Hae tibi erunt artes.
"These arts will be yours."
Brief, concise, elementary instructions—words which anyone would likely treasure hearing. "Arts" always implies deep respect afforded one's imagination and inventiveness, stirring a latent zeal to "create" something of great value. Those raised on the classics certainly recognize these words, located in one of the most renowned passages in the greatest paean to World governance, The Aeneid. Funny that this verse is parenthetical, really, slipped in there around a rousing charge to rule nobly accompanied by a dizzying showcase of the most valiant Roman historical figures. These four words cannot be blithely dismissed, however, for by them the highest ranking World operatives do their duty. Ostensibly spoken to Aeneas through his father Anchises, there is no mistaking this was actually Virgil speaking to Augustus and has been considered nothing other by those who've read it—the most celebrated mythmaker boldly exhorting the most decorated potentate to do nothing but crack all heads as necessary. It was almost as if Virgil were there when God spoke those words to Cain at the inaugural event commencing the annals of man's hyperviolent treatment of his fellow man. While God does send Cain and his legacy out to do their thing, you'll note there in the fourth chapter of Genesis that God is nowhere near any of this. Cain's minions through the ages are out of His presence. It is simply not of His Kingdom, but it does serve a purpose. As Virgil so eloquently transcribes it there in Book VI, the System rules the peoples with power, imposes the habit of peace, spares the vanquished, and beats down the proud. These duties alone would otherwise be wholly scorned except for the four key words. The oath-bound duty-sworn World operative does indeed have divinely imbued cleverness at his disposal, use of Arts so powerful that no one could defy him. As much as the common World inhabitant shakes his fist at Rome's overarching rule, he just as perversely basks in it. This is because he desperately needs someone to acknowledge that he has any value at all, and those Roman but catholic Arts have convinced him that he can only get that from Cain.
Have you noticed the proliferation of "American Idol" type television shows that require presenting oneself and talents to judges who assess the performance? Usually the panel consists of a couple of toadying celebrities skilled at gushing "Bravo! Fantastic! Can't wait to see more!" and at least one scowling curmudgeon who must find fault with something. And you know—he is the most popular! Why? It is because everyone wants to hear "This is how you are valued" from someone who appears to have authority, and they want it to be expressed again and again and again. If you can get the crustiest Russian judge to give you something higher than an 8.5 on the balance beam, then you've really done it, you've demonstrated that yes— You have value. Now, forgive me, I understand: I'm just not saying a whole lot there. I know. People like to be valued? Might as well say the sun is hot. Pshaw. And value assessments coming from someone of authority? Eh. The real issue is the muddled disconnect we have with this value thing and the authority figures from whom we seek those affirmations. What precisely is that value, and how does Mr. Voice-of-Authority know it? People have always bantered about value and quality and meaning and beauty. But something that gets in the way of any real understanding of those fine things lies in that tiny little parenthetical remark made in The Aeneid. Remember those four words? The ones about those Arts? What are those? You can read about many of their strokes in Sun-Tzu's classic Arts of War, you can see how they've been used in history by perusing any history of the Jesuits, you can track their progress by peeking in any college classroom, and you can witness their wide dissemination by turning on the television or reading the paper. That's how the most evocative Simon Cowells of the World have woven their way into your very own psyche. You'd think you'd have to do a lot of work to discover what's really going on—crawling deep underground, scouring the most classified information to uncover the most insidious (and scintillating!) covert operations, and I believe there is fine merit to all that. But really, all you have to do is look in one place where the product of the Arts is broadcast openly all the time, by the minute even. It is in the economic indices, and in the pervasively exasperated remarks made about them by industry watching pundits. Here is where value disassessment, if you will, is revealed in the most striking ways. Sure those of us with the stamina for such ponderous indulgence see how the markets behave, but so many give up trying to reckon what it means not as much because it is so tediously incomprehensible but because, yes, the Arts have been used so proficiently. The fact is there are really only two ways things can be valued.
Many believe the World way involves pegging value by whatever whims Caesar and his cronies in the ivory towers say it should be, but it is really more about what they're told it is to be. The Arts help them make it all look pretty. Remember, Sir Isaac Newton once regally declared a pound sterling would be convertible to a fixed quantity of gold at a rate of £3 17s 10 ½ d per ounce. Now, here's the question. Who says? Who came up with that? Sure there must be some stability in markets to counter the volatility fashioned in large part by the favored game-piece movers. I'm merely asking why it is that? Is this value the veritable one because someone of Newton's stature said it? It is quite interesting to note that Newton was obsessed with alchemy, the elusive task of turning lead (or any metal for that matter) into gold. Because whole nations have always jerked things around no matter how much we venerate shiny yellow rocks, that once stalwart measure was chucked long ago and now the job falls to vaunted wonks like Ben Bernanke who openly but infrequently admit that to divine things they don't do much more than gaze into a crystal ball. Do you know how often central banks through history have proudly decreed the reserve requirement and essentially offered the rationale of "Just because"?
Do you know what the Fed's reserve mandate is now?
It is effectively nothing. Banks lend out everything they've got or can
get—at least they
try to—because all money in circulation is just borrowed money anyway. Should
depositors' demands be a tad excessive the Fed just prints money, trusts Caesar
(looking a lot like Uncle Sam peddling IOUs), and hopes to keep lying just a
teeny
bit more. Think this train always stays on the track? Runs on banks don't start because banks don't have money, they start because the World's value disassessments are exposed. For those who think the FDIC put an end to bank runs, just look back at the IndyMac collapse in the summer of '08. Remember that? Smiling federal examiners stood at branch doorways telling the anxious throngs their money was safe, and the response was an ample sneer and more of a lengthy wait in the hot sun. The tricky thing about it all is that it seems to happen a bit too much. Banks close every year, and during the "bad times" the numbers are in the hundreds. Even though feds mostly swoop in at night and private equity firms spend weeks analyzing the entrails thrown on the wall, plenty of congregants still mass at their temples. There's no such thing as too little anxiety among those the value pronouncers must serve.
The Kingdom way is different and doesn't involve any Arts of deception to keep the peaceful happy and the warring squashed. The Kingdom way is simply this.
Jesus Christ.
It is through Him, by Him, with Him, of Him, from Him whom one's value comes—that of anyone who chooses to allow Him to be their very value assessment. How much are you valued? To Him, it is His very life. And because He is God Himself, that is the highest price of anything at all, ever, and those whose selves are crucified with Him have gained their souls back and the phenomenal capacity to love with His love. Those living by the World who don't have that life waddle and bumble about trying to get that value slapped on as best they can. Often they can look pretty good, beaming, dressed to the nines, speaking quite eloquently about the finer things. But scratch those indices a bit more and you'll see what's really there. Recently the highly revered value assessor Warren Buffett wrote an op-ed in top Arts dealer The New York Times in which he laments a federal deficit of nearly $2 trillion. Essentially he said "Whoa, don't make the lie too big now or we're in real trouble." Does he say we should all get with Jesus who assesses value perfectly? Nah. Just that the federal government should be a bit more deft with its monumental taxing and spending power, and that, quote, "The dollar's destiny lies with Congress." That's it. That'll do it. Keep urging Caesar to lie to us. This from an individual who has also been busy scrambling to come clean about how he could value his company's derivatives the way he did when the numbers didn't add up. In case you don't know, the ratio of worldwide derivatives (what power brokers say things are valued) to assets (things valued when actually looking at them) is 4 to1. But then, this is The Arts in action.
