panic attack

Unlimited Liability is a term used in the military.  It refers to the soldier's acceptance that there is no limit to the cost he may pay, in mind and body in the line of duty.

For the Christian man or woman too, unlimited liability is a goal of faith: to aspire to let nothing stop us in the pursuit of our calling to grow closer to God, love our neighbours and in that love to make disciples in Jesus' name, however that calling may manifest itself in work and play.

Fear of death is natural.  The power of God to save is supernatural.  For the Christian the limit of exploitation is beyond the grave.  In an attack, this is the line beyond which a fighting force, for whatever reason may it be casualties or supplies or risk of over-extension, will not advance.  The limit to life is not the end of life as we know it.  But similar to the end of life as the pagan knows it, so too the limit of death as we know it is not simply death.  There is a terror worse than death just as there is a life beyond life–this is part of the meaning of the eternal power of God.

We as Christian people serve a God who is bigger than our natural imaginations and more righteous than our fantasies of righteousness, and more terrifying than anything we could ever dream of.  What He expects from us is the same in eternal power as what He gives us in Christ.  The excuses of the unbeliever will not make the "cut" any more than the life found in Christ ever end.

It is not that there should be no hope or fear, it is a question of where the fear and hope is laid.  Is it laid in the eternal, or the carnal, the natural, the man-made artificial?

Sample the prayer of Habakkuk (Habakkuk 3) found in the Bible and you get a quick picture of a man who was fearing and hoping in the right way.

Put it in perspective in one sentence: Habakkuk is a prophet who is receiving a message that his nation's wickedness is going to be obliterated by a Babylonian invasion.  God, in a word, is irate.  Habakkuk knows Israel needs this judgement for it's evil and it is coming.  So in light of an imminent apocalypse of biblical proportions, Habakkuk does the only reasonable thing; he prays.

So your homeland is about to be raped, pillaged, destroyed and sold into slavery for its evil, what might you say?  I really don't know what I'd say but you can bet it would be something along the lines of "God please don't do this I'd like to continue living in peace with my family, not get torn limb from limb, have my wife raped and my infant tossed against a stone wall."  God has a habit of sparing his children from disaster (check out  Noah & the Flood for but one example), but the thought of a "Chaldean horde", a "fierce, impetuous, dreaded and feared" people (Hab 1:6-7) running through town doesn't exactly inspire great confidence that everything's going to be peachy keen.

right fear
But Habakkuk prays a strange prayer, it actually runs more like a hymn of remembrance; there is no explicit request or supplication through the entire chapter which comprises it.  Who prays a prayer without asking for anything?  Habakkuk says he "heard of your (God's) fame" (v.2) and he recalls God's awesome power in battle, His unstoppable power over the forces of nature, over humankind and the events of human history.  Did somebody forget to mention to Habakkuk that his nation is about to receive the beat down of the millennium?  This isn't a 'panic prayer' over the Chaldean horde.  But make no mistake, Habakkuk is afraid, he is terrified, "I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound, decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled."

Habakkuk wasn't afraid of the fierce warriors or the incumbent orgy of death and destruction: he was afraid of Almighty God.  The thought of the wrath of the Lord God was enough to make him admit to posterity that he would have wet himself at the sight.  His attention was on the terror of eternal death rather than physical death.  

right hope
There's an antithesis though, another side to the story.  The nation coming against Israel is a natural army, it is a tool of God and nothing more, "They mock kings and scoff at rulers.  They laugh at all fortified cities...Then they sweep past like the wind and go on; guilty people, whose own strength is their god." (1:10-11)  The mounds unbelievers use to bury their fear of judgment and death, these vicious killers come to bring reckoning from the Almighty and demolish these pitiful piles with ease, laying bare the sins of nations.

The Babylonians idolize their own strength, and Habakkuk knows it, "Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us."  They do not know that there is a terror worse than death, a death deeper than the earth can bury and hide; the awesome and all-consuming power of God in His wrath.

