Thank God for Principled Prohibitionists

If the 18th Amendment was required in order to grant the Federal government the authority to regulate alcohol because the Constitution did not previously enumerate such authority, how can it be said that the Federal government has the constitutional authority to regulate firearms when the Constitution specifically restricts it from doing so? The 18th Amendment and its repeal stand forever engraved into our nation's history as a reminder that the powers of our federal government are limited to those enumerated in its Constitution. In contrast to the enumeration of powers brought about by the 18th amendment, and its subsequent removal of those powers by its repeal, the 2nd Amendment remains, un-repealed, and rather than granting a specific power to the federal government, it makes the certain activity of regulating the private ownership of firearms off limits to it.

You might make the claim that since the Constitution mentions the regulation of a militia, and grants the Federal Government certain authorities with regards to establishing a navy and armies, that the Constitution does in fact grant the Federal government the authority to regulate firearms. This may be true, but that authority would be specifically limited to its own internal use for those enumerated functions, and the "shall not be infringed" clause of the second amendment would clearly put regulations affecting individual arms ownership out of the scope of federal constitutional power.

You might argue that the Supreme Court has rendered several opinions validating the authority of the Federal government to regulate firearms. Even if you understand the opinions of the court, you should take into consideration that the Supreme Court is itself a part of the Federal government, the justices, while often educated and intelligent, are also afforded their status more by nature of their political connectivity than by their constitutional objectivity. Besides, there are many constitutional scholars, many who are more educated and intelligent than any Supreme Court Justice, whose opinions are just as worthy of our attention. This all beside the fact that with just a basic understanding of natural law and a prima facie reading of the Constitution, a reasonable person can easily discern the proper constitutional role of the Federal government, with no help from any other outside expertise. The opinions of the court are just that, opinions, and as they relate to the scope of their own power are somewhat irrelevant, and assuredly suspect, particularly when those opinions violate the natural rights of individuals.

Sadly, the simple answer to the question of where our government is deriving its authority is that we no longer live under a government that consists of and is restricted to the powers enumerated by the Constitution. The government that we are currently being subjected to derives its powers solely by the force of political will and the use or threat of violence, with no cause or pause to consider principle, enumerated or not. If this is the case, then we should have no moral objection to ignoring the rules put forth by politicians who swear an oath to uphold the Constitution but act openly in defiance of it. Most of the general population, having never sworn an oath to the constitution, are surely under no moral obligation to obey these dictates, and those that have are in fact especially obligated to ignore them. At least with the 18th amendment we could argue that the rule of law was sought out, and due process applied, albeit foolishly. An appeal to principle, even a bad one, at least speaks to some kind of integrity.

From an economic perspective, the 18th amendment was a tragedy of misguided and ignorant good intentions. Its passage brought to fruition the realities and dangers of government intervention in the free market. However from a perspective of constitutionally granted authority, the 18th amendment serves as a smoking gun. That a government that didn’t have the power to regulate alcohol without amending that document where its powers are defined, also does not have the power to create regulations on anything else, particularly those regulations its constitution specifically forbids. That is, unless we resign ourselves to the reality that our current government consists of something other than what its constitution enumerates all together.
-Originally posted on the Daily Paul.

Planning your death experience.

Even if the experience of death is simply a chemical reaction that lasts just a few seconds but where your consciencness is suspended in a state where it can no longer experience time and the perception of those few seconds seems eternal (which seems to be a common occurrence in many near death type experiences), you must have a rational belief in a life after death or in a power over death in order to experience those few seconds in a way that your mind does not come to the conclusion that there is no way out. If death comes upon you and your mind realizes it and loses hope of being revived or has no hope of a resurrection, then eventually the experience will be recognized as an illusion and as that happens your perception of a distinct self will soon begin to disintegrate as there will be no other thing outside of your own conscience control to validate your separate existence, which would be like hell, I'm sure. Only by the actual belief in a resurrection will your rational mind retain the hope necessary to experience the dying process as a temporary transition with an expectation of coming out of it in a real sense and thus maintaining the integrity of your self awareness. A well founded and thoroughly examined belief in Jesus Christ offers an objective and rational hope in such a resurrection.

If you have not "worked out your your salvation with fear and trembling" then any irrationality in your belief structure may serve as a fatal blow to your minds hope of being resurrected.  The Bible also teaches that if a person has "become enlightened" but then falls away from belief, that it is impossible for them to be saved.  Could this be because your mind now has a rational objection to Jesus Christ, the proof of the resurrection?

