Crusader War College

While I believe the loss of freedom in the health care "reform" bill makes it intolerable, I continue to work on my project that has dictated this web site's hiatus, which promises to radically change the game.

Another masterful piece by Steven den Beste.

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Wow.

Like WOW.

THAT is who I REALLY am.

THAT is what I REALLY BELIEVE.

And THERE ARE OTHERS who believe as I do!

I once joked that I was a Pentecostal Free-will Baptist, but I had no idea that what I thought was "off-the-wall" was actually held by others.

Like WOW.

Thanks be to God!!!!

[The Jansenists were seen as calvinists because they held to total depravity. So does Reformed Arminianism.]

John Ray at Dissecting Leftism doubts it, attributing the increase of verbal skills through a person's 40's as the side effect of knowing new words.

This ignores the reasoning power latent behind words.

It may appear that I haven't been doing much with this blog of late. In reality, a lot of stuff has been going on behind the scenes, with a lot of private posts to a sub-blog on this site that is acting like an on-line diary. The war on Islamism continues to motivate much of the activity, but other concerns have risen in priority. In other words, 9/11 and the War have been a wake-up call. In addressing the matter, other issues and problems, of a hidden but more serious nature, have not as much arisen as become apparent. In short, there is another War going on that is older, deeper, and more serious, of which the War on Islamism shrinks to being a front. A major front, to be sure, but still a front of a wider conflict.

Thus, my belief is that the way to victory necessarily lies through the spiritual and religious realms, not the political or sociological realms. The political leaders and intelligensia of western civilization are secular materialists that are, by choice and necessity, totally ignorant of religion and its power over the minds of individuals. They insist on seeing things through marxist, secularist, materialist, political, and atheist filters, and thus unable to see that the followers of the Islamists leaders see things exclusively through religious filters.

I should point out that unbelief in the necessity of victory lying through the spiritual and religious realms is itself a culturally imposed filter. Since much of how the spiritual and religious realms work relies on faith, a filter that affects what one believes and is willing to act upon will affect one's ability to work and maneuver in those realms. Indeed, it is the LACK of any ability to maneuver in the spiritual and religious realms that is cited by those who LACK the faith to maneuver as PROOF of their non-existence: The filter re-enforces the belief that it MUST be correct and continued use MUST be made of it.

Islamists believe that Islam can return to true power by its followers returning to its primitive roots and teachings. In this, they are correct.

Correct Prescription.

Wrong Religion.

Indeed, in looking back at the primitive roots of the Christian religion, I am struck by the pervasiveness and depth to which Greco-Roman filters have damaged and limited both Christianity AND Judaism. As a way of looking and living in the physical world, the Greco-Roman filters are unparalleled. However, they are no help, and are a great hinderance, when dealing with the spiritual world in which the Jews lived, and in which Christianity initially developed.

Thus, the current item being worked upon on my agenda is to work toward removing the Greco-Roman derived Secular Materialist filters imposed by years of living in the United States. These filters prevent a return to the primitive roots of the Christian Religion by imposing assumptions about what is and is not possible.

Unfortunately, one MUST wear filters: they tell us how to organize our perceptions and how to think about them, so my not having a filter means not being able to organise my perceptions and would render me incapable of thinking about what I perceive. I cannot as much remove a filter as much as I can replace a filter, in the same way that I cannot easily unlearn a habit: I must replace it by learning a new habit that would take its place.

To me, the best filter to use as a replacement would have to be a First Century Jewish filter, modified by reforms proposed in the Sermon on the Mount and the later teachings of Jesus Christ. This seems to be the best bet because of the current situation in Israel: Jews currently only occupy a portion of their true land heritage, and see how well they've done so far! Their current troubles stem from those who, however blindly and unknowingly, sense that a full occupation of the land would restore the Jews to full power as the True God intended. Thus, the current frantic process pressure them to give away land, land, LAND! The less of the promised land the Jew has, the less power he has. The more of the promised land the Jew has, the more power he has. As can be demonstrated, outside of that promised land, the Jew has little power, although what little he does have has been a great blessing, both to him and to the nations in which he lives.

