Skeptical Economist

I have just read the Skeptical Economist by Jonathan Aldred. This book promised to be good, but the delivery was disappointing.

The subtitle of the book is "Revealing the Ethics Inside Economics. Aldred’s aim is to expose the hidden ethical assumptions that are smuggled into modern economics. This is a noble goal. The claim that economics can be a value free science is a sham.

The problem is that the liberal humanistic values held by Aldred prove to be a fairly dry well from which to draw a replacement. Aldred is right in saying that sound economic thinking must have a solid moral base, but that basis can only be provided by a sound moral system. Christians are best placed to find the clear moral thinking that economics urgently needs.

See Normative Economics.

Tactics and Strategy (5)

A wise general attacks where the enemy is weak. A better tactic for the advance of the kingdom could be to identify the areas where the people of the world are vulnerable and resist there. A number of problems are making people really uneasy; violence, economic crisis, loneliness, sickness are just a few. If Christians can demonstrate effective solutions to these problem, the people of the world will be drawn to these solutions.

If we are going to attack the world system, we should identify the places where it is most weak and attack where it is vulnerable.

For more on this topic see Poltical Tactics and Strategy.

Tactics and Strategy (4)

Forming alliances with fellow travellers may not the best tactic. Christians are often tempted to align with a conservative party. Conservatives do resist the next liberal thing, but at the same time they make previous liberal innovations mainstream. While they are in power, they stop innovation, but only for a time. Conservative parties only slow change, they never roll it back.

Christians can sometimes win a victory by taking up an issue where the liberal party has gone too far, and made a change that most people oppose. Christians will get support if they lead the charge against the change. The problem with this approach is that these issues are usually peripheral to the kingdom of God, so people get a misleading view of who we are. Even if we had won the battle, we might have lost the war, if people got a distorted view of the Kingdom of God. This tactic is unwise, as a victory at the operational level, may be a defeat at the strategic level.

Tactics and Strategy (3)

Attempting to prevent the world system from expanding into areas that it wants to go may not be the best good objective. A wise general does not attack the enemy at the point where they are strongest. That tactic would generally lead to defeat. Likewise, a wise general does not let the enemy decide the battle tactics, as that will often lead to defeat. The world is confident and expanding rapidly. We can expose what they are doing and speak against it, but we should understand that we probably cannot prevent the expansion.

We need to be careful about the perceptions created by our tactics. Losing a lot of small operational fights can translate into a serious tactical defeat. We have lost every fight for the last twenty years, so we are not taken seriously. We now have the reputation of a losing team and hold the wooden spoon.

We have lost our last twenty operations fighting against the symptoms of social change, but we have missed the causes of the radical change in the shape of society. The social change that concerns us has more deep-seated causes, which we have not resisted. We have been fighting losing battles, while a more important war has been lost. Sometimes a tactical retreat may make more sense than a drawn out series of operational defeats.

Tactics and Strategy (2)

The Kingdom of God is losing ground in most western countries, as the kingdom of the world presses against us.

Some suggest that the solution is a new political party to do battle on this issue. We should be very careful. Single issue parties usually get side tracked and then sidelined.

When a general loses a battle, he does not try to re-fight the same battle again on the same battlefield. This tactic would just reinforce his defeat. He can easily turn a half victory into a total loss. Better to look for a place where the enemy is weak and attack there.

We should be preparing for the next battle, not refighting the ones we have previously lost. What is the next key issue?

Tactics and Strategy (1)

We are in the middle of a cultural war,
but most people do not realise what is happening.
The Great Unwashed do not have a clue
about God or the meaning of life.
They just get on with it
working to “earn a buck”
and trying to have a good time.
They do not think
or care about the great issues of life.
They just follow wherever they are led by the cultural elite
that controls the media and shapes the nation.
The real struggle is between the cultural elite,
the clever people and the church.

At the moment the church is struggling.
It should be challenging the secular elite
and shaping the culture,
but instead its members are being sucked out
by the prevailing hostile culture.
The church is in danger of being engulfed
by the world around it.
The clever people are winning the cultural war.

Cultural Conflict - Occupied People

The people who already occupied the land when the people with a new culture arrive have fewer options.

1. Resistance
   The initial response to a large migration was usually resistance. The British Empire met resistance wherever it went, but the resistance failed in the face of superior force.

2. Capitulation
   Most peoples facing large scale migrations from colonising nations eventually capitulated. They had no choice, but to make the best of a bad situation.

3. Conversion
   Some peoples do acknowledge that the colonises cultures is superior and adopt for themselves. In India, many Ghurkhas attempted to become more English than their English masters.

