"Have it Your Way" 'Christianity' for Today

By C.L. Bruton

Ours is a world, especially in the west, where its participants have long been endowed with every expectation that they can be whatever it is they want to be, do whatsoever they want to do, have whatever they want to have whenever they choose to have it, they can believe whatever they want to believe having been assured that they have made it to 3rd base when all along they were born there.  This machination has moved volition to a new longitude exponentially expanding its intended even realistic scope and breadth.  Those who propagate this concept do so without ever having to fuss with either quantifying or acknowledging the greater world around us which so inconveniently weighs into our reality.  This aberration has leeched itself into the western evangelical creating a visible irony of those in the 'church' living out the 'have it your way' doctrine in what could be in greater part a military state.  We want what we want minus the pain.  Pain even suffering live on a longitude of physicality even emotion.  In the broader sense, pain and suffering are those things that we don't get and we desperately want, or those things that we do get and we desperately don't want some of which, possibly most of which of which, are in varying degrees self-authored and all of which are couched in the notion of fairness or justice however fraudulent an aberration it may be, in which the greater the injustice the more likely there is an absence of a perpetrator. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.L. Bruton
• Release date: Mar 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393809586

Book preview

Have it Your Way  'Christianity' for Today

The Sin of Hubris

Have it your way ‘Christianity’ for today

Slothfulness

Deception...........................................................

100-year dollar fraud

Disinformation

Incriminating innuendo

Is Knowledge protection?

Hitler’s pope

consensus

Monoculture – Empire building

Gaslighting

God’s will

The New Testament church

LORD

The etymology of ‘church’

Bereans

Rest

The Mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven

Doctrine of the Tithe

The Cheerful Giver

Tithing in the new covenant

Point #1

Point #2

Point #3

Point #4

Point #5

Point #6

Point #7

Point #8

Point #9

Point #10

Point #11

Point #12

Point #13

Point #14

Point #15

Point #16

Conclusion:

Lost 10 tribes 

YEHOVAH Punishes Israel

The Fall of Israel

Jeremiah the spook

The Lord's Love for Israel

Dan a Serpent's Trail

Covenant of grace

Remnant Delivered

Mystery of the kingdom of heaven

New World; Erets Acheret

Primacy of the New Testament

‘New Covenant ‘church’’

New Testament ‘church’

Who Observes Sabbath?

Doctrine of Grace

Ignatius Conspiracy

Are you liberated?

Trinitarianism

HISTORY

Prophecies of YEHOSHUA

Original.............................................................

amygdala hijacking

Two Witnesses

Religion by birth

The Equality of Peace

Avoid introspection

Primacy of sin nature

Survey of Job

Pandemic of Deception

Application.......................................................

Ours is a world, especially in the west, where its participants have long been endowed with every expectation that they can be whatever it is they want to be, do whatsoever they want to do, have whatever they want to have whenever they choose to have it, they can believe whatever they want to believe having been assured that they have made it to 3rd base when all along they were born there.  This machination has moved volition to a new longitude exponentially expanding its intended even realistic scope and breadth.  Those who propagate this concept do so without ever having to fuss with either quantifying or acknowledging the greater world around us which so inconveniently weighs into our reality.  This aberration has leeched itself into the western evangelical creating a visible irony of those in the 'church' living out the 'have it your way' doctrine in what could be in greater part a military state.  We want what we want minus the pain.  Pain even suffering live on a longitude of physicality even emotion.  In the broader sense, pain and suffering are those things that we don't get and we desperately want, or those things that we do get and we desperately don't want some of which, possibly most of which of which, are in varying degrees self-authored and all of which are couched in the notion of fairness or justice however fraudulent an aberration it may be, in which the greater the injustice the more likely there is an absence of a perpetrator.  ‘Life is fair’ finds its origins in deception meant to author faulty thinking moving forward surviving within the mathematical certainty of compounding ultimately ushering us into lawlessness.  This is an intentional canvass of the greater world around us that vast cesspool of deception in which we live.  Deception resides in the locale where we are unaware that we are unaware having long since relinquished our humility only to resist ever employing personal accountability.  Deception is that place where we do not know, that place where we are incapable of knowing what we do not know, the land of the unknown unknown.  All of us in varying degrees suffer from the Dunning & Kruger effect which has left us among the majority who experience self-inflicted violence in the form of confidence beyond that of a subject matter expert leaving us too stupid to know we are stupid.  My experience with deception is informing my judgment.

Deception coupled with the malady of the mind that of the fallibility and malleability of memory along with the Dunning-Kruger effect; 'if your incompetent you can't have the self-awareness to know you are incompetent' or people who are too stupid to know how stupid they are.  These lead to the ever-growing disparity of our story which has in many ways disconnected with reality...   Moreover, for how many centuries now has man attempted to not only understand how the mind works but to both manipulate it and describe it via ever changing metaphors the current one being the computer.  There is some irony lost on this pursuit within the confines of those against Divine design.

