Of Cain

To understand Cain and why he murdered Abel, we must go back to the original sin of Adam and Eve and the curse that was laid upon the Serpent in the Garden of Eden.  Genesis 3 verse 15 states,

I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.

The key takeaway here is that Eve’s offspring would strike back at the Serpent and the evil that it perpetuated upon all of Mankind.  And, just like the Apostles of Christ who stated that the kingdom of God was at hand shortly after Christ’s ascension.  I imagine that both Adam and Eve believed that Cain would redeem them for Eve states, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord” when Cain is born.  Abel is basically an afterthought when his birth is mentioned.  He is the second-born, meant to simply live as a man without the heavy burden placed on Cain.

It appears that Cain was elevated and given praise by his parents.  They more than likely believed him to be one to redeem all of mankind, lift the curse of sin, and bring them back into the Garden of Eden.  It is probably why he was tasked with growing produce rather than raising livestock.  Livestock is often considered to be a lower practice by most societies and I am willing to bet that Abel’s chosen profession was one that left him as an outcast among his family.

And so Cain and Abel brought their offerings to God.  And God rejected Cain’s offering but accepted Abel’s.  When I was a child, my father said it was because God could see Cain’s heart and while that is probably true, more than likely God was expecting blood sacrifices in order for Cain to redeem his sin.  In a sense, Cain was telling God that he was without sin, unlike his brother Abel, and that he need only give God an offering of produce, not an animal sacrifice.

Cain was, naturally, angry with this rejection.  All his life he had been held in high regard and given all the praise that was due to a redeemer of Mankind.  But here was stinky Abel, who offering of animal flesh was accepted over his best produce.

And so God, recognizing the danger, commanded Cain to master his own sin, which I imagine only angered Cain even more.  And so, Cain murdered Abel in a perversion of the blood sacrifice that God demanded of Man.

Cain was cursed by God for his great sin, of which he was never remorseful over.  At no point does he express regret for his brother’s death.  God curses Cain to be unable to provide for himself anymore, instead having to wander the land begging and scavenging for scraps.  Eventually, he builds a city, probably leveraging his status as Adam’s firstborn in order to establish a kingdom.  And thus, we see the first instance of the elite, born in human sacrifice and cursed to never be able to provide for himself.

The most striking element of the story is when God commands Cain to master his own sin.  This is echoed by Jesus when he tells the people to strive to be perfect as the lord God is perfect.  This runs contrary to a lot of modern Christian thought where the general consensus is that we cannot overcome sin on our own, but only through the saving Grace of Jesus.  And while that is certainly true, it does not absolve us of self-control.  We are saved by Grace but we are to conduct our lives in a manner that strives to be perfect like God.

So let go of your Pride, your Envy, and master your sin.  Otherwise you may find yourself murdering your brother.

The Perfect Sacrifice

In the times of ancient Israel, after Moses led them out of Israel, God saw fit to build a solid foundation for His chosen people.  And since men are foolish, sinful, and naturally prone to wickedness, God sought to plug some of those weaknesses by bringing them the Law through Moses.

The first Laws that God really laid out in Leviticus were laws concerning the sacrifices, that is, the animal sacrifices that the people would have to make in order to atone for their sins, largely because God knew that the people would sin and would need atonement.

And so God told the people that the only acceptable sacrifices for sin would be the firstborn male of the clean animals, without blemish, and who opened its mother's womb.  If the sacrifice was to be consumed by the priests and the person offering the sacrifice, that food was considered to be holy.  In a sense, you would be consuming food that was purified and purifying your own body and soul as a result.

The sacrifice was always to be presented to the priests who would take care of the butchering of the animal as well as the process in which the resulting sacrifice would be handled.

Flash forward to the time of Jesus.  He gained a huge following based on his teachings, but mostly his healings.  Then he turns to his disciples, who numbered in the dozens at the time, and told them that they will have to eat His flesh and drink His blood.

Then he was left with only 12 disciples.

But Jesus was the firstborn male among the chosen people, from the line of the kings, who had literally opened his mother's womb since she had been a virgin at the time.  He was without sin, even spending 40 days of fasting and resisting Satan's temptations to make bread from stones.

In essence, He was the perfect sacrifice for the atonement of the sins of all of mankind.

On the night of His betrayal and arrest, He gave His disciples bread and wine, telling them that this is His body and blood, thus telling His disciples that this was really what He meant by eating his body and drinking His blood.

And then he was arrested by the priests of the chosen ones who were envious of his power and influence over the people.  He was betrayed by a disciple of His who was bitter over being corrected when he questioned the cost of perfume that a prostitute was using to clean Jesus's feet.

And so the priests, who at the time could not execute justice themselves, turned Jesus over to the local governor.  When Pilot asked them what charges were against Jesus, all they could say was that he was a criminal overwise they wouldn't have given Him over.

Thus, the priests ended up performing their duties as priests and took care of the one final sacrifice that was needed to redeem us for our sins, unwittingly of course.  And during the Passover feast, of all times.  But even that was all for the Will of God in order to redeem us all.

They took the most perfect sacrifice and cursed Him by hanging Him from a tree until he was dead.

And when it was finished, the curtain in the Temple was torn in two and God no longer would limit Himself to the holiest of holies because such a thing was no longer necessary.  The price had been paid, the sacrifice had been made, and mankind was now able to be forgiven for our sins.

It didn't sit well with the people though.  Instead of being overjoyed, they realized that they had succumbed to a kind of collective madness and tortured the Son of God to death.  Even the centurions who were there recognized that He was God's Son.

It must have been a miserable Passover celebration that year.

But after being dead and buried for three days, Jesus came back from the dead.  And so, the sacrifice was redeemed along with the people.  Because God is God of life, not death.  Sin is death and can only be redeemed in blood and death.  But He is not of death, but life.  And so, Jesus came back from the dead because He is the Son of the God of life.

And now He sits at the right hand of His father waiting for the appointed time to return to conquer the wicked with the sword from His mouth and rule with an iron scepter.

For now, we wait and hope, eating the bread and drinking the wine that is His body and blood in remembrance of Him.

Amen.  Come Lord Jesus.

Bad Advice From Biblical Women

The biggest folly of man in the Bible is listening to women.  Well, not the biggest, but certainly in the top 10 failings of men.

