July-August 2013

"To say that the truth is in poor taste is the height of hypocrisy."

- Naomi Wolf

Among all the newfangled items emerging from the ever-more violently surging Information Age is something called "Augmented Reality." Apparently you can now flash your mobile device at something and receive more data about that thing. Say you wave it at a building, and some signal emanates from the location that tells you when it was built, what its value is, how many tenants occupy it, and so forth. The grander idea is such technology helps stimulate imagination and increase specialized knowledge for the purpose devising solutions to problems that require really getting at things not easily available without it.

Isn't that just the thing each of us has always wanted? To just get at what the real thing of a thing actually IS? Now with the spiffy practice of augmented reality and all its spectacularly potential applications, well then, the Age of Real Truth has finally arrived.

I mean, think about it, sure you can swing your electronic thingie around and—shazzam—on the screen pops something you can know to truly make the truest decision about a given, um, truth. Hey, about to wait in line at the club and wonder how fun the place is really going to be? Whip out that wand. How about laboring to get the right feng shui? Whip it out and whip it good—zapp—instantly perfect arrangement of decor and ambiance.

And how about the feature that would be most coveted?

Bzzzt.

Right there in front of

A person.

Come on. Isn't this the real purpose of this nifty new tool? When it really comes down to it, don't we really want to know the most pertinent intentions of anyone with whom we have to do, and not have to go through all the turgid rigmarole to try to get at what people are really like?

Isn't this why the character trait of integrity is one of the most valuable? That our outside persons match our inside persons? That when we say "Yes" we mean it?

I furthermore think of that Mark of the Beast attached in some way to our hands or foreheads portended in the 13th chapter of the Revelation, that official iconographic identification signifying one's authoritative ingratiation with Caesar enabling the most robust economic activity. I wondered how exactly that'll work out when precise retinal scans will do just as well.

The answer comes easily enough. With the increasing desire for augmented reality it could be that an augmented integrity must be accounted for before any vital transactions are consummated. Essentially, you've got to have your augmentation authenticated, and that requires RFID of some sort to accomplish that. This is not even to mention the possible transhuman innovations that'll surely be in the mix.

I like futurist stuff, and I'm just conjecturing here, but I do know this further truth to consider: that people also do a lot of fabricating when doing their augmenting. In fact, we all do it, all the time. It is natural, and yes, it may not necessarily be a bad thing.

Most recently I've been laboring under the apprehension that there is really no such thing as falsehood at all. A while back I considered that there is nothing anyone does that is irrational. I'm now beginning to think about a key corollary to that truth, that yes, there is no such thing as a false thing.

Yes, in a sense, everything is true.

"Now wait a minute, Dave, what if I knew there was a truck coming and I told you there wasn't one coming around the corner before you stepped into the street? Bamm—dead Dave. Isn't this a falsehood?"

Well, yeah, except that the whole arrangement of what happened just there was true. There was truthfully a misrepresentation of a truthful situation that involved one person truthfully taking advantage of another's truthfully actual trust and lack of knowledge to do some truthful evil to that other person. As Jeremy Campbell put it in his delightful book The Liar's Tale, "Liars, in the last analysis, depend on the truthfulness of others to pass their stories off as God's truth."

Let me explain further, and I will try to be exceedingly brief because I know this could encompass an entire dissertation. I'm sure it already has through history, many times. I've considered that what we generally call falsehoods, lies, and deceptions break down into these categories:

1. Misinterpretation.

2. Misrepresentation.

The first is merely the result of innocent assumptions made about a set of data, and when those assumptions are shared, they may be accepted as truthful when further information gathered may prove them inadequate. I seem to remember my college professors obsessively insisting I read about the "shifting paradigms" of science, you remember, that stuff from Thomas Kuhn. The entirety of scientific pursuit has this idea in its back pocket.

The second is where it gets dicey, and I believe that may be broken down into three kinds:

1. Benign misrepresentation.

2. Beneficent misrepresentation.

3. Malicious misrepresentation.

The first happens all the time with jokes, make-believe, mild pranks, play-acting; the second when an emergency responder tells the critically injured that he'll be just fine in the interest of preventing him from going into shock. For the sake of brevity, I won't get into all of these, safe to say that for those who think any kind of misrepresentation is bad, I doubt they couldn't easily find many examples of those first two. Think, "Does this dress make me look fat?"

I want to take just a bit more time here with that third one, first mentioning why this isn't as much falsehood as it is something more significant, and then focus on a critical branch that gives the most meaning to the legitimacy of the World System.

