Confusion

The Labour government that has ruled New Zealand for the last six years seems to be struggling. Since Jacinda Ardern stepped down as Prime Minister at the beginning of the year, five cabinet ministers have resigned or been sacked from their roles.

In a way, this is not surprising, as apart from a few skilled ministers, Labour was always a fairly weak team, and managing a government department is a very challenging role. Very few politicians are up to it. The chief executives of the key government departments have spent years learning to work the system, and those who get to the top role are very skilled power operators. It is very difficult for a relatively experienced politician to rein them in (I explain this further in Political Power).

When Chris Hipkins became the leader at the beginning of the year, the news media jumped on the band waggon, but now their mood has changed. They are writing articles suggesting that Labour may have already lost the election in September, in order to position themselves as those who determined who becomes the government (as they like to believe).

The most recent resignation was the Minister of Revenue, who resigned because he disagreed with tax policies announced by the Prime Minister. This suggests that in addition to personal failures, the cabinet is also fraught with power struggles over policy issues.

When I look at this situation and try to understand the spiritual realities behind these difficulties, the word that comes to mind is “Confusion”. In 2015, I wrote the following words about the spiritual climate in Wellington when I sensed that a spirit of confusion had been released by those with power in the capital city.

Wellington will be confused
People will buzz in and out of the beehive,
uncertain of what to do,
Filled with fear, perplexity and confusion (Is 22:5).

All treading on each other
to get to the top (out of habit),
but not knowing where the top is,
or what they will do if they get there.
Not knowing their right hand
from their left (Jonah 4:11).

No ideals, except for
pride,
power,
position,
privilege.

Trouble to the left
Trouble to the right
All is confusion
All is confusion
Disaster behind us
Terror ahead of us
Confusion,
all is confusion.

This confusion has been bubbling away for quite a while but is now becoming manifest. The leaders of the National Party are crowing about the problems of the incumbent government, but they have forgotten their own struggles with confusion. Following their loss in the 2017 election, they suffered several leadership coups that produced four leaders and four deputy leaders in two years. Each of these leaders came from quite different political perspectives, so there is obviously a great deal of division and confusion beneath their desperate, election-driven unity.

Most of the people with government experience disappeared from the political scene during the leadership struggles, so if National does win the election, they will have a bunch of untested ministers trying to control the heads of government departments with years of practice at handling power. They will come under the same spirit of confusion and will not have the spiritual wisdom to deal with it.

Past to Future

Perhaps because I am getting older, I have been thinking about my life and the people that have influenced me to be what I have become. I have thought about my childhood and the influences that shaped my life.

My thinking has been partly inspired by reading “The Myth of Normality” by Gabor Mate. It is a fascinating book, and he communicates the insights of Psychology in a way that is relatively easy to understand.

I have written up some of the insights that I gained from reading his book in a substack article called Past to Future. The article also describes what I have learned about myself. I will post some key insights here, but for the full article you should read Past to Future.

Bad Stuff

A lot of bad stuff is happening in the world, but these things are normal in a season when the people of the world have forgotten God. Modern expansions of power are just the world doing what the world does, and the world expands while the church sleeps, but I am not surprised, or disturbed. God sits in heaven and laughs. He scoffs at their plans (Psalm 2:4).

Without God, serious problems always occur, so people look to political power to rescue them. And there are always power seekers willing to step up and try to do it. They often start out with good intentions but get corrupted by power. Some arrive at a place where they believe that they can achieve more good by doing evil. Some bad people also try to manipulate political power to advance their evil goals.

This is happening now, but it has always happened. Read English and European history, and you will see that it has been going on forever. The same thing was happening in Judges 9. It is an analogical to what is happening in our time.

In the last hundred years, we have seen massive increases in political power as faith in God has declined. With every new crisis, leaders demand more power to deal with it, and the people are mostly glad to see it, because without God, they need the government to rescue them. I note that people who grumble about increasing political control expect the government to rescue them when their homes are damaged by flood, landslide, or earthquake, or when a pandemic disrupts their business. I am not surprised, or distressed by these changes. They are the inevitable consequence of people losing faith in God. Without God, people need political powers to rescue them.

Fortunately, the limits of political power are also being completely exposed. Every time a crisis is dealt with, another worse problem that they did not expect pops up in its place. The political powers are just not smart enough to deliver the peace and plenty that they have promised, so all over the world, government leaders are being shaken and are failing.