4. Migrate
   When faced by a migration of a hostile culture, migrating out to another are is an option. When British settlement of Capetown increased significantly, the original Dutch settlers felt they were losing their culture. The joined the Great Trek into the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

Cultural Conflict - Migrants

A nation needs a strong unified culture to be viable. When two opposing cultures are present, the nation will tend to fall a part. This is a serious issue for migrant to a new land.

When a people with a strong culture migrate into an area already occupied by people with a different culture, the migrating people have five options, if they want their culture to shape the society in their new homeland.

1. Dominance
   During the 19th Century, the most common approach was to dominate the people occupying the land using military force. The British uses this method in all their colonies. The military dominance of British Empire spread English culture throughout the world. The first American settlers used same method to deal with the Red Indians.

2. Reservations
   If the native people persist in rejecting the new culture, they can be pushed into reservations on the sidelines of society. Plentiful alcohol can be used to keep them quiet. American governments used reservations to shut down the culture of the natives who resisted the settler advance. This method was also used by the Afrikaners in South Africa. Until apartheid collapsed, most of the natives were pushed into reservations called Bantustans.

3. Ethnic Cleansing
   A more extreme solution is for the arriving culture to wipe out the people already in the land. This has been the norm through most of history. When the Roman Empire collapsed the people of Europe were defeated and destroyed again and again by peoples migrating from East.

4. Capitulation
   If the migrating people are few in number they will have no choice but to accept the culture of the people already occupying the land. For example, refugees arriving in a western country may try to persevere in their religion and culture, but because they arrive in a position of weakness, they are usually swamped by the host culture. If they do not give in, their children generally will.

5. Conversion
   The people migrating may persuade the occupiers that their culture is superior and the latter may agree to convert to the culture that has just arrived. This is what Christian apostles do. They move into a new village and stay there until some people in that village see the benefits of the gospel and freely convert to Christianity. The gospel can transform the culture of a nation. When English missionaries came to New Zealand the Maori were very receptive to a more peaceful culture. Many Maori converted, but when the land wars betrayed their trust, they rejected the warrior Christian religion.

6. Covenant
   New Zealand is the only colony where the British did not use military force to dominate the local culture. Here they made a covenant called the Treaty of Waitangi with Maori leaders agreeing that they could preserve their culture, provided they accepted the British presence. This approach worked for a while, but once the settlers became desperate for land, they switched to the dominance method. The urban migration of Maori in the 1950s and 1960s brought the covenant back to light and it is now being honoured more fully. We now have an interesting strange situation where the trappings of Maori culture function within a western culture.

Village in a City

Creating a village in a city is easy. It does not need a building, nor a set of laws, but relationships. A group of people who are committed to each other can draw in the other people in their community. They can build the relationships that turn a street into a village.

Rare Penalty

The Old Testament imposes a number of requirements that will make the death penalty vey rare. All of the following conditions must be met before the death penalty can be imposed.

• The crime must have observed directly by two or three independent witnesses (Deut 19:15).

• The witnesses must not have committed the crime they are testifying about. Adulterers cannot testify against adulterers. People with a record for violence cannot be witnesses to crimes of violence (John 8:7).

• A young man cannot be given the death penalty, if his parents object. If they think that he is redeemable, he must be given another chance. They would need to take responsibility for helping him change (Deut 21:18-21).

• The victim’s family must agree to the death penalty. They will often refuse consent, because they will benefit more if the murderer pays restitution. The rest of the community could only overall, if the murderer continued to be a threat. The death penalty was only permissible in situation where protection of the community took priority over the compensation of victim’s family (Num 35:31).

• The death penalty can only be implemented, if the murderer criminal stays in his community. Most murderers would flee their tribe or community to avoid punishment. There were no police force, no prisons to retain criminals. There were no extraditions laws to get convicted criminals returned for sentence. Fleeing criminals could escape justice, but they would cease to be a risk to their community, because they would be afraid to return.
  
  The fleeing criminal would lose the protection and privileges that come through being part of a tribe or community. He might find it difficult to find another tribe or community to participate in and might end up living among other outlaws. This would be dangerous as someone might seek revenge by paying someone to kill him.

• When a society has become “hard of heart”, the community should stop imposing the death penalty in most situations, as excessive use the death penalty brutalises a society (Matt 19:8).. It is better for crimes to go unpunished than for society to be become vicious and violent.

Most situations where the death penalty is imposed in America will fail to meet one of these conditions. If these conditions were imposed in America, the death penalty would almost disappear. The Old Testament is much more merciful than American justice. People who assume that the Old Testament is harsh do not understand it.

More at Crime and Punishment.