Sure someone may lie through their eye teeth, but again, if they are lying, there is a truth behind the lie. The issue then isn't the lie itself, the issue is what someone is doing with the lie. This is truly the essence of God's commandment against bearing false witness. Yeah, okay, call it "false" if you want, but it isn't the "falsity" that is what's important. It is the unrighteous behavior behind it.

Because this webzine firmly posits the idea that the World System is the legacy of Cain, sent out of the presence of God to be the authorized administrator of sin management activity, or more succinctly, the standard human sacrifice practices of a populace refusing to call on the name of the Lord, by definition it must use any and all tools of unrighteousness to accomplish its ends. Attending to the premise here, that kind of misrepresentation has a special term.

Disinformation.

In fact there is a book out with that title written by a former Romanian secret police agent, and there are few who don't know about the tactics used by Cold War communist regimes to sustain autocratic power. We'd like to think that baaad governments rudely mess with our rights protections and we should be reeealy well-versed in all the ways our own government can jerk us around so we aren't so easily subsumed.

The truth is it must use disinformation as a matter of necessity. No matter how vengeful or gleeful you are about the Edward Snowdens of the world, World operatives will always be there to disinform you, and as much as you are obligated to the System you do what they say no matter how much you believe you are above it all. Quite expansive and just as imaginative are the misinterpretation, misrepresentation, and yes, disinformation the World System utilize to keep many from knowing how much disinformation is used to keep them from, um, from, well...

From calling on the name of the Lord.

A classic example of this at work—and wow, is it working phenomenally well—is everything surrounding the recent Supreme Court decision to formally if not full-on institutionally legitimize same-sex marriages. In and around all the things spilling into the discourse du jour, a couple of key truths stand out that are rarely, if ever addressed.

One is the simple fact that the System-through-the-mesmerizing-media-by-way-of-the-Jesuitized-universities has so rigorously and profoundly spewed the best disinformation to get so many to believe that homosexual activity is perfectly fine. Think about how long ago they got society to bend past the point of no return and confess that homosexual activity is fine and dandy in certain situations. Even the most kind and gracious Christians were indoctrinated to dismiss wholesale the core reason that homosexual behavior is so evil: It is the commission of a sexual abuse crime against another individual. Instead the idea was insidiously hammered into everyone's psyche: It's okay if someone naturally inclined wants to do it and it doesn't affect you.

The other truth is one that will indeed contribute to the collapse of the Americanist version of Cain's legacy, and that is the summary emasculation that occurs throughout common society. I could elaborate with my own considerations of this present condition, but I'll just say that I was introduced to a new book by Helen Smith called Men on Strike, and while I haven't read it I did peek around a bit at its contents. The title alone says quite a bit.

While Smith gets into all the ways men are not getting married, not having children, not committing to leading families, I firmly believe much of the reason is because manhood is being shredded by the disinformation campaign that tells us we must endorse homosexualism or face severe consequences from the tolerance police.

I'm sorry, but—ya know? I understand. Faced with those kinds of repercussions, I wouldn't want to mess with that. Why go through the extraordinarily hard work of nurturing a family, community, even a nation when the standard issue virility required to do such a thing is so ferociously excoriated in so many different ways. Men desperate to be men are being told they can't. Careful, even when the disinformation distributors tell you, "Nahhh, no worries, you're great with your august authorized augmented manhood," I'd take a second look. Really look at what's actually happening.

I can only think of the suicides committed by so many military men—yes, it is an epidemic among men—and they've discovered they are not by those who've been scarred in battle or suffering from PTSD as you'd expect. This is not even to mention the crisis over sexual assaults in the military, something officials there have been wrestling with much longer than most people think. What is going on here?

I know what.

It doesn't even have to do with sexuality, or family, or the government, or the church, or the media or the universities or manhood or even falsehood.

It has to do with righteousness.

What is your relationship with God like, and how does that play itself out in your life? What is it like when you love someone with agape love, the kind that seeks and then embraces truth, but also rejoices immensely when people experience bountiful grace?

When that is going right, when that is true far beyond the ugly misrepresentations of our misinterpretations, then righteousness reigns in the deepest parts of the heart, the soul, and the mind. And I must add, of course, that the only way to get that is to authentically seek it, and sincerely ask for it from the One who has it.

It is all about whether whatever it is you do reflects His righteousness or does not.

I am saddened whenever I see the virulently dismissive things like I saw in the title of the book Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal, about one person's descent into homosexual behavior and, yes, the disinformation that consumes all those who celebrate it. I am further saddened when I see the relative paucity of those with the spiritual virility to energetically minister to disinformed people with His love. 