Philippians 2:12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed--not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence--continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,

Hebrews 6:4 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age 6 and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. 

The thoughts that fill your mind now, while you are living, will be the entire means available to you by which to navigate the physical process of death.  If there is anything real to seek in death, the only way you will be able to distiguish it from a hallucination of your dying brain, will be to have familiar knowledge of it prior to dying.  If Christ appears to you in death, your prior knowledge of him will be the means by which you recognize and interact with him.  If you have doubt, your mind will determine that He is an illusion and will not interact with Him in a real way, and He won't be able to lead you to His ressurection.

Colossians 3:1 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

I forgive God of His sins against me

Hebrews 5:1 Every high priest is a man chosen to represent other people in their dealings with God. He presents their gifts to God and offers sacrifices for their sins. 2And he is able to deal gently with ignorant and wayward people because he himself is subject to the same weaknesses. 3That is why he must offer sacrifices for his own sins as well as theirs.

The sacrifice of Christ also reconciled God's sins against me. Yes, God has sinned against me. He has acted against my will, he has allowed or even committed tragedies that offend my sense of right and wrong, He demands righteousness from me that I do not desire to obey, in general He stands other and above me, and I find myself His offended enemy.

Colossians 1:21This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. 22Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.

Although His sin against me is universally irrelevant, inconsequential, and even my voicing them as "sins" may be silly and probably is in fact insane or at least ignorant, the sting of the offense still embitters me against Him. However, I believe that God is lovingly concerned with my perceived encroachment by Him upon my person, the person He created me to be, no matter how ignorant or irrational I may be.

Job 9: 32 “He is not a mere mortal like me that I might answer him, that we might confront each other in court. 33 If only there were someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together, 34 someone to remove God’s rod from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more. 35 Then I would speak up without fear of him,  but as it now stands with me, I cannot.

Through Christ, even though He was not truly guilty of anything apart from offending my ignorant perception, God still seeks to be fully reconciled to me, and I forgive Him.  He became sin and sacrificed himself for the sin that he became, once and for all, I receive all of it.  He receives my forgiveness, even as His truth chisels away at my own ignorance.

Hebrews 7:27 Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.

It might seem pointless, even heretical.  You might be saying, "You're crazy Dax, God doesn't need to be forgiven, He hasn't sinned, you are just misunderstanding Him, seeing Him wrong".  And my answer is "So what?" I am still angry, my ignorance to His ways has created a chasm between us and I still need for Him to be reconciled to me, and I need to forgive Him.  If he shows me the full truth later, I will receive it, but as it stands, I know I need to be forgiven, but I also need to forgive God in order that my relationship with Him be fully reconciled.  He not only allows for me to do this, but He has provided for it through Christ's ministry of reconciliation.  Reconciliation is a two way street, an exchange of equal value, if not in reality, at least in the minds of the parties to the reconciliation   In fact the Greek word for "reconciliation" in the text below is a monetary word meaning something like "exchange of equal value".

2 Corinthians 5:18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. 19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.

How great is the love of God that He does not dismiss my offense, even though it is worthy of dismissal  even ridicule, instead he honors it. Much like a father apologizing for having to correct his child, he does so, not because his actions toward the child were in any way wrong, but because of his love he is concerned with recognizing the individuality of his child, and maintaining the relationship.

Understanding this aspect of Grace, and of the the ministry of Christ in not only working to reconcile me to God, but also God to me, has helped me to see that when I have brought an offense to another person, even if their offense is unfounded, even if they completely misunderstood me, even if they are acting out of total ignorance, or out of spite, God has still provided the example for me to take the offense seriously and work and sacrifice to see that it is forgiven and that the relationship reconciled.

Ballot Access: Exposing a Fatal Flaw.

Here is (more or less), the speech I gave at the Rally for Ballot Access at the Oklahoma State Capitol building on October 8th, 2012:

(I was introduced as Dax Ewbank, a disenfranchised delegate to the Republican National Convention.)

Henry Ford said about his Model T: “You can have any color you like, as long as it's black.” There were practical implications for his limiting the consumers choice in this regard, it turns out black paint dried the fastest and this was necessary for the assembly line process to work.

In seems in Oklahoma we’re attempting to make an assembly line of our elections by saying, "You can have any candidate you'd like as long as they’re Red or Blue". Can you imagine the practical implications of this policy?