Biden, Macron and Rutte are examples. And the powerful people who try to manipulate political power, like Schwab and Soros, are getting older and are no longer confident that they can resolve all the problems that frighten them.

Railing against the world for doing what it always does is a waste of energy and will not help. We have an effective solution to the problems of the world. That is the gospel of Jesus and the alternative kingdom that he is establishing with the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, the church seems unwilling to push this solution seriously.

Systems of the World

The systems of the world are being shaken, and will eventually fail, but I am not confident that we are close to their collapse. They are being shaken, but I think they are tougher than we realise, and will persist for longer than many expect.

The rulers of the world are desperate and will use every resource and power they can get hold of to keep on top. Unfortunately, most people in the world still believe that political power of some kind is the solution to the problems that the world faces. They will gladly give the powers of the world more authority in a desperate attempt to hold back the darkness and keep the peace.

We will see systems failing in ways that look like they are collapsing, but it will not be their final fall. At these times, the systems of the world will appear to be beaten, but they will move and switch, and come back even stronger. For example, the United States could collapse in on itself under the strain of political and cultural division, economic crisis and inability to resolve it, and another serious military defeat. However, these crises will just create the conditions for a more ruthless leader to rise to power, and make the United States militarily stronger, but probably more evil.

What worries is the complete unpreparedness of the church for what lies ahead. Although there are plenty of secular and Christian warnings of troubles ahead, nothing much has changed and the church is even less prepared than it was twenty years ago.

God will not allow the systems of the world to collapse, until his people are ready to take advantage of the power vacuum and put something better in its place. That's why I wrote,

We should be joining together, so we can advance God's Kingdom when the kingdoms of the world collapse and fall. Radical change is needed, so we can shine brightly in the darkness and share in the victory that God has planned.

I fear that if the world systems were to collapse tomorrow, most of the church would not be prepared to stand, so that it would be wiped out along with the powers of the world. That would not be very helpful to God's purposes.

So God will allow the world system to persist for a long time yet. He will allow it to keep going, as long as it takes for his people to get prepared. And that is a bit out of his control, because he will not force his people to make changes that they are unwilling to make.

Curse

The second part of the curse/consequence of the fall does affect the relationship between men and women.

Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you (Gen 3:16).

God spoke to the woman and warned her that as a consequence of their handing authority on earth over to the spiritual powers of evil, she would be “ruled over” by the man.

The Genesis account does not explain how this would happen, but the Hebrew word translated as “rule” is “mashal”. It is a strong word. It means to “rule” or “have dominion”. God warned that women would be dominated by men. This was a change. Adam had not dominated Eve when they were created in the garden, so this was a consequence of the fall.

The reality is that there are only two ways that men could dominate over women:

• Superior intelligence.
• Superior physical strength

There is no evidence in the scriptures that men are more intelligent than women, so it must be superior physical strength that allows fallen men to rule and control fallen women. I have already noted above that there is no evidence in Genesis that men were created physically stronger than men. Rather, it suggests that they were created equal in strength.

This suggests that something happened at the fall to increase Adam’s physical strength over what it had been when he was created. Or perhaps, the change to women that increased their pain in childbirth diminished their overall strength and made them vulnerable to the physical dominance of men.

This physical dominance would be reinforced by their continuing attraction to men, even those who are damaged by sin. Genesis says that women would continue to be attracted to their husbands. This was the natural outworking of their natural ability to communicate and interact, so it seems to be a good thing and not the consequence of the fall, although it might be attenuated by it.

From Gender Difference in the OT

Attachment

Genesis explains something important about the nature of men. In creation, before the fall, loyalty to a wife takes priority over loyalty to parents.

That’s why a man abandons his father and his mother and attaches himself to his woman and they become one flesh (Gen 2:24).

We tend to focus most on the “one flesh”, which is possible because they are made from the same stuff. However, the first part of the verse uses a strong word to describe the change that occurs when a man finds a wife. The man abandons his parents. The Hebrew word is “azab”, which means loosen or forsake. Men must honour their parents, but they are expected to leave their parents and form a new strong relationship with their wives.

The husband attaches himself to his chosen woman. The Hebrew word is “dabaq”, which means “to cling, stick, stay close, cleave, keep close, stick with, follow closely, join to, overtake, catch.” This is a strong word. A man is expected to really cling to his wife and stay close. The common understanding that men are created to go out into the world and do bold things, whereas women stay at home and cling to their men is wrong. In the beginning, God created men to pursue and cling to their women. Obviously, this shapes the personality that God gave to men, but not in the way that is usually claimed.