 Yes, I am unquestionably speaking of men stepping up to get it done. And yes, I am categorically stating that the only way a man can be the man Christ made him to be is to ask Him, not any given woman what they think. Don't worry, men, there are indeed things you are made to feel and think and do that women love and for which you do not have to check in, as long as you are clothed in His righteousness, and as such you are boldly sharing the Truth and Grace that only men can.

But alas...

On a Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago I was driving home from an errand, checking into the alternative music station I like every once in a while, and a breezy hip-hop tune called "Same Love" came up that was all about how wonderful it is for homosexually-minded people to give full vent to their dysfunction and how splendid it is when everyone obsequiously hops right on board with it all.

I'd heard it played on that same station a few times since, and I'd venture to say no fewer than a few million people have made it their new FSF (favorite song forever). The problem is that it is filled with egregious misinterpretations, and yes, the most malicious misrepresentations about life, personhood, contentment, relationships, and emotional stability.

Ironically the song that was played just before it was titled "Believe" and it had this line: "Give me something to believe, 'cause I'm just living to breathe." Later was this extraordinarily plaintive cry to someone who'll get him Truth: "What are we waiting for?..."

Quite brazenly honest don't you think? But no wonder he has nothing to believe in. We're all supposed to just coast along in our own little existential rafts on a stream of absurdity splashed in our faces by World Operatives who as a sworn duty must employ the most unrighteous deceit. But if that is what they do, and disinformation is an authorized activity for the purpose of keeping a sinful populace from murdering one another, then it could be veritably asserted that it is for beneficent reasons.

Excuse me?

As it says in the first letter of Paul to Timothy, the law is good as long as it is used properly, for it was made for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful... He further declares in his first letter to the Corinthians that the power of sin is the law. Categorically indispensible for effective law enforcement is the requirement that disinformation keep people in obedience to Caesar and subject to the direction it will take them. It looks so good, it is made to look good, even as much as all under Caesar's thumb are nonetheless ruthlessly trapped in a body of death.

Only Christ can free them—the only real "outting" is to come to Him. It is then imperative that followers of Christ committed to exercising His virility do not do what so many zealously vow to keep doing: make more laws or put more things to a vote. How eager the Catholicist is to rush right into the World's ways to try to fix things! Bringing the Kingdom to the hearts of hearers is about doing Kingdom things. This means getting ungrafted as a vibrant assembly of disciples by firmly abandoning any 501c3 commitments, and rousing the motivational gifts of the Spirit for all to be equipped with what God has provided for the most explosive Kingdom work.

Homosexually-minded people don't need more of Caesar, they need Christ. They already have everything Caesar offers—even their demand for marriage privileges carries with it the proclamation that the law constrain their behavior. The sworn law enforcer is no respecter of ideological preference, for even the somewhat conservative Exodus International, renowned for its reparative therapy efforts, recently closed its doors and its leaders went so far as to apologize for presuming they could cure homosexuality.

No wonder they did! They assumed homosexuality was normal and natural and that trying to change them from something that can't be helped is a crime—a critical component of the disinformation! It is easy to see why: the organization was tied to Caesar through its 501c3 tax-exempt non-profit status. Their lord, and the lord of millions of churches beholden to the World in such a way, is Caesar, not Christ.

They are inconvertibly subject to the disinformation, and thoroughly unable to see through it to the truth, freedom, and rich whole joy in Christ. No wonder so many are seduced by the disinformation. Detractors wave their already naturally built-in augmented reality detectors at those who say they're Christ's and deep inside there they see mean uncaring foolish people, which itself is a brilliant part of the Operative's disinformation campaign.

When will they see the Real Thing?

Sometime after I'd heard those songs, I'd had my radio tuned to the local Christian music station, and up came a song that blows me away. Does so every time I hear it. Yes, I did think about this one specifically in contrast to "Same Love."

That song is "Glorious Day" by Casting Crowns. Go ahead, look up the two on the web lyrics page you frequent. Better yet, listen to the two.

See if you can get a feel for which one represents the righteous truthfulness of things, a righteousness and a truth that brings the most viscerally gratifying contentment for the soul.

Find the One Who Gets You to Who You Truly Are.

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Living, He loved me
Dying, He saved me
Buried, He carried my sins far away
Rising, He justified freely forever
One day He's coming
Oh glorious day, oh glorious day...

One day the trumpet will sound for His coming
One day the skies with His glories will shine
Wonderful day, my Beloved One, bringing
My Savior, Jesus, is mine

from "Glorious Day"

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This page was originally posted by David Beck at yourownjesus.net on July 4, 2013