Take for instance Adam who without any hesitation accepted the fruit from Eve and ate it.  Instead of kicking the serpent's ass and throwing it out of the garden, he let his wife give in to envy and by his own pride damned all of humanity.

Then we come to Sarai who was barren.  So she urges her husband Abram to father a child by her maidservant Hagar.  Abram, who should have trusted in God, instead listened to his wife.  Later when Hagar had become pregnant, Sarai decided that her maidservant should be sent away.  And Abram listened to her.  Good thing God had more compassion.

Samson, despite knowing the danger that was posed to him, told Delilah the secret of strength.  This was after lying to her about it twice and on both times being “randomly” attacked by his enemies.  Still, she cried and bitched at him about how he hates her or some such nonsense, and he finally gave in.  He should have sent her to the curb after the first attempt on his life and then killed her whole family for good measure (savage times).

And then we have King Solomon who ended his life as a fool because he listened to his wives and concubines and began to worship false gods.  And thus he created a broken kingdom in what was once a great and prosperous nation.

King Ahab would often listen to his wife, Jezebel, instead of listening to the prophets of God.  Often times she would murder and steal from his own subjects while Ahab himself did nothing to reign in her wickedness and thus brought her guilt upon himself.

These are just the few examples I can think of off the top of my head.  I think the moral of the story is to never accept a woman’s advice when you know it is contrary to God’s Word.  If you feel even a tinge of doubt about what she is saying, then you need to flee from it.

The Seven Virtues #7: Faith

Faith is a virtue that is difficult to grasp, even by Christians.  As a borderline socially autistic individual who tends to reason things out naturally, I admit that my faith is difficult to obtain.  Trust me, for someone like me, it took God Himself to intervene in my life to make me understand that there was more than just what I saw and heard.  This is not something that I think most people will experience, because God handles all of us in our own way and in His own time.

Christian Faith has two parts, according to C.S. Lewis.  The first part is the part that most people have trouble with: belief.  Believe requires us to reject the shroud that has been pulled over our eyes by the Kind of this World and accept that there are things that we cannot reason away.  That is an extraordinary rejection of personal pride in oneself and it does not come easy.  Those of you who do not believe in God or anything supernatural, I certainly sympathize with you.  We do live in an ordinary world where our mundane lives have little to offer us in our day to day rituals.  To hear that there is something more than this does seem a bit offensive to me and I can see how it would make people defensive and angry.

Everyone believes that something is wrong with humanity.  The Statist Utopian and the individualist anarchist both agree that there is something wrong with human beings.  And while the causes are often debated over and governmental policies are often prescribed to “fix” things, in the end there is no shortage of wrongs done in this world.  The standard by which we live is often times violated given specific factors and circumstances.  It almost seems like we can’t help ourselves to behave irrationally and hurt others in the process.

Christian Faith starts with the belief that we are all sinners.  To sin is to violate the Will of God for us.  God’s Will extends beyond just a simple set of rules (far much simpler than the government’s, by the way) as it is about living as a creation of God rather than a creation of this world.  This is a hard concept to accept.  It requires that you believe in a supreme being, that He created you, that you are a sinner prone to evil, and that evil is a violation of said being’s Will.  Already many agnostics and atheists have huge issues with this concept.  Many Christians do as well.  The primary reason is that it requires us to accept that we are wicked and evil.  It takes a lot of humility for someone to admit they are wrong, let alone prone to evil and corruption.  I have yet to meet a rational non-Christian admit that he or she is prone to evil.

The next part of Christian Faith is the belief that God sent His Son, His very Word incarnate into flesh, to this planet for the sole purpose of showing us what a life as God’s creation should be and to ultimately experience death by torture for the sake of our redemption.  So now, not only do you have believe that you are a sinner and despicable before the eyes of God, your creator, but you have been redeemed before Him through faith in His Son, who died for us all.  While some who fall into despair at the very notion of no hope for redemption will joyfully embrace this wholeheartedly, there are others who will want an explanation as to why.  To be honest, I can’t answer this entirely, which is where the faith part comes into play.

Finally, and this is where things get really ridiculous in a rational, down-to-earth sense: we believe that he came back from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and will be coming back to judge the whole of mankind, whether living or dead.  For the ordinary individual with no concept of things supernatural beyond what is seen in fiction, this is probably the most outrageous article of Christian Faith.  To think that a man who was tortured to death by being beaten, stabbed, and hung from a cross in order to be exhausted to death would come back where all others have failed beforehand is just downright unscientific and completely irrational.  The only guarantee in life is death and nobody ever really beats that.  Of course, he conveniently isn’t around anymore to explain it because he ascended (whatever that means) into Heaven (where ever that happens to be).  But don’t worry, he’ll be back to embrace those who believe in Him and to cast those who didn’t into Hell, where ever that happens to be.  There is no rational or logical sense to any of this and yet many people embrace this as the ultimate truth of our existence.

You can see why it took someone like so long to wrap up my blog series on the Seven Virtues.  Faith is a difficult concept to grasp for someone like me, despite the wisdom God has granted me and the intelligence I have gained through His Spirit and my own hard work.  To believe all this, to embrace that I am a child of God through Jesus His own Son, is quite a leap into unknown and unperceivable territory.  But Christian Faith is all about this and it brings us into the knowledge of the truth about humanity.  I can tell you that it is much easier to predict what people are going to do or say given the knowledge that comes through faith.  Not that I’m not surprised from time to time, of course.  I don’t claim to have absolute knowledge through Faith as it tends to cover only the nature of my life in relation to God.

Ultimately, God desires obedience more than sacrifice.  He makes this clear in the Old Testament on several occasions.  As disobedience to God’s Will is the very definition of sin, this certainly is not surprising.  Even worse is that we are unable to be completely obedient to God 100% of the time we are here in this life.  So God orchestrated the perfect sacrifice of the only man who was 100% obedient to Him in order to allow us to share his own connection with God.  No comes to the Father except through Jesus.

This is what Faith is for the Christian.  It is the ultimate expression of things that have come and things that will come.  It is knowing that God is Holy, that His Son has redeemed us, and that He is Lord not through some complex algorithm or some scientific study, but through Faith.