While Simon Cowell does a bang-up job on TV, the economic gurus are a bit more illuminating. Because of their fanatical desire to either tell us all quite confidently what's what or cash in a bit more by doing their part for the lie, they unwittingly reveal the abject inadequacy of the World's value assessment amidst Caesar's Arts. May I share a brief sampling from a few modern sources. One of the most popular books among the high finance crowd is Justin Fox's The Myth of Rational Markets. He says we should finally see that markets alone don't really work as a pretense to implementing more government regulation, but his treatise is nothing new. Every time there is a financial panic, World shills speak about the contemptible failure of Adam Smith's beloved free market model. The fact is everything anyone does is rational, even if it involves successful lying. It is especially rational when you're trying to get Caesar to enable you and your exploitive ventures. The issue is not really what is rational but what is righteous. But then, why would someone completely outside the presence of God know what that means? Fox searches feverishly for the perfect model for predicting market behavior to prove it doesn't it exist by trying to show it's not really there after all. He just can't fathom that it's been there for millennia and it actually works perfectly for those who must do human sacrifice. Another tome is University of Chicago professor Richard Thaler's Nudge, about how World operatives should use kinder ways to "nudge" people to do the right thing. Why whack them on the head when you can use the Arts? Duhyee. In the Financial Times Thaler wrote a piece in which he tries to bolster the "myth of the market" myth, even snuggling up a bit with eminent quant Robert Shiller for cred. "Prices can be unpredictable and still wrong," he says. Um, wrong? How can you know "wrong" if you don't have a transcendent standard by which to determine that? (Isaac Newton doesn't count.) Thaler even concedes "it is hard to reject the claim that prices are right unless you have a theory of how prices are supposed to behave." He gives an example in which something (in this case a certain stock) was considered by different people in different places under different conditions who had different perspectives and different motives at different times with very different information—including that of Cain's agents gently muttered in Caesar's megaphone. After noting two different prices arising from this he pretty much says "See, it can be wrong!" Never mind that this kind of thing happens all the time and doesn't disprove the law of one price. It does demonstrate how those ill-versed in Christ's immutable Words are necessarily captivated by Caesar's shifting Arts. Top Wall Street Journal economist David Wessel has a new book out, In Fed We Trust. Now there's a title that does say a lot. Appearing on PBS's Newshour, he said that two things struck him about the economic crisis last fall. One, it was not just big but really really big, and two, the guys in charge of fixing it were very ordinary. Even more telling was his reference to the metaphor for former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan's consideration of penthouse market exploitation. Greenspan always surmised the "poker players" could effectively constrain themselves because it was their money on the table, and Wessel categorically said this folly was proved wrong. Oh, there's that word again, "wrong." What does "wrong" mean to the humanist who has only human behavior as any type of standard? What human has the standard? Caesar's Arts cloud the real problems with the metaphor. First, these poker players are not playing with their own money but other people's money, and are doing so explicitly to appropriate it for themselves (quite rational I might add). Second, they have to lie to do that, and must work very hard at it. Who doesn't know that poker very rationally requires impeccably executed deceit? Third, since the lying is very lucrative, the high cost of being deceptive is simply figured in. Indeed this is why Fox, Shiller, Thaler et al simply cannot see how a price can always be right. They refuse to accept that the required lying is paid for and as such is part of the perfectly rational price. Fourth, not only will they lie just as much with the most gallantly rigorous regulation, but the regulators are just as happy with the liars because the more there are, the more their services in "catching" them are demanded and paid for by the taxpayer. That's about as rational as you can get, I'd say. Finally, I must make mention of Niall Ferguson's brilliant primer on the history of the World's value assessment, The Ascent of Money, a venture also broadcast as a documentary series on public television. This is a comedic jaunt (I say that as a compliment) through the utterly ludicrous behavior of financial artisans, and Ferguson concludes appropriately: "Planet finance can never quite escape from the gravitational force of planet earth, because the quants can never take full account of the human factor, our tendency to underestimate the probability of black swans, our propensity to veer from euphoria to despondency, our chronic inability to learn from history." There it is. They can't get it, and they never will. A black swan, by the way, is term that describes a completely unforeseen and extraordinarily disruptive variation in an economy. "Fear the black swan" is the word on Wall Street and its players are always swarming to find cover, never realizing that its likelihood is merely symptomatic of the Arts used against them. For the World inhabitant worshipping the Fed chairman, University of Chicago economists, and Warren Buffett, all that's left is the resigned concession that the more visible of Cain's accountants will do a passable job telling us we're valuable no matter how much they're lying. Every economic crisis, panic, meltdown, indeed every inevitably resulting war is caused by the highly calculated and deeply covert exploitation of markets. That the face of this work shines through methodically pious political lackeys who barely have to lift a finger is a crucial part of the program. Fine wholesome folks flooding town hall meetings screech about how socialist things are getting without the faintest idea they've been nationalized their whole lives. Worried about government takeover of health care? It's already theirs, and they've had it for centuries. World Artisans do a fantastic job of drawing your gaze away from the truth: Value disassessment is demanded by a willing populace given over to rank human sacrifice, it is skillfully arranged by the militant organization best trained to execute Cain's charge, and it is so much fun because they get to use the Arts. It is always rational. Always. Every single time. It is just never righteous.
The Artisans practice their craft on the Christian by insisting it is only the System that may manage one's value and that he must contract with Caesar to facilitate that. What's more telling is that as much as Christians say they trust in Christ and they say they're part of the Kingdom, when it comes to authentic value assessment and godly capital movement Christ is rarely ever in the picture. How do I know this? It is because virtually every institution—small or large—through which value assessment and capital movement take place is contracted as a World affiliate through a W-4 income declaration system in incorporated bodies, many of which are churches obligated to Caesar as 501c3s. He has The Arts at his disposal to give a fine dramatic portrayal of the part of Regulator while at the same time convincing World inhabitants that he may be trusted to keep open the channels for due returns on their human sacrifice. The Arts are scarcely used to convince us Wall Street is cutthroat or Washington gutless, everyone knows that. The point of all of this is that this is the way it is supposed to be at the behest of Cain's legacy. When you're signed on with it and assume the privilege of heaving with all your might to reform it, you aren't as much hooked up with Caesar or even with Cain's sworn operatives. You're under the thumb of the one most qualified to use the Arts for World glorification. The harrowing reality is if you're trusting Cain's highest ranking officer,
What are you doing with Christ?
I have to close with this brief personal anecdote. I was listening to the sermon from a relatively new pastor—he does head a 501c3 church—and he was laying out his vision for ministry. Bless his heart, like most young idealists he means so well, but all of his proposals were for the most miniscule things. I confess, I cynically look upon soup kitchens as necessary and don't for a minute question what God does through them. But I read Scripture that tells me if we were fully Christ's there would be a pool of capital so magnificent that would result in abundant provision for everyone. I don't know, that's just what I read in Scripture. This pastor continued and spoke about doing what we can without much money, and he said these words: "We are not a bank." No wonder we have to scrounge. We've carelessly handed over to Planet Finance the very meaning of our value. Planet Christianity has succumbed to and continues to be entranced by those Arts. Here's the thing. At precisely the same moment as this pastor said this—I kid you not, my eyes just happened upon these words from the third chapter of Ephesians:
"…the unsearchable riches of Christ…"
Wow, there it is. The contrast. World exploitees like the good pastor obediently following the General's voice in the echo chamber—whining when he could be rich beyond understanding, making mudpies no matter how often a holiday at sea is offered. Wait, doesn't "unsearchable" mean we're just as lost as the World? No. It just means there's so much of it we can't know about it all. There's a lot of it, but it doesn't mean we can't have it. Sow with it. Love others with it. Revel in it to the very core of our being with The One who gave it all to us.
You can't do that in the World. But you wouldn't know it if you can't see through the Roman's Arts.
***
#
"If only we'd return to the Constitution." Ever hear these words? They frequently roll off the lips of patriotic libertarian types of all persuasions who revere it as holy writ. The idea, it seems, is that government must know its place, that either big government or unresponsive government—depending on your ideologically colored huff of the moment—must be vilified to advance the crusade. Whatever that may be at the moment.