In school we laughed when we learned that in communist countries they would be forced to cast a vote for a single candidate. But the joke has been lost on us now, with the simple inclusion of a choice between just two parties.

Now we can claim the people are free to choose, but of course we aren't.  Instead we are forced to choose between just two parties, who too often do not provide enough distinction between each other to constitute a real choice at all. Often times they miss or misrepresent entire issues that are important to the people. In a very real way, our sacred and coveted right to vote has been taken; our voice in our own government has been censored or even silenced.

Many people may point to the party system and place the blame there, and surely much of the blame lies there, they are, of course, the ones who have passed the laws that have restricted our choices.

But I for one am a fan of the party system, just not the two party system. I believe that political parties are very effective ways for people to organize around an ideological platform. People who are passionate about the platform and have time to be active in the party then are able to do the sometimes tedious work of holding meetings and conventions to present to the population a candidate that most closely adheres to the party's stated beliefs. As a person who hasn't always been politically active, it was good to know that there were people out there willing to do this work, so that when the time to vote came, I would know who the candidates were and what they stood for.

No the problem is not with party politics, as unattractive as it sometimes gets, the problem is with the duopoly of power that has been encoded into our law that protects the two major parties

I am a Republican, I want to be a good Republican, but that implies that I believe that Republicans are good. I know our platform is not perfect, and that our party can always improve, but by limiting the conversation within our political discourse we are certainly guaranteeing that improvement will not occur.

Are our convictions so shallow that they cannot withstand the criticism of an opposing viewpoint? And if something in our platform or philosophy cannot withstand honest questioning, should we really keep it? Should we defend it?

Jesus said love your enemies, this was not just a teaching born out of a sacrificial and altruistic call to love, it is also a very practical piece of advice. Sometimes our enemies are the only ones who will tell us the truth, our friends don’t because they want to remain our friends!

When we exclude viewpoints we don't agree with we open ourselves up to be hurt by our own weakness that we are blind to. CS Lewis called it our "fatal flaw”:

“This is the next great step in wisdom–to realize that you also are just that sort of person. You also have a fatal flaw in your character. All the hopes and plans of others have again and again shipwrecked on your character just as your hopes and plans have shipwrecked on theirs.

It is no good passing this over with some vague, general admission such as “Of course, I know I have my faults.” It is important to realize that there is some really fatal flaw in you; something which gives the others just that same feeling of despair which their flaws give you. And it is almost certainly something you don’t know about”

How are we to become stronger as a nation, a state, a party, or even as individuals if we go out of our way to silence those who disagree with us? Are we not just setting ourselves up to be blindsided by the very weaknesses our opposition is pointing out but that we have chosen to militantly ignore?

Let me paint a scenario for you:

What if Oklahoma's ballot access laws were the most restrictive in the nation, and out of all of the people, parties and candidates in our nation for the office of President of the United states, the choices for Oklahomans were limited to just the two people of the two major parties?

What if those parties, knowing their hold on our ballot was secure, violated their own rules, disenfranchised their own members, and by the influence of a well-funded and powerful national campaign, forced their will upon the membership?

What if they went so far in their national conventions to ignore their own party rules, to ignore the common rules of order, and even to ignore the voting voices of their own membership and script the outcomes they wanted into their teleprompters?

What if the courts ruled that business within the party was not under their jurisdiction?  That the parties were "private clubs" free to govern themselves as they wish. 

What kind of choice would it be for Oklahomans? It would be no choice at all, it will have been decided for us, and we could only blame ourselves because we would have failed to hear those who were pointing out our fatal flaws.

Well this is not a hypothetic situation; this is the reality, particularly in Oklahoma!

The courts cannot legitimately rule that party business is not within their jurisdiction when the parties have a government enforced monopoly on your vote! If the parties are to be free to operate how they please, even violating their own rules and silencing their own membership, then the people must be free to choose from or create new parties so that their voice will be heard. For our society to constantly improve, we cannot have a government that silences criticism and denies ballot access to those that may challenge the status quo.

It’s time to bring freedom back to the land of the free, recognize our fatal flaw and open the polls in Oklahoma!

Help bear the burden of Liberty.