And thus, we have Faith as the Seventh and final virtue.  From it, all other virtues can flow out as obedience to God through Faith in Jesus will gradually make you a better person.  Take my word for it, I’ve lived it and witnessed it myself.

The Seven Virtues #6: Justice

The fourth and last cardinal (or pivotal) virtue is Justice.  Now Justice is not what is commonly seen on courthouse dramas.  That is only a small part of it.  The virtue of Justice extends to integrity, fairness, and honesty.
Integrity is doing the right thing when no one else is watching you.  Whether or not you believe in God and trust in Him, integrity is incredibly important for your prosperity.  In the short term, doing the right thing can harm you, but in the long term, you will benefit because of your attitude.  The world’s richest people have remained so because of their excessively high sense of integrity.
Fairness is not some selfish, childish desire.  Often times, the concept is invoked by children who are denied their own pleasures or by greedy people who live on the government’s whim (like welfare junkies or government union “workers”).  It is the sense of dealing with each and every person or situation with a sense of adequacy.  This does not mean that people are treated equally, but individually.  God does not treat us the same so why should we treat others the same?
Honesty is probably my personal standard of excellence.  If you are not honest in your dealings, I will lose all respect for you and I will refuse to deal with you.  In my opinion, if you cannot be honest then you are borderline subhuman.  As Kain said to Raziel in the video game Soul Reaver 2, “Hate me, but do it honestly.”
Justice is not about the equal distribution of income.  Social justice is anything but real justice because it fails to address the root of real justice.  Instead it is handled by people who administer based on their own personal preferences rather than true fairness.
Justice is not always served in the court system.  While our system of courts, where the accused are innocent until proven guilty in theory, is probably one of the more enlightened systems in human history, it still manages to fall prey to humanity’s sinful nature.  The O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson cases is probably the most prominent.  In both cases, human nature played a larger part in the courtroom rather than some higher sense of decency.  While both men were judged to be not guilty, the antics in the court make it nearly impossible to determine the real truth of the matter.
But you can practice the virtue of Justice each and everyday.  Simple matters of integrity, being honest with others, and seeking out a reasonable sense of fairness when dealing with others is the best way to deal practice justice.  If you hold to this virtue, you will live a life to be admired by others.
So be honest in your dealings and encourage others to do so.  It will make this world a more pleasant place to live in.

The Seven Virtues #5: Charity

Charity is often equated to giving to those in need.  While this certainly is Charity, it is merely a part of it.  When you help others, you are demonstrating the virtue of Charity, but it so much more than that.

Charity is a theological virtue, meaning it is one that is essential for Christianity, but not necessary for non-believers (though it is probably a good idea for everyone to practice it).  Charity these days is what we may refer to as love for your fellow man.  It is love in the general sense and it is part of the second commandment Jesus gave us when he said, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (though I think this was in the Torah too).

In the old English, this kind of love was referred to as Charity.  Somewhere along the way, our usage of the English language changed, as most languages do, and we began equating the word “charity” as giving money to the needy.  Again, this certainly does qualify as love for your fellow man, but it is only a small portion of the scope by which you can practice the virtue of Charity.

For Christians, the virtue of Charity is essential for us when relating to the rest of the world.  There have been countless individuals who have rejected the Gospel because of the behavior of Christians.  I’ve heard a story, probably not true, where Ghandi went to a church while he was seeking and said to himself when he left that he really like this man Jesus but not his followers.  True or not, it does drill home the importance of Charity as a theological virtue and it’s necessity.

Being a Charitable Christian means you must love everyone, even if you don’t really like them.  To “like” someone in this day and age usually means you share their interests or find that person pleasant to be around.  It is a relational comparison where you “like” someone more than you “like” another person.  Within clergy (and probably church inner circles), people who are difficult to “like” are labeled “EGR” which means “Extra Grace Required.”  While this seems a little insulting, our charge is love our neighbor no matter how exasperating he or she can be.

The essence of Charity is to be a servant to your fellow man.  The Parable of the Good Samaritan was probably the best example that Jesus could provide that exemplified this virtue.  But there are always smaller things you can do to be charitable to other people.  I’ll leave it up to you to figure them out, but they are all fairly obvious, even if you are sociopath.

Charity is an essential virtue for Christians.  It is probably the theological virtue that deals with our relationships outside of God.  This virtue gives us the tools we need to spread the Gospel.  People generally don’t respond well to being told they’re going to Hell.  They don’t enjoy being told that their actions are evil and sinful.  They don’t like it when you bring up Jesus is unrelated topics of conservation.

But when you practice Charity, people wonder and ask why you are doing that.  And you can simply respond that you are practicing what Jesus taught you and doing the best you can to follow His example.  That way, they will seek Him out of their own accord and you’ll have the satisfaction of leading them there.  Even if they don’t accept Him as Lord, you can at least find satisfaction in knowing that you were given a chance to provide someone else a path to salvation.

In the end, that’s really what is important in this life.

The Seven Virtues #4: Fortitude

Fortitude is a crucial virtue for anyone trying to follow the seven virtues.  Like the others, it is fundamentally linked to every other virtue so that if you lose this one, the others will disappear shortly afterwards.

Fortitude is mental and emotional strength in when facing difficulty, adversity, danger, or temptation.  It means that you stick to the principles you believe in and hold fast to what you know to be true.  You must have a strong will because there will be things that will push you away from the virtues you seek to uphold.

Fortitude is another cardinal virtue and thus is something that non-believers and believers alike should put into practice.  For believers, it adds resistance to the temptations and trials we will face, as the enemy tends to step things up in this life after we committed our lives to the Will of God.  It is through our faith in Jesus that we become enemies of the fallen ones and they will attempt to undermine our faith in Jesus.

The greatest example of mental Fortitude in the Bible is when Jesus was tempted by Satan.  Being only a man at this point, though with the Spirit, he was led into the desert and spent 40 days of fasting.  Basically, he was going to die soon if he did not eat since that is about how long you can survive without food.  Fasting also opens a lot of doors for Satan and his ilk to attack you because you tend to lose a lot of your resistance.  So Jesus was tempted by the devil three times and in all three cases He withstood Satan’s assault on his mind and spirit.

As Christians, we have come to appreciate this story, but I doubt that many Western Christians can truly fathom the struggle He must have gone through.  This is because most Western Christian hardly ever fast.  I admit to having done it only a few times and only for a day or myself.

