Notes on the Monolithic Nature of the Nation

The Catholicist Nation

      Some issues may arise from my home page piece from July and August of 2011. Instead of trying to cover all of them in the notes, I added this page to address them.

Issue 1:  "What about Jesus' statement that we should fulfill the smallest letter of the law?"

 

This is from the book of Matthew, chapter five, verses 17 to 20. Jesus is responding to those who believe that to be free from the Pharisee's religious rule is to be exempt from the principles in the law. The answer to this comes from a full biblical understanding of the law, Truth and Grace, and the striking contrast between them.

This question is only asked (almost always in the most smug rhetorical manner) to keep people under the crushing weight of the World System's oppressive prosecutorial arm and paying them for the privilege of helping to provide it. The main thrust of Jesus' point was whether or not His listeners could follow that law even better than the Pharisees. There was only one way to do that. One simple command from Christ will tell you. Look at John 15:12 to see it. I've compiled an entire page of convincing Scriptural support about the actual meaning of the law to the follower of Christ and its profound contrast to Truth and Grace.   

 

 

Issue 2:   "How is the metaphorical 'going under the water and dying in a fish' different from the human sacrifice you say is practiced by World operatives?"

 

The answer is that the former is an individual simply choosing to do what Christ did, giving of himself out of love for another. Everything Jesus said was about giving up yourself and your attachments to the World to regain yourself in your truest form. He added that the only way you could do this was by Him.

The latter is biting off other humans to stuff oneself. It is about being so devoted to mammon, that you must devour the value of others in order to sate one's desires. The most repulsive idols adopted to do this are all the powerful people who best facilitate the value extraction of the World System—the government administrator, the financial advisor, the institutional minister—getting in good with them is the overriding goal.

If you cannot see the difference between the two forms of sacrifice, then nothing written in this webzine will be meaningful.

I should add, however, that when speaking of self-sacrifice, 99% of the time this is not ending one's life by stepping in front of a bullet to save someone else. Most times it is simply the choices one makes every moment to love another actively in both word and deed, and this does involve giving up some other selfishly pleasurable things that would hinder that expression.

It is indeed "dying to self" on a regular basis and "taking up the cross" of being alive in Christ no matter what kind of pain comes with it. Those who have done this have found that the most pleasurable things come from self-sacrifice. Ultimately, yes, one's physical body will die after such devotion. But those who've habitually lived this kind of life depart the mortal and temporal with the deepest joy because they know they've loved because they are loved, eternally and infinitely.  

 

 

Issue 3:   "Why are you so against the basic principles of capitalism? You criticize companies for simply practicing the simplest marketing practices."

 

The home page piece mentions the practice of "markdowns." All this means is that companies try to read how a given market will behave with respect to a given good or service. It is human nature to try to find the highest value that would be considered.

For instance, if I try to sell a brand new invention, the turnip twaddler, I need to get an idea of what kind of demand there would be for that product. The marketing experts I consult will try to find that out, but it is a lot like looking in a crystal ball. Of course large amounts of psychology, sociology, management skill, and plain common sense is employed. But all they are asking is essentially, "Will other human beings value this, and by how much?"

What then happens is the company may figure people will value a twaddler at $10.00 each, but actually price it for the market at $30.00 each. Assuming all the costs are entered into the $10.00 price, the company simply makes the $20.00 it won't get from the market at $30.00 another cost. They call it the "markdown" simply because they have to mark their preconceived $30.00 item down to $10.00 to better reflect the market forces of supply and demand.

The question here is not whether profits are good. Jesus even said they're good when he spoke about using your gifts to amplify and enhance the value of that gift for the benefit of all in community. Profits simply represent the measure of what's been done for others considered useful (whether they actually are is another issue altogether).

The question is what are businesses doing to get those profits (exploiting others who are susceptible to exploitation?), what are they doing with that money (appropriating it for iniquitous purposes?), and how are they going about making themselves look good all the same (setting up organizations that foster codependent reliance on them and their "generosity"?)

Barry Lynn's book Cornered goes into great detail about the truth of "standard business practices." The saddest part is not his elucidation of that frightening reality, but his conclusion that fails to contain the actually efficacious answer, which is "Leave all of this, turn to Christ, and manage all your enterprises from the Kingdom." It is instead the pathetically typical "Keep trying hard to tell Caesar to do more and more good things and help out many more people." But he too, like so many, is wholly Catholicized and simply cannot comprehend the magnificent truth of a God who does reign and does provide a very real deliverance from this body of death.

 

 

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Scripture  |   Homepage   |   Site Map

A Rough Sketch of Human Sacrifice

Value Extraction in More Detail

A Primer on the Meaning of Human Value Transfer

The Ungrafted Business

The Efficacious Answer

    

 

 

This page was first posted by David Beck at yourownjesus.net on July 21, 2011