Help me stand up to the corruption that has taken over the Republican Party.  As you may know our state Republican convention was a disaster.  Here's my report on it.  Corruption prevailed and Mitt Romney was at the core of it, getting his delegates seated to the RNC despite the fact that they blatantly broke the rules.  For a brief and accurate depiction of what happened, check out Ben Swann's story on it here:

http://www.fox19.com/story/19300162/reality-check-rnc-rules-committee-cant-follow-its-own-rules

I've started a new job, been living in a hotel for a month because of it, and trying to move into a new house, but I'm still committed to going to Tampa.  If you want to help the cause of Liberty in Tampa, if you've been waiting to find a way to realy make an impact, I have a solution for you. Help me with some of my expenses.

I'm not a professional activists or politition, I'm a working person, with a wife and seven kids.  Standing up for my rights and for my children's future has cost me in time and money, and going to Tampa is just adding to that, but I wouldn't make the sacrifice to my family, our finances, my job, and my time if I didn't think that it was truely worthwhile.  Win or lose the establishment of this country need to be confronted with the fact that what they are doing is immoral and unacceptable.  I plan to go, educate as many delegates as I can (I will be staying in the convention hotel), and hopefully swing many of them to Liberty.  There are literally thousands of liberty activists who will be in Tampa, hundreds of them will be delegates, alternates, and guests within the convention walls, working to make a difference.  Bear some of the burden with me and chip in here to help with my expenses:

Sorry, your donations won't be tax deductible, but if Liberty wins, that really won't matter anyway, will it?  For that matter, if Liberty loses it won't matter either...

UPDATE:

As a quick update, thanks for everyone who donated.  I collected almost $1400.00 and was able to make the trip with ease.  My facebook timeline during the convention has all the video and comentary, you can check it out here: http://www.facebook.com/fiodax and scroll back in time on my timeline to the end of August, there'll be plenty to read!

Anarchy in the Royal Family

What do you think of the word "anarchy"?  Does it have a negative or even evil connotation in your mind?  Are you a Christian?  Have you ever said "No King but King Jesus?"  If so, and if you really mean it, then you are probably more of an anarchist than you realize.  

Anarchy simply means "without a king".  The context of anarchy is generally in a human sense, not a spiritual one, and the philosophy supporting it simply claims that no person has the right to claim ownership to another person.  Kings claim ownership, often by divine right, always by force and coercion to not only your property but also to you.  It is through this claim that they justify their right to levy taxes, make rules and enforce them with guns, conscript soldiers and slaves, and confiscate property.

In a Kingdom there are serfs, lords, and then there is the Royal family.  The serfs are the population whose lives and property are the property of the king, they are not part of the Royal family and are not politically well connected enough to be a Lord.  Serfs pay homage to the king via taxation, and are subject to the king's laws and decrees at the threat of violence.  The Lords are the friends of the King who he has given land or privilege to, lords can also collect taxes on their lands and subject the serfdom on their lands to their laws.  And then there is the Royal family, which should need no additional explanation, this is the king and his family.

That's all real interesting, but we live in America, we don't have a king, right?  Well here's a test.  Are you free to use your property as you see fit?  How about your car, who needs those pesky tags right? Or your life?  Are you free to not pay the taxes levied on the fruit of your own labor via the income tax if you don't agree with the policies of the government?  Of course not.  You are a serf.  The Federal Government is the King, and the power brokers behind the scenes are the Royal family.  Quite often the power brokers are literally families that have been in power for decades if not centuries who control the political and economic forces that are used to control us. In this kingdom the Lords are the corporations, who are given special privileges and access to the royal treasury and to the royal guard in order to protect and expand their property.  We are the serfs, subject not only to the laws and decrees of the king with regards to taxation, conscription into military service, and obedience to untold number of regulations (decrees), but we are also subject to the will of the Lord's (corporations) as they use their special privileges to force us to accept their will in regards to the products and services we are given the choice to live by.  This entire kingdom is predicated on the assumption that you are the property of the Federal Government.  A powerful elite has set themselves up on the throne of God almighty and assumed ownership of you.

The word "anarchy" has been derided and redefined through our public (royal) education system, and through the mass media (royal propaganda), because it is a dangerous idea to the underpinnings of fraudulent kingdom you are being forced to participate in.  If you were to consider the possibility that you belong to yourself, and that no other person has the right to claim ownership of you or your property, then you may experience what is called "cognitive dissonance" when your mind attempts to reconsile the idea of self ownership with the demands of your king to pay taxes, buy car tags, renew licences (what are we pets?), or participate in any other "mandatory" activity.  Anarchist see the individual as not only owners of themselves, but also sovereign, and this sovereignty is in direct conflict with the sovereignty the government claims over you.  In fact this is evidenced by the fact that they must use violence, or the threat of it in order to coerce you to obey their decrees.  Violence and fraud are particularly repulsive to an anarchist because these kinds of acts are violations against the victims property and sovereignty. It is better for the "kings" if you remain ignorant, or even repulsed by the words and ideas of self ownership, because of where these ideas may lead your thinking.