For non-believers, Fortitude is equally important in that you will face trials yourself, even if they aren’t from fallen angels.  Christians, of course, face the same kind of trials as non-believers, but I don’t think fallen angels are all that interested in turning non-believers from Jesus.  They may try to use non-believers to serve their own ends, though, but most non-believers don’t understand what is truly happening.

Fortitude enables us to withstand our troubles and ensure that we maintain our principled set of beliefs.  When you don’t have this virtue, you will become subject to the will of others, natural or otherwise, and you will lose your sense of identity.  Because if there is something you know to be true and are willing to stand up for it, it is one of the signs of individuality.

I can personally attest to witnessing what happens when someone doesn’t have the fortitude to stand up for himself.  It is very tragic to witness such a thing and I have nothing but sympathy for someone like that.

Practice Fortitude and stand up for yourself.  Fight for the truth you know and you will prosper in the long run.  Otherwise you may find yourself lacking in the other virtues, both cardinal and theological.

The Seven Virtues #3: Temperance

The cardinal virtue of Temperance is one that is rarely practiced in modern culture these days.  It is the virtue that dictates you moderate your behavior and lifestyles.  Unfortunately, many in our society have taken to going from one extreme to the other.  There is hardly a portrayal of someone who is able to moderate their behavior.

American culture is one of excess.  We take great pride in being able to go overboard in all things.  Whether it’s alcohol, food, sex, or just stuff we are obsessed with buying, we go to great extremes for many of these things.  This virtue is designed to prevent us from going too far and keeping our extreme behaviors in check, without denying us the opportunity to enjoy them.

That’s the other extreme that violates this cardinal virtue.  The idea that we must abstain from certain things completely.  While there are some things that, as a Christian, we must abstain from because there are boundaries set up by God.  Sex is only acceptable when it is between a man and a woman who are married.  Within that boundary, they are free to engage in whatever sexual acts the two feel comfortable with.  In marriage, we have a formula for temperance when it comes to sexual relations.

But to completely abstain from things that one doesn’t need to abstain from can be just as damaging as engaging in excesses.  This world has so much for us to enjoy, and when do so with a disciplined heart, we can thoroughly enjoy all God has given us.

For Christians, Temperance also prevents us from falling into idolatry.  Idols are anything that we put before God in worship.  Temperance allows us to enjoy food, alcohol, sex, and so much else without falling into the worship of these things, which is what the Seven Deadly Sins basically are.  Indeed, this virtue is the counter to at least six of the seven deadly sins, as those sins are basically our instincts in overdrive.

For non-Christians, this virtue is still pivotal because it allows anyone who practices it to keep within certain boundaries and allows them to maintain their own lives without destroying them in the process.  Basically, it is the same with non-Christians as it is with Christians, only non-Christians don’t have as many boundaries that they need to follow since they have not chosen to follow God (I know I’m probably enraging some fellow Christians by saying this, but you need to disregard the sin of the sinner when spreading the Good News).

Temperance is not an easy virtue to practice, especially if you are prone to addictions and obsessions.  The goal of this virtue is to find a kind of balance in your life so you can enjoy things and not let those things destroy you in the process.  There is no perfect balance, however, and it takes prudence to know where the line is when engaging in a certain kind of behavior.  Every person has their own limits and no two people can enjoy the same thing to the same degree.  We are all like snowflakes, after all.

So you will need to know what your limits are.  If you have problems with overeating, then you may have to keep yourself out of the kitchen and instead find something else to do.  If you struggle with lust, then you will need to redirect your passions elsewhere so you don’t end up making an embarrassing visit to a doctor someday.  And so on and so forth, I think you get the idea.

The Seven Virtues are all linked together, although they are separate concepts.  See how Prudence aids in supporting Temperance?  Both are cardinal virtues that are vital for everyone, including non-Christians.  Temperance itself allows us to engage the world and discover its many pleasures and wonders while keeping our other virtues intact.

And don’t worry, it doesn’t take much self-discovery to know our limits nor does it require any experimentation.  It just requires a little prudence and a little bit of another virtue I will discuss in the future: Fortitude.

The Seven Virtues #2: Hope

Hope is one of the seven virtues and is not a cardinal virtue, but a theological one.  As such, non-believers have no hope to worry about (just kidding).  No, the hope I refer to is the hope in the promise God have given us.

Remember how I said that life is nothing but a struggle.  I said that a man struggles against the world and that woman struggles against man.  Generally, this is the case among all of us, whether we believe in God or not.  Hope is there to help us understand that there is more after this life and that the struggles now are nothing compared to the joy we will have.

With hope, we are continually looking forward to the eternal world and not engaging in wishful thinking.  For everyone has a desire for Heaven within them, otherwise we wouldn’t have secular Utopians trying to ram their twisted worldviews down our throats.

Anyway, this desire is found in so many things in our own lives.  We find in the fulfillment of our jobs and finding something we enjoy doing.  We find in love for others.  We find it in entertainment.  But ultimately, all these things give some level of disappointment.

No matter how much you love your job, there is always that day where it is like any job you might hate.  No matter how much you love your spouse, there are always days where you’d rather not be around him or her, unless it is necessary.  And no matter how entertaining something is, at the end of the day it isn’t the reality of your life.

And so, despite that tinge of longing, we often find ourselves disappointed in Earthly things.  Now, I am not calling for you to abandon such things, just because they are perfect.  Indeed, you’ll still have the desire to engage in such things and those lesser desires will be filled.

But the greater desire will remain.  This desire for heaven is innate in all of us and drives us to do extraordinary and sometimes horrible things.  As Christians, we have to recognize that this desire was placed in our hearts by God.  Call it His strategic invasion into the spiritual world.  Our world, after all, is ruled by Satan, by sin and disobedience to him.

Yet He has planted on our hearts a desire for Him, a desire that cannot be satisfied by any Earthly thing.  Instead such things arouse this desire and make it burn even more.

And so we must hope for the satisfaction of that desire.  This is the hope that I speak when I refer to this virtue.  It is what Paul writes about when he mentions hope.  It is not silly, trite, or delusional, but Godly.

