"'Cause, you're Oompa Loompas and Trumpkins, and stuff. Just like Kevin Williamson said. And stuff."

Note I left at Steve Hays Triablogue blog under a post where he psychoanalyzes Trump supporters finding them to be just exactly what he's read National Review saying them to be:

c.t.8/28/2015 7:21 PM

Shit, you said Trumpkins, mimicking the NRO establishment tools who consider themselves the 'smart set.' Williamson, Goldberg, et al., just got skewered by the Weekly Standard. And, no, it didn't make them look cool. Now delete this 'cause I said shit. Fuck Trump smokes out the putative conservative tools.

Language warning, oh, too late.

They'll delete it, usually with a note saying something like: "We've informed you prior that you're not welcome here."

I know, dang, I'm not allowed to be a part of the Triablogue experience. [I had an insult here, but I remove it due to not wanting to be mean. People are who they are, and are where they are, and, we all survive the abortion odds, walk on grass for the first time, wonder about our place in the world...]

I'll just end here with: Kevin Williamson is not someone you want to emulate, Steve. Good on socialism, not so good on discernment of his own inanity.

Level of Being

"Biblical support for the above: Matthew 5:20 KJV For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. W."

W., I would also use Jesus' statement about how you can't pour new wine into old bottles. This clearly means to increase understanding we must increase *capacity* for understanding. That is increasing level of being, not just knowledge. Our level of being is exposed by our limits. To give a biblical example just so people can know what level of being refers to: how quick are we to answer a perceived insult with resentment rather than waiting on God and engaging in Christian new thinking such as love your enemy, turn the other cheek, and seeing in ourselves what we dislike in others? This is an example of what measures level of being.

c.t.

Another "'Cuz...and stuff" Critical Text defender

A Critical Text useful idiot was challenging me saying, "Well, Reformed men have no problem with these modern versions, and I think they know what they're talking about."

I replied: "The Reformed you know are probably academic-oriented, educated in culturally Marxist institutions, adopting post-modern attitudes - and mocking approaches to true believers - with a total lack of self-awareness or critical engagement. One of the poisons which gets put in their mouths, and which they swallow obediently, is the notion that they stand above the text, and the text needs them more than they need it. You can stand above a scholar-constructed text. You have to look up to a received text. For the latter you have to acknowledge something higher than you has given the text to you. You have to be grateful to something higher than you."

Then he said: "'Cuz, James White, and stuff."

So I replied: "When did the notion that we needed a text *constructed* from divergent manuscripts come about? As opposed to a text *edited* from a received body of similar manuscripts? When did this notion occur? At what point in history? The counter-Reformation? The so-called Enlightenment? The 1800s? When? Answer this question first, and defend it, or you're not serious."

No answer was forthcoming. And stuff.

Continual weirdness in the Christian blogosphere and forumsphere

After reading numerous articles on how scientific studies using satellites and what not have found that the earth appears to be at the center of the universe, or at least in a privileged position, I began to look around for Christian sites on the internet that comment on the subject, but really could not find anything that approached the subject head on [and a note here: I just checked the Puritanboard, a site that has numerous people who will intelligently debate geocentrism all day, and it has zero posts or references to these recent satellite discoveries, that is telling; when something seems truly supernatural, in this case within the context of a current paradigm, many if not most Christians seem to scatter or go deer in the headlights]. So I recalled that there is a Reformed Christian by the name of John Byl who has a PhD. in astronomy, so I went to his blog and put a very kindly worded question to him:

c.t.July 12, 2015 at 10:13 AM

Dr. Byl, general request... As a Christian with a PhD. in Astronomy could you speak to - perhaps clear up - the recent stories of how the Planck Satellite and previous mappings of the cosmic microwave background have in some way shown that the Earth seems to be the center of the universe? The problem for the average Christian who is obviously interested in such a claim is the science is beyond the average layman. Could you write something on it for us, a general audience? Thank you in advance...

OK, so I waited the better part of a month for a reply. During that time he made other posts to his blog, so I know he was active on it, yet I got no response. So I wrote this:

c.t.July 30, 2015 at 2:13 AM

Trying to guess your reason for no reply...is this not a subject that interests you? Or, what... It seems like a rather big thing that recent satellite mappings of the universe would show the earth to be in at least a privileged position? Other recent scientific studies seem to show the same. Was wondering what your take on it all might be. Can't seem to find Christian responses on it.