Many Christians may shy away from the anarchist ideology because of the concept of self ownership.  We are taught that we were purchased by Christ, and that we belong to God.  But a closer examination of this idea will lead you to some interesting conclusions. We need to build a bit of a foundation to get there so lets take a look at these verses:

• Exodus 20:3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them;"

It is clear that God establishes himself as the only God.  We should place no other God (or King) before him. Nor shall we bow down to any idol, or symbol that is either representative of him, a human king, an animal, or any other thing.  On this premise alone the claim of ownership upon you by a human King must be rejected.

• Revelation 21:3 :And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

The intent of God is to dwell with us, not to exist distantly separated from us.  That he will live with us and be our God, and that his tabernacle will be with us.  

• John 4:24 "God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

God is a spirit, and must be interacted with as such.  Our interaction with him must be according to his nature (spirit) and it also must be accurate (truth).  Idolatry is wrong because it is an interaction with God via the physical, not the spiritual, it is neither spirit nor truth.  Legalism is wrong because it is an intellectual interaction with him, it is truth, but not spirit.  Mysticism is wrong because it is only a spiritual interaction, spirit but not truth.

• Luke 17:20 "Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, 21 nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.” "

The kingdom that God rules over cannot be seen because it is spirit, like Him.  If you can see the kingdom you are subject to, that is a pretty good indication that it is not God's kingdom and you are practicing idolatry. 

• 1 Corinthians 6:19 it says: "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies."   
• 1 Corinthians 3:16 "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?" 

Here is the establishment of God's ownership of us.  An anarchist would cringe at this prospect.  But as a believer we understand that God doubly owns us.  He created us, and then he also purchased us at the Cross. This is how he established the Kingdom that we are able to live in with him.  Our bodies are His tabernacle, and his dwelling place is not only among us, but within each individual.  He is "among" another because he is "within" me when I am near them, and them me.

• Galations 4:4 "But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law,5 to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.6 Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”  7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir."

And now we see the radical departure of the traditional kingdom model.  There are no serfs or Lords in the kingdom of God, only Royal family. God adopting us and and making us heirs.  God's very nature living within and among us, our bodies serving as the physical location of his throne and temple.  This is difficult to equate in terms of human government.  Even if a human king were to adopt you and make you an heir, the human king still could not use your body to locate his kingdom, because the human king is human, physical, not spiritual.

As a Christian if I  identify with the word "anarchist" I don't see how I can be violating any Christian principles, in fact, in order to be able to prepare my body to become the dwelling place of God, one of the first things I must do is deny any recognition of ownership by any other human being or object or idol.  In fact if God not only owns me, has made me his son, and also dwells within me, to live as if my body were the property of any other power seems quite ridiculous.

Living life in this paradigm should radically change how we behave and interact with others.  When we view others as tabernacles of God we can instantly see why the principles of anarchy become very important in our control of our physical bodies.  Every individual is the physical manifestation of the spiritual presence of God. If a person commits an act of violence or fraud, or makes a false claim of ownership to another person or their property, they are in reality putting themselves in the place of God himself.

"No King but King Jesus?", yes, and embracing and understanding anarchy is where it begins.

God is in you.

Your heart is wicked and cannot be trusted, it behaves this way out of an instinctual attempt to guarantee its own survival. Your heart will never enter into an agreement where it must sacrifice something for itself in order to provide for another, it goes against it's nature. Even the motherly instinct to protect a child is born out of an instinctual desire to protect the continuation of your genetic identity. Even animals do it. Your heart is the seat of your desires, and it only cares about itself, and the projection of its genetic identity into the future.

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? -Jeremiah 17:9

Your mind can be taught and become aware of moral principles that conflict with the desires of your heart.  The suppression of your heart's desires when they conflict with the moral principles within your mind is the outworking of religion or law. This suppression of desire will cause your body to experience stress as your heart reacts to what it perceives as a threat to its survival. This stress will eventually manifest as physical and mental illness.