Of course, there is nothing mystical or spiritual about the Land itself: its just that it happens to be land that God mentioned in a promise he made to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and later to the entire nation of the Hebrews at Sinai. The power is in the God of the Promise, not in the land, but the land is a component of the promise made by God. No land, no promise fulfilled.

I, as a Christian, have a bit more maneuvering room since the promise of the land was made to the physical descendants of Abraham, so I'm not as tied to the Promised Land as the Jews are. Still, there had to be something to the Jewish filter that made Jesus who he was, and enabled the Disciples and the first Jewish believers catch on and replicate what he did.

Zionist Youngster comes up with the most intriguing subjects. In his post, which is linked above, he talks about "golah" and "galut". I tried to figure out what the two concepts mean, and here's my best take.

Golah is the physical non-presence of a Jew from the Promised Land. One is "golah" when one's physical GPS coordinates do not fall within the geographic parameters of Israel. However, "golah" is a spiritual term, which means that the geographic parameters of Israel are those of the land boundaries of the original 12 tribes, which today not only includes Gaza and the West Bank, but also chunks of Jordan adjacent to the Jordan River.

Galut appears to be, to me, the MENTAL non-presence of a Jew from the Promised Land. It is clearly harder to detect, but happens to be more important. God told Samuel, when choosing the successor to King Saul, that man looked on the outward appearance (Golah), while God looked upon the heart (Galut) (I Samuel 16:7) Of course, "golah" and "galut" do not appear in the passage: the point is that one is verifiable by human eyes, while the other is directly hidden from those same eyes. Golah is dependent on where one's BODY IS. Galut is dependent on where one's metaphorical HEART IS.

It seems to me that, although "golah" and "galut" are specific conditions of Jews, the general phenomenon can apply to Gentiles as well. Some examples can help wrap one's head around the core concept.

For instance, ambassadors and consuls must necessarily be "golah" and NOT "galut". To do their job of representing their nation to a foreign one, they must necessarily be "golah": physically out of their own nation and be physically in the other as a representative. But they must NOT be "galut": their heart and loyalty and center must remain with their home nation. For an ambassador to be "galut" is to "go native", to abandon one's sympathies, ties, and emotional "heart-home" to one's native land and adopt loyalties and ties to another nation. They have let their outward condition affect the inward sense of what is their true "homeland".

Put this way, my biggest problem with the United States State Department is that the higher ups are "galut": they seem to act as if other nations are their customers instead of their own native land and their own citizens. They are NOT "golah", but are "galut".

This helps me with my views about illegal immigration: Illegal aliens to America are "golah", but NOT "galut": They are absent from their nation, being in ours, but their hearts are not absent from their nation. The waving of their national flags during demonstrations to issue demands for accomodation without adopting the customs and practices of America, including that of respect for law, shows that they are NOT "galut": they have not severed and abandoned their ties to their old nation. Indeed, when one judges their remittances in the light of Jesus' pithy observation that "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also", they are definitely NOT "galut".

In contrast, LEGAL immigrants have made a committment to become "galut" with respect to their former nation. Oh, they may share traditions, dress, some customs, and some cuisine from the old country. There is no avoiding that there will be MEMORIES of the old country. But the committment, and the demand, is that their heart be "galut" with respect to the old country. It must be HERE, not THERE. Where the practice of their old customs conflicts with the essence of the nation, such as clitoral circumcision, militant jihadism, and having multiple wives, the practice must be given up: there is tolerance, but it DOES have limits.

Traitors must necessarily become "galut" before they act against their nation. Benedict Arnold was "galut" in a way that the "Man without a Country" discovered that he had never truly attained once he was made "golah" from the United States.

I may discourse on this further at a later time, but I think I got the concept: the benefit of "illumination" is not just the coming of "light" that enables one to see the "light" itself, but that it helps one see other things more clearly. My thanks to Zionist Youngster for the post.

The url links to a Little Green Footballs post where the commenters wonder whether it is okay to rejoice when evildoers get vanquished.

