commands contradict their political "principles."  And acting by their political "principles," they have inflicted great harm on our country.

So if the "Evangelical base" finally turns against their political (and their "Christian") (mis-) leaders because of economic collapse, it would be a good thing...though probably too late.

But what does it say about a people who willfully ignore The King's commands, continually offending the God they say they love...if they finally "repent" when their financial well-being suffers ?

My spiritual take-away would be that it shows the god they truly love, and trust in, and serve, and worship in their heart, is Mammon.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Joseph Smith the Deceiver

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Everything I've read by Fawn Brodie has impressed me.  She was a rigorously honest historian, and a graceful stylist.

On a cruise this week, I've had a chance to re-read her first book, No Man Knows My History, the first biography of the "prophet" Joseph Smith which was neither Mormon hagiography nor biased anti-Mormon invective.  Brodie, a non-practicing Mormon herself, searched the historical documents of the LDS and RLDS archives, and affidavits collected by the earliest crusaders against Mormonism, subjecting both to the same strict examination.

The picture of Joseph Smith which emerges is not at all flattering.  Brodie gives Smith credit for his charismatic personality and his imagination, his attractive playfulness and his forceful oratory.  But she doesn't soft-play his earlier career as an unsuccessful treasure-hunter, his continued failed attempts to enrich himself (often at the expense of his followers), and his child-like craving for attention and grandeur.

Brodie came to the conclusion that Smith's theology, and his "Golden Bible," were products of his personality, and not revelations from God.  She was subsequently excommunicated by the "Saints," and her work attacked by Mormon historians.

In the over-70 years since publication, Brodie revised the biography once, and some of her conclusions (for example, the identity of Joseph Smith's children by various "plural marriages") have been challenged, sometimes successfully, by new evidence.  But she rigorously documented Smith's immature egotism, and how it manifested in the  "Book of Mormon" and his theology.

Smith at various time showed disdain for his own "Golden Bible."  When the cornerstone of the temple in Nauvoo was being laid, he placed in it the remaining original copy of the Book of Mormon, saying "I have had trouble enough with this thing," shocking one of his priestly witnesses (p.276).  One of his former high officials (albeit a particularly slippery one) who left the church later claimed that Smith proposed to him a plan to have plates engraved that he could exhibit for a fee as the original plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated (p. 316-7).

Brodie documents well the most fascinating fact of her subject, Smith's transformation from petty frontier con-man to prophet of God's new faith.  He  himself seemed at first to be amazed to find his revelations believed (much like Donald Trump's amazement that he could "...stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters").  He called his followers to their faces "...the greatest dupes, as a body of people, who ever lived..." (pp. 295-6).  To another visitor who remarked on the absolute power he held in Nauvoo, he agreed no man could be entrusted with unlimited power; but added in "a rich, comical aside" (said the visitor) "Remember, I am a prophet !" (ibid)

The tragedy for Joseph Smith, and his followers, was that he eventually came to believe his own deceptions, to the point that Brodie characterizes him as "...fully intoxicated with power and drunk with visions of empire and apocalyptic glory" (p. 354).  When he set out the "articles of faith" of Mormonism, one was that "the Book of Mormon  [is]  the word of God."  And he came to fully believe that he was himself God's sovereign ruling authority on earth, whose word supplanted all previous religious doctrines.  Another "article of faith," for example, was that "...men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgression" (pp. 277-8).

Smith led his followers in self-deception (or let's say "hypocrisy").  After he'd been teaching "plural marriage" to his inner circle for some years, word leaked out.  Smith not only denied to the world that he and the "Saints" were practicing polygamy, he solicited affidavits from his people testifying there was no polygamy.  And he got them: not only from his high officials who already had "plural wives," but even from the parents of a 17-year old girl who were witnesses to their daughter's marriage to Smith only months before (pp. 320-1).

