Harry Potter isn't the witch you should be concerned about.

Rebellion is as sinful as witchcraft, and stubbornness as bad as worshiping idols. So because you have rejected the command of the LORD, he has rejected you as king. 1 Samuel 15:23

Whenever I would read this verse I always had a hard time relating witchcraft to rebellion. What on earth do they have to do with each other? Not that it really matters anyway, because witchcraft is a pretty uncommon practice in today's world, right? I mean I know that witchcraft is bad, but quite honestly I couldn't see the difference between the sorcery in "Harry Potter" and the same in "The Lord of the Rings", the former being derided as an evil that is being thrust upon our children under the guise of literature and the latter being a magnificent work of Christian fiction. Witchcraft? Rebellion? Harry Potter, bad. Gandolf, good. Isn't it all just fantasy anyway? I just didn't get it.

Then I was reading a Christian author by the name of Derek Prince who said that witchcraft is basically any attempt to control another person by manipulation and intimidation with the goal of domination. Prince’s definition of witchcraft in a Christian context opened my eyes:

"Witchcraft is the attempt to control people and get them to do what you want by the use of any spirit that is not the Holy Spirit and if anyone has a spirit that he can use, it is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God, and no one uses God."

It made much more sense when I realized that witchcraft does not consist of casting magical incantations and riding brooms, instead it is the setting one's self up as King in rebellion to God and demanding of others that YOUR will be done. Now I saw not only the connection between witchcraft and rebellion, but also that witchcraft is a very common thing.

As a student of liberty, and with my eyes now opened to the prevalence of witchcraft in our society, the controlling nature of witchcraft reminded me of the non-aggression principle. According to the non-aggression principle any unsolicited actions of others that physically affect an individual’s property, including that person’s body, no matter if the result of those actions is damaging, beneficiary or neutral to the owner, are considered VIOLENT when they are against the owner’s free will and interfere with his right to self-determination.

With this definition of witchcraft in mind please also pay close attention to how violence is viewed within the non-aggression principle. I typically thought of violence simply as brute force, but according to the non-aggression principle, violence is ANY unsolicited action that physically affects another person, even if we believe it may result in their benefit.

Putting these ideas together I came to this conclusion: The initiation of violence is witchcraft.

American Christendom is suffering from a dangerous delusion. We are ever so eager to applaud our own restraint as we abstain from Harry Potter novels in abhorrence of ungodly "witchcraft" while at the same time living (and voting) in such a way that condones statements such as this one:

"Don’t give me this idea — I hear this: ‘Oh, you’re a moralist. You’re trying to impose your values.’ Everybody’s trying to impose their values. That’s what America’s about." -Rick Santorum

The key word in the above quote is:

impose: to put or set by or as if by authority: to impose one's personal preference on others.

In order to impose you assume authority (set yourself up as king) and then demand that your will be done. This is witchcraft, and especially so when violence is justified in its application. For this statement not to be one of witchcraft the word must be changed to:

persuade: to induce to believe by appealing to reason or understanding; convince.

It must be understood that if violence is used then the persuasion is forfeited. With violence, the other party is not submitting because of an act of their will, but instead by an act of witchcraft.

The cartoonization of witchcraft via Harry Potter and the like have served as a convenient distraction and scapegoat to hide the blatant fact that we have become a nation of witches in rebellion to God. No longer do we appeal to reason and our respect for each person's individual humanity, freedom and personal responsibility when we desire to convince someone to change. Instead, like a coven of gaggling hags, we rally around a self-congratulating moral propaganda and in pursuit of our will have no qualms with resorting not only to unsolicited acts of “benevolent” and "preventative" violence, but even to the brutality of war.

We do not have a right to impose our beliefs upon others. It is witchcraft, it shows a disregard for human dignity, and it is also disobedience to the will and authority of God. When combined with a stubborn, prideful superiority what is created is a idolic doctrine that perpetuates itself through emotional appeals to patriotic platitudes as it marginalizes the “unrighteous” who become the target of its imposition. We may fool ourselves for a while by redefining words in order to create the illusion that we despise evil and that our actions are good, but sooner or later truth always becomes evident, and it also demands obedience.

Harry Potter is not the witch we should be concerned about. He, just like Gandolf the Grey, are sorcerer’s of fantasy, to be enjoyed within the realm of imagination. In reality our ignorance to the witchcraft we practice daily is wreaking havoc on our families, our communities, and the cancer of it spreads to affect even our nation’s polices toward other cultures resulting in bloody wars.