Death Penalty

Most people believe that the God of the Old Testament is harsh and cruel. The death penalty is one reason for this belief. It is true that Old Testament provides for a death penalty, but it is very different from what is generally believed. The way that the death penalty is used in most American states is totally different. The modern use of the death penalty is not supported by the Old Testament.

Modern criminal justice uses two main penalties.

• fines paid to the state for lesser crimes
• imprisonment in state funded prisons for serious crimes.

Old Testament justice is totally different from anything we know. Prisons did not exist, because they were not practical in among agrarian, nomadic, tribal societies. They could not afford the millions of dollars needed to run prisons.

The Old Testament system is based on restitution to the victims of crime. A thief had to repay four times what they had stolen back to the person they had stolen from (Ex 22:1). This compensated the victim for the cost of tracking down the thief. It provides a strong deterrent against theft.

When a person assaulted another, they were not put in prison. They had to compensate their victim for all the damage done. The expression “eye for an eye” was not an instruction to take revenge. It was first used in the Old Testament in the context of calculating the compensation due to a victim of assault. If the assault victim lost an eye, the criminal would have to pay financial restitution sufficient to fully compensate them for the loss of an eye (Ex 21:23-25). If the victim lost an arm, the criminal would have to compensate then for the loss of potential income. This was a severe penalty.

If the criminal could not pay restitution, he would have to find someone in his community to pay the restitution, in return for his agreeing to work for them for sufficient years to payback the money that had been loaned. Indentured labour allowed a poor criminal to pay restitution to their victim (Ex 22:3).

A murderer had to pay his victims family restitution to compensate them for all the income and support his victim would have provided during the rest of this life. Unless, he was rich, he would usually have to mortgage his life as an indentured labourer for a long time to pay what he owed (Num 35:31).

In very serious cases of murder, the Old Testament does not allow the restitution alternative. A serial killer or serial rapist who is unrepentant would continue to be a danger to his community if the was allowed to pay restitution (Num 35:31). He could not be locked up in prison, so the death penalty was the way to protect the community from a dangerous community. Just as a sheepdog that develops a habit of worrying sheep has to be put down, a person who becomes so evil that they murder several people, may need to be killed to protect the community from harm. This is probably more merciful than locking them up and throwing away the key for thirty years.

Why Money

Money should be a sign that I have given up something in exchange and yet received something back.

I have some goods, I do not need. Two people want them. One has some money and the other does not. Who would I give them to?

Unless I wanted to do an act of charity, I would not give them to the person with no money. I would not want to encourage people to expect something for no effort. Knowing it takes hard work to produce things, I would give up the goods in exchange for money. I would give my goods to the person with money, because I know that he is a producer. He has also had the made the commitment of giving up some goods or services for money in exchange for money, before he has received anything back. This is behaviour that should be encouraged, because it facilitates economic exchange. I hope that when I am in the same place, that someone will take my money in exchange for the goods and services that I want.

I would give my goods and services to people with money to exchange for them, because I want to encourage other people to be productive. I know that the alternative to using money is barter and barter severely limits my ability to trade. I will encourage people who are using money honestly, so that my potential form trade is improved.

I will know that trade with money only works if people are willing to exchange goods and services for money. I would prefer to reward the people who run the risk of accepting money, because I want to encourage this type of behaviour.

More on Money.

Timing and Prophecy

There are two situations in the scriptures.

1. Some prophecies are conditional, so there is no time attached to them.
2. In other situations God is very precise about time.

Therefore we cannot just give up on timing. We actually need to do better at it.

When a revelation comes, the prophetic should ask four questions.

1. When is the revelation to be communicated?
2. How is to be communicated?
3. Is it conditional or does it have a specific timing?
4. What is the timing?

The need for question 4 depends on the answer to question 3.

The reality is that we do not have a full revelation until we have the answers to all these questions. People get so excited about getting a revelation that they forget to press in and get the rest. They stop before they have the lot.

If Christian prophets want to be taken seriously, they will have to do much better on timing. Being vague about timing is really just a “cop out”. God can do better than that.

South Ossetia (2)

The Ossetians and Georgians living in South Ossetia generally live in separate villages with only short distances between them. The next village up the valley from an Ossetian village will be often be a Georgian one. These people have lived in uneasy peace for a hundred years, despite their close proximity. The villagers will sometimes buy and sell from each other, but generally just get on with their live. Sometime a young man from an Ossetian village would fall in love with a girl from a Georgian village, causing anguish to their families. The modern Romeo and Juliet would have to decide might find themselves on the fringe of both their villages.