Western Christians are not taught this virtue because we have so much wealth and tend to lack nothing of substance.  Poverty is non-existent in the United States, only people with misplaced priorities in their spending and working habits.  As such, we live a life of leisure and comfort, not having to worry about chopping wood so that we can heat our bedrooms, wondering where our next meal will come from, or wishing that our roof wasn’t made of hay.

While there is certainly a great benefit to all this and I wouldn’t trade any of it unless God told me to, it does diminish this heavenly virtue because we become complacent in our lives.  While we still have the desire for Heaven in us, we lack the training to properly deal with it.

This is probably the biggest problem with secular schooling for us.  It has caused us to focus on the earthly things rather than heavenly things.  To understand that this existence is temporary and that greater things are to come.

The Leadership of King Ahab

I’ve been reading the Bible in one year, again, and this time doing it chronologically.  I’ve just finished the reign of King Ahab, possibly the worst king of Israel (there was one who was worse in Judah, I think).  King Ahab represents everything you shouldn’t do when you are a leader of millions of people and hold complete control over their lives.  He is also an excellent reason for libertarianism because no matter how foolproof the system may be, there will always someone like Ahab to mess it all up.

So just what did Ahab do that made him such a terrible king?  There is a laundry list, but I want to focus on a few incidents in his life.

The first thing was how he reacted when he wasn’t able to buy a vineyard from one of his fellow subjects.  He wanted the vineyard because he wanted his own special garden built there or something.  Really it didn’t matter because he was rejected as the owner wanted to keep the vineyard that was essentially his inheritance.  His property, his choice, after all.

But King Ahab was not happy about the decision.  So instead of accepting the man’s decision and moving on, he went up into his bed chamber and sulked like a baby for a very long time.  His wife, Jezebel, took notice of this and asked him what was wrong.  When Ahab explained the situation, she promptly had the man killed and Ahab proceeded to take the vineyard.

This story illustrates the kind of man Ahab was.  He was nothing more than child in a man’s body, easily influenced by his deceitful wife who sleep with many other men besides her husband.  Talk about a big wimp.  For a man who is suppose to have the skills to rule over millions of people, he sure did not seem to have much sway over his own wife.  And he was perfectly willing to allow her to oppress his subjects provided he got something in return.

In another incident, Ahab was meeting with Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, and consulting various prophets concerning going to war.  Jehoshaphat asked if there were any prophets of the Lord among them that he could consult, because he was a righteous man.  King Ahab’s response was that there was one, but he always said bad things about him so he didn’t like him.

Jehoshaphat responded simply that a king should not say such things.  I wholeheartedly agree.  When you find yourself in a position of power and authority, you will be faced with many critics and people who will say things you won’t like.  That doesn’t mean that they are wrong and you are right.  So not only is Ahab a whiny man-child, he is also arrogant and only wants to hear certain things.

Well, this prophet did say something bad, that Ahab would die in the subsequent battle, despite the Israelite victory (I think they won that battle, although they probably didn’t, it was difficult for me to tell exactly what happened over all).  So Ahab has King Jehoshaphat ride into battle like a king while he hides among the army as a regular soldier.  The opposing army was ordered to target only the king of Israel and so they attacked Jehoshaphat.  During the fight, these soldiers figured out that Jehoshaphat wasn’t Ahab, and so they let him flee.  Meanwhile, Ahab gets struck by an arrow and dies by sunset on that day.  Ancient Greek playwrights couldn’t have written a better ending for this scumbag.

So what was the problem with King Ahab?  Well, he was childish, lacked wisdom, believed himself to be always right, and never, ever could take criticism from anyone who spoke the truth.

And I believe that Barack Obama perfectly echoes King Ahab’s personality in many ways.  His wife is controlling and domineering and she likes to show off her fancy dresses.  She even convinced Obama to let her mother live in the Whitehouse.  He himself can’t take criticism, not even jokes about his big ears, as evidenced by his attacks on Faux News (as they shall be forever dubbed by shutting out Ron Paul last year).  He is arrogant, believing that he has the will of the people behind him, and he comes off as a child in his dealings.

President Barack Obama is a modern day Ahab, weak-willed and easily swayed by others who are stronger willed than he is.

The Seven Virtues #1: Prudence

I remember when I was in the sixth grade and we were all outside for a fire drill.  Some kids were running through a puddle, splashing water all over themselves because everyone else was doing it and it was apparently the cool thing to do.  Then one of my teacher walked and yelled at them saying, “Common sense tells you to not do that.”  The look of disgust at the idiocy of my fellow students was priceless.
Unfortunately, these days I find that just about of those we place in authority lack one of the cardinal virtues: prudence.  Prudence is common sense and one who has prudence has the ability to utilize their wisdom and discipline to their fullest extent.  As King Solomon wrote in Proverbs 19:25, “Flog a mocker and the simple will learn prudence; rebuke a discerning man, and he will gain knowledge.”
These days our culture has rejected harsh discipline for some strange and incomprehensible reason.  Harsh discipline and strict punishments for those who commit crimes have go the wayside and as a result we get repeat offenders more often than rehabilitated, productive members of society.  This latest episode with Clemens who killed four police officers should be a chilling reminder of why we should dismantle all parole boards and make criminals serve their full sentences.
But I think it runs much deeper than simply imposing harsh discipline.  People need to develop the virtue of prudence otherwise they will see their intelligence and their wisdom go to waste.  I asked people what the opposite of an idiot savant was and no one really could give a proper term for it.  Somehow, intellectual moron just doesn’t seem to fit with me.  But we have to agree that there are plenty of people out there who have an IQ many people would sell their souls for and lack all semblance of prudence.  Don’t worry, they usually work in colleges where they do the least amount of harm.
Prudence is one the seven virtues that are opposite the seven vices (or deadly sins).  It is not a Biblical virtue, any more than the seven deadly sins are Biblical, but it is pivotal to believers and non-believers alike.  Without out, we become subject to the control of others who have it.  In essence, we lose our individuality, our sense of self, without it.
A lack of prudence is probably the primary reason for all the insane laws that governments at levels pass in order to protect us from ourselves.  How many laws are passed involving fire safety, when this should be common knowledge to everyone?  How many laws are passed for  driving on the roads, when most car crashes can be avoided by simply driving sensibly?
The fact of the matter is, most people lack prudence in big ways and when they do, they end up voting for Statists.  This is because the Statists promise them things that most people would normally not even trust with their own parents.  And so a lack of common sense is the primary reason for the expansion of government in our modern era.  Most people recognize that everyone else lacks sense except for themselves and so they assume that the government will fill in the void for them.
I am not saying that I am perfectly prudent all the time.  But I do have a good sense of things more often than not.  It really isn’t hard once you start applying your own thought processes to everyday situations and not letting your emotions rule your mind.  No, I am not a robot and I do feel emotions.  But I don’t let them consume me and my own thinking, anymore than I let my own logic rule over me.  While both are never in perfect equilibrium, both have a healthy balance in my life, for the most part.
This is what we should strive to do.  We should all strive for common sense.  The best way to attain it to start reading up on it.  If you are a Christian, then I would recommend reading the book of Proverbs in the Bible (incidentally, I find that most Christians only read the New Testament to their own detriment).  If you are a non-believer, then you’ll have to look elsewhere and unfortunately, I have nothing I can recommend.  It’s not that I haven’t read non-Christian books before, it’s simply that I haven’t been interested in reading anything on the subject.
But you must obtain prudence because from it, all other virtues flow forth.  Because our society is full of greedy, selfish individuals (not really much different from the rest of the world), it takes strong prudence to deal with them.  If we are to save our society from tyranny, then our only course of action is to encourage and grow prudence in others.