From Gender Difference in the Old Testament".

Inflation

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand announced yesterday that its Monetary Policy Committee agreed to leave the Official Cash Rate (OCR) at 5.50%. They believe that they are getting price inflation under control. They note that the CPI, which they use as a measure of inflation, was 6.7 percent over the past year.

Unfortunately, that does not resolve the problems that inflation has created for ordinary people. Focussing on inflation over the latest year creates a false perspective. Since the December 2019 quarter (before COVID), the CPI has increased by 17 percent. Over the same period, wage rates for workers doing the same role with the same skills have risen by only 9.5 percent. That gap is why people feel there is a cost of living crisis.

The wage-rate increase for the accommodation and food services industry in the private sector rose was only 6.6 percent. For people in this industry, the gap between price increases and increases in their wages increases is even more severe, unless they can get longer working hours, or find a better-paid role.

The CPI does not measure the effects of changes in mortgage interest rates, so the gap above is only part of the burden that wage earners are feeling. For most, the increase in the additional interest that they will have to pay is the worst aspect of the inflation pain that they are experiencing. And there is no sign that mortgage interest rates will go back to the low levels to which house buyers have become accustomed.

A bank economist said today that in a couple of years, this inflation will be just a memory, but that is not right. In the unlikely event that the inflation rate returned to zero, prices will not return to the level that they were before the inflation started in 2019. Prices just stop increasing, so the price increases that have already occurred are locked in forever.

Unless, wage and salary earners can get an increase in their wages to compensate for the 17+ percent increase in prices that has occurred, they will be permanently worse off. That is why bank employees are currently frustrated by a 7 percent pay offer from their employers, especially when the banks have been making record profits.

Genesis 2

Genesis tells us that it was not good for a man to be alone/separate (Gen 2:18). Up until this point in the creation account, everything had been good. Adam being alone was the first thing that was not good. The animals created did not provide a solution to this problem (Gen 2:19-20). He needed relationships with other humans. This did not make him different from women. The type of companionship that Adam needed is described in Genesis 2:18, where God declared what he intended that he would "make him a helper as his counterpart".

This phrase has been badly translated to support male dominance. There are two key Hebrew words. The Hebrew word “neged” is translated as “suitable for him” in many traditional English translations of this verse. However, its root meaning is “front”, in the sense of “in front of, what is conspicuous, in sight of, parallel to, opposite”. There is no sense of inferiority or subservience.

This phrase has been badly translated to support male dominance. There are two key Hebrew words. The Hebrew word “neged” is translated as “suitable for him” in many traditional English translations of this verse. However, its root meaning is “front”, in the sense of “in front of, what is conspicuous, in sight of, parallel to, opposite”. There is no sense of inferiority or subservience.

The other Hebrew word is “neged”, which means “helper”. Again there is no suggestion of weakness or compliance. The word is mostly used to describe God’s role as our helper (Ex 18:4; Deut 33:26; Ps 33:20; 115:11; 121:2). If God can be called our helper, then a woman can take on the word with honour.

God decided that he would give the man a “helper corresponding to him”. The common translation “suitable for him” makes it seem that the woman was created to support the man, but there is nothing in the Hebrew text to support that suggestion. The woman is a helper corresponding to the man. The woman is equal to the man. They two are stronger together because they support each other. It is not a servant/master relationship, but two equals supporting each other. There is nothing in the phrase to suggest that men are created to lead and women to follow, as some theologians claim.

The phrase “helper corresponding to him/in front of him” tells us nothing about any differences between the personalities of men and women. The woman is a helper in the same way as God is our helper. The role does not require a difference in personalities (even if a difference exists for other reasons).

From Gender Difference in the Old Testament.

Gender Differences in the OT

I recently completed a study on gender in the OT. It is too long to publish here, so I have put it on Substack. See Gender Differences in the Old Testament. The following paras are the Introduction.

A common teaching is that God created men with a disposition for leadership and women with a disposition for following. People who hold this position claim that a man must be the leader in his home to find fulfilment and that women can only be fulfilled if they actively submit to their husband’s leadership. The problem with this view is that it does not exist in the Bible.

I went to the scriptures to identify what they say about the personality differences between men and women. I was surprised to find that they actually say very little about the personality differences between men and women.