But the famous "revelation" that God commands the practice of polygamy was far from the most heretical of Smith's teachings.  (That revelation was nullified as God's abiding word for Mormons when a later "Prophet" heard God reject polygamy...conveniently, when polygamy was the issue blocking Utah from being admitted as a state of the United States.)  His greatest heresies were yet to come.

In the King Follett funeral sermon he declared that "God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man...:" the "Adam-God" theology that Mormon leader Lorenzo Snow summarized, "As man now is, God once was: as God now is, man may be;” which Mormonism still teaches (p. 366).  In an argument with one of his authorities who opposed the church' "debauchery," he exclaimed "...we can all go to hell together and convert it into a heaven by casting the Devil out !  Hell is by no means the place the world of fools suppose it to be, but on the contrary, it is quite an agreeable place" (p. 370).

But more than re-defining God Himself, and hell, Smith's theology was most about glorifying himself.  In one of his last sermons, he proclaimed, "I have more to boast of than any man ever had.  I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam...I boast that no man ever did such a work as I..." (p. 374).  He clearly considered Jesus a lesser spiritual leader than himself; and his ambitions for secular glory also led him to proclaim himself General of his own Mormon army, and a candidate for President of the United States.

I admire Fawn Brodie;s life-long practice of honest history.  And nowhere does her integrity better serve truth than in documenting the spirit of anti-Christ at work in Joseph Smith and his "church" since its founding.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Loving Truth (Even on Facebook)

I have a facebook "friend" ("friended" because she's the wife of a real-life friend) who continually posts all the current political/social lies. Among other things, she posts a lot of tea party stuff (including regular posts from the Australian Tea Party....!?!?!?)

As a Christian, I have to see lies as spiritual warfare. Jesus said He IS "the Truth." He called satan "the father of lies." It's as simple as Jesus said: spreading lies is working for the enemy. By definition, a lie contradicts Truth, as when "The serpent said...'You surely will not die !' " (Genesis 3:4). By nature, a lie is a Personal denial of Jesus Christ.

Even the evil secular world recognizes the simple moral judgement that lies are wrong. Even the spiritually-blind can see that following lies produces disastrous results: who can ignore the utter destruction of Germany when it followed Hitler's "Big Lie" ? In terms of the Bible's deeper moral wisdom, lies are spiritual poison to those who ingest them, producing spiritual death. What kind of "friend" feeds their friends poison ?

Believing what Jesus said, it's painful, infuriating in the extreme, to see Christians (CHRISTIANS !!!) spreading lies on facebook, in e-mail, in their blogs. The only good way I've found to respond to Christians (?) who do the enemy's work is to point out their "facts" don't measure up to Truth...as non-judgementally as possible.

"Non-judgementally" because personal culpability is not the ultimate point here. Personal failing we ALL have always with us: and calling each other evil names short-circuits our receptivity to reproof. To get across the spiritual evil of lies, our best hope is that "friends" who spread them are not so personally invested in them that they personally identify with the lie. It's helpful that virtually all e-mail and facebook lies are authored by Anonymous: giving greater possibility that whosoever will can more dispassionately (and honestly) compare someone else's false "facts" with verifiable reality.

It's noteworthy that "honesty," "fact," and "reality" all, in one regard or another, relate to TRUTH. Even more noteworthy that all are expressions of what really exists...of I AM. In the same way that Creation declares God's glory (Psalms 19:1) and His righteousness (Psalms 50:6) such that all men see it (Psalms 97:6), I understand that the Truth through Whom all things came into being (John 1) is indelibly stamped on the human world in full view of All humankind. Most of all do we, who claim to follow that One Who IS "the Truth," have to LOVE Truth in our honesty to facts and reality. Sadly, if our e-mails, facebook posts, and blogs are a reliable indicator, such honest love is severely lacking in the heavily-politicized American Church.