At the time the Constitution was being considered for ratification, Abigail Adams, nearly as renowned as her husband John, wrote a letter to her sister Mary about the meager return on her investments because of depreciated currency. She complained, "[We are] sufferers by the instability of government." The culture war over this magnificent concept titled "Government" had raged long before Adams, but since the American experiment is always front and center in the minds of today's trendiest crusaders it would be worth reflecting on a few of the battles waged when The Document was formed. The greatest conflict at that time had much less to do with large states vs. small states or centralists vs. decentralists—these jaws were merely the most publicized. It was that between the bondholder—or the one with the wherewithal to best facilitate capital movement—and the interests from whom he needed cooperation, namely, the farmer, the slave, and the native, or more commonly known as the American Indian. The farmer was required to make good on his financial obligation with specie (gold or silver), something he lacked in any meaningful abundance. The slave was expected to be obsequiously compliant under the weight of unbearable racial oppression. And the American Indian was compelled to frequently agree with ever-shifting arrangements regarding land use. That each of these interests were regularly stirred to rebellion was precisely part of the plan. There is not space enough here to cite all the convenient uprisings, let's just say ample justification was thus presented for the formation of a powerful enforcement body to restrain such insolence, its charge directed by the principles in The Document. And did The Document do its job. First, it transferred the onerous taxation program from the states to the national government, interestingly one of the most popular features of the work at the time. Charles Carroll, a delegate from Maryland, supported ratification because it was a vote for "a better system of taxation" that would prove at once "more productive & less oppressive than the present." Thinking about the huge tax burden today may make this statement comical, but it should be noted the Carroll had very close connections with the most powerful covert World operatives doing the bidding of the one most qualified to yank all the pulley ropes in this endeavor. (Is it coincidence that the disestablishment of the Jesuits was fully in place for all of The Document's formative years? Or was this merely part of the exquisitely Sun-Tzuan designs to persuade detractors that The Company had no input in its creation?) As we look over the progression of constitutional dominion, Carroll's words will be seen for the brilliant sales pitch that they were. Because it could now raise money with much greater authority, the U.S. government could fully support an army and any militia required to summarily check any significant insubordination. It didn't matter if it was significant, if it was particularly useful in serving the feds' purposes, it was widely advertised as such. Taxation was used against the farmer to keep him "inspired" to produce, and at the same time his debt was never fully eased because it served the same purpose. Even as much as champions of the bucolic have so vigorously opposed "big government"—the populist sentiment always seems so heroic—it has always been notoriously devoted to The Document constructed with their repression chief among its functions. It goes without saying that a force now fully equipped to crack heads with impunity could much more effectively suppress slave revolts and rearrange native populations. Remember that crazy twist of history when Robert E. Lee led the federal units that quashed John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry? Much less known is that before president Andrew Jackson dissed chief justice John Marshall by telling him to enforce his decision against the martially supervised procession displacing the southern tribes—the infamous Trail of Tears—Marshall himself was instrumental in starting it with an earlier ruling based on an interpretation of the Constitution that was not entirely novel at the time. The relentless appropriation of land westward allowed the bondholder to see some substantive return on his investment, for as long as there was land availability there were always land auctions. The gravy train ran off the tracks in 1912 with the statehood of Arizona and New Mexico, but the very next year the bondholder would put it back on again with the advent of a viable income tax program and the installment of an august organization—the Federal Reserve—to administer a revolutionary new version of perpetual indebtedness.
Are the bondholders the villains in this great American story? No. Again, they are merely the assigned value assessors gainfully employed by the World System, considered to be the most adept at making capital movement somewhat fluid. They are, indeed, the financial agents for Cain's agency of hegemonic sin management. How about all the other players? Innocent victims of wanton exploiters? Perhaps, but anyone who commits themselves to rebellion against the ordained authorities are subject to all the retributive force a power seven times greater may muster. It was common to refer to the American Indians as savages, and, well, they were indeed that. Forgive me, I know, this is not exactly a politically correct thing to say, but a cursory review of how they treated one another will convince you that they were. Farmers and slaves enraged, armed, and mobilized, however, are just as savage. And such means required to savage them must be fully savage itself, including, alas, its funding source, the bondholders who prize returns over lives typically dismissed for those ends. Hey. What about that. Everyone is a savage. The radical fact that emerges—at least radical to millions of modern-day slaves—is that
This is precisely what the Constitution is all about.
I don't have to recite the items from today's news to belabor the point that the savagery still happens. Much of it is quite wholesomely American. It's downright rude to imply that you are patriotic while neglecting to be enlisted in some systemic rebellion against the targeted hegemony with a legion of like-minded individuals. Make an appeal to The Document? Stand on that which is CAWN-STIH-TOO-SHUNAL? Demand that your rights be respected by the highest ranking officers of Caesar? You will be intractably gripped by the essence of its work, the evolution of which you can see above. It is no surprise that World inhabitants are fond of declaring how "constitutional" a thing is or is not. No matter how noble or honorable a Document advocate is, every appeal to it is a confession of one's subjugation to Cain's domain.
The funny thing is that while the Bible is an alternative document elucidating principles of governance for those who wish to live richly in the Kingdom, it wholly endorses the existence, legitimacy, and authority of Cain's latest experiment. Cain's agency does do its job phenomenally well. Enslaved World inhabitants do have their rebellious proclivities constrained, kind of, and in that it is an authentic footstool of God for the benefit of His own. When Cain's minions get bored they do stir things up a bit providing great entertainment, however virulently lethal it is.
The most important feature of the Bible is that it speaks of an opened Door for those who do want genuine freedom from the savagery.
His name is Jesus Christ.
Want to see capital movement that'll make the wealthiest bondholders look like bored kids in a smelly sandbox?
Try asking Him. No documents, no bonds or debt notes, no fancy forms with intricate artwork, no contracts or certificates with flourishing signatures, no vows or oaths or the sincerest of promises.
Just go through The Door.
***
#
This quote from Elie Wiesel is one of the most profound I’ve ever come across. It so resonates with me because as much as it is true that you are what you eat, it is infinitely more meaningful that
You are who you follow.
Vaunted Presbyterian wonk Timothy Keller has a new book out called Counterfeit Gods, and while I haven’t read it I’ve familiarized myself with its contents. I’m actually not much interested in getting into it, because while I think Keller is a decently articulate witness for Christ, his elaboration of success, love, power, money, and sex as the idols of the day is nothing new. He merely belabors the point that an idol is something not-God to whom we give our devotion. Zillions of people have had and still have such idols and all the eloquent ranting about how awful that is doesn’t do a lick to change things. What would be more groundbreaking is if he’d asserted something much more striking: That the real idols are the people whom we follow and their ideas which we adopt as guideposts for living. Who are those people? And what are their ideas? Sure we all want significance and intimacy and all the rest of it. The real question is: From whom does one get the ideas about those things?
It is axiomatic that government plays a part in this, that it is quite instrumental in directing what is best for us and for society. I know that a lot of people put their faith in the government because they either endorse one of its policies or revile it. They may even express vehement indifference to it—whatever the case, they are all doing something with government. Here is my next question. Which government are they talking about? No, I don’t mean which type of government, or which level or branch of government, or even which sphere of government. I mean is it the World System governed by the presently installed and elevated operatives of Caesar, or is it the Kingdom governed by the Lord of Heaven and Earth, Jesus Christ?