Jesus said in Luke 6:31, "Do to others as you would have them do to you." The Patriot and statesmen Ron Paul said, “If we believe strongly in our ideals, the best way to spread them is to set a good example so that others will voluntarily emulate us. Force will not work.” Have you been convinced that this statement is true? If so please do not let rebellion and stubbornness cause you to dismiss this sobering reality. Now is the time to really make a change, and the sooner we make it, the less painful will be the correction. Let us repent of witchcraft, turn back to our nation’s foundations, and from there emulate the goodness that is at the true core of who we are.

Questions.

Before you speak disparagingly about all the people in your city who are not working and living off welfare, or about the financial bailouts, or national healthcare please first ask yourself some questions:

1. Have I taken someone under my wing and taught them how to work, or do I assume that everyone was raised in such a way to develop a good work ethic?


2. Do I spend my money in such a way that would support the jobs in my local economy, or am I motivated mostly by fashionable corporate trends and immediate savings?


3. Do I invest my money in such a way that creates business and job opportunities in my local economy, or do I only concern myself with tax sheltering and monetary bottom line value?


4. When I die will the wealth I have accumulated stay in my local economy, or will it be distributed to my children who have moved to urban centers in order to get the few remaining non-foreign jobs with the companies that my retirement investments financed and my spending habits support?


5. Have I taken political action to reform the welfare system that I speak so virulently about, or do I secretly love it because it provides a way that I don't have to spend my time and money personally helping to "those" people?


6. Does my argument against welfare come from a position of integrity or do I find myself supporting other forms of welfare without so much as questioning them such as agricultural programs, public schools, foreign military bases, government flood insurance, etc?


7. Do I go on and on about the evils of our government bail outs, but secretly breathed a sigh of relief because much of my retirement savings was invested in the Wall Street financial sector instead of in local enterprises?


8. Is my house, car, furniture, and church building nicer than it would have been if we would have had to help the poor in our community instead of turning that responsibility over to government and then griping about it?


9. Do I argue vehemently about how we cannot afford the banker bailouts and nationalized healthcare, and wax eloquently about how these programs will never work and will actually harm the very things they are intended to protect, but never question the expenses and harms of our undeclared wars, unpopular foreign policy and militarism?


10. Do I rail on about how big corporations should be punished and regulated and crooked politicians should be recalled or jailed but never question the glue that binds big business to our politicians' purses which is the politically motivated fiat money creating powers of the private Federal Reserve Bank?


11. Is my fear of radical islam rational or is my behaviour being motivated by means of a Freudian mind trick playing on my emotions? Why am I not as willing to give my government powers and why is my government not seeking power based on the fear of bee stings or lightening strikes considering that these events kill many more people than do radical muslim terrorists?


12. Why do I support the environmental regulation of businesses by the same system that created, by means of it's fiat money powers, our environmentally unsustainable consumption based economy from which it garners it's power?


13. Are the policies and actions I support with regard to the state of Israel born out of a faith that God will protect them from their enemies including from a disproportionately militarily ill-equipped Iran or are they born out of a fear that He won't, can't, or isn't real?

War or Ron Paul

Usually I concern myself, especially in regards to these kinds of letters, with issues relating to our local community. I do believe, as did our country’s founders, that political power is geographic in nature and I believe that the most powerful way to manifest a local geography’s true political potential is for the church in the community to follow the simple command of Christ to “Love our neighbors”, including those that are “enemies”. Following this simple command compels us to take personal and collective responsibility over ourselves and the local resources we depend upon, and to resist giving up control over those things to distant bureaucracies. In fact to the extent that we give up responsibility not only for the resources that sustain our lives, such as our lands, roads, waterways, schools, hospitals, businesses, but even for the poor and suffering amongst us, we also literally give up the very source from which our political power receives its legitimate authority and therefore its ability to protect our interests in our system of government.

When electing a politician to represent our political power at the state and national levels we need to take into consideration first the scope of power of the office to which they are being elected and second their perspective of protecting our local political authority. For instance if we elect a Senator or Representative that promotes a popular state or federal entitlement program to care for the poor, we need to understand what we are giving up in the process. If we delegate some of our responsibility to care for the poor in our community, we do this in trade for a part of our livelihood in the form of taxation. This may be a good trade, but more often than not these big city bureaucrats tend to tie strings that don’t often make much sense in our local contexts. By giving up our responsibility to the poor in our community we also give the government a moral claim via taxation to the local resources that are needed to meet this need. Our state and federal representatives make the laws that direct these kind of social programs, but let’s consider for a moment the office of President.