Fortunately, there are a number of good fact-checking sites online whose honest research verify if the latest political-social factoid actually happened, or if some partisan interpretational "spin" is truthful. I reference and forward those pages when I want to non-judgementally confront a "friend" who's spreading lies. The hope is that anyone with a spiritual consciousness of "Truth," any who honestly love Him, will understand, and repent of these lies.

The deeper question is one that's intrigued me for over 40 years: WHY do people believe lies ? I grew up in a neighborhood only a few miles from the world headquarters of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and a number of kids I grew up with were RLDS or Mormon (indeed, our high-school graduation was held in the RLDS temple next to the parking-lot where Mormons claim Jesus will return to earth). My spiritual awareness as a teenager was practically nil, only the rudiments impressed on my unwillingly mind by years of Southern Baptist Sunday School and sermons: but I remember wondering even then how nice folks, intelligent people, could believe the stuff my Mormon friends did ?

The question came into sharper focus in the early '70s. I was mostly apolitical at the time, a former druggie recently begun to walk in Christ: but we were all hyper-aware of the Watergate drama playing out daily. It seemed obvious to me then, as it does even more today, that President Nixon was lying his ass off to save himself. But my parents, longtime Nixon followers, entirely believed his lies that he hadn't done anything wrong, and that everything negative being said about him was the work of political enemies out to get him.

My parents were "good," church-going people, and they weren't stupid. Yet they believed Nixon's lies to the day they died. It put the question prominently before me again: why do good, intelligent people believe manifest lies ?

Even after 40 years, I have difficulty understanding how it can be. It's more clear to me than ever that accepting Truth, or believing a lie, is a moral choice God gives us. More clear too that following Truth (Jesus) is the Way (Jesus) of Life (Jesus) and blessing: and following a lie the sure road to destruction and death. But the best answer I've come up with why people would choose the latter, is that they want to.

My facebook "friend," perhaps in oblique reference to the many times I've challenged her lying posts, recently posted this (itself by an anonymous author):

"Just because I post it, doesn't mean I'm going through it and it doesn't mean that it's directed at anyone. Maybe it's just that I like what I read or what I see and so I share it. I am Human!"

The attempt to disavow responsibility for one's own posts ("Just because I post it...") seems disingenuous on the face of it. But I doubt my "friend" really means it, anyway. Her admission that "...it's just that I like what I read or what I see and so I share it" sounds very much like she recognizes she's responsible for what she posts.

But my focus was on her reason for posting lies: "...I like [them]." That part of her statement seems very honest, and confirmation of my small understanding why people believe lies: it pleases us to do so. In the broad view, the autonomous ("self-law") mind of man in rebellion against God, accepts and acts on no authority higher than its own: we want to do what pleases us.

The problem of being governed by our autonomous mind could not be more stark than it is in regard to Truth: as stark as (and part of) the choice between death and Life (Whom Jesus also said He IS). God gives us a free choice: will we love and follow Truth, and live...or do as we please ? Everything in His governing reality, framed and fashioned by His Word of Truth, follows from that choice.

Woe to American Christianity, whose public testimony (in its facebook posts, e-mails, and blogs) is that it "likes" lies !!

God, Father of mercy, break our evil hearts to REPENT before You !!!

Christians and Social Justice

I'm skeptical that controversy has innate value for establishing truth. It never settles...but rather, unsettles...the questions it raises: a pornography of thought, that stimulates desire it can only frustrate. Controversy is essentially a masturbatory exercise of mental and emotional self-indulgence.

One symptom of our society's sickness is that we've created for ourselves a class of "commentators," whose business (literally) is promoting controversy and partisan ill-will. It's a mark of the American Church' waywardness that large numbers of Christians follow such deceivers.

I usually consider it plays into that sickness, and those "commentators' " juvenile desire for attention, to treat their manufactured controversies as worthy of serious thought. But God can use even those to His glory...if Christians are driven to find what HE says on the controversial topic.