To understand a bit more about this dichotomy, I thought I’d stroll through a common concern about the human condition. It is namely that some people in society must receive help from others in order to have their needs met, and that they can offer nothing in return. Their sustenance must be provided by someone else in return for little or nothing. When these people suffer, economists will consider this the essence of market failure. The most common classification of persons in this condition are children, the elderly, and the sick or disabled. These are the big three. Only the cruelest curmudgeons would disagree that somehow, someway these individuals must rely upon completely charitable help from someone somewhere. I thought about this for a while and wondered, are there any others who could be classified in this group? Certainly those labeled the underprivileged are frequently extended this status. These would generally be considered those born with some lesser capacity to produce, from the extremes of the mildly underpaid to the chillingly homeless. It could also include those who are simply neglected, for whatever reason. In a sense they are the unloved outcasts. From there I thought, could the less-well-off also include those with incomplete information? They are very susceptible to being deceived, even know only the ways of the World and follow the most powerful value extractors to their severe detriment. Really, every individual holds incomplete information about others and is therefore always liable to be exploited. You could be very well-off and still be an exploitee. In that sense, then, all the air-breathers and water-drinkers should be included in the mix. After all, we do trust that whoever runs things in that nebulous realm called “society” will find ways of keeping the air and water clean. Even those who sneer at the climate change hysteria are trusting that some chemical plant won't pull another Bhopal where they live.
Let’s just get right to it. All bad things considered “market failures” left unchecked would result in death. And really, who doesn’t die? If you are a die-er, then you are in the group. Are you dying right now? I don’t mean you are lying in a hospice somewhere. If you aren’t in denial, you acknowledge after you’re born you start dying. Around every corner is something that could kill you. Even so, will you be dead at some point? If you are a die-er, and yes, you are a die-er, then you are someone who needs the help of someone else for your very existence. I’d like to take this one step further, which actually is the key thing bringing this cerebral exercise to a head. When it’s all said and done, precisely why is someone a die-er? Sure our body’s cells die, and a few of us will get run over by a truck, but what is the deal with eventual death anyway? The answer is everyone commits awful acts against themselves, against others, against their community and society, which pretty much means we’re spiritually dead right now. We are victims of the worst kind of handicap, our own naturally-disposed yet thoroughly debilitating evildoing. Feel free to just blow this off, no big deal. Go ahead and say you’ve never done anything really wrong, I understand. It is extraordinarily difficult to face the reality of our condition and it is perfectly rational to evade it. The point here is that we are all inextricably vulnerable to market failure. Each one of us requires others, whoever they are, to survive even the next minute. I imagine there may be those very rare few who are so self-sufficient that they can grow their own food with their own tools outside their hut a thousand miles in the wilderness, but—whew!—a militant recluse, I can’t think of many others more victimized by market failure.
Here is where the government comes into the picture. The concept of market failure is always followed by mention of government, and for good reason. People get paid gobs of money to devise newer ways for government to fix market failure. We all want powerful people—those in government—to step into the picture to make things happen for those victims. Generally most conclude that there is only one of these governments, you know the one, it has Barack Obama and all the money and all that, and that those who can’t do viable market stuff (children, elderly, sick, poor) are the ones government is expected to help. Most everything about temporal government revolves around the key ways Caesar’s version addresses those particular individuals: public education for children, Social Security for the elderly, Medicare for the sick, unemployment insurance and welfare for the poor. But again, just as much as we may say everyone must receive help from powerful others even to survive, it is just as veritable that there is not one government but two. I actually think there is substantive assent for the former position, because the size of the federal government is expanding so much. How many believe that everyone needs bail-out money of some kind, the latest ravishing demand for universal health care one of the most telling indicators. Unabashed libertarians proudly declare they need none of it from any government, but somewhere along the line something they needed was subsidized by another somehow. What is far less understood is the real distinction between the World System and the Kingdom, between Caesar’s government and Christ’s, and especially between the two sets of ideas they present about how needs should be met. Two governments, in essence, two wholly authorized resource movement managers.
The World System way is merely the implementation, maintenance, and augmentation of human sacrifice. Its job is to keep people in a state of blissful misapprehension about the real spiritual nature of their condition. The motivation to help others is wholly Catholicist—merit points are tallied in the heavens for wholesome works, and because it is all based on fear the objects of such charity are never freed from their enslavement. This codependent relationship simply keeps the victimized tied to the altar, and the federal government, the Roman Catholic Church, and the banking system led by the Federal Reserve are the institutionalized bodies that sustain it. The Kingdom way is the complete abandonment to the reality of God sacrificing His one and only Son to rescue us from the oppression that is the World. The only meaningful expression of this is the surrender of oneself to be crucified with Him, then extending love and forgiveness to others rejoicing in the magnificent things God can and does do in them, through them, and for them. Endless and limitless, seeding and spreading and surging agape translated into authentic value enhancement of every human being. The key is that
Ne’er the twain shall meet.
Jesus will not share the glory of His work with Caesar in any way. And yet, what do those who say they’re with Jesus do, all the time?
They contract with Caesar. They sign W-4 forms coming under the
reign of Caesar. They sign 1023 forms incorporating their churches. They sign debt
contracts putting themselves under the feet of brazen usurers. They rage What am I saying?… Maybe they must. Maybe they all are so intractably Catholicist and will never for a second really give themselves to Christ. Maybe they do need the power of the law to govern their affairs. Maybe they are just as deceitful as those who train them that they can’t help but insatiably strive to get the upper hand of human sacrifice. So why then am I saying anything about them when I’m already saying we should have nothing to do with the works of darkness? What do I have to do with it? It’s because I merely want to expose them—the very words in the book of Ephesians, by the way, that follow those about the darkness. “Have nothing to do with the deeds of darkness,” Paul writes, “but rather expose them.” I have nothing to say one way or another about Cain’s domain except to shine a light on it. And it’s not my light, as if I had any. That Light is Christ, brighter than a thousand suns. Caesar’s got his light, for sure, a nifty looking penlight with weak batteries to guide his resource arrangements. It is seven times brighter than the light any of the millions of die-ers have, so hey, they follow it for good reason. I guess Christ's is just a bit too bright.
This past October an issue of Christianity Today—really the Time or Newsweek for the Christian set—featured this essential plea scribbled across its cover: “Evangelicals desperately need moral and spiritual renewal, we all agree. The question is, how do we do it? First: Grace…” I’d venture to say none of the dozens of blitherings about what to do had anything to do with truly, fully, wholly, completely selling ourselves out to Jesus Christ. He’s not just grace, He is Truth as well… I’d venture to say no one mentioned that we should actually believe in Him. The operative word there was actually, by the way, meaning actually believing in Jesus and not Caesar or some counterfeit Christ. All the stuff about government or some other powerful individual fixing things when it isn’t Christ is in the end purely worthless. It serves its purposes now, for a time, but ultimately it will all be dust. I’d venture to say a lot of it was just the same stuff Timothy Keller was saying, you know, stop being so into success and love and power—perfectly fine things, actually, which Jesus said would be ours if only we’d get them from Him. What if we actually chose The Kingdom Option? What if those with Christ’s name on their lips resolutely joined to do precisely what Christ told us to do? What if we formed worship assemblies that didn’t contract with Caesar in any way? What if we actually became ungrafted to the World not only in our churches but in our schools, businesses, even financial management firms? What would happen in our very souls if we saw all the pooled resources sowed among those who have a genuine heart to see God’s glory shine through those overwhelmed by His provision? Do Keller or those writing in Christianity Today offer this as the most significant cure to the spiritual disease they speak of? Please forgive me, maybe they do. If they do, I’ll pay attention. I really will. If not, it’s just more World pap from World people and their ideas. Most times I don’t think they know who they’re listening to, but they are listening to them. Those who’ve seduced them are just fine with that. It’s the Catholicist way.
Which group of resource managers are you listening to? Which government and its ideas are you following? Really. Actually.
Which one?
*** Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end. - Isaiah 9:7
***
#
This verse describes the benighted condition of Israel as they were slipping out from under the divinely instituted oppression of Babylon. While God used the empire as an instrument of judgment, the piercing confessional prayer of Nehemiah makes clear the truth of the people’s complicity. Biblical scholars like to emphasize that pronouncements about a historical event and God’s consideration of that event should apply only to that specific instance, but I must say this is indeed a circumstance that could just as easily elucidate the present distress today. The people and places have changed, but it is really not much different. The critical part of that verse for the purpose of answering the question “What to do?” is in the distress, for distress too heavy is always confronted quite dramatically. The Society’s task is to exploit that distress for World System advantage. Those not sworn or contracted with that system will endure the distress for all its profundity, and summarily ask God to share with them His perspective on what to do, as the Israelites did. Those obligated to the World will be seduced by the Society’s proficient designs, and no better place to see the deft manipulation of distress is in the bowels of the financial world. As victims of institutional value extraction sink through the quicksand, gulping for air and heaving for life, they listen attentively to what is streamed through the World’s megaphone. The content generally spews out in one of two ways. 1. “We’re making progress, things aren’t so bad, cheer up it could be worse.” 2. “Those liars, let’s go get ’em, they’ve done wrong, let’s teach ’em a lesson.” World inhabitants then go about their lives trying to make sense of the two messages. Which one is it? Few are able to confidently answer the core question here: Are things good or are they bad, and what will be the answer to this question tomorrow?
I like this quote from Franklin Raines, former Chairman and CEO of the disgraced mortgage broker Fannie Mae. It goes a long way to getting at what’s really happening. Back when he was being grilled about the GSE (and long before the 2008 subprime meltdown) he said, “Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990’s by reducing down payment requirements. Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.” This appears to be a wholesome boast about the federal government’s kindness in helping down and out people get homes. But the underlying meaning is much more significant. Tell me, isn’t he really just saying this? “We’ve been making it easier for the World System to provide capital for people, replacing their own families and communities. Yet too many of them are worthless or simply have so much of their productive value systematically hacked off that our exploiters must charge them higher prices.” Whatever is said about this capital movement or that one, the question will always come around to “Is it worth it, really—will the people we’re investing in pay off?” There are indeed only two ways to answer that question, one is by the Kingdom ruled by Jesus Christ who moves those beholden to Him to love with a love that sows bountiful riches of all kinds into communities. The other way is the World way, and it always involves human sacrifice.
This is indeed the heart of the matter.
Christ sacrificed Himself so others would follow and crucify themselves to Him, sacrificing themselves out of their love for one another. Cain sacrificed another, his own brother, and set the standard for what all those without Christ must do so they get any gratification they can. It is nothing other than sacrificing others. Furthermore, those who do see it for what it is and itch to rail against “the exploiters” (often more pleasantly euphemized as “the system”) should also know a difficult truth. Human sacrifice is legal, constitutional, institutional, and wholly endorsed and sustained by the World. There isn’t a single thing one can do to end it, at least temporally. Many will likely say this is an insane exaggeration, that speaking of something as eccentrically peculiar as human sacrifice is naively melodramatic. I just don’t think they’ve been looking closely enough. Or maybe they have and they’re just part of the program—just waiting to get their cut, with a beaming smile and a modest portion proudly awarded the Boy’s Club and Red Cross. I always like to share numbers that quantify these things a bit, but too often they don't get right to what things are or they're turgidly incomprehensible to ill-versed observers. Here’s a pretty easy one to grasp. By some estimates unfunded liabilities of the federal government are surpassing $100 trillion. That means the feds promise to hand out this amount of money to the country’s people and they don’t exactly have it right now. It amounts to $1 million per household, again a sum it says it will distribute at some point later whenever that is. Here's the million dollar question: Where are the feds getting this money? The average household earns $50,000 a year. So if we do the math, are we to assume that each small family unit is drawing on a $50,000 yearly income to get one million future dollars? Or is it more likely that many of these numbers are just officially-sounding ostensibly-accounted-for presumptions of value with no veritably concrete value assignment attached? I hear constantly about how foolish our leaders are, sometimes even how contemptibly reprehensible their behavior is. Why the frustration? These numbers make it clear that they’re merely doing precisely what human sacrificers demand of them. The value extractors are not just powerful government people, they’re everyone contracted with Cain’s legacy. I can’t help but think that all the snarling is just echo chamber noise emanating from the precision instrumentation of the Society. How many times can one hear “They’re robbing Peter to pay Paul!” before getting thoroughly jaded? How many different ways can someone grouse to get people’s attention? Here’s a sample of it from Charles Goyette’s recent primer The Dollar Meltdown: “How may power best be exploited and aggrandized? Who is to be bailed out, and who is to be plundered for it? Who is to be subsidized, who penalized? Who shall be taxed and who shall be paid?” The fact is this is standard procedure for all World inhabitants at every wealth and income level. Everyone is looking to hack off something from someone else. It means little to say Americanists should know better in a country as great as the U-S-of-A, because the Society has simply covered the distress with vanilla frosting and made the bellicosity of “getting ours” more palatable. Matthew Stewart spends most of his excellent expose The Management Myth ripping modern business management a new asshole, and just before he offers the standard blithering about how we need to just damn-it be better people in whatever supposedly novel way he thinks, he starts to get at what’s really happening. He writes: “The shareholder-value model had induced executives to engage in asset stripping—destroying the long-term productive potential of a corporation for the sake of short-term stock market gains. At a more general level, the dogma implicitly favors a similar kind of asset stripping for society at large—a demolition of the trust on which society is founded. The business schools do no worse than train their students in subjects that do not exist; they also prepare them to become destructive members of society.” Did you catch that? Did you see the key term in there, mentioned twice.
Asset stripping.
Much like value extraction, I must say.
Which is what human sacrifice is all about.
I thought I’d add one more nifty evidence while we’re at it, one I came across just the other day. It was perfect. I had to include it here, something we all know about but I don’t believe we consider seriously enough. Vampires.
I happened to barely catch the end of National Public
Radio’s All Things Considered, and Margot Adler had a piece about the
popular vampire. Not just the vampire, which is a classic metaphor for the human
sacrificer, but the popular vampire. It seems high profile showcases like The Twilight Saga, Moonlight, and True Blood have made vampires not only perversely attractive but downright respectable. They’ve donned the mantle of heroic protagonist, and Adler’s main thrust is that the drama is so compelling because as they struggle with their insidiously predatory nature, they have this endearing drive to be substantively moral. Umm… yeah. Sounds like the Catholicist Nation to me. “Oh, come on,” I can hear it now. “Vampires. Pshaw. A wild figment of fantasy—get out of here with your daft ideas about human sacrificers.” Well, Adler’s own concluding words were along the lines of “We’re all vampires after all.” Her words, not mine. "They really are us" was the phrasing to be exact. We’re all just vampires. To rephrase a well-known biblical verse, “For whoever wants to feverishly clutch his own life will take the life-blood of others yet in the end still lose his life, but whoever gives up human sacrifice and accepts Christ’s shed blood for them will have his life saved. What good is it to gain all the stuff acquired by other’s blood, yet give up his soul? How can offering up anything from value stripping be worth one’s own soul bought by Christ and His sacrificial love?” (For those who chafe at such liberties taken with Scripture, the exact verse is cited in the notes below.)
Yes, it is indeed the firmly unequivocal premise of this website that
· Human sacrifice is a veritable and quite commonplace reality. · It is carried out regularly and habitually by all who do not have The Son. · Those who ask Caesar to be their lord will be provided the standard service of its full enablement. · Caesar’s operatives in the service of Cain’s legacy will use the most skillfully executed arts of deception to keep it viable. · God allows it in as much as it is part of His footstool, functioning to ultimately steer people away from it into Christ’s arms, or fulfill His purposes until the last day, or both. · Those who say they’re Christ’s but sign binding pacts with Caesar designating his lordship over their affairs are merely enlisting with the World and doing its work. · Many of those Christians are simply fully immersed Catholicists sworn to do Caesar’s legitimate work and are nowhere near the Kingdom. · Often those individuals work in the highest levels of the World administering powerful political, ecclesiastical, and commercial enterprises that are all about human sacrifice.