Realistically, a Presidential candidate’s promises are often conveniently left impotent by the fact that most of these ideas as they relate to spending, taxation, and other change are really not within the scope of power of the President. The President of the United States has a limited and balanced role in our system of government. The veto power is a significant tool of the executive branch, however even this requires considerable exercise of political principle on the part of the President, and can be overturned by a supermajority of Congress. However one area where the President can exert significant power is the area of foreign policy, especially in regards to the disposition of our military forces. It is in this scope of power that Presidential power poses the most significant threat to our local political authority and the resources that provide for our livelihood.

War is a doubly destructive activity that requires each side to destroy men and resources to finance and facilitate the destruction of men and resources on the other side of the conflict. Unlike entitlement programs in which we trade the rightful claim to our resources but at least receive, albeit often discounted in value and ineffective in purpose, a social program that provides some relief to our fellow citizen; when a nation gives it’s government the authority to wage war we are quite literally granting the government a moral claim to our resources via taxation and debt so that they can destroy it in the process of destroying our enemy.

War is never a boost to the economy, not even the subsequent rebuilding benefits prosperity because the resources destroyed in the carrying out of the war could have been invested into creating new wealth without having to have been destroyed in the first place (google “broken window fallacy” for a better explanation of this economic principle). While the defense contractors and the bankers financing the war and reconstruction may profit individually from war, that wealth is still a second hand result of the wealth destroyed in the act of war, wealth, and let’s not forget lives, that have left the people for good. With this in mind it is obvious that the decision to go to war must be considered gravely and with much consternation. Because of this threat, our founders wisely put the power to declare war in the hands of the congress, the people’s representatives, and the power to direct the war to the citizen President in his executive position as Commander in Chief.

Over the past several decades our country has trodden down the dangerous path of relinquishing the responsibility of Congress to declare war, in spite of constitutional objections, to the President. In a real sense, just as we have done in the delegation of our responsibility to care for the poor, in our delegation of the power of war to our President we have given a single individual the moral authority to take and destroy our wealth and even our sons and daughters in order to pursue a militaristic agenda who’s benefits are left solely to his personally biased determinations, and its important to point out that these bias’s are often influenced by the very banking and defense lobbies that most directly profit from the President’s confiscation and destruction of your wealth and children for the purposes of war.

To make matters worse, taking your wealth and children cannot provide enough money to finance the continuation of a war-faring empire. Each new battle creates new enemies creating a new need to go into a new battle. In order for our current appetite for war to be satiated we have to use the counterfeiting power of the Federal Reserve to come up with the money to finance our military adventures. Because of this you are not only being taxed without representation on the front end of the war, through inflation your wealth is being taxed again through dollar devaluation. Also consider that in addition to this unfair taxation, that our government does not merely inflate the currency and devalue it, it's worse than that: for every dollar they create there is another dollar in debt plus interest owed to the private banking cartel we call the "Federal Reserve". So to pay for these wars they are literally demanding our wealth, the lives of our children, our wealth again via inflation, and then telling our surviving children that they have to pay it all back plus interest! War cannot happen without the means to afford it. So, just as it is with most things, at the root of war is money. Any president who wants to take on the issue of war must also deal with the issue of money.

This brings me to the 2012 Presidential election. Obama was elected in 2008 based on many things, but one of the big motivators for many people was his promise to bring the troops home. However, upon entering office it was clear that his intention has become to continue to expand our country's policy of preemptive, undeclared and illegal wars. Since Obama is as of yet not being opposed in the Democratic primary, the only hope is in the Republican candidate that will be challenging him. In the field of Republican candidates there is only one candidate, Ron Paul, who is promoting a platform of peace that is promising to use his power as Commander in Chief to direct the military to bring the troops home and end our expensive foreign policy of militarism and intervention. Ron Paul is also the only candidate that is openly calling for an end to the Federal Reserve system which makes the financing of our war empire possible. He is calling for a return to sound money as outlined by our Constitution. With the field of candidates limited in this way, in effect, the Republican primary IS the general election if you are for peace, because if Ron Paul is not on the ballot of the general election the only other option is war.

The choice is now clear. Do you want war or do you want Ron Paul?

I dreamed I was a rat in a cage.

I dreamed I was a rat in a cage (must have been a flashback to my smashing pumpkin days), anyway, I was in a cage with other rats. There were 3 levers on the wall of the cage. We found out that we could get food from two of the three levers, one had a red sign that had a solid black icon of an elephant on it, one had a blue sign that had an icon of a donkey. Actually the images changed periodically, sometimes the red sign had an elephant on it, sometimes it had "Coca-cola" on it, and the blue one did the same thing with "Pepsi". Each of these 2 levers had a tube that went to the same vat so that when you pulled it food would come from the vat and you could eat. On the third lever was a yellow sign with a coiled snake on it. We believed that we should never pull that lever or we would die. It became clear to me however that the third lever was the latch to open the door on the cage.