When we study the scriptures, we need to be careful to distinguish between:

• statements about what ought to be, and
• descriptions of the way things are.

We need to understand which type we are reading.

1. The Bible contains statements about God’s intentions for the behaviour of men and women. His commands can imply a difference between the personalities of men and women.

2. Descriptions of behaviour can point in two different directions.

   • When God created humans in his image, he made them male and female. If men and women behave differently, this could be a reflection of what God created them to be. Differences in behaviour can be a consequence of being created male or female.

   • Humans are also affected by the fall. If men and women display different personalities or behaviour, it could be the consequence of the fall. This type of difference does not reflect God’s original purpose for men and women.

When studying the behaviour and personalities of people in the Bible, we must be aware of these two possibilities.

When studying the scriptures to identify how males and females are different, we should consider which of these two categories apply to the passages under consideration.

• Any differences that were introduced at creation are what God intends to be there. They are normative.

• Differences that came as a result of the fall are not normative. Rather they are to be resisted and should disappear when we are born again and transformed into the likeness of Jesus. This restoration might only come to fullness when the body of Jesus grows to maturity.

We must distinguish “what is” from “what ought to be”, especially when studying the Old Testament.

God always had a Plan

God has a coherent plan for bringing salvation to the world. Each new covenant that he established was not designed to replace the old because it had failed, but an extension of the previous covenant to gain additional benefits for him and his people. The new covenant that Jesus established by his death and resurrection was the ultimate fulfilment of his plan.

God does not make mistakes, and he knows what he is doing, so his covenants did not fail. Each one achieved what he expected it to. Each one prepared the way for the next one.

The Rainbow covenant established with Noah gave God the authority to intervene when evil got out of hand. Placing a constraint on evil was a limited gain, but it was a start.

The covenant with Abraham created a people for God, but they did not yet have a land. He lived a wandering life, so he was relatively safe from spiritual attack if he stuck with God. Abraham created one nation, but God wanted all the people of the world.

The covenant with Moses established a land for the people with laws that enabled them to live in peace with each other in close quarters. By coming together in his way, they became vulnerable to spiritual attack, but the Tabernacle offerings provided spiritual protection for them if they stayed loyal to God. This covenant was a huge advance, but Moses only got one piece of land, whereas God wanted the entire earth. The Holy Spirit was active, but only on a few special people, mostly prophets. God wanted a broader range of ministries.

Jesus' ministry achieved everything that God needed done on earth and in the spiritual realms to achieve his purposes. This covenant was complete. Nothing was lacking, and nothing still needed to be done.

1. Jesus' death on the cross defeated the spiritual powers of evil by shedding the blood that they demanded as a ransom for setting humans free. The soldier pierced his side, and the blood ran down onto the ground where they wanted it. The blood was for the powers of evil, not for God. If Jesus had to die to appease God, he would have died in the temple, and his blood would have been put on the altar, but he died outside the city, where the powers of evil controlled the situation.

   Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross (Col 2:15).

   Once he had paid the ransom they demanded, they lost their authority over humans and over the earth.

2. God vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead (Col 1:19). The spiritual powers of evil were happy to give up their authority over humans in return for killing the Son of God. They believed that by killing him, God’s plans would be totally defeated. However, God foiled them by raising Jesus from the dead. From their point of view, this was a massive disaster because they had given up authority over the people of the world to destroy the Son of God, which seemed like a good deal, but then Jesus was raised, so they lost out twice, and were left powerless. They can never recover from this defeat.

3. Jesus came from the tribe of Judah, so he was not allowed to be a priest while living on earth (Heb 8:4). Rising from the dead qualified Jesus to be a priest after the order of Melchizedek, who had neither beginning of days nor end of life (Heb 7:3). Having become a priest in this order, Jesus was qualified to enter the heavenly holy of holies and bring an offering to God. He did not need to cleanse the heavenly tabernacle because it was already holy.

4. Ten days after he was raised from the dead, Jesus ascended into the spiritual realms to be with God, the Father. He passed “through the heavens” (Heb 7:14) and became a High Priest who can sympathise with our weakness. In him, we can boldly approach the throne of grace and obtain mercy and forgiveness. In response to Jesus' request, God agreed to have mercy and forgive everyone who trusts in him (Heb 7:15-16). He takes away our shame by saying that we are “OK”.