Some religions teach the training of the mind to overpower the desires of the heart, some religions teach the training of the mind to ignore the desires of the heart.  Sometimes governments are instituted to use force to externally control those who are unable to otherwise control their body's as they respond to the desires of their heart, and not yield to the moral controls inculcated within the mind. All of these options still leave you with a heart that desires one thing, and a mind that desires another, this in-congruence leads to unhappiness. Substance abuse and insanity are often a result of one's attempt to rectify this conflict between the mind and the heart by numbing or deranging the mind so that it ceases to recognize the dissonance. Suicide is an attempt to either put an end to the pain caused by the unmet desires of the heart, or to put an end to the stress caused by the minds awareness of the depravity of those desires, whether that identification as depravity is born out of truth or not.

Blind faith, blind obedience to authority, and religion are all derangement of the mind. A belief of the mind that does not coincide with action born from the true desire of the heart. It is a mental disorder and a division of the integrity of your person. Religions of the mind project an imagination of a God or power that is outside and other than you as a person and that sets an expectation or otherwise coerces the you to conform the actions of your body to the knowledge of your mind despite the desires of your hearts.   I understand the that the word "Islam" literally means "submit", and one of the principles in that religion is called "jihad" which means to struggle.  The submission of the heart to the mind is indeed a struggle.  Other religions use guilt or the promise of reward to provide the reasons the mind needs to overcome the heart's evil desires. Religions of science can be used to attempt to fill the mind with reason and then use that reason to control the desires of the heart.  Governmental systems, which are a form of idolic worship, often use propaganda to inculcate within the mind a certain expectation of behavior that they then enforce with violence.  Governments often justify their power to use violence by either becoming an intermediary to God, or by setting themselves up as the outside authority (God) and then give themselves a "mandate" to rule (control the behavior of others) by force.

John 4: 21 "Woman," Jesus replied, "believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth."

God is a spirit and our minds cannot reasonably understand Him (or accept him as truth) because we lack the faculties to do it (we cannot see, touch, smell, hear, or taste God), and our hearts have no interest in Him. In the old testament God established himself in reality by manifesting his presence in a physical temple, and then established laws, on physical tablets of stone, that people were taught (with their minds), so that they could come into his presence and know about Him. The justification to their minds for conforming their bodies to those laws (against the will of their hearts), was the physical evidence of God's existence though his presence in the Temple and the recollection of the physical miracles he performed to demonstrate not only his power but also his reality. This gave the mind a reason to conform to the law of God, he was real. God did this in order to establish His identity among us, and he chose Israel to carry and protect the history of that identity though time.  God never intended to relate to us permanently though the temple/law structure, however he had to establish His identity in reality in order to provide the proper context for his ultimate intention and the purpose of Christ.  If He were not to have done this, then the identity and purposes that Christ claimed would have been meaningless, and by "meaningless" I mean that we would not have been able to understand the meaning of it with our minds.

The apostle Paul was well educated (with his mind) as to the law of God (Acts 22:3). So much so that he had trained his self to identify with it as who he was. When he would act "outside of his mind" he recognized that it was the desires of his heart within him acting, disconnected and separate from what his mind wanted to do (Romans 7) "Sin living within him".  Because Paul was well educated in doctrines that he believed to be true it motivated him to want to conform his body to those doctrines, and not only so, but also to coerce others to conform their bodies through violence, hence his persecution of Christians (Acts 22:4).  He identified sin as a wholly separate being acting unreasonably from within him, and others.  He rightly defined sin as any action that was born from a desire of the heart that was not in congruence with the knowledge of the will of God.  Paul's solution to this problem as a zealous Jew was to use violence to force compliance, but his solution as a Christian was much different.

The finite nature of the environment in which we live, combined with the fact that we are powerless over death cause our instinctive hearts to attempt amass as much as it needs for survival, pleasure and longevity. This activity becomes immoral rapidly as we are convinced by our hearts to commit fraud and trespass against other people in order to obtain what we need to survive, or as we use violence against them in order to force them to conform to our mind's interpretation of moral behavior. We literally begin to live by stealing the necessities of life from others, even our sociological systems begin to manifest these sins in the realities of poverty, all forms of violence, and war. The trespasses we commit against others do not happen outside of the reality of the existence of God, no matter how ignorant we may be, or may have forced ourselves to be. Inevitably, no matter the training of our mind,  our hearts often take charge of our actions, and commit injustices against God and others. The obverse also happens, in our mental attempt to conform our reality to our minds understanding of morality, we use violence to coerce others to behave in the way that we see fit. These trespasses must be reckoned in order for the God who claims he is a God of justice to be so.   We are either sacrificing our morality, or our desires in an attempt to survive and find peace in living.