To this he finally replied:

john byl July 30, 2015 at 7:27 AM

Hello C.T.:
I haven't replied because (1) your comment is off topic and (2) I reply only to real people. See my comment rules below. If you want to pursue this, please send me an email.

Just, ******* weird. The usual weird I've come to expect from Christians on the internet. It's *kind of a big subject*, no??? Kinda. "your comment is off topic" and "I reply only to real people". So what about these recent satellite findings that THE EARTH IS AT THE CENTER OF THE FREAKING UNIVERSE!!!!!???????

"You're not presenting your question in the correct manner. This is a blog. There are correct methods to approach me with a question." I won't bother with your email address because I doubt you have anything interesting to say at this point anyway.

Here's what I see going on...

Currently today in the United States many people formerly thought to be conservative have been smoked out as establishment Republicans, which pretty much is the same as being a member of the devil Democrat Party. A non-politician, a builder, i.e. somebody who actually produces and does things, entering the presidential race has done this.

I see the same thing among Christians. When something truly strange like scientific studies that show the earth to actually be at the center of the universe appears it smokes out the Christians who are just pretending (for whatever reason). The very fact they have no interest in the subject at all gives them away. It's like if Jesus returned next hour they would still be thinking of gassing up their RV to get to that conference in Seattle where they are to deliver a paper on the return of Jesus. The real thing happening? No interest. What? Actually believe all that stuff?

Major division of the faith

An active division of the faith the mainstream or establishment church ignores or is ignorant of is the division between thinking about the faith vs. being on spiritual ground and acting in the faith.

The latter is being in the cauldron vs. being outside the cauldron.

The Christian academic professor, for instance, writing, thinking teaching is outside the cauldron.

The Christian practicing presence, and prayer, and discipline (such as fasting from features of his fallen nature) in a spiritual landscape that is default hostile is inside the cauldron.

Being inside the cauldron develops being. Staying outside the cauldron can give an environment to gain knowledge of the faith, but without ever being in the cauldron that knowledge has a ceiling; tends to veer into areas fallen nature desires it move into; and can actually go backwards from the sound basics of the faith.

Knowledge and being are both necessary. Being in the cauldron is necessary. Spiritual warfare is necessary.

Genesis 6:2 and Reformed seminary types

[From an email.]

Most all modern day Reformed seminary types stay away from the angelic view [that fallen angels mated with human women]. It's like a thing that will get them cast out of the guild. Because it's a stepping into the mesoteric realm. You admit angels in that passage then you have to defend it, and defending it means going to Jude, Enoch, the entire biblical storyline of Satanic defilement of the bloodline, attempted, between Adam and Christ, etc., etc.

Meredith Kline came close to adopting the angelic view, but he said fallen angels took over the bodies of the kings and leaders and mated with women that way, but in saying that the fallen angel view is possible he made an insight that really cemented the fallen angel view I hold as the accurate one. He pointed out that Satan counterfeits God's plan, and in having fallen angels mate with humans to make hybrids he was counterfeiting the incarnation of Christ, fathered by the Holy Spirit on a human woman, Mary.

The argument for fallen angels is strong. Very, very strong. The ancient Jews, the early church fathers, 1Enoch quoted in the Epistle of Jude, etc.

Liberal theologians are prone to downgrade the notion and doctrine of sin. Conservative theologians are more prone to unconsciously deny supernatural elements of the Bible. The former become practical atheists; the latter become practical deists.

A request to followers of the Critical Text deception as it becomes more exposed

I want to make a request to followers of James White and the Critical Text movement. Whether you are part of his close following or just have read his book or listened to him on the internet, or if you are part of the Puritanboard and have defended him, etc., I make this request of all of you. As you go through the psychological stages one goes through when they learn that the person they've been looking up to is not a person worth looking up to, please - please - don't then take out your frustration and disillusionment with the word of God itself. Don't abandon the Bible. Don't decide that you're no longer going to read the Bible or believe the Bible or live by the words of the Bible. This would be giving the victory to the Devil. This is what the Devil wants, that even in the exposure and defeat of his workers the effect is the same: getting people to be dispirited about and turn away from the living word of God. Go through the psychological stages, but keep your eye on the true target of your increasing wrath: those who have wickedly set into motion a plan to dispirit people about the word of God, to preach that there is error in the word of God, that God has not preserved His word in any meaningful way, all to get you to turn away from God's word and back to the word of man and Satan.