Make no mistake, Habakkuk is in no state of delusion about his unlimited liability; but Habakkuk knows his limit of exploitation is only as far as the natural.  There is, because of God's mercy as Saviour to those who call Him Lord and Master, to those who are not his enemies, peace and absolution from the wrath which is worse than death.

real confidence, boldness,  joy and peace
Habakkuk's bold hope and confidence extends entirely beyond the simple avoidance of natural death,

"Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour.  The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights." (Hab 3:17-19)

Habakkuk's bold trust is reminiscent of Job who said "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." (Job 13:15)  Or the heroes of the faith who looked beyond the grave for their hope in the letter to the Hebrews.  This is real faith, real hope, real joy and real confidence.  Habakkuk did not ask for God to be a powerful Saviour, to rescue him from the worst fate possible (eternal death), to arrange the course of events and planets alike and to annihilate the hordes; Habakkuk knew it.   It was no supplication, it was a proclamation.

The man whose unlimited liability is covered by Christ's unlimited liability, he whose confidence, courage and plans are in God's keeping– this man is a terrible and powerful sight to behold.  His life and strength are endless, his absolution is complete, his avenger is the Almighty, and fears are only his victims on an irrevocable attack to everlasting glory:  For the eternal wrath and love of God have no limit of exploitation.      

The Nameless Hero of Faith

After a centurion has appealed to the Jewish elders in a bid to save the life of his "highly regarded" slave, an interesting exchange develops which defies the typical definition of greatness. It is thus a story to be grappled with, as it challenges the well-meaning heroism of the world with the heroics of faith. (Luke 7/ Matthew 8...I prefer the more detailed Luke 7 version here.)

The Jewish elders explain to Jesus, "He is worthy for You to grant this to him; for he loves our nation, and it was he who built us our synagogue." To paraphrase a little, "This guy is really worth your time, he loves the people and is really patriotic for Israel. He even constructed our local worship building!"

The centurion loves the people, he obviously has some respect or understanding for Judaism (if not outright conversion), he has worked hard in the service of others, he cares for even his slave, he has the recommendation of the people his Emperor has conquered and at this point in the text we can see that the centurion believes that Jesus has at least some power to help him.

If this fellow isn't worthy, (Jew vs Gentile theological discussion aside) then certainly no Gentile is worthy.

Jesus appears to take the bait so to speak. But I believe it is because He knew what would be written in history to follow and also because Jesus isn't one to deny those who knock, worthy or not.

What makes the case of the centurion so unique follows next, for as Jesus arrived near to the centurion's household, the centurion's friends bid him come no further saying, "Lord do not trouble Yourself further, for I am not fit for You to come under my roof; for this reason I did not even consider myself worthy to come to You..." (v.6)

As it turns out, the centurion did not think himself worthy as the Jewish elders praised him; and it was for this reason Jesus considered him worthy. The centurion acknowledged that Jesus was Lord and had the power to do the impossible; in other words, by sheer report of Jesus the centurion knew his superior commander from the rest of the world's meaningless monarchs. He had never met Jesus and yet acknowledged His authority (v.8).

Worldliness always measures heroism and righteousness by signs that it can see: patriotism, loyalty to family and kinsmen, moral acts, buildings and battles.

By contrast, the great spirituality of the Centurion was measured by his unwillingness to count himself as anyone more than a man under the hand of God; and that this God was alone worthy and able to accomplish what concerned him; even the impossible.

Instructions for Revolution: Part 1

After writing a post on tyranny, I thought it would be profitable to post something about how I thus far understand, in my inexperience, how tyrannies are destroyed.

I say "destroyed" because make no mistake, in order to stop tyranny in any of its corporeal or noncorporeal (physical or nonphysical) forms you will be engaged in battle. When I say "destroyed" however, I do not necessarily mean that the entire nation or person must be erased, but that it is reduced to a state in which it can no longer exert its malevolent control over your person or persons.

History illustrates that war is not a battle unto complete annihilation of one side. As John McCain recently aptly pointed out of the current war in Afghanistan and terror in general, war is "a battle of wills". When one side has lost the will to fight, the war is over. A nation may lose the will to fight because it cannot stand casualties or seemingly unnecessary expenses (which would seem to be our current situation), or perhaps it has lost the will to fight because its general has been captured or killed in battle (This was Alexander the Great's favourite tactic), or perhaps most commonly, the nation has lost the ability to effectively put up a fight and thus surrenders to avoid disastrous damage to its homeland (Partly the issue for Imperial Japan in 1945).