   Jesus keeps on asking for mercy on our behalf. He has faced the same battles that we face and understands how difficult it is to serve God through the intense spiritual battle that is taking place on earth. He defends us from every accusation of the enemy.

5. Jesus sat down at the right hand of the Father, who appointed as King of Creation, far above all rule and every authority in both the spiritual and earthly realms (Heb 1:3; Eph 1:20-23).

6. Jesus threw the powers of evil out of their place in the spiritual realms where they had operated (Rev 12:7-12). Prior to the cross, they were able to go into God’s presence and accuse his people of sinning and demand that they be allowed to punish them. They lost that role when Jesus ascended into God’s presence. This is part of Jesus' intercession on our behalf.

7. Jesus poured the Holy Spirit out on his people. He released a much fuller manifestation of spiritual gifts. He released a broader range of ministries to strengthen the church (Acts 2:32-33; Eph 4:7-12).

8. Jesus organises the holy angels to support his people in their activities and ministry for him (Heb 1:14).

Jesus ministry and the new covenant that he established, completed each of the tasks that the earlier covenants had started (1-4) and provides several additional benefits for God’s people (5-8).

Purpose of God's Law

I have just a published an article on the Purpose of God's Law on Substack. This is an important topic for all God's people.

God provided the law so that people could live together in harmony. In the modern world, people still have problems with each other and disputes over property, so this need has not disappeared. We still need the Law of Moses.

General Election

The coming general election in New Zealand when people vote for the party they want to control the nation is beginning to generate a lot of noise, but it is all a bit irrelevant. Unfortunately, the people have already made a more significant choice by giveingcontrol of the nation to the spiritual powers of evil, by rejecting God and losing the protection that he provides. They are in control, so it does not matter much which party gets elected.

Chris Hipkins, like most people in the Beehive, holds a materialistic world view, in which the physical world that we can see and touch is all that there is. The battle in the spiritual world is not on his radar, so he has no understanding of how the spiritual powers of evil influence events in the physical world that he operates in. This is why,

• Solutions to problems that he expects to work often fail.
• Good policies produce poor results
• Problems that have been solved keep re-occurring.
• Situations that are under control, keep falling apart.
• People whom he trusts, do bad things.
• Smart people keep getting things wrong.

Although Chris Luxon is a Christian, he holds the same materialistic world view as Chris Hipkins. He will discover that the political power that he wants to exercise is manipulated and controlled by the spiritual powers of evil, and he won’t know how to deal with that.

Birnham Wood (3)

More quotes from Birnham Wood by Eleanor Catton.

Any conversation on the left these days, it's always so competitive, it's always each person trying to outperform the person before them in terms of their oppression or their lack of privilege or their personal trauma or, like, the fact that actually, they're Jewish or actually they're bisexual, or guess what, they're a quarter this or that ethnicity, which gives them the right to speak or the right to take offence or whatever. It's a marketplace! Yet again! You can dress it up in the language of sensitivity and social justice and blah blah blah, but the point of intersectionality isn't to learn how to transcend our differences, or eliminate them, the point isn't solidarity, it's about shoring up your brand, cornering the market, everyone out for themselves, maximising profit and minimising risk. It locks us into our differences, it’s segregationist. And it's also just advertising. It's brand management. That's the point. We're still inside the paradigm! p.106

A marketing algorithm doesn’t see you as a human being. It sees you purely as a matrix of categories: a person who is female, heterosexual,—or whatever-sexual—and white, and university-educated, and employed, who has these kinds of friends and shares these kinds of articles and posts these kinds of pictures and makes these kinds of searches, and on and on—and the more sophisticated the algorithm, the more subcategories it's able to diagnose, and the better it's able to market whatever it is it's selling. Identity politics, intersectionality, whatever you call it—it's the exact same thing. It's the same logic. The smaller the category, the better you're able to sell yourself. The safer you are, economically.

Yes, it is cynical, but as long as we keep thinking like this, we're stuck with cynicism. There's nothing else. We'll never be able to agree to work towards a common goal, and that means the whole project of a genuine left-wing politics is fucked. How can we even get started on the project of creating and protecting public goods when within every group there's always a subgroup, and each one has their own particular agenda, and they're all in competition with each other for airtime and market share? p.108

And “identity politics " is also a propaganda term. People who are actually marginalised, people who are actually systematically oppressed, whose lives are actually in danger, they don't say, “Oh, have you heard about this great new thing, it's called identity politics?" They're talking about justice, and survival. p.109

Birnham Wood (2)

More quotes from Birnham Wood by Eleanor Catton. I found them quite perceptive.