A glorious book (a golden book) that has to be realized

There is a book that is so good, like a masterwork by Bach or Mozart, that gets lost in the vast mix of Puritan works, and also is often described as simple, as in for beginners, but that is like saying Mozart's 41st symphony is for beginners, whatever that means.

I speak of Thomas Watson's A Body of Practical Divinity. It's made up of 3 vols. Body of Divinity, Lord's Prayer, and Ten Commandments. See excellent ebook editions of them from Monergism at the bottom of this page here.

They're all three linked at the bottom of that page. For an example read Watson describe the Kingdom of God in the book The Lord's Prayer. In the contents the link is: 'Secondly, The kingdom of heaven implies a glorious fruition of all good.' Read through that. Imagine if any other religious tradition had such a work (such a teaching!), imagine how it would be their golden book.

There truly are three unique folk classics of the Puritan era. I haven't seen this as clearly as lately.

1. Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan
2. Human Nature In its Fourfold State - Thomas Boston
3. A Body of Practical Divinity - Thomas Watson

(The A.V. 1611 could be included in that, as a translation, it has 'folk' qualities as well, meaning, at the level of the people in tune with the seasonal and daily rhythms and activities of the natural world...that plainness and common-sense and deep, simple understanding, with not the absence of poetry and vision and power.)

This 'folk' quality of Watson's book is really what causes people to classify it differently from other doctrinal works. That 'simple' or beginner's work quality. Again, like saying a masterwork by Bach or Mozart is simple.

James White, mental patient

James White is a pure mental patient. Look at the last third of this.

You have to have been around somebody with Narcissistic Personality Disorder to know how that disorder rivals every other disorder in the book for obnoxiousness. They become a fortress. Unreachable. They never get better. It's a tragic disorder in that sense. But they take first prize in being obnoxious.

In White's case it is all turbo charged by the fact that his self-image is of a world class intellectual.

It's best that people not even deal with him in any way at this point. (It's funny that he throws the Puritanboard under his bus in this latest video, and he has 95% supporters on that forum.)

People with White's disorder will gather around themselves followers. They become a kind of egregore. When a person has zero self-awareness and a glass-eyed like confidence in everything they say or do it attracts a certain type of weak follower.

_______
A further note: Narcissists hate people who can 'see' them. They go ballistic towards people who can see them. It kind of makes them implode. Kent Brandenburg can see White. Will Kinney can see white. Two of the more calm and polite people on the internet, and White talks about them like they're wild bomb throwers.

A little vignette of White's psychology: Recently a radio show from my part of the world, Armstrong and Getty, began playing in syndication in Arizona. White has been listening to it and remarking on things he's heard on it. It matches his politics pretty much. But for a stretch of time White stated he was very upset with the show because they kept talking about NBC's Brian Williams. White didn't like that. They were mocking Brian Williams and his self-promoting lies. "Enough with the Brian Williams talk!" White said waving his hand over his forehead. Why did White get upset about this? Because White does what Brian Williams has done in his life. Being reminded of Brian Williams, for White, is like a woman seeing another woman at a gathering wearing the same dress. The inflated self-image, the little untruths and exaggerations in stories about world travel (White once stated he did a debate that went over all of Europe...well, cable access potentially has a large audience too). White in the Ukraine during a time it was in the news: "I was at an intersection and there were armed thugs acting like they were in control, and it got a little sketchy..." He most likely never left the airport hotel's community room. Etc. He goes to South Africa..."I'll be ministering to South Africa this fall..." He can reach up and take hold of a galaxy in his hand. "Excuse me while I kiss the sky..."

Kent Brandenburg once said this of White, capturing one of White's more prominent mental traits: "White is the kid in the classroom who slams his pencil down on his desk to let everyone know he finished the test first."

The practice of the faith

1. Conscious Labor

2. Intentional Suffering

If you understand these two things you'll understand the true practice of the Christian faith.