The first step to destroying any system of governance (Tyrannical or not) is to destroy its values, the values held in the hearts of the people or person it governs. This holds two functions, it destroys the ability of the governance to control and manipulate by what rewards it offers for compliance. Secondly, undermining or proving false the values of a system and replacing them gains a convert or converts to the new ideology which then has:

a) The will to fight against what it now recognizes as falsehood, and;

b) The resilience to reject bribes or settlements from the tyranny.

A sure sign that you are dealing with a tyranny is that its values are not centred around the value of truth. Usually this takes the form of appealing to humanity's dark nature: self praise, material possessions, self-gratification etc. It may not be so very obvious though, and deception wouldn't be deception if it didn't try to hide itself at least a little. At the end of my last post I gave some indication of where good governance stands. I argue that humanity does have an inherently dark nature (some political systems will attempt to make you place abundant faith in man's or a single man's/party's overall goodness, like communism or fascism or totalitarianism). What are the signs of good governance?

a)Where there are signs that a person or persons is/are working against the grain of their darker moral nature(s); When the values of the government, expressed by word and deed are in line with, and reflect a primary interest in inalterable universal moral principles.

For example, liberty should have been to all people in the United States from the moment the constitution (a reflection of a nation's values) stated “All men are created equal”. But racism, like any other human crime, is a neverending battle, the Civil War was a major turning point for the United States, and the seeds of that victory gave men like Martin Luther King Jr., the liberty to further demolish ingrained racist tendencies and structures in American Society.

King was able to do what he did because of the revolution in American thinking that men like Abraham Lincoln fought for so desperately. The point stands however, that the encapsulated moral values of the US constitution have made it the bastion of liberty (all cynicism aside) that it is today. Anyone questioning that liberty, at least as it stands today, needs to have a look around the world. Of course, liberty is not something one can leave to the vagaries of human nature lest it be lost.

b) The first sign of good governance was the 'easy' part. The real test is truthfulness; the truthfulness of its ideas. Even presuming that your personal or national governance tells the truth about its intentions, and thinks that its moral stance is best, its moral stance may not reflect truthful values. I have already argued that the best governance comes from universal objective moral principles, and a large part of my reason for doing so is the fact that these kinds of principles are the least susceptible to common human weaknesses. Moral principles are not physical substances, so they rely indirectly for false or truthful fulfilment. What I mean is that the payoff from moral principles is one step removed from say the reward of millions of dollars in illicit cash. It is terribly easy to be bought off by millions of dollars in cash, while manipulating based on moral principles requires more leg work.

The safety of moral principles as a system of value is that in order to achieve effective governance they must be believed by the people or person being governed/tyrannized. Simply put, it is harder to convince someone to your ideology than it is to just pay out some kind of direct bribe (wealth, health, etc.)

The dangerous and powerful aspect of moral principles as a system of value is that if adopted over and above those baser human desires, it produces an adherent (for good or ill) which will be far more likely to remain fanatically loyal to the principle, since the moral principle goes far beyond the individual interest and stretches to the universal.

For example, fighting for “freedom” can be a great and good thing wielded by a genuine leader and can spur political, diplomatic or military action, but wielded by a deceitful or self-interested ruler 'freedom' or 'democracy' can be code words for enslavement. The Nazi's did not call themselves fascists, they were called “National Socialists”. The murderous communist regime of Russia likewise called itself the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”. Under less extreme conditions, some socialist ideas can produce compassionate social change. Unbridled faith in a communist or National Socialist ideal; does not.

What causes then, an unbridled faith in certain principles to lead to the very disaster the creator may have intended to avoid? Friedrich Nietzsche probably wouldn't have been thrilled to learn that key parts of his philosophies had been adopted in hearty approval by Nazi Germany. The key problem is not precisely the ideal scenario philosophy, it is the factors that we decide to put faith in to make the 'ideal scenario' a reality. An edifice planned to be invulnerable cannot be built with vulnerable parts. A pure glass of water cannot be poured using contaminated water.

