On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 8:47 AM, Don Rogers <derog1@comcast.net> wrote:
Thanks John, that’s a good tutorial, covering the very broad scope of the elements of economics and related subjects. But if our quest is to identify the issue more narrowly from a moral standpoint, it may require a simpler format. Demonstrating how the present dilemma came to be and it’s effect on each of us over time might bring the otherwise dismal subject matter closer to each listener’s wallet.
It can be shown simpler. But I'm not sure how much more is needed to convince that theft is going on. Do you need more proof of theft? More simple material or more advanced material can be provided if needed.
Much harder is to focus the attention away from the effect on each of us and our own wallets. The internet and books are full of men screaming about the theft and the murder it enables, and how horrible the future can't help but being. Then they tell you how you can protect yourself from calamity, or make huge profits from everyone else's coming poverty and misery. What they are silent on, is any sense of responsibility. Since they refuse to discuss what is considered "religion" or anything non-neutral in specific punishments from crimes, they cannot offer any real solutions.
In this, they show they are at the mercy of the Church. Very similar to how the Church has accepted the obliteration of substance and measure in money, leaving us with only non-nonsensical quantities -- so the Church has abandoned two of the essential principles needed to think constructively about politics, crime, and punishment. We may think we are identifying something as criminal and wrong -- but we really aren't unless we can be confident what punishment the Bystanders need to coerce upon the criminal, AND what will happen to the Bystanders if they fail to punish the criminal the right way. Just as ineffective or dangerous as trying to utilize quantities only in money, so limiting law enforcement/political discussions to the wrongness of human behavior is useless or worse than useless.
Case in point is the ProLife, Anti-Abortion "movement" of the last 30 years. They cry about how precious the baby would be if you didn't kill it, regale you with pictures of how sweet they look alive, and how horrible they look ripped apart. They detail all the ways murdering your baby is WRONG.
And stop.
But notice the full, tri-partite way in which God deals with the core and foundation of crime and punishment, and all sword-bearing human government....
5 Surely I will require [b]your lifeblood; [c]from every beast I will require it. And [d]from every man,[e]from every man’s brother I will require the life of man.
1 God starts with the end. Here's is what will happen to the society, the population if you don't do what I command. I do require this from you. If you do not punish the criminal who has violated My rights, My covenant -- I will employ your brother/neighbor to punish and violate you. "You" as in the bystanding culture/society/population. The Bible has many stories of how this works out in history. We see how God judges in the lives of Abimelech, David, Ahab, and whole societies.
“Whoever sheds man’s blood,
2 Definition of the crime. Within this phrasing for murder is included all the other ways of taking a man's life, later reflected in the 10 commandments. Don't steal a man's life consisting of his brain waves and heart beat. don't steal his life consisting of the great blessing of his 'helper suitable" - his wife. Don't steal any of his temporal stewardship over property of any kind (including his body and freedom to think, speak, move, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it) , don't steal his reputation or good name by falsely accusing him of wrong -- and don't even think about it (covet). Each of these areas takes away some aspect of a man's life.
By man his blood shall be shed,
3 The punishment for the crime. The punishment fits the crime, but always defer to how God's revelation directs you to punish, because you can't rely on your natural wisdom to always understand what "fit" will mean.
For in the image of God
He made man.
There is a reason not to commit crime in the first place. It is a smashing against God by smashing at what is reachable -- man-in-His-image. There is a reason bystanders must punish -- because it is unthinkable that God's goodness and power would not be defended and vindicated, and His nature revealed to the world in this way. There is a reason societies will suffer if they fail in this calling. Because of the nature of the universe you cannot help afflicting yourself with unintended consequences if you act like what is there is not there, and pretend that what is not there - is real and good and dependable. The only thing worse than wickedness, is that wickedness be ignored and blessed.
When you think about it, it is only when men care more about God's rights than their own -- that civilizations actually enjoy maximum individual rights, freedom, and prosperity.
I think here is the key to dominion in the area of money, banking, welfare, and government. If we only think about our own gain and rights -- the personal consequences to us, our heads will be too impressed by the plunder the wicked offer us by their breaking of God's law, and distorting the representation of God's sure and just consequences that result.
One question that always comes to my mind when thinking about all of this is. If constant debasing and printing more and more “money” has failed so far to bring catastrophe to the world economies, at what point will it all implode and what will that look like for you and I?
Better to understand more of what has occurred in the last several centuries and decades to other men, and, most importantly, to the thankfulness and reverence to God. Remember what a corrupt Roman Church did to Jesus and His Body prior and during the Reformation.
Remember what has happened to continents of people prior and following the 1600's and later when usury came back into favor and fractional-reserve banking took hold. Banks became able to increasingly manipulate nations into wars by debt, and sink them in debt by wars.Think of what we have done to the Russians and the Chinese, and Eastern Europe by the hand of the communists. Think of what we have done and are doing to the likes of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, spewing depleted uranium across their landscapes. Think of our massive inflation plunder through our "world-reserve currency" which is leaving whole nations of men in a failing standard of living while we are fattened for the slaughter at their expense.
Yet better, always, to think of the offense of men volunteering to join in the false witness, denying God's truth, the murder, smashing at God's image, and the theft, offending against God's sovereign ownership and stewardship assignments, coercing and interrupting men on their way to please God with their life and service. Think of men prostrating themselves and trusting, as a slutty wife, adulterating away from a strong, loving husband, and fawning and worshiping after lying, abusing, cruel men eager to destroy her body and soul.
Think of laboriously digging great tanks in toxic, cracked rock, and hauling great reservoirs of stale, stagnant water, so as to prefer it's dirty, leaking uselessness over the cool, clear, life-giving, artesian fountain that never fails.
Seek ye first the government of God's Messiah, and the water, and the food, and the protection, and the clothes, and the gadgets, and the health-care, and the all these things, will be added unto you -- and in this life -- persecution. Because it is through much tribulation that we must enter the government of God. He did not say "take up your cross" for nothing. It is only in the denying of ourselves, our profit, our comfort, and preferring His prerogative in the dispersal of His wholly-owned assets, and His honor, and His ethical authority to define crime and punishment -- that we discover, as did the Covenanters, that in spite of our laughable hopelessness at inadequate resources -- that, for the emperor, "none go a warfare upon their own charges". He will provide for you. He will fight for you.
