Paul's Passing Thoughts

It can be argued that the least common denominator of life is the freedom of man question. Man was created free and is free. Set against that reality is sin which seeks to enslave man. In between is love which is founded on freewill, and is set against fear.

Mankind is created to be free, and his love must be grounded in freewill. Love without freewill isn’t love. Arranged marriages may be the law in some countries, but it isn’t love…obviously.

From time to time, I hear a profound statement concerning the freedom of the individual which is a metaphysical reality. The first time I heard it was in a Jesse Stone movie played by Tom Selleck. The Paradise city council didn’t like how chief Stone was conducting a murder investigation, and during a meeting with him stated, “Don’t you know we can fire you?!” To which Stone replied, “You can, you can fire me, but you can’t tell me what to do.” In case you can’t grasp the profundity of that script, we get help from a former British spy who told her Nazi captors, “You can execute me, but all you will have is a dead body.” Further mocking them in regard to multiple charges supposedly worthy of death she stated, “Please decide which charge to execute me for because I can only die once.”

Hopefully you get the point; tyranny is completely illogical. The desire to control others cannot be realized; in the final analysis, you can only kill people for being disobedient to your desire to control them which means they never did what you wanted them to do, and you can only kill so many people. Tyrants seem to understand one thing to a point; it takes people to have a country so if you kill everyone you no longer have a country; so, the use of manipulation and propaganda is the preferred method to control people.

No doubt, you can get people to conform to a point politically and in personal relationships through fear, but that isn’t love, and relationships driven by participants being compelled to act in a certain way will always yield ill results.

At the core of this discussion is politics whether in the personal realm or governmental realm. Man is free, but those who want to control others ask, “Should man be allowed freedom?” Is that good or bad for everyone? That debate can only center on one question; “Is man able, or unable?” Hence, tyranny must convince the masses that they are unable. Why are countries defined by an oppressed populous acceptable? Because oppressed people are easy to control. And if the populous is large enough, the ruling elite are still able to extract what they want to fulfill all of their various and sundry lusts.

Therefore, defining the American political realm is very simple; on one side you have those who believe in human ability, and on the other side, you have those manipulated into believing that mankind is toast without a ruling elitist class. These do not understand their own inherent need to be free until it’s too late and they realize they have been scammed. The misery of being enslaved invokes courage because life’s worthlessness without freedom is eventually realized in progressive tyranny which must promise freedom as a way to take it away in the end.

All of this explains Trump Derangement Syndrome; Trump is an Individualist; he believes in the ability of the individual. The fear is that Trump will take away the ruling elitists that protect us. Enter fear. If that damn Trump has his way, we will all be fending for ourselves in a crucible of Capitalism.

Likewise, Church is a political affair driven by control lust. All of its theology is driven by this core value. If mankind is able, and therefore able to have an individual relationship with God, what do we need church authority for? This is why all churches deny the new birth or redefine its true biblical definition; because, even if it can be asserted that the unregenerate are unable, an ability granted by the new birth cancels all the bets. Hence, we can’t have that either.

However, when the basic proposition is wrong, it only gets worse like telling more lies in an attempt to cover for previous lies. This is why church is a confused morass. It is an illogical downward spiral.

So, supposedly, since man is unable, and needs to be “under the authority of godly men,” true love taking place in the church is logically impossible. Whenever you hear churchians love bombing, they are either lying or are misinformed. This is because authority and love are mutually exclusive. It always cracks me up when I hear elders telling people that they are exercising their authority over them out of love. Almost as funny if not so sad is women who believe they are loving their husbands by being in submission to them. Love does things for others because it wants to, not because it has to.

Logically, church orthodoxy must call for a doctrine that presents God as the only one performing love while love-speak on the part of parishioners is mere pretense. In fact, we see this idea of “One Way Love” presented in church often. This presents another problem with those under authority; if authority is truth, why would reason be necessary? Therefore, the idea of “One Way Love,” doesn’t conjure up a pondering that would ask, “Does this mean that even believers are incapable of loving anybody including God?” That’s exactly what it means.

So, now we need another lie to cover for that lie. And so it goes. Why would God love mankind if it’s a one way love in which God doesn’t receive any love in return? Or, if He does, it’s a love that He manufactured for Himself while falsely stating that it is coming from someone else, yet, the false pretense must be exposed so He gets all of the glory…or something like that. Answer: “For God’s self-love and to glorify Himself.” In the end, this downward illogical spiral must strip mankind of all merit requiring further doctrines to connect the downward ideological dots. So, let’s make all reality a metaphysical narrative written by God for His self-glory because He loves Himself. That’s called “historical-redemptive hermeneutics.”

This, of necessity, has God creating evil to make Himself look better to Himself. In order to magnify God’s love to Himself, He supposedly created evil so He could bring Himself more glory by loving a bunch of loveless humanity because He loves Himself. And because He created mankind with total inability, He must show His love towards mankind by enabling some to see their inability to love while leaving others to the blindness that He created them with. Therefore, salvation is defined by a profession that one, in fact, cannot love but can only accept God’s one way love. Be sure of this; true church orthodoxy calls for man’s zero sum merit as the only true gospel. Consequently, this requires predeterminist doctrines. And I might mention, the more you digress into this stuff the more it looks like run-of-the-mill mythology though dressed in scholarly garb.

Of course, what would be much more believable is an election where man is unable, but God’s elect are enabled through the new birth to love God and others. But again, that doesn’t solve the problem of people needing church, right? To the extent that you are unable, you need to be ruled over.

This also goes hand in hand with doctrines that make salvation progressive as set against salvation being final and the church merely equipping the once saved always saved for service. Again this idea would limit needed authority.

Authority lust is what drives church doctrine.

This makes church parishioners complicit in many lies and deceptions, but I will close this post with one example. Week after week after week, the total depravity of the saints is preached, yet, when an elitist pastor gets caught with both hands in the cookie jar, he is forced to resign. This is done strictly for purposes of protecting the narrative that church is society’s moral compass. Parishioners know this is a lie, and more and more society is realizing that it is blatant deception as well.

If church is a “hospital for sick people,” why would the chief surgeon have to resign for being sick?

paul