What the churchians teach always comes down to dead ritual. "Drink grape juice and eat crackers! And, oh, yes, just sit there and don't worry about knowing anything, just be 'under the care of' these 'ordained' elders." Who don't know shit. That's like 'being under the care of' Vinnie the Bouncer at the Sports Club Bar and Pizzeria; or daddy the minivan driver who thinks everybody who doesn't look like him is trying to molest his children. Neither of them have ever done much about the shallowness they were born with and born into.

A Christian is a prophet, priest, and king. Where do kings gather? If you knew history (i.e., churchian elder, if you weren't so damn shallow) you'd know the only place you're likely to see a gathering of kings is on a battlefield. The spiritual battlefield in this case. I don't know what's going on in that churchianity church of yours. It looks like a nursery full of grown ups on the spiritual battlefield. Just where the devil wants you. Off the King's Highway and docile.

I'll give a thumbnail description of intentional suffering. There's fake suffering, there is real suffering, and there is intentional suffering. People indulge in fake suffering most of the time (resentments, whining, making requirements on everybody and everything, boredom, etc.). Then there is real suffering, i.e. suffering that can't be avoided, but it can be redemptive (illness, injury, loss, seeing tragedy or suffering, etc.). Then intentional suffering; i.e. suffering that never happens as a part of life or mechanically, but has to be conscious (loving your enemy, seeing in yourself what you dislike in others, replacing gratitude for resentment for everything all the time, etc.).

One note: illness or injury that is real suffering can morph into fake suffering if the person indulges it in that direction. There are other caveats to all the above, but you just have to be savvy and see them.

If you have eyes to see you can see how intentional suffering is visually seen in what is called the Lord's Supper, that visual parable. You in effect eat your suffering, in the event/moment/circumstance, and join with your Savior on the cross. The more unjust the act or word against you the more real your intentional suffering. The effect though is awakening and being more conscious and not wailing and pouring dust on your head.

So what then is conscious labor? And how is it like baptism, or baptism of the Holy Spirit? More like intake of the Holy Spirit. (We can have the Spirit by degree. Jesus was the only human being who could have the Spirit "without measure.") Conscious labor is not as easy to describe in a short paragraph. It's basically the opposite of sleepwalking through life (and fascinated with shiny objects and other things), which is what fallen humanity does, whether street dweller or king, street sweeper or famed surgeon. All human beings sleepwalk through life. It takes effort to not sleepwalk through life, hence the 'labor' in conscious labor. I'm going to take the easy way out and direct you to a book titled the Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution by Ouspensky to learn about conscious labor. If you're scared of that, then fine, go back to your nursery. [Note: 'evolution' in the title does not refer to mechanical, Darwinian evolution. And, the book is method, not dogma.]

_______
Another necessary note: with Ouspensky's books, the main ones being Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution, the Fourth Way, and the more 'chaff-y' and narrative In Search of the Miraculous, you *have* to get the actual paperback editions. The Kindle editions are horrible and missing illustrations and just, again, horrible in more ways than that.

I'm giving this information because people who have read my blog here and there over the years need to know why I'm so weird compared to the mainstream Christian blogger types.

One thing is I've always been pulled between two different languages, Work language, and Christian language. You can't mix languages. Mixing them downgrades both. In the least you have to know both languages to a very full degree of understanding to begin to use them together. Hardly anybody on the internet has a real understanding of the Work ideas, practices, and goals (you'll mostly run into cult use of the language on the one hand, and shallow New Age use of it on the other); and having a complete understanding of the Bible and biblical doctrine is also rare among Christians let alone non-Christians.

The problem with both groups is a lack of development with higher influences (imaginative literature, history, philosophy, music, art, religion, science, and everything that falls into one or another of those categories; also physical development, athletics or performing arts). And it has to be a unique - balanced - development; and, another big thing: inwardly motivated. I.e. balanced and motivated by a search for real understanding, not to get a passing grade or to impress people in conversation. It has to 'take'. It has to start to build a unique center in you, out of which emerges the beginning of real self-awareness. Also conscience. Or the unburying of conscience.

You can read a library and get nothing from it. You can learn at the foot of Jesus and get it all wrong.

Anyway...