John 3:14-15 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

When boys were men.

Check out Historic American Prints and see some haunting and mesmerizing images of the men who fought for our country's independence.

It's amazing that these men were overthrowing their government, traveling the world, and leading troops to battle as young as 13, most no older than 17. We waste this time in men's lives by extending childhood into a made up thing called "adolescence".

Before adolescence was invented, boys became men at 12-14 that's because it's when it biologically happens to them. The ages of 18 and 21 are purely statutory arbitrations that don't have any real biological significance.

Today we'd shutter to consider loading a 13 year old with the responsibilities that these men obviously bore, however they bore them well enough to overthrow the most powerful military force on earth at the time and win their own country. What would happen if we began to encourage our young men to once again take on risks like these old patriots did? What if we spurred them on to take these kinds of risks not just for their country, but in Love and for the Kingdom!

To truly be free, we should all become cops.

The cop is given the benefit of the doubt, the assumption of innocence, the freedom of individuality. When one officer does something outrageous, we are derided, ridiculed and scorned if we associate those outrages to the culture that the cop came from. We're told not to judge the group by the actions of a few individuals, but to allow the overriding principles of duty and integrity to shape our opinion of the society of police, and to give each officer the freedom to live up to those principles as an individual, free from the stereotypes brought upon by the an overbearing public wishing to exert their control over the police society as a whole.

The double standard is obviously in how the police policy is towards the public. One guy puts a firecracker in his underwear and we're all terrorists who have to be radiated and molested, because really "anyone could be a terrorist", in other words, "all of you are defined by the worst among you", which is exactly the opposite of how we all are expected to view the police.

So is this a double standard? Only if you believe that an average joe has the same value as an average cop. Double standards must be applied uniformly, it's not a double standard for a society to jail a man for stealing and then praise a dog for it's intelligence in accomplishing the same feat. Does an average Joe have the same value in society as a cop. Obviously not.

Joe can't have the same value as a cop. Joe hasn't gone through the training, made the sacrifices, nor taken the oaths. Joe is an untrustworthy heathen, he is not beholden to any authority except himself, and is a threat to the principles that are the foundation of the freedom of all officers.

The cop is granted rights and freedoms from the state. He is free to take any action he pleases so long as it does not harm another officer. In fact, even illegal actions, if not harmful to another officer, will routinely be overlooked by other officers in order to maintain the liberty of the police society. Only officers have this right, the rest of us must cower in fear as we see an officer approaching, we have not been granted power by the authority that the officer freely lives in.

Here is a pretty clear example of what this problem looks like in real life:

So how do we as the cowering public overcome this problem.

I see 3 possible solutions:

1. We all become cops. Then we would all have rights, and could be demanded to be treated as individuals and held accountable only to the law, and not to the perception of the group we belong to.

2. All cops become citizens. This could be done by overthrowing the state and removing the authority from which cops get their freedom.

3. Live in our freedom. Or in other words, appeal to a higher authority.

So let's say I decide to carry a weapon such as a handgun. This is a right only available to free people, not subhuman serfs or slaves. Our constitution in fact lays it out in one simple sentence, that my right "to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed".

Now, this right does not come from the constitution, it comes from God. The constitution is not granting me the right to keep and bear arms, the constitution is recognizing my right and then restricting the government from infringing upon it. The constitution is not a right-granting document, it is a government-restricting document. My right to keep and bear arms exists by the mere fact of my humanity.

Unfortunately this is not the view of the Federal culture that empowers police to mistreat average Joe's. The culture that has led to the militarization of the police and the tyranization of the average Joe stems from the misguided premise that rights are granted by government. This is why we are developing into a dichotomized culture where cops are given freedom, and average Joes are all suspect until proven innocent. So how do we combat this?

I guess I could buy a spy camera, protest loudly about my mistreatment, and have my constitution ready, to some degree this is necessary to expose the hypocracy within our system to the other average Joe's out there. The problem with this tactic is that I'm just average Joe. I haven't gone through the rituals that have granted me rights via the state like the cop did, so all of my protests will simply be seen as the antics of a wailing child who does not realize his place in society. My freedoms were given to me by God, but I live in a country that has ceased to recognize God as someone with the authority to grant freedom. Since, the state has not granted me any freedom, and as long as I operate within this context, I will remain an average joe, subject (read: slave, sub-human, serf) to the freedom loving cops.