But Samuel replied: "Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. -1 Samuel 15:22

God does not desire this kind of sacrifice however. He desires obedience, the difference being that sacrifice is the physical outworking of the mind despite the desire of the heart (the desire of the heart is what is being sacrificed), and obedience is the physical outwork of the mind and heart in agreement with one another. Similarly, enforcing a moral understanding of God on others with violence, even if the moral understanding is born of truth, is a sacrifice of the desire of the heart of another, as well as our own.  God prefers mercy to this kind of coerced sacrifice.  God doesn't not intend for his Children to accept or enforce His existence by means of any sacrifice outside or in addition to the sacrifice of Christ, but instead by means of internal desire and intellectual understanding.  

For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings. -Hosea 6:6

Jesus said that if we "want" or desire to save our life, then we will lose it (Matthew 16:25), but if we lose our life we will save it.  The wicked and instinctual desires of the heart are simply behavior without a consideration for morality for the sole purpose of physical survival. Ironically, to follow these desires is to guarantee death, because we ultimately don't have the power to eternally perpetuate our own survival. To submit to our heart's desire to survive is to guarantee our death.  It is the want or desire to save our life that must be sacrificed in order to be moral, but that desire must be lost altogether in order to have life in the power of God. 

This conflict between the mind and the heart is the dynamic that motivates the actions of our body.  It is as if our mind and our heart are arguing with one another.  If the heart has a desire that is stronger than the mind's reason for not satisfying it, then the mind will submit to the heart and the body will act accordingly. If the mind can provide to the heart a strong enough reason not to satisfy a desire then the heart will submit to the mind and the body will act accordingly.   Because the spirit of God lived within Christ's heart, and the knowledge of God was within his mind, he was able to give us a model as to how God intended us to live in peace without this constant conflict. God chose to allow the voluntary sacrifice of the life of Christ to serve as justice for the trespasses we committed while acting out of our ignorance and out of the nature of our instinctual hearts. The resurrection of Christ from the dead provided the physically knowable reason for our minds to trust in him, and it demonstrated His power over the primary motivator of our instinctual heart, death. When we accept the sacrifice of Christ alone, the mind is able to provide to our instinctual hearts a reason so powerful that it ultimately brings about the death of all our wicked desires. God does not leave us as minds with dead hearts, but He puts within us a new heart with new desires.

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." Ezekiel 36:26

"Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart." -Psalm 37:4

True Christianity teaches us to train our minds with the knowledge of God, and that God desires to literally enthrone his spiritual self within your heart at the seat of your desires. The spirit God who cannot be detected by the faculties of the mind or body, instead of making himself manifest in a temple or idol or through a miracle or coercion, makes himself manifest by taking up residence in the heart of a human being, changing the nature of the seat of the man's desires. The knowledge of God plus his desires (His will) coming from within us cause our minds and our hearts to be at peace with one another. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God is within us (Luke 17:21), and Paul taught us that the entire secret of the mystery of the universe can be boiled down to this: Christ is in you (Col 1:24-27). The solution is that our new heart becomes the new temple of God.

"Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?" 1 Cor 3:16

When you pray, or relate to God, if you do so to a God that is "out there", or if you live as if you are being coerced to behave by a God "up in heaven" or "out there" or in a church or temple or in the teachings of a dead person or of a living person that is trying to control you with guilt or the promises of fleshly rewards, then you are worshiping an idol. God is not "up there". He is inside of you.

Practice the presence of God by focusing your mind on your heart and recognizing the Kingdom of God (who's origin is the Cross of Christ) is inside of you and capable of directing your desires and providing a peaceful agreement between what your mind knows and what your heart wants. Do this by focusing your mind on the words of the prayer that Jesus taught us:

Our father, who is in heaven (in our hearts), Hallowed by your name (which is our name, because you are our father). Your Kingdom Come (in our hearts), Your will be done (by our minds causing our bodies to act according to the desires of our hearts), On earth (through our bodies) as it is in Heaven (in our hearts). Give is this day our daily bread (so we won't worry about death), And forgive our trespasses (when we did worry about death and stole from another by fraud or violence or only acted out of knowledge and tried to coerce others to conform to that knowledge), As we forgive those who trespass against us (in this way the forgiveness of God is manifest through our bodies). Lead us not into temptation (by replacing the seat of our desires in our hearts), But deliver us from evil (by allowing our minds to know how to control our bodies thereby removing us as a threat to others and others as a threat to us).