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I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.  Socrates, from Plato Apology

Those who think they know never learn.  ~Tao Te Ching

Let's be honest, every generation would have us believe that they know.  If you are a Baby Boomer or Gen X for example interacting with a Millennial or Gen Z it is highly likely you grasp this reality only too well.  As a father of a Gen Z I can honestly say that I am in direct competition with Google the contemporary emporium of retail knowledge the grand bazaar of information.  What is interesting is that when we employ information, we deem knowledge we have data mined from Google it is acceptable to plagiarize only to represent it as our own.  At best we might acknowledge we read it on a Google search.  Every generation knows not only better they know categorically more than the generation preceding.  The following is a world map drawn by Johan Schoner which at the time of its rendering was the most advanced understanding of geography.  The year was 1520 a mere 500 years ago subsequent to those who believed the world flat and anyone who disputed this reality was labeled a heretic.  Notice North & South America...  the point is no generation is aware that they are unaware nor are they capable of knowing that they do not know what they do not know, those unknown unknowns.  Every generation beginning with Adam & Eve has found themselves completely unaware of the plethora of deception which permeates their mind invading their thoughts corrupting their contemplations obstructing rational thought. 

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Pride is your greatest enemy; humility is your greatest friend.  ~John R.W. Stott

God sends no one away empty except those who are full of themselves.  ~D.L. Moody

The Sin of Hubris

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Full Steam ahead, really?  This example of self-importance couched in fatal certainty is the manifesto of the western evangelical a vivid tell of deception.  What impairs us, what ushers our dispatch extinguishing the light of our lamps lives in the unknown unknown that which we are I fear terminally unaware that we are unaware by virtue of deception that longitude where it is not possible that we can know what we do not know as we press the pearl of understanding into the mud with our hooves.  It was not the ice above the water that sunk the Titanic the unsinkable pleasure cruiser it was their fatal certainty having long since alleviating them of their humility, accountability leaving them in fatal certainty.  The Titanic is a multidimensional apologue of the greater ‘church’ at large.  It was unsinkable = fatal certainty.  It was a pleasure cruiser = Burger King religion of ‘have it your way’ it’s all good.  It was known yet their demise would come by the unseen and willful unknown of the growlers or bergy bits in their path.  We must be willing to ask how the bergy bits got in our path?  Were they self-authored? 

This book will at great length seek to understand the etymology of the primacy of sin that which is the underlying causation of sin, of pride which is sin in subsequent pages.  We will for now proceed in the primacy of sin.

It is curious how the great sin, the progeny of sin, the threshold through which all sin enters, pride gets absolutely no play time in the current evangelical theater the same is true of its antithesis humility which begs the question, WHY?  It would appear that pride has gone through a rebranding becoming a new and improved version of itself only to be embraced by the evangelical as a virtue.  It is not lost on any of us how pride impoverishes us of our humility while quickening our courage.  Pride has been for centuries a mantle, a robe of eminence and esteem with the rich, powerful, successful, famous, and even among the high society religious hirelings.  What is novel is how the masses have come to covet the very thing they for so long loathed that single solitary thing that oppressed them over generations.  Somehow, we find solace in the notion that people are basically good, truth be told, most people are narcissistic in varying degrees.  What is narcissism if it is not pride?  C.S. Lewis also refers to pride as ‘the great sin’.  Lewis writes in summary of the great saints throughout the ages in Mere Christianity:

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According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind...

... it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.[i]

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Pride is observed in the Law of 1st mention in the Garden encounter with the serpent.  The consequences today are just as real, every bit as severe for us as they were for Adam & Eve.  What is life really?  Were we to distill it down to the first in the ingredient list what would we find?  Clearly, we discern even contemplate what we the formed are too He who formed us.  If this life is anything it begins and ends with relationships with both others and with Elohim, our maker.  What would our lives look like were we devoid of relationships were our lives purged of any and all of them? 

If you struggle with the prospect that life at its core is relational consider if you will how it begins to cave in on itself when we are denied the most basic of life’s pleasures. 