People can live in peace despite their different religion and different culture provided they are left to themselves. The problem comes when a state is established to control all of the villages. Democracy does not resolve the problem. If Georgian win a majority in the government, Ossetians will start to feel aggrieved. If the Russians gain control, the Georgians will feel oppressed. One culture always suffers, when the other is gets control.

Georgian and Ossetian villagers who have lived together in peace suddenly become enemies when they have to decide which cultural group should rule over everyone. They were quite happy to live close to people from a different culture, because they could ignore them most of the time. However, they were very clear that they did not want to get into a situation where that other group had control over them.

Most political commentators would say that religious or cultural differences are the problem. That is not true. Religious and cultural differences only become a problem, when people from different background are forced together in one state. The state is the problem, whether or not it is democratic, because it allows the winning cultural group to control all others.

Political authorities attempt to impose their control over an entire region. The state takes resources from some people and gives them to others. This will usually work in favour of the majority cultural group. Minority groups always end up feeling abused.

The solution is not to eliminate cultural and religious differences. Nobody really wants to be put dumped into a great melting pot. The solution is to get rid of the state. Then people of different cultures will be able to live in peace in their villages. The people of South Ossetia do not need the Russians or the Georgian governments to control them. Peace would be easier to obtain, if both government kept out. Meddling of western governments will not advance peace, because they always want to pick which side will control the entire area.

This same problem exists all over the world. People of different tribes and religions have live along side each other in many places. Colonial governments often put several these tribal groups together in one nation, where not nation existed. With independence, democracy gave one tribal group control of all the others. Oppression of other tribal and groups was inevitable and internecine war eventually followed.

The solution is not to eliminate tribal and religious difference. The problem is caused by the emergence of the nation-state during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The nation state is a system of control. The only answer is to get rid of the nation state.

South Ossetia (1)

The Ossetians are believed to be descended from tribes which migrated into the area from Asia many hundreds of years ago and settled in what is now North Ossetia.

As the Russian empire expanded into the area in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ossetians did not join other peoples of the North Caucasus in putting up fierce resistance. Some fought alongside the Russians against neighbours who had long been rivals, while others made the difficult journey south across the mountains to establish villages in the part of Georgia, no called South Ossetia.

Bolshevik forces occupied Georgia in the early 1920s. During the carve-up which followed, the South Ossetian Autonomous Region was created in Georgia and North Ossetia was formed in Russia.

As the Soviet Union collapsed, South Ossetia declared its intention to secede from Georgia in 1990. Georgian independence the following year increased South Ossetia's determination to consolidate the break with Georgia.

In an unrecognised referendum in November 2006, South Ossetians voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence from Georgia. A simultaneous referendum among the region's ethnic Georgians voted emphatically to stay.

The tensions came to head in early August 2008, when, after nearly a week of clashes between Georgian troops and separatist forces, Georgia launched an full air and ground assault attack on South Ossetia, reportedly gaining control of Tskhinvali. Russia said its citizens were under attack and responded by pouring thousands of troops into South Ossetia and launching bombing raids on Georgian targets. Within days, Russian troops had swept the Georgian forces out of both South Ossetia and then proceeded to occupy parts of Georgia.

Pedestal Prophets

The root problem with one-man leadership is that those who get to the top often feel insecure, so they surround themselves with sycophants and “Yes Men”. Anyone who might challenge their authority is kept at a distance.

The other side of this problem is the platform or pedestal prophet. The senior pastor who does not have his own pet prophet brings one in from outside and puts him on a pedestal. From that platform, the prophet is allowed to give encouragement to the people and challenge those that need sorting out, but the senior pastor always stands behind the prophet, safe from his words.

The pedestal prophet has authority because the senior pastor testifies to his credibility. In return for this authentication, the platform prophet must submit to the authority of the pastor/manager and honour him. The prophet is kept on the pedestal where his ministry can be controlled. The platform prophet must go along with this charade, or be kept in silence.

The truth is that a prophet is not needed to expose the problems of a Ted or Todd . The people who are close to the leader, usually know what is going on. The problem is that they are too loyal to challenge a person that they look up to.

The real problem is that God has provided a way to protect leaders and people, but the church consistently refuses to adopt it. These incidents will only stop when we go back to Balanced Ministry, with churches led by a team of pastors, prophets and evangelists working together in submission to each other. As long as we perpetuate the myth that one guy must be "top dog", these embarrassing incidents will continue to shame the church and hurt innocent Christians. God cannot protect his people from evil, while the leaders of his church refuse to adopt the Spiritual Protection he has provided.

Dispensationalism

Many Christians who have escaped dispensationalism are still caught up, because they still believe two things.