A Godly, Mediocre Life

The greatest fear that the average man has, I think, is that he leads a life of mediocrity and not excellence.  I know this seems a bit cliché to say, but I believe that everyone wants to matter in some capacity in their life before they die.  At least that is the impression I get from the Western world.  In any event, it certainly seems like that is what drives most ambitions.

I do not know if this is something that has been around since the beginning of our existence.  Maybe the peasants of the Medieval period did not care too much about mattering in their lifetimes and worried more about getting food to eat.  I have my doubts, however, because I believe that if that were true, then we would never have escaped the feudal period.  The desire to make something of ourselves may be ingrained in our psyche.

This is probably why many men go through what is considered a “mid-life crisis.”  In reality, it is more a crisis of the realization of our own mortality and our truly insignificant part we play out on this world.  Such men look at their wife, their children, and their relatively unimportant job and realize that they have not done much else with their lives and that it is now coming to an end.  They perceive their own end in the future and decide to have some fun while they can or attempt to do something that matters.  In the end, many of them fail at this and they end up dying with regret or in despair.  Not because they have wasted their lives in actuality, but because they perceive that they have.

I will not be sugarcoat anything, though.  Our lives truly are insignificant, no matter what you believe.  I am a Christian, but I am not a fool.  I probably will never be a great man of God, who you would read about in the history books with awe and wonder.  I was given a gift from Him, you see, a gift of accessing His wisdom and understanding of human nature and behavior.  I am not boasting about this gift, because this gift comes directly from Him and He can take it away from me.  For a long time, though, I believed that because I possessed this gift, this greater insight into the world as He sees it, I believed that I was destined for great things in life.

I believe now that such things are highly unlikely.  While there is always a chance that God will call us to a greater ministry in His service, the vast majority of us live, eat, work, breed, and die without ever making a dent in the history books.  My greatest fear was living a life of mediocrity.  I believed that my wisdom was a gift to be used to lead people and to bring about great change in this world.  But I can no more do that than I can stop my heart from beating by sheer will power.

What I failed to realize in all this, however, is that mediocrity in the world’s terms is not necessary a bad thing.  After spending an entire year reading the entire Bible and doing it again this year, I have come to the conclusion that when God wants you to become his prophet or apostle or whatever you think it is, then you will have a terrible life.  It will be wrought with sorrow and oppression and you will be unhappy if you let it all get to you.  Many of those men did from time to time and God had to reassure them in some cases that it was all part of His plan.

I am an insignificant spec in the course of human events.  I am slowly coming to accept that in my life, in spite of the gift He has granted me.  It is hard to not fall into despair from it all, but I believe that I should just remember that He only demands my praise and love for Him and nothing greater than that.

Still, it is hard to face this sad, simple truth.  While I do not believe that my time has passed yet and that I am still very young, I hold no expectations of anything greater than what I am now.  Sure the career may change, my family may grow, and my wealth may increase, but my standing in God’s plan may not be anything to sneeze at.

I will admit, though, that my desires for my own life are conflicting.  On the one hand, I wish to do great things, to change hearts and minds in a big way and to bring about a new way of seeing this world.  I want the world to see things the way I do.  But that is not always the way that God sees the world, despite the gift He has granted me.

On the other hand, I desire a quiet simple life and to possibly raise children of my own in my own way.  I desire to live in a manner that is extraordinary but is nothing to write about in the history books.  While I may have some degree of control over both choices, I believe that God’s Will for me will dominate my life and at the end of the day, I am nothing all that special.

Nothing more than a leaf in the wind, instantly inspiring awe and wonder, and passing through memory just as quickly.  And that, I think, is the best case scenario for me.

The Natural Tendency of Man: Tyranny

I know I may seem pessimistic, but I firmly believe that the natural tendency of mankind is to desire tyranny in exchange for supposed safety and security.  It is actually fascinating to see so many people with so much potential piss away their freedoms because they want to protect the things they got while they were free.  And as always, there is someone around who is more than willing to step and be their oppressor.

This has been the natural course of human history for a very long time.  This kind of thing is even talked about in the Bible.  Before Israel had a king to rule over them, they had what amounted to an anarchy.  There was no central authority, except for the occasional prophet who God would raise up to smite their foreign enemies.  But when Samuel came about, the nation of Israel decided they wanted to a king to rule over them.  They did so because Samuel’s sons were misbehaving and they feared an oppressive rule under ungodly men.  So instead of being ruled over the sons of a prophet of God, they wanted that prophet to chose a king for them.

Samuel was, of course, upset by all this.  Sure the nation of Israel had its issues, like all nations, but things had worked fine for the most part.  God would raise up judges in their time of need in order to settle affairs and lead armies when needed.  Other than that, people were able to do as they pleased.  Even though they had a very specific set of laws, there was no real enforcement of those laws and often times they were broken.  Still, these laws were not all that oppressive and were more like regulations of courtesy and retribution for crimes against fellow men like rape, destruction of property, and murder.  There were laws about dealing with diseases properly, what animals to eat, and the proper kinds of sexual intercourse as well which I suspect was God’s way of ensuring that the Jewish bloodline would only grow and prosper.