The only way out is complete abandonment to the Jesus Christ of Scripture.
One dead giveaway that someone is really just toeing the line of a World operative is the hoarse screeching about how much the liars are getting away with and how awful the coming train wreck will be. Their only solution is something akin to the Second American Revolution. “We need to rise up, people!” they will shout. “We need to take this country back!” they’ll holler. The latest wave of “tea parties” is symptomatic of this phenomenon. But what will be wrought? Nothing but the very thing human sacrificers slobber over. More blood.
In closing I must add that it is the personal desire of this follower of Christ to link up with others who insightfully see this biblical truth and have a genuine desire to act on it in the limitless power of the Holy Spirit. If you look at what comes right after the ninth chapter of Nehemiah with which I opened this piece, you’ll note that no fewer than 36 top leaders of the nation of Israel make a bold, firm decision to do exactly what God has asked them to do for worshipping Him in Spirit and in Truth. When will there be as many doing so today? It isn’t about forming a new church. It isn’t about adopting a provocative new name for a boffo new Christian kind of thing. It isn’t even about starting a spectacular new movement that just ends up a World subdivision anyway when its devotees procure the World’s attractive services. It’s about nothing but humbly doing just what God told us to do in His word. And yes, I do believe that does involve really actually truly getting together—in physical proximity with one another, not just in cyberspace—and talking about His things as He says they are. It explicitly requires meeting and discussing and making real commitments—in formal settings no less—among people who are wise and influential and have a full heart for Christ and His Kingdom. That’s what was going on in the tenth chapter of Nehemiah. It happened successfully at that time to vibrantly nourish the nation of Israel through which Christ would come. Now that Christ has arrived and we have the Holy Spirit permanently dwelling in our hearts, doing this now should be a snap. Yes it does involve full understanding of the nature of human sacrifice. And it does involve what to do with that understanding. And then it is simple…
Watch God blow us away.
Oh, yeah, that does sound rather abrupt. "Blow us away..." Yes, that can be taken two different ways. I guess it depends on whether you're watching it from the World or from the Kingdom.
***
#
Francis Beckwith is a very honest man. Now I know that often people say so-and-so is honest in order to proudly "praise" or "bury" him as a way to impugn his character in some underhanded way. I only say this because you wouldn't think Francis Beckwith was very honest from the vitriol expressed by the Protestant community after he left his position as president of the Evangelical Theological Society three years ago to rejoin the Roman Catholic Church. Many were aghast that one so eloquent about biblical matters would turn so resolutely to the other side. How utterly irrational. It was perfectly rational, however, for Beckwith is being genuinely acquiescent to the full meaning and force of the law to govern his affairs. Indeed, every Roman Catholic living richly by the precepts of the most spectacular law enforcement institution in the World is a very honest individual. Why question their deeply authentic sincerity? Chris Castaldo is another honest man. A former Catholic himself and a pastor at a church in Wheaton, Illinois, he has written a fine book about evangelizing Catholics called Holy Ground. He's also been traveling the country speaking and granting interviews, and I attended one such talk at Biola University near Los Angeles. An interesting thing about this event was that it was attended by a number of devout Roman Catholics who were very open sharing their concerns about this idea that Protestants and Catholics are separate in some way. One even mentioned it was all just a matter of semantics. Castaldo did the exceedingly gracious thing throughout, but as he did it was clear that as much as many of the Catholics and Catholicists alike were chafing at some of the evening's substance, the truth was making its way further to the distant back of the conversation. The reason for this is simple: Castaldo very honestly believes that evangelizing Catholics is simply a matter of getting them to switch God clubs. For the most part his case is indeed biblical, but his approach is one that cannot really get at the truth of what's going on. This is because he has not become fully decatholicized himself, and again sincerely believes the issue is really just a matter of one's own particular belief system and where it fits. I can't say where I think Castaldo is with his faith, or Beckwith, or anyone for that matter. That's not my call. But I do read what Scripture says. And I do know what it says about the law. And I do see what it says the Roman Catholic Church truly is. And because this organization is the ecclesiastical manifestation of the World System's ordained law enforcement inaugurated just after the first murder of a man several millennia ago, it is very rationally assigned the duty of managing the sinful behavior of people who honestly confess they still need its services.
Just how this is exhibited can be seen in the recent whirlwind of current events dealing with the Roman Catholic Church. A brief sampling, if I may, with the essential headlines that have been screaming across the newswires: "Vatican declares Pope has immunity." The attacks on the Catholic leadership regarding the perpetual sexual abuse scandal have pushed the Institution into code red dissembling mode, but that the Pope has immunity in his role as World System enforcer is not a lie. Oh, Romanist operatives may consider the presently enthroned individual too much of a public relations liability and arrange for a replacement in a "less controversial" way, but the position is secure and quite justifiably protected from any outside prosecution. He is the prosecutor, or at least one of its most prominent faces. "Phone hotline set up for abuse victims gets flooded and has to shut down." The church felt it needed to appear bit conciliatory so a "hotline" was set up to make devotees believe they were actually being heard. So many people, so many thousands of people called in to cry, complain, holler, question, confess, scold, and make demands that the church's switchboard could not handle it. It shut down in a New York minute. Relatively stunning evidence for the pervasive nature of the problem, it more profoundly demonstrates that so many are so beholden to the Institution because they believe, very reasonably so, that it is the only entity that can save them. "‘Satan is behind the large number of attacks against the church,' say officials." Those who point out discomforting things must be at least a little to blame, it seems. For their part they've got the top Vatican exorcist stepping it up to rid the church of the devil's presence wherever he may be found. As long as we know he's on the job, at least there's that. And because it makes for such great entertainment, it's probably best he doesn't do too much. Otherwise we may get bored and ignore the very important-looking pageantry of all those guys in the boffo outfits. It's good that they speak so regularly about how much they're doing to fix things. "Scores in Germany say they are leaving church." They may say they are leaving, but they aren't. "You say ‘No, no' but your eyes say ‘Yes, yes.'" Even if they do hold out, they will either go back later, or they will simply transfer their membership to another God club. A church, ministry, or any non-profit organization that has some tax-exempt classification is just a subdivision of the Roman Church. Doesn't matter if it is religious or non-religious, theistic or atheistic, pious or profane. Everybody has a Jesus, even if it isn't the real one. Everyone is trying to find an affinity group that acts as their salvation, and every one of them is subject to the laws and bylaws of the World System, unless… unless any given individual or even group decides to leave the System all together. If they don't know of the only meaningful place to go outside the System, the Kingdom option, they'll necessarily just swing over to another "Jesus." "Justice John Paul Stevens is the last Protestant on the Supreme Court." Why is this even mentioned at all? I thought none of this kind of thing really mattered anymore. Protestants may stridently lament the risk that their voice won't be heard anymore when Stevens is gone, but it doesn't matter. Caesar will do whatever Caesar must do no matter what kind of voices are in the echo chamber. That six Catholics now sit on the highest bench is simply the honest revelation of who does the best job of merciless condemnation.