As long as you keep treating the individual as the basis of political agency, he was saying now, you're going to be stuck with different forms of capitalism. This is my whole idea. This is what I'm trying to write about. What if we stopped talking in terms of individuals at all, and instead, we took the relationship as the base socio-economic unit? The relationships, the bonds, the connections—they're just as basic to any system as the actual individuals, the actual data. Right? And in relationships, we do all sorts of things that radically challenge the neoliberal status quo: we make sacrifices, we put the other person first, we learn to compromise, we care, we help, we listen, we give ourselves away—and fundamentally, those are different kinds of sacrifices to the kind that are all about self-discipline and following a regime. They're not individualistic; they're mutual. Like, all the stuff that you were saying before, stopping eating meat, flying less, shopping local, I mean, all power to you, for sure, but there's something so puritanical about it, like, it's a programme of asceticism, always being strict and consistent and never being lazy or whatever—and at the end of the day it's still about you as an individual. Your purity, your moral conscience, the sacrifices you've made.

There's something so joyless about the left these days that is so forbidding and self-denying. And policing. No one's having any fun, we're all just sitting around scolding each other for doing too much or not enough—and it's like, what kind of vision for the future is that? Where's the hope? Where's the humanity? We're all aspiring to be monks when we could be aspiring to be lovers. p.102

Take the concept of equality. You could argue that it's only really meaningful on a human scale. In large numbers, all it means is homogeneity, or conformity—huge numbers of people who are exactly the same—I mean, who would want that? It's oppressive, it's inhuman, it's boring. It's everything everyone says about communism and how deadening it is. But between two people, equality is a totally radical idea. I mean, how amazing that two different people, with different values, and different experiences, and abilities, and needs, that they could see eye to eye, and live in such a way that brings out the best in both of them, right, and allows both of them to flourish! That's symbiosis, it's mutuality, it's love—that's just the kind of relation to the world that the left should be aiming for. Not where you have to help someone other than yourself, but where you want to. Romantic love could be our ideal. Our political ideal. p.103

Birnham Wood (1)

I recently read the novel called Birnham Wood, which is set in New Zealand, by Eleanor Catton. I really enjoyed the story, although the ending was a bit too dark for me. I liked the way that she interspersed the novel with the philosophical and political reflections of her characters.

Here are a couple of examples from one called Tony.

You're still inside the paradigm. You're still treating people as consumers, you're just saying that they should consume more responsibly and consume less. But as long as you keep talking in the language of the market, you're never going to address the root cause of the problem, which is the market itself— and how we've all become so individualistic and consumeristic that we can't even conceive of anything anymore except in market terms. If we want to mount y kind of serious challenge to neoliberalism at all, we have to go way deeper than just changing our spending habits. We have to change the way we actually think.

Think about the fact that nobody's willing to use the language of morality anymore. We can talk about power—all we talk about is power, who's got it and who wants it—and we can talk about privilege, which is basically the same thing, entrenched power, but to use words like good and evil, or not even evil, just good and bad, when it comes to people's behaviour, or their lifestyle choices, or their forms of self-expression—their freedom—that's, like, totally taboo. Especially on the left. Where do you think we got that from? It's the market. The idea that human choices can ever be without morality, without a moral dimension—that's pure capitalism, seeing the market as a value-neutral space, where morality doesn't exist and people are free to compete on equal terms and there are, like, natural laws of supply and demand or whatever—and, of course, it's all bullshit, markets are created, they're always created, they're always policed and regulated and interfered with by the state. But we totally repeat that same logic. Don't you see? We treat power both as an absolute, as a natural law, and as something that's completely relativised in terms of moral value—so basically, exactly the same as how we think about so-called market forces. There's no difference. And the sad thing is that we can't even see we're doing it. We think we're above this shit. We're inside it. p.100

The term “free market" is totally a propaganda term, and yet we all use it, even on the left. It's insane. We should be asking ourselves, why are we using their words and their logic? Why are we doing their job for them? p. 101.