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Solitary confinement is prison within prison the size of a horse stall furnished with a toilet, bed, and sink.  Food is delivered through a slot in the door.  Some refer to it as sensory deprivation.  In a study conducted at McGill University male graduate students were paid to engage in a sensory deprivation experiment lasting six weeks.  None lasted more than seven days.  Most if not all lost the ability to think clearly about anything for any length of time while several began suffering from hallucinations.  One man only saw dogs, and one only eyeglasses of various types.  Harvard Medical School study of inmates confined in solitary and found more than 30% were actively psychotic and suicidal.  Grassian concluded that solitary confinement can cause specific psychiatric syndromes, characterized by hallucinations; panic attacks; overt paranoia; diminished impulse control; hypersensitivity to external stimuli; and difficulties with thinking, concentration and memory. Some develop crippling obsessions.  One inmate developed an obsession with his inability to feel like his bladder was fully emptied.  He literally spent hours even all day standing in front of the toilet.  He could not do anything but focus on that missing feeling of emptiness. Clearly, solitary with its incredibly high concern for suicide establishes that we were created to be social beings and when we are denied this our life becomes a vacuum, we cannot fill prompting us to look for the exits as life is no longer life.

There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account.  There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.  ~ Mark Twain

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The first and worst cause of errors that abound in our day and age is spiritual pride. This is the main door by which the devil comes into the hearts of those who are zealous for the advancement of Christ. It is the chief inlet of smoke from the bottomless pit to darken the mind and mislead the judgment. Pride is the main handle by which he has hold of Christian persons and the chief source of all the mischief that he introduces to clog and hinder a work of God. Spiritual pride is the main spring or at least the main support of all other errors. Until this disease is cured, medicines are applied in vain to heal all other diseases.[ii]

Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense[iii]

Pride is a self-fulfilling prophecy wherein we have made ourselves the target of YEHOVAH’s wrath.  Pride is a self-betrayal couched in self-worship.  If YEHOVAH does not make us answerable to our pride, then he owes Adam & Eve among a long list of others apologies.  Pride among those who prefer to be accepted as believers is the most egregious display of hypocrisy.

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"There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves.  And the more we have it in ourselves, the more we dislike it in others."[iv]  ~ C.S. Lewis

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Pride in its realest sense eclipses the OT, occurring in sixty-one separate narratives. Pride is found mainly in the prophets and the books of poetry.  The Bible speaks of a myriad of manifestations of pride:  pride of the eyes, heart, spirit, mouth and speech.  We are all most adept at identifying pride in others such as conceit, arrogance, haughtiness, insolence, presumptuousness, scoffing, mocking, gossiping, slandering, malice, strife, censorious, faultfinding, harshness, hypercritical, captious, self-righteous, condescending, complaining, murmuring, and sarcastic to name a few.  The irony is that pride resides in the blind spot, our inability to detect or otherwise discern our own pride with the added caution that YEHOVAH actually says He hates it.

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5 Whoever secretly slanders his neighbor, I will cut him off; I will not endure him who has high eyes and a proud heart.  Psalms 101:5HRB

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11 The lofty eyes of the proud man shall be humbled, and the pride of men shall be bowed down; but YEHOVAH, He alone, will be exalted in that day.  Isaiah 2:11HRB

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18 Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. ° Proverbs 16:18HRB

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8 Better is the end of a thing than its beginning; the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.  Ecclesiastes 7:8HRB

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3 Do not multiply your haughty words; let not arrogance go out from your mouth; for YEHOVAH is a Elohim of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed.  1Samuel 2:3HRB

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21 You have rebuked the proud, the cursed ones who wander from Your Commandments. ° Psalms 119:21HRB

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9 So says YEHOVAH, So I will spoil the pride of Judah, and the great pride of Jerusalem.  Jeremiah 13:9HRB

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56 For your sister Sodom was not to be heard from your mouth in the day of your pride, Ezekiel 16:56HRB

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10 And the pride of Israel testifies to his face. And they do not return to YEHOVAH their Elohim, nor seek Him in all this.  Hosea 7:10HRB

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8 Adonai YEHOVAH has sworn by Himself, declares YEHOVAH, the Elohim of Hosts: I abhor the pride of Jacob, and hate his palaces; and I will shut up the city and its fullness.  Amos 6:8HRB

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In the theater of life pride finds its animation its potency of tangible substance within the temporal in the venue of words.  While it is true it can be observed in body language, actions, even expressions our words are the principal stage of exposition.  Pride is the mother of the fatherless child of critical spirit while its antithesis is gratefulness and humility.  The pageantry of pride is vivid within fatal certainty.  One of the powerful undertows of pride is the notion that we have something for others and they for us.  On what do we base this notion?  I have nothing for them and they have nothing for me ~ truism.  All is as YEHOVAH wills it.  When we engage in self-worship, we are choosing the flesh over the spirit. A critical spirit is an emotional and social mugger.  What is more alarming than our nurturing a critical spirit, the illegitimate child of pride, is we will experience the sequel of death if we merely fraternize or consort with the wicked.  This is not to say that an interaction with someone who is wicked produces death but an ongoing relationship the proverbial separation violation will cause death.  We are warned in Proverbs that we will encounter harm when we associate with a fool.