Anyway, when the elders of Israel demanded that Samuel anoint a king, this is what he told them in (1 Samuel 8:10-18):

¹⁰ Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. ¹¹ He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. ¹² Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. ¹³ He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. ¹⁴ He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. ¹⁵ He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. ¹⁶ Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. ¹⁷ He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. ¹⁸ When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day."

You know, I read that passage and I think that maybe the Israelite elders would act in a manner that would preserve their own interests.  Instead, they still insisted that Samuel place a king over them.  So Samuel went out and anointed Saul, who turned out to be a grade A butthole.  He looked kingly, as he stood a head taller than all the other Israelites, but he was a short tempered, paranoid murderer whose reign ended in suicide.  There really did not seem to be much of a mourning when he passed away.  Of course, David succeeded him as king and was a fine ruler overall, save for murdering a man in order to marry his wife.  But God took care of that whole mess.

Anyway, I wish I could say that the David-type kings were the norm, but the Saul-type kings really were the normal course of business.  Most of the kings of Israel were oppressive rulers who forced worship of false gods and did horrible things in the sight of god.  In many cases, these men oppressed the people and had their children sacrificed to Molech.

But the prophet Samuel predicted all this long before any of it happened.  He warned of the oppression that the people would suffer under a king.  And still they did not listen, instead they wanted safety and security instead of freedom and the responsibility it entails.

In the end, that is all we can really expect of our fellow man.  When it comes down to it, be it military might or financial stability, mankind will always look to the government to secure what they hold most valuable.  It makes me sick.

Faith and Common Sense

One of the greater struggles I face is when to how to express my faith in God.  I know that we must have faith in God’s salvation through His Son Jesus, but what about the little things?

Jesus said that we should not worry as even the birds are provided for.  Certainly worry is one of the barriers to trusting in God, as it will allow us to fall into despair.  Despair is the opposite of faith and it is a terrible state to be in.  It leads to much darker things in life and makes you seek out any kind of hope, no matter how foolish it would normally appear.

But where do we draw the line between faith in God and common sense?  I suspect that many of us confuse real faith with stupid faith.  A friend of mine who is a realtor told a story about how a man had said he was going to buy a house with 100% cash.  So they all met with a lawyer and the man sat there waiting.  When they finally asked the man where the money was coming from, he responded that God would provide it.  Talk about such naivety.  The only way I would do something like that is if God himself wrote in thin air with fire in front of me, “Go and buy a house.  I’m paying.  Oh, and I love you.”

I guess what most people do not understand is that God leaves the methodology of our lives mostly up to us.  Faith is placed in God’s Will but the details are often vague and while we do have some guidelines laid out, most of us are left to our devices to deal with the circumstances of our own lives.  I find this to be comforting, though, as a life where God directs our every action is no life in true freedom.  We are called to love Him, but He does not compel us to do so.

I heard another story about a man who needed dialysis on a regular basis.  However, he often refused treatment because he claimed that he had his only medical needs at his feet and head: a Bible.  Such people are fools in the Biblical sense, because they do not know God all that well.  Well, we are all fools in that sense, but many of us who know better can say so by comparison.

Throughout much of the Bible, many of the people had limited encounters with God, the only exception being those who witnessed Jesus’ ministry.  Moses had nothing to do with God throughout most of his life, only becoming his anointed lawgiver after turning 80 years old.  Many other people had very few and rare encounters with the supernatural aspects of God throughout the Old Testament.  In the New Testament, there is not much, save for the accounts of Jesus and the immediate after effects.  But even the apostle Paul himself had limited encounters with the supernatural throughout his ministry.

So we cannot count on God to supernaturally guide us like so many delusional people seem to.  We have to have common sense and enough discernment to handle our own affairs and always be mindful that God may come calling at any time.  But pray that you will have a quiet life because from what I have read of the prophets and apostles of old, their lives had horrible repercussions.  The cost of becoming someone of such high standing is a mighty one and God only chose those who could endure it.

The Wealth of Christians

As Christians, we are called to help the poor.  Now, in the time of Jesus, many people were poor and destitute due to either a handicap or being widowed.  There was no welfare system during the time of the Romans and so everyone who could work, would do so in order to eat.  While I am sure there were lazy people, for the most part the downtrodden were really down on their luck, so to speak.
These are the kind of people Jesus called us to help.  Not those who can help themselves, but those who cannot.  There, of course, many different ways of helping and in this day and age, I do not recommend giving money to anyone.  If someone wants money for food, give them food.  More than likely, you will find that they had food, they were just lazy.
But you cannot help someone if you yourself are having financial issues.  If you cannot keep your own household together, then you will grow to despise the giving that goes on.  I know that people think it is great to give until it hurts, but if it hurts often enough, then you will hate it.  Pain is never something one looks forward to, unless one is absolutely deranged.
So you need to get your own household in order first and foremost.  This means that you have to take control of your finances by budgeting before the next month begins and agreeing upon with your spouse (if you are married).  If you both can agree on a budget and stick with it, then you will have more harmony in your marriage than you know.  But it also means that you will be able to give without feeling like your giving and it hurts.
Another thing Christians need to do in the West is to get out of debt and to never go into debt ever again.  How much more could you give if you have no $400 car payment, no credit card payment, and no student loan payment?  How about if you got rid of your mortgage payment?  How much could you give and help others if you had no debt?
It is weird, I know, but while God permitted debt to exist within his own sacred nation, he always put severe restrictions on it.  You had to completely forgive all debts owned to you within a certain timeframe and you were suppose to charge zero interest on debt given to the poor and downtrodden.  That is something that is very different from what the banks do today.  In doing so, God probably set it up so that the Israelites had very little debt in their lives because very few people would be willing to loan money.  As Christians, we should be ever mindful that with very few exceptions, we should have the discipline to completely avoid debt so that we are much more free to serve God.  You may be waiting on God’s Will because He knows that you will fail because of all the debt you have.
Another thing is that we should always strive to make substantial wealth.  If Christians were the richest group of people in the world, how much better would the Word spread throughout the world?  Our enemies have substantial wealth themselves.  The secular humanists have a lot of funding from shady deals and decadent entertainment, although many of them also make plenty of money legitimately.  But they put their own wealth toward fighting us and we need to beat them.  One of the best ways to do that is to make more money than they do and put that money toward our own agendas.
Now, not all Christians will be wealthy and many of us will be given different paths in life.  That does not mean that it applies to you.  The rich are not the enemy of the Christians because the rich are like the poor: some are good and some are bad.  If more Christians were millionaires, then we would see a much different world.