Bread, Wine, Body, Blood, Jesus

Reflecting on Good Friday, I think about the last supper, the meal of wine and bread that Jesus shared with his disciples prior to his crucifixion.

"While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take it; this is my body." Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it. "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many," he said to them." - Mark 14:22-24

In many ancient traditions life sustaining foods such as grain were actually considered to be the very bodies of the gods that provided it. Likewise the wine from grapes and fermented liquids from other fruits and grains were considered to be the very blood of the god. The change and action caused by fermentation being seen as the very spirit of the god. "By taking the grain or wine into their bodies, as food and fermentation, human beings brought into themselves the body of the sacred themselves." (from the book: "Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers" by Stephen Harrod Buhner).

If this is true then it is shocking when you consider the last supper of Christ. When he said about the wine, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" and about the bread, "This is my body, which is for you", the people surrounding Jesus would have clearly understood the similarity between what he was saying and the pagan rituals, and the implication of what he was saying and doing would have been scandalous and profound. They would have instantly hearkened back to when he said "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him."John 6:56. It would not have been symbolic at all, the people surrounding the table of the last supper would have had a clear and real cultural context for the significance of the bread and the wine as His body and blood.

Jesus was not simply stating that he was a god, nor was he just the Messiah of the Hebrews, he was making it clear, he was the God of gods. That even the body and blood of the pagan gods that many worshiped belonged to him, and that the salvation and presence of God that many sought by eating the "flesh" and drinking the "blood" of these gods could truly only be found through His physical flesh and blood that just a few hours later would be consumed for the salvation of the world.

The pagans were not flippant or foolish about their beliefs, the grain and the wine brought life their physical bodies, and it was reasonable to them that their search for the power that would ultimately overcome death should follow this same pattern. They participated in this ritual honoring the creation for its power to sustain life, but despite the spirit they called upon, or the fervency by which they conjured it, they were left seeking.

We might look upon these ancients as ignorant heathens, but Jesus came not to condemn them, nor did he share in their ritual to mock them. Just as many religious Jews were finally confronted in Christ with the reality of the Messiah that their traditions had been leading them to, so also were the worshippers of the earth and every other deity finally confronted with the power they were seeking, and not in a foreign tradition, but through the body and blood, in the grain and the wine, as they were accustomed.

As we consider the last supper of Christ, consider, that in a very real sense ancient people performed a similar ritual for thousands of years before Christ with the firm and true belief that they were partaking in the body of their god, who had no power to save them, and now similarly, we partake in a very real way of the body and blood of Christ, who can.

How media hacks count.

At the Ron Paul rally in Oklahoma City on the 25th of February, 2012, police estimated that there were over 3000 in attendance. The Ron Paul campaign website claimed 1700. I was at the rally, there were quite a few people there, definitely 1700 if not 3000.

Ron Paul Rally, OKC 25 Feb 2012

News9.com of Oklahoma City covered the event claiming:

The Paul crowd outside the capitol was estimated at a little more than 1,000.

And then they had to follow it up with:

About 2,000 people were at a rally for Rick Santorum in OKC and 500 showed up to hear Newt Gingrich speak last Monday.

Strangely enough when this same news organization covered the actual Santorum visit on February 9th, they claimed:

Santorum greeted a crowd of nearly 1,000 supporters Thursday morning at Magnuson Hotel and Convention center near Interstate 40 and Meridian.

Rick Santorum Rally in OKC, 9 Feb 2012

The tagline on the story about Ron Paul's visit was clearly meant to belittle the Ron Paul gathering by comparing it to the Santorum gathering which was claimed to be twice as big. However, it simply wasn't true, not true to fact, and not even true to this news organizations own previous reporting of the event. It's looks as if the exact opposite of what they claimed is actually what transpired.

Shame on you News 9, I hope the votes aren't counted the same way that you guys count crowds.

Ron Paul is a modern day prophet

Jeremiah 28: 9 "As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes to pass, then it will be known that the Lord has truly sent the prophet."