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29 having been filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, iniquity, covetousness, malice, being full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, evil habits, becoming whisperers, 30 slanderers, haters of Elohim, insolent, proud, braggarts, inventors of evil things, weak minded, disobedient to parents, 31 without discernment, covenant breakers, without natural affection, unforgiving, unmerciful, 32 who knowing the righteous judgment of YEHOVAH, that those practicing such things He condemns to death, not only do they do them, but they also associate with those who practice them.  Romans 1:29-32HRB

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Reflect on your present blessings, on which every man has many, not

on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.  ~Charles Dickens (M. Dickens, 1897, p. 45)

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16 These are murmurers, complainers, going according to their lusts†, and their mouth speaks proud flattering words, lifting up faces for the sake of gain.  17 But you, beloved, remember the words spoken before by the apostles of our Master Yahshua Messiah, 18 because they told you that at the last time† there will be mockers following wickedness, according to their lusts.  Jude 1:16-18HRB

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20 He who walks with the wise shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be broken. ° Pro 13:20HRB

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Harvard psychologist observed:

Any neurotic is living a life which in some respects is extreme in its self-centeredness... the region of his misery represents a complete preoccupation with himself. The very nature of the neurotic disorder is tied to pride. If the sufferer is hypersensitive, resentful, captious, he may be indicating a fear that he will not appear to advantage in competitive situations where he wants to show his worth. If he is chronically indecisive, he is showing fear that he may do the wrong thing and be discredited. If he is over-scrupulous and self-critical, he may be endeavoring to show how praiseworthy he really is. Thus, most neuroses, are, from the point of view of religion, mixed with the sin of pride.[v]

Let’s for a moment investigate the ‘evil spirit’ or ‘unclean spirit’ more often than not understood to be demons we encounter in the NT.  We have many notions of demons in our modern lives some of which are pudgy and cute moving in and out of our dimension in an effort to employ subterfuge in our lives.  Maybe they poke us in the eye or unzip our zipper when we look away in an attempt to exploit us.  Whatever our story dictates as to their appearance or their mischief I think most of us would agree that they engage us offensively to do us varying degrees of harm. 

How we define demons or evil spirits can vary greatly.

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This Biblical narrative example is a brief look at a man known as a demonic, Legion.  Legion is the personification of a life, destitute of relationship, relegated to solitude, replete of the essence of life.  His was a wretched miserable existence one that could never be envied as he sought to feel pain for the solitary purpose of knowing he was alive. 

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1 And they came to the other side of the sea, to the region of the Gadarenes.  2 And He coming out from the boat, immediately out of the cemetery a man with an unclean spirit met Him, 3 who had his abode among the tombs; and no one was able to bind him, not even with chains.  4 Because he had often been bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been torn by him, and the fetters had been shattered. And no one was able to subdue him.  5 And continually night and day in the hills, and in the tombs, he was crying and cutting himself with stones.  6 And seeing Yahshua from afar, he ran and bowed the knee to Him.  7 And crying with a loud voice, he said, What is to me and to You, Yahshua, Son of the most high El? I adjure You by YEHOVAH, do not torment me.  8 For He said to him, Unclean spirit, come out of the man!  9 And He asked him, What is your name? And he answered, saying, My nameis Legion, because we are many.  10 And he begged Him very much that He would not send them outside the country.  11 And a great herd of pigs were feeding there near the mountain.  12 And those devils were entreating Him and saying, Send us upon those pigs that we might attack them.  13 And He permitted them, and those unclean spirits departed and attacked the pigs. And that herd ran to a steep place and fell into the sea, and about two thousand were drowned in the water.  14 And those who fed the pigs fled, and they told it to the city, and to the fields. And they came out to see what was happening.  15 And they came to Yahshua, and stared at the one who had been demon possessed, sitting and being clothed, and being in his senses, the one who had the legion. And they feared.  16 And those seeing it related to them how it happened to the one who had been demon possessed, and about the pigs. Mark 5:1-16HRB

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Life only truly begins when we enter into a loving relationship and connect with someone.  We evaluate our lives on the single criteria of relationships and those interpersonal feedback loops.  If our marriage is bad our life is bad.  If we have 1,000 friends on FB our life is good.  Our quality of life takes a hit if our girlfriend posts she is single.