On the one hand, we have many psalms where the psalmist rejoices over the punishment of the wicked. On the other hand, we have Proverbs 24:17-18, which advises us not to rejoice at the misfortune of our enemies, lest the Lord disapprove and turn away his wrath from them. For Christians, we definitely have the requirement placed on us to "pray for your enemies".

However, I have real problems with that verse. Not the verse itself, but in the execution. You see, I happen to be a pretty good prayer warrior, with a lot of visible successes. I pretty much get what I pray for materially, mainly because I do a lot of research and soul searching before I bother to ask. And when it comes to praying for others for stuff, I have a pretty good record there. Not perfect, mind you, but good enough to establish pretty firmly in my mind that disbeliving in God would be personally dishonest.

Thus, praying for my enemies is a bit difficult, since wouldn't MY praying for them materially help them? Why pray a prayer that I know God won't answer? Makes no sense to me.

However, I've recently found a satisfactory way around this problem. If you happen to be a Charismatic Christian who speaks in tounges, read on...

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Strokes often change a person's character, depending on where the damage hits. Some may become more impulsive, others depressed. Now researchers have shown that damage to a small but very specific brain area can wipe out an addiction to smoking.

Antoine Bechera, of the University of Iowa in Iowa City, has identified 14 patients who all stopped smoking immediately after having a stroke that damaged their insular cortex. This seems to be not because they were concerned about their health, but because they had lost all interest in cigarettes, he told the Federation of Neuroscience Societies in Vienna this week. "One or two had even forgotten that they used to smoke," says Bechera.

Interesting...

Bechera's experience with these patients supports his hypothesis that addiction is caused by an imbalance between two neuronal systems — the impulsive system controlled by a brain area (the amygdala) that helps to process emotions and a reflective system controlled by the forebrain. The reflective system anticipates and assesses the consequences, good or bad, that any action will have for the future. Most addiction research focuses on the impulsive system.

Bechera has previously shown that some drug addicts behave similarly to stroke patients with forebrain damage when it comes to decision making. In tests designed to assess financial risk-taking behaviour, they impulsively chose to take as much cash as possible up front, even when that option is linked to a major loss of cash in the longer term. This implies that their impulsive system is winning out over the more logical, risk-assessing system.

Selective damage to the insula cortex seems to filter out some of the information from the impulsive system when it comes to making a decision. As a result, smokers whose reflective capacities are functional seem to be able to make the rational decision to give up, without experiencing withdrawal pain, Bechera says.

Excellent. The traitor within now has a name.

In consultation with involved college faculty, the Department of Transdimensional Warfighting has been renamed the Department of Experimental Religion, with warfighting being a division within that department. This change was initiated by the faculty of the former department when research indicated that the original focus was too narrow, and that confusion would result regarding the former name if that focus was broadened. This is not in response to a "softening" of the original intent of the deparment, but due to a realization that transdimensional warfighting is a sub-menu option of a larger set of capabilities, the research of which requires a larger and more integrated program that does not lend itself to an inter-departmental/inter-disciplinary approach.

The new department also serves a need that the old one had inadvertently ignored. While not disputing the dire need to train transdimensional warfighters, such a program trains practitioners, but not researchers. After some prayer, the faculty realized that the required research program for the new department would dovetail neatly with the needs of the older department: A researcher would necessarily be a warfighter, but a warfighter is not necessarily a researcher. Developing researchers is to be preferred: we are a War College, not a vo-tech school. The current outline of the research program/curriculum leads us away from a dual-track program to a program with initial and follow-on components. To modify and extend an old, but true, saw: "Giving a man a fish feeds one man for a day. Teaching a man how to fish feeds one man for a lifetime. Teaching a man how to teach other men how to fish feeds multitudes."

The output of the new Department will be documented in Journal of Experimental Religion.

I am going to juxtaposition two passages from the Sermon on the Mount that are conventionally not put side by side. The first is known and loved by Liberals: to quote to OTHERS of course:
The first is Matthew 5:38-48:

"You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

The second is Matthew 7:7-11

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

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