1. The final judgment is getting close.

2. Things will carry on as they always have till then.

These beliefs have two implications.

1. We are well through history on earth. Not much more is going to happen.

2. We have seen the best that the Holy Spirit can do.

These hidden, but pervasive assumptions contribute to a lack of expectation among believers, but they are totally wrong. The scriptures tell us about some great things that God still has to do. The usual approach is to push them to after the second coming, but there is no good reason for doing that. If we just expect more of the same as we have had, that is what we will get.

Iron Rod

Many Chrisitans believe that Jesus will eventually return to earth and rule the world from Jerusalem. He will oversee a large bureaucracy and powerful army that will force people to obey and worship him. This view of Jesus is based on misunderstanding of an expression used several times in the bible: “He will rule them with an iron rod” (Rev 19:15).

The iron rod is a fairly simple image. Iron represents permanence and strength. The rod is a shepherds crook. New Zealanders should understand this phrase, because the aluminum shepherds crook was invented here. Aluminum was a superior metal for crooks, because it is lighter to carry and can be bent more accurately.

When I was a young farmer in the late 1960s, I would use my crook to catch a sheep that needed assistance. While the sheep was staring at my dog, I would sneak up behind the sheep and hook its hind leg. The crook presses on a nerve that forces the sheep to move backwards towards me, so I could grab it and tip it up to give the attention needed.

I used my crook to catch sheep the needed assistance and to catch lambs that had strayed from their mother. If a sheep was being attacked by wandering dogs, I would have used my crook to drive them away from the sheep. I never used my metal crook to strike the sheep.

The iron rod is an image of Jesus caring for his flock; it is not a weapon used by him to enforce obedience.

Many Christians think that Jesus sitting in Jerusalem and ruling as a king would be the perfect government, but this is awful. The thought of Jesus using an “iron bar” to crush his opposition is repulsive, because it is contrary to the gospel. God will never use force to change to the world. He prefers to touch the hearts of people, so that they will freely choose to obey him. His answer to the problems of the world is the gospel of Jesus and the healing power of the Spirit. If Jesus has to come back to sort out the world, the gospel must be powerless and the Holy Spirit is a failure. God is backing the Holy Spirit to get the job done, so wait for Jesus to return to do it is a false hope.

We must never forget a very important fact. God’s greatest gift to mankind is freedom. Therefore, he will never force people unwillingto obey him. He will allow them to experience the consequences of their choices, because that is part of freedom, but he will not stop people choosing. God wants people to obey him, because they love him, not because they have to. The most that he will do to make them obey him is the stirring of the Holy Spirit in their conscience.

Marriage Supper of the Lamb (3)

Jesus has his name written on his thigh.

KING of KINGS and LORD of LORDS (Rev 21:16).

This name shows that all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to him. As the Church proclaims the gospel in the power of the Spirit, the nations of the world will choose to submit to Jesus. Nations, political powers and human governments will be swept away as the Holy Spirit advances Kingdom of God. This is the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, "Come, gather together for the great supper of God, so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great" (Rev 19:17-18).

The supper of God is the defeat of kings, generals and might men and those who rely on their power. This is not a literal supper, but a symbol of their downfall. Human governments and those who support and trust them will fall away before the advance of the Kingdom of God.

Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against the rider on the horse and his army. ….. The rest of them were killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh (Rev 19:19-21).

As the Holy Spirit advances the gospel, rulers, kings, presidents, parliaments and their bureaucracies will wither away and disappear.

Marriage Supper of the Lamb (2)

Jesus is called “faithful and true”, because he is is faithful to his promises. His truth will drive all darkness and evil out of the world. The vision describes how this happens.

With justice he judges.

Jesus does not use warfare to establish victory. He achieves victory by replacing human government with a justice system based on his word.

Jesus is followed by a huge army.

The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean (Rev 21:14).

The heavenly army that rides behind Jesus is the church. It is dressed in clean white linen to show that its sin has been washed away by the blood of Jesus. The followers of Jesus are riding on white horses to show that they understand the implications of his victory on the cross. They are not sitting around worshipping the political power, while waiting for Jesus to rescue them, but are serving him in the power of the Holy Spirit. These people know that human government is a false hope.

John described the weapon used by this army.

Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. "He will rule them with an iron scepter." On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written (Rev 21:15).

This is not a literal sword, but symbolises the word of God (Eph 6:17; Heb 4:12). The sword in Jesus’ mouth represents the words that he spoke. The followers of Jesus will destroy his enemies by speaking his word in prophetic power. Christian prophets will speak out against the kings and rulers that oppose the kingdom of God.