"God needs to be rescued." This was the exact headline in the Los
Angeles Times of a brief interview with Sinead O'Connor, notorious for tearing
up Their god needs rescuing by anxiously loyal soldiers sworn to zealously pious duty, much of it motivated by the incessant need for absolution. Rescue him and his officers and you've got a few more points toward a ticket to heaven. Just this week Newsweek had a cover story called "What Would Mary Do" all about how the women of the church need to get going to rehabilitate those wayward men. It all just substantiates the codependent nature of the World System. It looks so awful, all of it splayed there only to embarrass everyone. It seems all we hear about is the abject bewilderment as to why it is going this way. That or the always simmering rage. Or both. The truth is the Roman Catholic Church does what it does because it is supposed to. Many decry it as dysfunctional, but it is very functional. In fact much of what we see and hear is deliberately coordinated to bolster its legitimacy by evoking feelings like those weaving through the World's psyche. Twisted? Of course. Calculated to keep the faithful in the fold? Absolutely. To question it, challenge it, censure it, berate it, protest against it, suggest things to it, or start reform movements in it is to confess that one belongs to it and as such is complicit in all of its activities, all of them, no matter how abhorrent. This is the way the System operates. The only way to abjure this realm is to turn 180 degrees to Jesus Christ. This Jesus is the One who once died, then rose from the grave, now sits at the right hand of the Father, and presently sees His purposes accomplished through the lives of those completely sold out to Him walking on earth in the counsel of the Holy Spirit by the light of Scripture. This is not the straw-man Jesus of the Institution. The God of the heavens and earth is not in a wafer and never was, but for those without Him it is perfectly rational for them to believe the fantasy that their Jesus is. He does not want us fixated on images of His hanging lifeless body on a cross, but it is perfectly rational for those hypnotically consumed by the extent of their sin to keep hoping the Institution saturated with such idols will save them. He asks that no one is called father or teacher, but it is perfectly rational for them to trust in an Institution man or woman with skin—it doesn't even have to be a priest or pope. It can be a tax assessor or president, an employer or banker—people make terrific idols, especially the most visible World operatives.
What of this writing, right here? By addressing the Roman Catholic Church so comprehensively, am I just as much a part of it? Do I have business with Rome as a constituent? To the extent that I'm paying tribute to the System through taxes, interest payments, and tithes, then yes, I'm card-carrying member of the Roman Catholic Church. If I have a W-4 form on file with my employer or disclose the expanse of my worth to World inquisitors in some way, I'm a devout Catholicist. If I secure, manage, or enable a 501c3 tax-exempt incorporated church, I'm in the pope's service. If I vote in a civil election, sign a lease on the house they say I own, or expect the federal government to manage a fancy pyramid scheme to provide for my retirement, I'm not only fully supporting the Institution and its summary work of condemnation but implicitly condoning all the behavior by its leaders that is so distasteful. Don't think you're in it? You may not be, honestly, you may not be. But it's also likely you're just being pulled along by industriously skilled minions within all strata of the System working valiantly to keep you in it. All that spiffy stuff about democracy keeps people from seeing the thriving autocracy. All those warm fuzzy gymnastics about its charitable generosity keeps people rationalizing the rank reprobation. All the hemming and hawing from angry people who say they mean business is the very best play acting of all. It's all very honestly rationally designed
To keep you from the One Who Truly Loves you.
I often address financial matters here, because in their stripped narratives you can easily see the fruit of human sacrifice, or the work of powerful people extracting the value from clients merely because those clients request them to do so. It is a perverse relationship that is as much rational as it is repulsive.
The latest power brokers to find bright light shining in a little
too much on their business are the boys at Goldman Sachs, with many of them
having to endure a splendidly theatrical
Why is this? It is best explained in this excerpt from a recent piece by Paul M. Barrett in Business Week. The title was "Goldman: The Mystique of Indispensability" and because my home page this month is about the most enigmatically indispensable World Institution, it caught my eye.
Goldman's mystique of indispensability appears likely to survive, according to Richard Bove, an analyst at Rochdale Securities. "The argument that Goldman takes positions in opposition to its clients has always been there, yet people continue to do business with Goldman Sachs," Bove said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. "The reason is they aren't playing the clients; they're benefiting the clients. There is no firm that can step in and replace them." One way or the other, the thinking goes, Goldman gets the job done. Not coincidentally, Bove recommends buying Goldman Sachs shares.
Replace "Goldman Sachs" with "Roman Catholic Church" and "clients" with "parishioners" and you have the same dynamic at work. They are both entrenched in World System law enforcement deftly executed by their priests, bankers, and bureaucrats. All of them have resources seven times the size of anyone else to advance the best human sacrifice services for those who need them. Jesus Christ is nowhere in the picture, which is precisely why clients/parishioners continue to do business with them. They are convinced that to do the human sacrifice they need, they must work as hard as they can to be on the side of those who do it the best. "No one can replace them."
Indeed, that is true. Francis Beckwith knew that. He does know what the law is, because he avows that's all he's got. He quite honestly knows. Millions of Catholics do. No matter how much they get clobbered by the head-cracking hand of the law, they've got their money with Benedict. Or Lloyd. Or Bernie—wait, that guy's now in prison. Doesn't matter, they're all the same. No one can replace them.
As long as you stay in the World.
For those who can look at it with squinting eyes, who can barely make it out, who ever-so slightly see the harrowing oppression that this is, they may just be able to turn and take a good glance at the Kingdom and the freedom its Chief Executive brings. The contrast between the very rationally honest law and Real Liberation cannot be more striking:
"You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love."
What counts is love.
Are you not aware of what this Love says?
***
#
On May 6, 2010, one of the strangest things rocked the world of
high finance. It left those immersed in institutional value assessment
scratching their heads about the true nature of the value they assess. As devout
products of the World sworn to vibrantly sustain standard human sacrifice
practices, all they could do was puzzle about it no matter what apparatus any
given financier proudly blapped was the culprit. At about 2:40 pm on that Thursday, the stock market went into a nosedive. It was fast and it was furious, a freefall never before witnessed. The markets rebounded a bit just before the 4:00 close, but the event shook everyone to the core. Some say it was a data entry error in a trade—"billion" was stated instead of "million." Others say it was a striking reaction to Europe's deepening economic woes. Still others blame the more sophisticated use of information technology by high-frequency traders that stirred up the volatility upon which they thrive. Investigators have been looking into what happened, but no one knows what really caused it. No one whose allegiance is wholly with those who run the System will ever know.
I know what happened. Forgive me, I don't pretend to be any big shot or claim to know anything anyone else can't know but for the essential help of Someone who does know, but I have not seen anyone write or say what I'm going to share with you here. I'd like to think there are others who do understand it, and I'd love to hear from them. Please email me, I'd love to know the truth and have the truth confirmed. But what happened was simply the sudden corporate expression of the fear that the lies would actually unravel when they were considered to be securely tied together. That's it. Don't think that happened? Tell me I'm wrong, I'm great with that. Tell me what's really happening, I do want to know.
As it is, this very unusual half-hour market collapse was merely
the panic of hundreds of power brokers representing the millions whose value
they manage, mortified by the reality that they could no longer get away with
lying because they perceived that someone else was cashing When a seasoned exploiter tries to sell you something that's worth less than it is, he's hoping you don't catch on for as long as he can keep everyone thinking it is what he says it is. When the jig is up he needs to move on to other more profitable value extraction opportunities. The "Flash Crash" was simply this multiplied by billions. Everyone thought they needed to get out, and acted accordingly. When everyone realized their value assignments were actually (whew!) holding up in the eyes of everyone else, the market steadied.
Many sneer that this casino
gambling is too lasciviously irrational, but on the contrary it
is very rational. Think about it.
Recognizing the lies,
tracking the lies,
subverting the lies, exposing the lies with restrained delight, turning the lies
against themselves—all
of this is the best, funnest, thrillingest game
I should know. It's one reason I do this webzine. The real question is whether you're doing it from the World and gallantly striving to assuage your overwhelming dread, or from the Kingdom and graciously extending His life-saving love with others who may genuinely want to be rescued from that body of death. I'm nobody. Like Peter, as he says in the tenth chapter of Acts, "I'm just a man." I'm just sharing what Jesus says. All I want to do is see my readers to get an idea of what Jesus did, and what He still does for those who invite Him into their homes.