The only way to get around this is to:

a.) live by means of my freedom, carrying guns, saying things, and going places as if my freedom to do these things was granted to me by God himself (because they were), and

b.) treat all other humans beings (including ones dressed up like cops) as equals and with love, abstaining from any use of force unless it is in direct response to force initiated against me.

So what would this look like in the case of my carrying a handgun. Well, what are registration, classes, permits, fees, paperwork, etc if not infringments upon my God given right to be armed?

If I am carrying a gun, do I have any obligation to inform the officer? It might be polite, but demanding that I do this upon every encounter with an officer first of all makes it seem like the police officer is somehow in control of me (and he's not, he's just another human like me), and second, it is an infringement by the state (who the officer is representing) of my right to be armed. The reason that cops are outfitted with guns isn't to protect them from people like me. As long as the cop doesn't approach me with violence, I'm not going to approach him with violence. Cops carry guns for the same reason that I do, to protect themselves from people who would initiate violence, without any concern for the law or for my humanity, and use it to force thier will. The only reason that I would not be as free as a cop to be armed would be that I am not actually free at all, and I simply don't accept that.

Bottom line, the solution is for me to live free and love. To treat everyone, including cops and TSA agents as humans first, and ask to be treated the same by them. If they choose to trample my rights, berate me, beat me, treat me as something less than human or even kill me for attempting to live as a free human being created in the image of God, then the authority they will be answering to, unfortunatly for them, is God, whether the state takes notice or not.

Helping the Poor without Love is Dangerous.

When asked what is the most important commandment Jesus replied first with the answer that everyone expected to hear, "Love God", but he was not willing to leave it at that without mentioning "Love others". (Matthew 22:36-40)

Somehow we've changed this from loving God and loving others to loving God and "serving" others. This small change allows us to feel justified in using a secular government to feed the poor, care for the orphan and widow etc. However, all of this work, however noble, is nothing if it is done without love. In fact it's worse than nothing. It's destructive.

"If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn't love others, I would be nothing." (1 Corinthians 13:2)

Serving the poor without love perpetuates a mentality that tends toward the justification of war. I call it a "xenophobaholic superiority complex", which is the compulsion to feel superior to people that you fear because they are different than you. It's a necessary social complex to develop if your going to have a policy of incarceration and aggressive war. If people were to relate to each other based on their own humanity, and if Christians were to seek the love of Christ in order to expand their own ability to love the unlovable, then we would not tolerate the bombing of poor people in other countries or the jailing of them in our own.

Xenophobaholic Superiority Complex: The compulsion to feel superior to people that you fear because they are different than you.

Take for instance a food line. It generally consists of rich people on one side and poor people on the other. The poor people being humiliated in their poverty on one side and the rich people justified in their salvation and exalted in their wealth on the other. Then when one of these poor creatures get thrown in jail unjustly, or one of our bullets or bombs kill them, we can comfortably tell ourselves "Hey, we tried to help them." We say we do these acts of service out of a love for God, but that's not what Jesus said to do.

Loving God is the easy part. The more we come to know about God the more we love Him. The more we see His love for us, His mercy, when we consider the price He paid for our salvation we cannot help but to love Him more and more. This is why Jesus spend much of his time telling us: "This is my command: Love each other."(John 15:17)

Loving other people is hard, in fact Jesus said that if He is not within us it's impossible for us to do (John 15:5). What we tend to do when facing the problem of loving the unlovable is we resort to dutifully serving them without love. However, when we find ourselves dutifully doing "the right thing" without love we don't just need to be concerned for the success of our ministry, we need to be very concerned for our own salvation! (John 15:6) Serving without a desire for it promotes self-righteousness, division, and if promoted properly will lead a culture numb and even accepting of abusive practices toward the lowly and different.

The solution to all of this isn't to work harder at serving, or to develop better ministry tactics, or promote more social programs. The solution is to stop, go to Christ and ask for more love, and then serve out of nothing but that love. (John 15:4)

God prefers obedience over sacrifice (1 Samuel 15:22). Obedience is doing something because you want to do it. Sacrifice is doing something you don't want to do, but you do it anyway because know it's the right thing to do. As a Christian, to live a life of sacrifice is to not believe the promises of God. When we believe the promises of God, remain in Christ for his love, and press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus, we live a life of obedience, our actions being fueled not by guilt or a quest for self-righteousness, but by the love of Christ for others that is within us.