One "commentator" recently told Christians to run from any church that teaches such "code-word" doctrines as "social justice" and "economic justice," which are (he says) "perversions of the gospel." Pronouncement such as his, on what the CHURCH should be and should do, must especially drive Christians to re-study and discuss scripture.

This particular controversialist has no part in that discussion. His operative ideas of "the gospel," "the Church," and "scripture" are the false ones of Mormonism. But he doesn't base his claim to manipulate Christians' thinking on "religion;" rather, on being a spokesman for "conservative" ideas. Since many Christians regard the "conservative" label as an imprimatur of political correctness, they buy his disparaging attitude toward "social justice." It's consequently worth examining that attitude against scripture.

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Folklore is that the Inuit have dozens of words for "snow." I'm no ethnolinguist, but I doubt their native language has even one word for "tropical jungle." The vocabulary of the world's political-social system is similarly unsuited for the Church' discussion of economic and social justice: the world's vocabulary embodies the world's thoughts, all of them long-proven flawed and inadequate. More to the point, its human views are complete misdirection for the Church' thinking about biblical teachings.

The AMERICAN Church has additional problems thinking about "justice" (or "liberty," or "freedom," or "rights," etc.). Our national culture has re-defined those biblical concepts in unscriptural ways. Our difficulty speaking to this society about "justice" (for example) is that American society means something different than we do by those words. A further difficulty is that we too are children of American society, and have our own struggle to let the mind of Christ (rather than our society's counterfeit) be our thinking.

The world-system's ideas of "social justice" are counterfeits. The Church must reject them. We are commanded to "take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ" (II Corinthians 10:5): no ideas except those of our Head have a place in Christians' thinking. On that consideration, the Church errs when it predicates acceptance or rejection of "social justice" on the world-system's false ideas and definitions.

The "commentator" above exemplifies that error. He helpfully wrote on a chalkboard for his TV audience, "My definition of social justice is the forced redistribution of wealth, with a hostility to individual property, under the guise of charity and/or justice." The definition by which he rejects "social justice" is manifestly that of the American world-system: indeed, of the narrow "conservative" faction of that human system.

Counterfeits are revealed by comparison with the genuine. False ideas from a lying religion or from human cultures are useless for that purpose. Scripture is the only place we will find the genuine: Jesus' idea of social justice, which we are commanded to make our own operative thinking.

The Bible says far too much about social and economic justice...which is basically righteous conduct toward other people, and with our resources...for even a summary review. Any who honestly wish to know God's mind on those heads can't miss it in scripture. But a keynote for Christians is probably Jesus' first public teaching.

"The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

'The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.'

"Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, 'Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.'

(Luke 4:17-21, NASV)

Jesus announces He is the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy. When John sends to ask if He is the Messiah, Jesus refers again to His deeds in fulfillment of this prophecy. (Matthew 11:4-6) Lest we "spiritualize" Jesus' deeds beyond the plain sense of scripture, the word He uses for "poor" denotes "beggars crouching on the street." (When He means the "poor in spirit," He says so, as in the Sermon on the Mount.) Jesus holds Himself out as the Manifestation of God's Mercy to all victims of sin: and names first those victimized by the world's unrighteous economic system.

Nor does Jesus play the blame game. Ministering to victims is not contingent on whether their suffering results from their personal failings or the failings of others (John 9:2). God's glory is Jesus' whole point and purpose: and God's glory is manifest in our righteousness toward those suffering poverty, imprisonment, illness, despair...no matter how they got into that condition.

Denying that human societies and economies...including our own....foster injustice is simply a lie. Denying the mercy God entrusts to us, to sufferers we deem unworthy...who IS worthy ?...is counter-scriptural. Those attitudes, whether derived from the teachings of a false religion or a false political faction, are emphatically not the mind of Christ. They must never be the thinking of those who follow Jesus.

Let all who have followed false teachings seek instead to know the mind of Christ. Let us all search out what scripture teaches, and follow Truth. Church, REPENT !!