Often you'll hear the term systemic risk thrown about as if
that's just part of the program, gotta deal with it, find ways to protect
yourself from it. Any recommended antidote that's introduced is always more
government regulation. One of the most revered System mouthpieces is Nouriel
Roubini, yet even his very best suggestions are comical. He recently remarked
"We need to go Don't get me wrong. These things are quite necessary for exploiter wanna-be's. As of this writing Congress is trumpeting their latest boffo financial reform package. The feds are shouting that they'll now really go after those wanton abusers of our most financially sensitive rudiments. Yeah. They've had six millennia to get this regulation thing right and it still didn't stop the most recent surge in human sacrifice exposure. Even more perverse is the sobering reality that any government intervention actually adds to the swath of destruction, however comfy they say we're supposed to feel about it. Another authoritative word says it this way: "The power of sin is the law." Systemic risk is just a fancy way for the World to classify sin, merely the habitual iniquity of everyone from whom World inhabitants strive to protect themselves and which World operatives manipulate to keep people fearful and in need of their services. It's systemic because those perpetually beholden to Cain firmly believe it can never be ended, just managed. It's risk because it jerks everyone around in one form or another.
And what do you get when everyone's eyes open reeeal big
during something like the Flash Crash? Why, a black swan, of course—by
the standard Investopedia type definition: the unforeseen event that
catastrophically affects things, particularly in financial markets. Come on, look closely. What is a black swan but everyone's concentrated exasperation at the extent which everyone else is also a liar and on to everyone's lies, most notably the ones everyone's got money in. When this happens during a single cataclysmic realization, you have a black swan. When everyone then insists to themselves they can't stop lying but they industriously work to convince others they've stopped lying or have always been among the few angelic ones who were never lying to begin with, there will certainly be another one. Oh, and to make sure one doesn't happen again too soon, they're now scrambling to implement "trading pauses" in the instance of any more serious market barfs—you know, to try to get everyone to calm down and convince themselves the lies aren't unwinding too quickly. You can't find stuff this great even on Comedy Central. Often John Maynard Keynes is invoked to try to explain things. Have you heard this no fewer than fifty thousand times? "The markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." Brilliant! Except what Keynes is really observing is that better liars than you will never stop exploiting you, and do so very rationally. Fools always mistake institutionalized deceit for irrationality. Deceit is just deceit, as rational as it is unrighteous, employed for requisite value extraction procedures and seven times more effective than the screeching Chicken Littles think it is. Nowadays it's just happening faster and faster and faster. So when I say everyone was baffled about the black swan event of May 6, I should clarify. Two kinds of people truly do know what's happening. The first are World operatives deep within the system manipulating events and molding the perspectives of those without Christ. The second are those who live bountifully in the Kingdom itself, the place where the True Value Assessor reigns and by Whose measure they can gauge it all.
The former have thousands of enthusiastic brainiacs working for them, getting paid quite Huh? What's this about gorillas?
Recently I'd come across the latest behavioral economics fad tome, The Invisible Gorilla, which gets into the deep cognitive psychology behind things. It is an elaborate reflection on an experiment in which subjects were asked to focus on particular things in a video, which at one point featured someone in a gorilla outfit making a very obvious appearance. Afterwards many confessed they did not notice the gorilla. The whole idea was to point out that our attention skills just aren't what we think they are. "Why didn't they see the gorilla that walked right in front of their field of view?! That's crazy!!" The book is filled with the typical anecdotal remarks about a slew of studies, but it really contains nothing more than what is in every Introductory Psych college text. Certainly there are "gorillas" around we don't see, but that's because if we saw every gorilla our brains would explode. We were made to focus attention on certain specific things for a reason, it is perfectly natural. The most significant truth revealed in this is not what the authors want us to take from it, namely that our minds just can't be trusted for anything really. What matters is that the biggest fattest meanest ugliest gorilla is one we always deliberately cover with the sweetest nicest prettiest spiffiest vanilla frosting. That gorilla is sin—or, excuse me, how politically incorrect of me—that gorilla is systemic risk. (There, that should keep some from being offended.)
Of course the World has its
zillions of way to spread the frosting on. There's the Federal Government
way—elevating administrators and lawmakers to slather it on real good. There's
the Roman Catholic Church way—enlisting the schnazziest ministers in the great
ecclesiastical showcase to make the layers look really nice. There's
the Federal Reserve way—enabling legions of skilled extractors to drop
the sprinkles on… All of them schlurping up heaps and heaps of the moist meaty
cake underneath.
There is a building I drive past every once in a while, a brand-spanking new edifice that is a wonderful thing, actually. It looks very nice, well designed, pleasing architecture, but it hasn't been occupied for the year or so that it's been sitting there. The developers claim that it is for retail, but it is in a very poor location for that purpose. It seems to be more of a fit as an office building for some small commercial enterprises. I concede that the reason it remains empty may certainly be the stratospheric price (well over $400 per square foot—ouch) or that it is situated in such an awkward place.
It has not a lick of opacity at all. Everything that goes on within its walls, or rather windows, is there for all to see. This place is so see-through that everyone walking or driving by can catch you there surreptitiously playing video games at your cubicle. Who wants that. When you've got a lot of gorillas to hide, it is no use being in a building where lots of people can see you, particularly the value extractors. Don't worry. The extractors will still have you. If they don't, they'll find you. They won't ever stop looking. For one thing, it's their job. For another thing, those without their value sealed by Christ's blood want them to do that job.
On the other hand, if
Christ has you, then you should really be with others whom Christ
has,
and you should be meeting together
In a building like this one.
Christ said He wants His own to be doing His things, above all to love others with His love by first and foremost insightfully understanding and vibrantly knowing Him. Furthermore He sends them out to do that very thing visibly, openly, and yes, just as powerfully as He did, replete with the accompanying healing people from major physical afflictions, freeing them from the power of demons, raising them from the dead, and moving mountains for them.
The reason no one is in the splendidly translucent church building
for all to see
is that they are instead scrunched up inside their 501c3 pantries under the W-4 cutting
table. There's also that Social Security dry storage closet, the 401(k)
walk-in freezer there, all with fully stacked shelves of mortgage debt, credit card debt—lots of big roomy places
for them to slink into! Please don't misunderstand me. Caesar's slatherers are simply doing the job their customers eagerly request. That means there are a lot of people doing a lot of scurrying and hiding and stashing their gorillas in hardly inconspicuous places.
But if you say you are Christ's, do people see you out there being His living words? To do this, however, you gotta let Him take that gorilla from you. Otherwise Caesar will find you—most likely he already has. If that's so, it may just be your gorilla tastes too sweet to give up. Sure the hair in the frosting is a bit nasty on the tongue, but hey…
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Some photographs inserted above may not have attributions. Some were taken from the web. Please forgive me for not including attributions. I make no money directly from this web effort. Thanks nonetheless to those who posted them so I may reproduce them here. Thank you. This page was originally posted by David Beck at yourownjesus.net on October 31, 2009 |
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a picture of Pope John Paul II during a musical performance on a major
network late-night comedy revue a number of years ago. How much Catholicists sweat so heavily
scratching and clawing to make the World a better place is
revealed in this whole approach. They incessantly screech we must demand
answers from the leadership. We must be on the cutting edge of reform.
We are responsible for making the church what it should be. 
grilling in the U.S. Senate. The
investment bank does nothing worse than any other such operation, but they can
be reviled by a few of the loudest whiners for being so good at what they do.
Nothing of consequence will happen to Goldman, just as nothing will happen to
Rome in the long streaming wake of its abuses.