Life is relationships; the rest is just details.  ~Gary Smalley

Clothed and in his right mind is a phrase which most if not all evangelicals are familiar while its meaning is elusive in varying degrees based on the underlying blindness.  It is difficult to parse Luke 8 & Mark 5 other than to observe at a high level so that we might entertain the overall principle presented, the would be moral of the story.  To distill either narrative to a maxim or tenet is difficult as there are few tethers if any to the Hebrew while the Greek is weak at best as the scholars have evidently taken themselves a joy ride, ‘look mom no hands’.  I can embrace the notion that in order for Legion to be sitting even clothed engaging in what would appear to be a civil conversation with YEHOSHUA  he would need be in his right mind that longitude where his vision, hearing and understanding having returned to him.  We have previously observed Legion with maladies of the mind which appear to have been eradicated as he looks to be liberated.  This begs the question what alleviated him of his faculties to begin with?  This is an expectation of we followers of YEHOSHUA that His is a heart thing, a mind thing where Legion represents the farthest end of the continuum of corruption of the mind where man experiences a complete disconnect from his own body.  YEHOSHUA is TRUTH personified Who is about the business of dispelling, vanquishing, and forever crushing liberating us even Legion of our deception the malady of the mind afflicting we His formed.

I am of the opinion that this narrative is an allegory of deception that the ‘demons’ are deception we as individuals have an active role in allowing onto our docks eventually entering them into inventory. 

The Law is a social code meant to enhance our ability to cultivate intimate relationships both spiritually as well as temporally.  When we are lawless our capacity to facilitate this is corrupted diminishing over time.  The end of the continuum can be observed even represented by Legion who desperately hungered to feel yet he could not.  Legion was undeniably alive but had no tangible observable fragment to evidence life.  YEHOSHUA liberated Legion from the thick unbreakable glass prison which prevented his living life insuring his isolation forever depriving him of relationship with man or Elohim; this I fear is death a far worse malediction than temporal death while encouraging to know that there is no longitude from which YEHOVAH is incapable of liberating us. 

If we hope to reconcile our stories definitively with any level of personal fidelity, we must be clothed in our right mind.  When we are deceived, we are predisposed to faulty thinking as our bias quotient has moved against us tilting our kaleidoscope skewing our ability even willingness to reconstruct our memories with any level of accuracy.  If we are honest, if we are capable of converging on our self-awareness, we cannot disavow the reality of the manipulation knowledge, beliefs, goals, mental states, emotions, guilt, shame, even social context influence our memories. 

We find Legion on the extreme end of the continuum of deception we can readily observe physiologically even mentally.  What does it mean to occupy a position on the continuum?  One camp attempts to manage the disparity of our stories with reality within the structure of the survival instinct.  Their premise subscribes to the supposition that the inequality of the story is at least in part self-authored.  If we are even the least bit truthful we cannot but accept that our stories are called our stories because we are in them as the lead character and because we write them.  We as self-authors will always cast ourselves in our own best interests, won’t we?

The path to being clothed in our right mind is a question of TRUTH which must be the basis, the foundation, even the fabric of our story if our story is to coincide with reality.

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13 And you shall seek and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.  Jeremiah 29:13HRB

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14 And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us†. And we beheld His glory, glory as of an only begotten one from the Father, full of grace and of truth.  John 1:14HRB

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17 For the Torah was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Yahshua Messiah†.   John 1:17HRB

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32 And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.  John 8:32HRB

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6 Yahshua said to him, I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.  John 14:6HRB

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13 But when that One comes, the Spirit of Truth, it will guide you into all Truth, for it will not speak from itself, but whatever it hears, it will speak; and it will announce the coming things to you.  John 16:13HRB

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Ours is indisputably a trek for TRUTH.  The narrative of Legion is clearly an account which illustrates the disconnect between the story and reality.  It is a narrative of ‘The grass is greener’ a tale of a young man who long since relinquished his gratefulness trading down for ungratefulness and entitlement causing him to lose sight of his way as it became obstructed by deception.  Having moved into his own way he had long since gone off course commandeering his destiny his next ambition would be an ascent.  However, the final costs don’t come in until we take delivery of our newly found uplift.  It is only then where he would have the occasion to realize that his was a self-boondoggle. 

There are a few considerations within the realm of demonology as pertains to the Hebrew book most of which come from the NT in our modern religious theater.  However, we must if we are responsible to the literature of the Hebrew book observe the rule of first mention which for us is an engagement which we are all aware.  The episode involves the master over the principalities of what we know to be evil.  If he had demons or minions which he could deploy at his leisure as punishing agents he would have done so in a way that was observable against Adam & Eve as well as YEHOSHUA, but he did not.  The other consideration which must be made is to scrutinize the ‘demon’ of the NT through the lens of the Tanakh. 

There is little if any designation of the role of ‘demon’ in the Tanakh.  We know that for the Hebrew people magic, sorcery, and things like necromancy were explicitly forbidden by Torah.  The pagans it is understood employed magic to expel or drive away demons.  For the Hebrews calamities even illness came from YEHOVAH as we witness the plagues against Egypt. 