If we allow that human beings are fundamentally flawed creatures which tend toward evil rather than good (I leave that to your examination) then a system of governance which places excessive faith in an individual (even self), a ruler, a party or even in fact many people (Plato called democracy the worst form of government! I don't, for the record.) we are bound to end up in disaster. Additionally, we must concede that the 'ideal' scenario or utopia, can never exist. As a corollary, or side point, we must also concede that excessive faith in any factor which can be manipulated by human intervention or dependent upon human satisfaction (eg. Technology, economic prosperity, disco robots) will also fail as a means of creating utopia.

The consequence of the above paragraph is that in order for faith or trust to be well rested in an idea, the idea must rest in a true appraisal of its objects of concern. That is a general philosophical way of saying that if you want to govern human beings, you have to have a realistic or truthful notion about who human beings are, what they need, how they interact, what they are, and are not capable of and especially, how they are flawed. Thus the lament of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 5:8, “If you see oppression of the poor and denial of justice and righteousness in the province, do not be shocked at the sight, for one official watches over another official, and there are higher officials over them.”

Solomon's disparaging message about human nature is a problem which evokes spiritual despair at the spiritual condition of humanity, at the condition of self before God. But politically speaking it is not something to cause us terrible anguish. Solomon's check and balance measure is just a few lines earlier in Eccl 4:9-13, where he expresses the power and survivability of a team working together. Although “one sinner can destroy much good” as Solomon said elsewhere, Eccl 4:12 tells us that “a cord of three strands is not easily broken”.

Although one cannot make an invulnerable armour out of that which is vulnerable, something very strong can be made out of many vulnerable parts. A kevlar vest is made of synthetic fibres woven together. It may not be invulnerable, but it has the power to slow or even stop a piece of pointed lead travelling at incredible speed.

The 'excessive' faith ideologies that I have mentioned are good examples of ideologies which, regardless of their moral stance, have failed the truth test of good governance. Promises are empty if they are based on a false sense of who we are as human beings; and they may even indicate a ruler waiting to exploit his advantage to create a tyranny.

I've already yakked long enough but maybe I'm making up for a couple month's posting. There's just one more thing. You don't really have to be a philosopher to weigh out all the ideas, in fact if you get caught up with just theories, you'll be lead astray. Perhaps the best way is to follow the guidelines that Christ gave when he said, “You shall know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they?” (Matthew 7:16)

The Pharisees had all sorts of moral rules for Jews but Jesus consistently saw through their hypocrisy and saw that although they “washed the outside of the cup” they did not wash the inner. The claims for morality did not match the inward reality of love for God and neighbour. The golden rule of treating others the way you wanted to be treated was the “Law and the prophets” (7:12), not the empty commandments of legalism.

It's kind of common sense that there's something fundamentally flawed with an ideology or value system that says one thing and does another; or claims to be good but all it does is oppress. That being said, its still easier said than done to ascertain the standing of a way of thinking. Tread carefully but decisively when it comes time to consider starting a war against tyranny. You may have to adopt an entirely new sight picture before you start shooting.

My idea in this first installment has not been to lay out to you the reader all the ways in which an ideology may be true or false. That is the task of a lifetime. You probably already have a good idea where I place my abundant faith, but that isn't really the point either. The truly difficult part of revolution is ascertaining the one's own values in relation to the values of the supposed tyranny, whether that tyranny is spiritual, mental, national, familial etc.

If one is not careful in this step, the project is misguided. An untruthful value system, no matter its promises of morality, will in the degree of its delusion, so also promote destruction and of course, tyranny. Just as demons can be cast out of a person and the demon return with seven worse than the first return, as Lenin replaced the self-centred Czarist system with murderous communism, so also can we be guilty of enslaving ourselves or others to an even worse conclusion than the first. Unbridled faith in an ideal can lead to tyranny. Unbridled faith in one's own revolution can be too.