Antichrist End Of The World Foolishness

There are many Christians who have determined that the end of the world will involve a great leader who is almost god-like and who will pervert and corrupt many people before Jesus Himself will deliver us.  This figure has been dubbed the Antichrist and is the subject of much speculation and entertainment pulp.  The Left Behind books were very popular among Christians and some secular critics alike.  They feed on this notion that there will be a single man who has some kind of supernatural power to overcome the minds of non-believers.

I personally think that the notion of a single figure having power equal or like that of the Christ on Earth is ridiculous.  While I understand that there references in the Bible, they are often vague and never, ever refer to a single person.  Often times, they are symbolic references to man’s own corruption.

I used to believe in that, but then I began to think for myself.  I spent that last year reading through the entire Bible and never once did I come across anything that specifically referred to a man (or woman) who is to come and be like the antithesis of Jesus on Earth.

Yes, you can interpret the prophecies many different ways and there are many different perspectives on Biblical prophecies.  It is a fool’s game, however, to say that the Bible means this or that when it comes to the vague prophecies, unless they have come true.  I myself could entirely wrong about the nature of the Antichrist and it could very well be a real person who has come, is here, or is coming.

Speaking of the end of the world, I have trouble believing that we are in the end times.  We may be in the end times of the United States of America, which is unfortunate, but not necessarily the end of the world.  Human beings have always been intellectually gifted and just as moronic since the beginning.  While the social norms and cultures may change over time and in different regions, the capacity for human understanding and intellectual thought has always been the same.

Because of this, I believe that the times are always the same.  There has always been sin and just because the older days seemed to be better, that is not always true.  It is kind of like the critics of industrialization who criticize industry for its apparent destruction of the environment sitting in their assembly-line produced recliners within their air conditioned homes.  There is nothing new under the sun.  The technologies and customs may change, but the patterns of human behavior hardly ever do.

The signs of the end as Jesus described to his disciples before the end were a pretty common occurrence if you go anywhere that has been stricken by war and famine.  Remember too that when the prophets discussed the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, it was much of the same thing.  In fact, there were worse things mentioned, like the cannibalizing children, much in the same way that some Chinese did under Mao’s famine in the 1960s.

I believe that there is no Antichrist and that those references are symbols of human evil.  I believe that the end will come like a thief in the night, where we will not know until when it happens.  Then everyone will know that Jesus is Lord and everyone will worship Him, whether they want to or not.

Until that happens, I will encourage every Christian to not worry or fret over the end times.  Instead we should live our lives in God’s Will and not focus on trying to interpret things and apply them to events that God Himself did not reveal to His own Son.

The Spirit of Job

Throughout the Old Testament, we find many stories of heroics acts and deeds but we almost never find any real heroes.  Everyone in the Bible comes short of fitting the mold of a perfect hero, where even the greatest man, David, committed adultery and murder.  Job, an obscure tale, is no exception.  He was a man of great wealth, good health, and a large family.  All of this was taken away in a few fell swoops and he was left to sit among trash with little clothing and covered in sores.

His friends come to him and when they see him at a distance, they cry out in sadness and lament the plight of their good friend.  When they reach him, they sit down next to him in silence for seven days.  After this, they engage in a discussion which involves the reasons behind Job’s current condition.  This is where the book picks up.  Usually, in Sunday school or during a sermon, you are told the beginning of the story and maybe the end.  This was humorously portrayed in the show South Park where, upon hearing the beginning from his parents, Kyle commented, “That’s a horrible story.  Why would God destroy a man’s life just to prove a point to Satan?”

But that misses the whole point of the book.  The beginning is a mere introduction to one of the most basic theological discussions that people have struggled with over the centuries.  It is the question of why horrible things happen to good people.  After all, if we are obedient to God, follow after Him and seek His salvation through Jesus, would God not stay his wrath against us?  In truth, He does do this to all of us, because He has reserved judgment until after our death.  But that does not mean, as Job found out, that He does not allow the enemy to mess with us.  Also, the hearts of men are by nature sinful and thus they will cause calamity on others as well.

The dialogues between Job and his friends make up most of the book.  It starts off with Job lamenting his condition and wishing he was dead.  His friends respond by saying that Job has sinned and that this is the reason for Job’s plight.  Job responds by stating that he has done nothing wrong and that he must make his case before God.  He believes that God has ignored Job’s own righteousness and at the same time agrees with his friends that God reserves such judgments for the wicked.  The debate continues back and forth between Job and each of his friends until Job adamantly declares that he has committed no sins.

Job and his friends fail, however, to address the premise of their arguments, that is that God always rewards the righteous and curses the wicked.  This is a lie that is used by the Enemy to further break the faith of the loyal followers of God.  After all, if bad things happen to good people who believe such a lie, then they will lose their faith.  Job very nearly does it seems, although he eventually gets a humbling audience with God.  God loves you and cares about you, but at the same time, we are all subject to the calamities of this world.  While His power can protect us, and He will protect us at times, this is probably a rare occurrence in our lives.  Miracles would not be miracles if they were common, after all.

This is the spirit that permeates much of Christianity and many cults and non-believers.  That if you obey God or follow him, disaster and destruction will always be averted in your life.  Atheists use that reason to cause us to question our faith, I have heard that Jehovah’s Witness followers tend to claim that happiness comes from following God.  I am sure that there are many churches that try and ride the emotional high you get from praising God claim this theology as well.  Televangelist are notorious for the prosperity theology that we all hear about.

These are lies.  While everything we have is allowed by God, because He has the power to take it away, that does not mean that it was given to us by God because of our supposed righteousness.  God gives to each of us on a case-by-case basis as part of His divine plan that is too complex for even His angels to fully comprehend.  It is hard to accept and it is a trap that I find myself falling for as well, so we must always be aware of the falsehood of prosperity theology.