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6 If a ram's horn is blowing in a city, will the people not also tremble? If there is a calamity in a city, has YEHOVAH not even done it?  Amos 3:6HRB

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There is an observable understanding that YEHOVAH is master over angels as well as spirits some of which are considered even designated to be evil as in the case with Saul. 

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14 And the Spirit of YEHOVAH departed from Saul, and a spirit of adversity from YEHOVAH terrified him.  1Samuel 16:14HRB

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This may quite frankly be a consequence even effect eventuated by these very instances lost in deception a nested target.  Demons are a difficult thing to quantify with the undeniable scope of superstition moving forward over the centuries.  Often the idea of a ‘demon’ is trapped in the poetry of the literature leaving us teetering between the figurative, tradition, and the temporal.

What of the scapegoat or the creatures banished to the desert places?

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10 And the goat on which the lot fell for a complete removal shall be made to stand living before YEHOVAH to atone by it, to send it away for a complete removal into the wilderness.  Leviticus 16:10HRB

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21 But the desert creatures shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of howling creatures; and daughters of ostriches shall dwell there; and he-goats shall skip there.  Isaiah 13:21HRB

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14 The desert creatures shall also meet with the howlers; and the shaggy goat shall cry to his fellow. The screech owl shall also settle there, and find a place of rest for herself.  Isaiah 34:14HRB

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What of the infliction of illness?

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5 You shall not fear the terror of night, nor of the arrow that flies by day; 6 of the plague that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction laying waste at noon.  Psalms 91:5-6HRB

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We do however observe them over and over present as maladies of the mind where the benefactors of these spirits are without exception deceived.  In these instances, we can measure the self-destruction they inflict on themselves which we must consider as a real purpose of these spirits as well as their tell.  Was Jacob actually engaging in a physical wrestling match with an angel or spirit or was he churning mentally over a thing with YEHOVAH.  If we are to serve both ourselves as well as YEHOVAH in this matter, we must put on an additional lens of the will of YEHOVAH where He not only pursues us but engages us with TRUTH for the purpose of our liberation.  The sweet spot for deception and or demons lives in that place where we require liberation.  We could move down the path of interpretation of things such as bells on the High Priest’s robe, incense, blood on door posts, the color of blue, written scripture texts were all necessary having parallels in paganism toward warding off evil spirits and protection from demons even the spirits of the dead understood as ‘shades of dead’ or ‘the congregation of the shades’. 

We do encounter the appellation of demon or devil given to foreign gods in many translations.  We see the goat personified in satan worship today.  The screeching owl we mentioned earlier is a child stealing demon which cohabitates with humans a character retained in folklore.  The Hebrew word for death Mawet is the proper name of the Canaanite underworld god, Mot, the enemy of Baal.  So, we see specific demons named in pagan religions of the enemies of the Hebrews.  Is it a vampire to which it speaks in Proverbs or is it a leech?  We must include in our assessment the real possibility of Israel being negatively impacted by the pagan religions of those with whom they were in exile or captivity. We also have what we know as the prince of demons Beelzebul or Beelzebub which is actually Baal-Zebub the god of Ekron [II Kings1:2] the would be lord of the files.  More than anything we know and have known for centuries that there is just not enough information in the Hebrew book to establish demonology or systematize it as a valid theology and this was done with purpose.

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17 They sacrificed to demons who were not Eloha, to Elohim whom they did not know, new ones who came lately. Your fathers had not dreaded them. °  Deuteronomy 32:17HRB

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37 Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; Psalms 106:37HRB

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7 And they shall not sacrifice their sacrifices any more to devil like goats, after which they have gone whoring. This is a perpetual statute to them throughout their generations†.  Leviticus 17:7HRB

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15 And he made stand priests for himself for the high places, and for the demon he-goats, and for the calves that he made.†  2Chronicles 11:15HRB

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15 Because you have said, We have cut a covenant with death; and, We have made a vision with Sheol, when the overwhelming rod passes through it will not come to us for we have made the lie our refuge, and we have hidden in falsehood.  Isaiah 28:15HRB

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18 And your covenant with death shall be atoned for; and your vision with Sheol shall not rise up. When the overwhelming whip passes through, then you shall be for a trampling to it.  Isaiah 28:18HRB

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15 The leech has two daughters crying, Give! Give! Three things are not satisfied, four never have said, Enough!  Proverbs 30:15HRB

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It is hardly beyond the bounds of reason to observe the narrative of Legion with YEHOSHUA as an allegory wherein the ‘demons’ were a myriad of instances of deception in such great number Legion had lost his faculty of touch, of feeling anything, even reason as it would appear that he had moved down the continuum of self-destruction becoming so absolutely lost, landing on a longitude necessitating liberation.  He could no longer engage interpersonally having gone completely inward.   He lived in a cave figuratively or otherwise having been siloed up in his acuity where he was trapped behind glass like a man in incarcerated unable to interact with anyone but himself forever chained by introspection, imprisoned unable to escape the ruminations of his twisted mind.  His deception was so extreme he could no longer live among people having left them afraid for themselves.  We are all I fear without TRUTH on the trajectory of Legion, without YEHOSHUA [meaning YEHOVAH liberates], without liberation of our minds we are left to our own devices.  It is not a stretch or difficult to observe an individual with severe schizophrenia who too has left what we determine as emotional normalcy, physically, even behaviorally having long since left what most would embrace as realty, lost forever in a delusion incarcerated in a fragmented mind. 