Extractive Politics

Rent-seeking and extraction are fundamental characteristics of a Liberal society, which is precisely about reducing (and complexifying) all aspects of life into a series of rules and regulations that require specialist educated groups to interpret and argue about them. Indeed, a Liberal society can be defined as one which replaces simple and well-understood rules with highly-complex and difficult procedures that require learned specialists to interpret them. And it is such interpreters, rather than mere producers, who have the higher social and economic status.

This is the fundamental logic of extractive politics. Find a problem that is insoluble but sounds bad, and that is often poorly defined and not well understood. Set yourself vague objectives that are impossible to measure, and which in any case depend on people other than you doing the actual work. Organise a few publicity-seeking events, cultivate the media and watch the money roll in and the jobs be created. Issue statements about the failures of others and demands for action from a position of moral superiority which you claim, but have done nothing to earn.

From The Rise of Extractive Politics by Aurelien.

Civilisational States

In a recent Substack post called We Are All Civilisational States, Aurelien has some interesting comments on the concept of a civilisational State.

Liberalism has always tended towards a kind of blank, managerial efficiency, bereft of any of the characteristics that make us human. It regards beliefs, loyalties, friendship, and social bonds of any kind as at best inefficient, preventing the smooth functioning of the market economy, and at worst as symbols of darkness and superstition, to be driven away by the pure light of reason... Such a society is actually already present in outline in the assumptions of the European Union. Religion, history, culture, language and belief divide people against each other, and so (it is argued) cause conflicts and even wars. Consequently, every effort must be made to extinguish national differences by discouraging the teaching and invocation of separate histories and cultures, except for warnings against their negative aspects, whilst promoting a tasteless, grey Brussels soup, largely distinguished by the ingredients that are missing. History, insofar as its existence is acknowledged, has gone from being a national story to a field of vicious debate and struggle where groups seek to impose their interpretations of history on each other, like family members fighting each other in front of a judge over inheritance rights.

Brussels today is, effectively, Nowhere: no history, no culture, no common heritage, and an ideology constructed entirely out of clichés, where difficult subjects are just not discussed. (Religion is considered a purely cultural artefact, and any criticism of practitioners of non-European religions for any reason is considered racism). History, in the form of buildings and monuments, is acceptable only insofar as it encourages the tourism industry or represents a business opportunity. Even the official language is artificial: a kind of simplified English, with a large influence from French legal vocabulary, often called Globisch.

"Free speech” used to be a Liberal principle, and in theory still is. Yet of course its origins lie in the struggle by Liberals to express themselves freely under absolutist or authoritarian regimes from the eighteenth century onward. Once they had achieved these freedoms, Liberals inevitably began to notice the inconveniences associated with free speech which they did not agree with. And because theirs was an ideology based essentially on a series of unsupported assertions about the world, free enquiry and rational questioning, ironically, were inimical to it. So it’s not surprising that support for freedom of expression has been falling sharply recently among people who identify as liberal.

American Prophets

In a facebook post below, Dan Hawk has some interesting comments about what he calls Dominionist Prophets. I agree with most of his points, although they do not all apply in every case. However, I don’t think that you have not gone far enough to get to the main issue. Dan sees the issue as a problem with biblical interpretation, particularly eschatological passages. I see the issue as a problem with the way the prophetic ministry has developed in the United States.

The recovery of the gift of prophecy has been an incredible blessing for the church. The three or four personal prophesies that I have received over my lifetime (through Christian friends, not travelling ministries) have been a huge blessing and encouragement in my walk with Jesus.

Unfortunately, there has been no room for the development of prophetic ministries within the structures of the pastor-leader-controlled churches that predominates the western church, so the ministry of the prophet to the church and the prophet to the nation have not emerged, despite being urgently needed. Instead, prophetic people have moved onto the internet, where there is no discipline and very little testing, so the few bits of gold released in that environment have been overwhelmed by prophetic mush.

Worse still, it has become a breeding ground for false prophets.

The appeal of the so-called dominion prophets arises out of disappointment and hunger. The scriptures are full of promises about God’s victory on earth, but modern evangelicalism has not explained how this victory will come to pass. Careful exegesis has been essential for challenging crazy ideas, but unfortunately, it has sucked the life of eschatology.

Defeating false teachings is important, but it leaves a vacuum, if something equally viable and inspiring is not put in its place. We have now arrived at a point where the evangelical church does not have a feasible and motivating eschatology. Consequently, most Christians have grabbed onto the only serious option, which is dispensationalism. The evangelical movement does not have an inspirational vision of the Kingdom of God, or an explanation of how it will come to fulfilment. Instead, “Kingdom” has become a popular adjective to attach to whatever the church is doing, so the term has become an empty concept.