Conscious labor and intentional suffering are more Gurdjieffian phrases (I was never a Gurdjieffian, but he was more in tune with a kind of Christianity of his youth and geographical area (Armenia? or thereabouts), so his language could sound closer to Christian language; Philokalia type Christianity). As a Christian I wouldn't recommend Gurdjieff's books, you might as well read Rabelais. But he stated Ouspensky put the teaching into sound form. He was impressed. The New Agers like Gurdjieff's works more because they aren't really looking for practical understanding; and they want to avoid that anyway because it inevitably leads - As Gurdjieff knew - to Christian teaching itself. You find yourself on the spiritual battlefield and you realize: I need the armor of God. Gurdjieff as evangelist is the father who throws the child into the pool and says, "Swim!" It's unique evangelism. He throws you onto the spiritual battlefield, naked and ignorant and weak, and says: "Figure it out!" Suicide, alcoholism, lifelong pagan/occult/New Age idiocy... You need the real armor of God. Once you have that the Work language puts you at a different level, but...TWO POINTS:

1. You're still a beaten down, smashed up apparent loser to the rest of humanity. You don't grow antlers the more you develop in a real way.

2. Regeneration by the word and the Spirit also puts one on the spiritual battlefield, whether you try to get there or not. So, you need the armor of God even if you never learned any extra-biblical teaching, sophisticated or not. And read Ephesians 6:10-18. Doctrine is the armor of God. Hard biblical doctrine, associated by name with Calvinism. See it, accept it, value it, it then changes you - reorientates you - internally. It makes you God centered and not man-centered. It makes you a fully armed soldier of Christ in the spiritual realm as well as here under the sun.

Dishonesty on race

This post is a good example of the crap Reformed types write on the subject of race. It bleeds fear of the world.

Let's start with these two basic premises:

1. Black people, yellow people, and white people are very, very different. Even at the *soul* level. Physically obviously. Physically to the degree of kind.

2. Individuals who have the Holy Spirit in them, though, whatever color/race, appear to be very similar, cultural differences aside.

Colloquially white people used to refer to Asians as yellow monkeys, and also white people used to call black people boys (as in not men; and if they did something man-like they were praised as if doing something that was above their natural character). On the other hand nobody was referring to the white man in animal terms; and nobody was calling the white man boy.

Sensing an animal quality or limitation of full development in a people/race is sensing something at the soul level.

It's the spirit that determines if a person or group is good or evil in the main. I.e. treacherous and violent or not, exuding a satanic ingratitude or not, full of the devil's pride and arrogance or not, asserting entitlement to be lawless or not. Etc.

The core question is: are Asians descended from Adam? Are black people descended from Adam? If yes has there been mixture to a Satanic degree with perhaps animal and/or fallen angelic 'blood' (yeah, however that works, and maybe just evil spirit effects flesh)?

Why did God tell Paul not to go into east Asia? Why was Ham's son Canaan cursed to be a lowly slave (Ham, the name to become associated with the black peoples of the earth)? Specifically Ham's son, as if to say that line of people?

Are black people also associated with the mark of Cain? God made him look different?

Wasn't Adam white (ruddy complected)? Weren't Israelites, people of Shem, white? Aren't Japhethites (Europeans) white? Where do far east Asians fit into the racial scheme post flood? Are they pre-Adamites? More animal than human in their soul (unless individually they are given the Holy Spirit)?

Isn't there a defilement of humanity - the pure line from Adam - by Satan and the fallen angels involved in all this (the difference in soul mentioned above)? Wheat and tares?

Isn't it maybe true that the feeling of abomination in the sight of a white girl with a black man is not solely racial and could very well be because it's sensed as a reenactment of Eve and Satan, or the daughters of men and the fallen angels?

The royal bloodline from Adam to Jesus had to be kept pure, didn't it? A big part of the history of the Israelites/Jews. Keep that royal bloodline pure to the birth of the Messiah. Satan tried to attack and defile that bloodline didn't he? So this is all a part of the history of redemption, isn't it?

So say it. When you fear God alone you don't fear man or the world. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

ps- I don't usually run a string of questions together. That is common conspiracy style rhetoric. In my case here I am just tipping my hand that I don't know the answers. I have some data points and am presenting them. Others seem to want to ignore them.