How many of us within the evangelical have become zombies even vampires so long deceived left utterly confounded by the disinformation spawned by the sheer scope of doctrinal options which has left us in a perpetual state of oblivious deception a psychosis of religious schizophrenia? 

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.  ~Lao Tzu

25 Therefore, put away from you lying, and speak the truth each with his neighbor; for we are members one of another. °  Ephesians 4:25HRB

Variety is the soul of pleasure. -Aphra Behn

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Have it your way ‘Christianity’ for today

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Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.  ~George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron)

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Humankind fears incarceration, slavery at any level.  Humanity has long since relinquished their minds having been enslaved by the invisible chains of deception. ~C.L. Bruton

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Why do we believe what we believe?  Without some level of intellectual curiosity, we will never determine our way.  Within the evangelical our choices number more than 40,000 denominations an expansive variety ensuring that we have it our way. 

Ours is a world steeped in deception a cultural tapestry we wrap ourselves in on cold nights.  We have bias to which we are entirely unaware which dials in our trajectory.  One such illustration reveals how we base assumptions on a notion of a construct such as time all the while we are unaware that we are unaware that we do not moreover cannot know what we don’t know.  This is the definition of deception.  This proposition has long ago become an ideology to which we cleave, at times with all our strength.  We say things like ‘time heals all wounds’; ‘time will tell’; ‘time is the great healer’; ‘time will make him wiser’;  ‘time is money’; ‘time waits for no one’; ‘time is the wisest counselor’; ‘time is a thief’; ‘time brings all things’; ‘only time will tell’; ‘in the nick of time’; ‘lost track of time’; ‘just a matter of time’; ‘a waste of time’; ‘time files’; ‘there is still time’ as if time is somehow a physician, psychologist, even prophet, crystal ball, oracle, or perfecter of human nature as we associate most if not all things to time doing ourselves violence as time is incapable of initiating or otherwise crafting change even shaping life.  Einstein said it best when he said, ‘time is an illusion’.

How about the phrase elevated to theology, ‘we were born into sin’?  What does this mean?  Does it mean as most evangelicals would have us believe, that we were born with a sin nature forever compelling us to engage in lawlessness?  Does it simply mean that the world is lawless, and this is our birth place?  At the heart, the core of this book the premise is driven by design whose intended target is the underlying causation of lawlessness the ultimate self-propagating contagion of sin, deception.  Deception, the underlying causation of sin has for two millennia been concealed by the primacy of sin.  We observe its casualties across life more specifically in the religious theater taking the alien forms of false theology, doctrine, teachers, and traditions all of which are little more than replacement players for their counterparts in TRUTH taking the form of counterfeits.  The ‘sin nature’ has single handedly done more damage to the evangelical than all others second only to the shell game of sin over deception which has made the symptom both the cause as well as the symptom leaving the religious theater a single dance partner of symptomology the underlying paradox of the medical industrial complex which is incapable of healing that on which it bases its existence.  Do we have time?

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6 Seek YEHOVAH while He may be found; call on Him while He is near†.  Isaiah 55:6HRB

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20 For if, when they have escaped the pollutions of the world by the knowledge of our Master and Redeemer, Yahshua the Messiah, they become again entangled in the very same things and are overcome by them, their latter end is worse with them than the beginning†.  2Peter 2:20HRB

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6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for through these things the wrath of YEHOVAH comes on the sons of disobedience.  Ephesians 5:6HRB

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6 Your home is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know Me, says YEHOVAH.  Jeremiah 9:6HRB

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9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is incurable; who can know it?°  Jeremiah 9:6HRB

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6 You shall destroy those speaking lies; YEHOVAH will despise the man of blood and deceit.  Psalms 5:6HRB

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7 He who works deceit shall not live inside my house; he who speaks lies shall not be established before my eyes.†  Psalms 101:7HRB

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13 Their throat is a tomb being opened; "they used deceit with their tongues; the poison of asps is under their lips; ° Romans 3:13HRB

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What are the pollutions of the world from which we must be liberated?  Paul gives us the order of events in which deception has preeminence over sin as its underlying causation.  We know from the narrative of the Garden that Eve was initially deceived before ever she transgressed even rebelled.  Who is satan?  He is the father of lies, of deceit as well as the accuser of the brethren which is the self-same.  It is beyond debate, beyond dispute that deception or lying is a thread that begins in the garden and continues throughout the whole of the Hebrew book.