Sound exegesis will not expose false prophets and prophecies. Academic methods will not expose them. The only antidote to false prophets is true prophets, like Miciah and Jeremiah. They will often be ignored, but when history works its course, they will be proved right and the mistakes of the false prophets will be exposed.

A related problem is that the people of the United States have made an idol of their constitution, and the system of government that it purports to define, even though it is not clear what it is. This idolatry has left the nation vulnerable to spirits of deception, pride, violence and control. Consequently, the nation has been dogged by American exceptionalism and a belief in using military power to achieve their nation’s goals, which has created a heady environment for false prophets to work in.

The dominionist prophets are committed to the use of political and military power to achieve God’s purposes on earth. This aligns exactly with the values of most Americans. Therefore, not surprisingly, the most popular prophets in the United States are those who preach Christian nationalism, and especially the use of political and military power to achieve God’s purposes on earth. I call them horned prophets. The Bible calls them false prophets.

This is the critical issue. The United States has a serious false prophet problem. The number is far greater than the two hundred confronted by Miciah. Unfortunately, the US church and nation do not have a true prophet like Jeremiah or Miciah to confront the false prophets that are leading it astray.

According to the Psalms, the lack of a true prophet was part of the curse on a disobedient Israel.

We are given no signs from God; no prophets are left, and none of us knows how long this will be" (Psalm 74:9).

I wonder if this lack of true prophets is actually a curse on the United States.

Poltical and Social Change

In his latest post on Substack, Aurelien makes some interesting comments about the things necessary to bring about political and social transformation.

If we look at history, we see that bringing about fundamental, discontinuous political change requires three things. One is a group of individuals with a common (though not necessarily identical) purpose. The second is a clear vision of what is wanted, either in terms of ideology or at least of defined political objectives. And the third is the resources and organisation capable of bringing it about. Having only two of these is not enough. This may seem mundane, but then quite a lot of the nuts and bolts of history are. And it reminds us that history is not, in fact, entirely the product of blind forces, but rather of a complex interaction between individuals, groups and society.

He explains how these things are lacking in the modern world, as political parties become technocratic and difference between them have blurred. Public interest and trust in existing political systems is reducing all over the western world. This is a huge risk.

As I read the word in the quotes above, I thought about the role of the church in society. Once it would have met these requirements, but I am not sure if it is true anymore. It seems to be divided and lacking a common purpose. The church has no clear vision of what is needed. There is no evidence that it can work together to bring about change.

One Baptism

A commenter asked if/argued that I teach two separate baptisms. I don’t.

Paul was emphatic that there is one baptism (Eph 4:5). Jesus’ baptism is the ideal. He was baptised in water and the Spirit in one event. That should be the norm for all those who trust in Jesus. Peter knew this, because when the Holy Spirit came upon Cornelius and his household, he realised that they needed to be baptised in water at the same time (Acts 10:47; 11:15-16).

Unfortunately, for various reasons, some people who are baptised in water do not receive the Holy Spirit at that time. In the case of Philip at Samaria the reason was that the believers had “only been baptised in Jesus name”. The word “only” suggests the baptism was incomplete. To remedy the situation, Peter and John came down and laid hands on the Samaritans to receive that Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14-17). However, this was not a normative situation. It was a remedy for a situation where baptism had not been done properly in the first place.

Most of my generation received the gift of the Holy Spirit well after they were baptised in water, because we did not know about the fullness of the Spirit when we were baptised. At a later date, when we knew more about his activity, we were prayed over to receive the Spirit. However that was remedying a problem with our initiation into the faith. Praying for baptism in the Spirit separate from baptism in water from was remedying this mistake.

We must be careful not to make a remedial practice normative. Receiving the fullness of the Spirit after coming out of the water is the norm, as per Jesus example.

Moreover, receiving the fullness of the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential for every follower of Jesus. If for some reason, the Holy Spirit has not come upon the person being baptised, the situation should be remedied by laying on hands and praying for the Spirit to come upon them (as Peter and John did at Samaria).

Teaching that there are two baptisms, one in water and a subsequent one in the Holy Spirit is dangerous, because it makes a problem that needs remedial action into the norm for everyone. It is better for baptism to be done in the way it happened for Jesus. But we must also correct any problems that arise, as quickly as possible.