How exactly are we ensnared by sin?  It is agreed that life has grown increasingly more inconvenient by design intentionally even maliciously to distract us making it progressively more confusing.  This is an alternative frame of deception.  Deception is likely the most powerful mental contagion.  We can and do experience it when we are enslaved to living in the past that longitude where nothing is ever good enough allowing us to overlook growth even progress spending our days managing the gap.  Many if not most of us in some lane(s) of our lives have been deceived believing we measure ourselves against our ideals which if we are honest at any level this notion of the gap has been espoused from the greater culture around us.  We would do well if we instead measured ourselves against where we were when the ball was marked last and where we are in the moment representing our progression along a trajectory.  We would be remiss were we to fail to acknowledge that we grade our own papers within a self-prescribed framework of preapproved bias.  We have also been indoctrinated by philosophies such as consequentialism which determines if a thing is good or bad based on the outcome or consequences when what we should be observing even measuring is progress.  This is an act of gratefulness over self-criticism.

2012 London Themed Mind The Gap Lapel Pin

How did I see God’s hand in my life today?  ~Henry Eyring

We, if we employ gratefulness by measuring our forward progress can both remember as well as encounter the growth over the gap.  When we mind the gap, we will have difficulty possibly even find it at times untenable to be grateful.  Let’s be honest when we are critical of others, when we accuse others it is driven by our own internal dialogue of self-accusation and self-criticism causing us to be frozen in time incapable of change appropriating our creativity as pertains to personal growth.  How would we describe ourselves?  If we use the past as a backdrop we are in bondage.  We must never forget that we write our own stories. 

We can also be in mental bondage to our present.  This is about how we deal with life which always comes with more hair on it than we like.  It is about our perspective, about how we frame our circumstances.  Weeds an allegory for life’s difficulties are among the most resilient of plants which can even grow through concrete.  We can be weeds not despite the gap but because of it.  When we focus on the gap, when our crosshairs are on our current condition, our circumstance we have externalized our suffering, our adversity, only to become a victim of the greater life around us.  Victimization is a self-delusion espoused by our cultures even sub-cultures which misdirect our focus away from our capabilities even our creativity impeding our forward motion, slowing possibly arresting our growth.  Our personal consumption can be a tell of the level we are minding the gap.  Consumption vs. creating is abandonment vs. growth. 

Focus on circumstances and you’ll be a consumer. Focus on capacity and you’ll be a creator.  ~Kade Janes

To live outside the deception of the gap we must employ gratefulness for our progress and our ability to create even inspire growth as well as progress.  When we can move out of the gap into growth, with the increase or progress we can alter our trajectory toward rewriting our future story.  How we frame our past as well as our present will greatly determine how we encounter adversity in the future.  YEHOVAH wants nothing more than we experience liberation, victory, and Shalom.  I believe it breaks YEHOVAH’s heart that deception robs us of our reality.  We have the power to shape our past and present just as we have the volition to be deceived by them as they are both subjective stories, we have both written and are writing.

The National Science Foundation published a piece that presented its readers with the reality of the scope of our mental activities.  It revealed that the average John Doe has between 12,000 – 60,000 thoughts every day.  They indicated that on the upwards of 80% of those thoughts were negative while 95% of them were ongoing duplicates.  95% of our thoughts carried forward represent a perpetual ‘Groundhog Day’.  Our self-talk is redundant on a massive scale. 

It has been well established that the unknown is the genesis of all fear.  This philosophy could go a long way toward explaining addiction specifically those which have an adverse effect on our mortality having long lost the perspective of what it looks like and feels like to be sober.  Many if not most evangelicals exhibit this stasis as we white knuckle our traditions, beliefs, customs, rites, dogma, even theology unwilling possibly incapable of reaching for TRUTH which necessitates our stepping through change [the unknown].  There is a malady of the mind which contributes to this thought stasis known as fatal certainty having long since left its victims devoid of humility even accountability.  We just may have lost the awareness to observe the patterns repeating again and again leaving us hopeless to grasp the underlying message.  It may well be that our life more likely YEHOVAH is attempting to deliver a personal communique.  Ultimately, we must be willing to give up what we have for what we want. 

The reality is ‘true christianity’ by definition, is little more than an oxymoron not to be confused with true believers or followers of YEHOSHUA.  ‘Christianity’ by origin even name represents both in part and whole the Catholic [universal] ‘church’ and by proxy its offspring Protestantism and all her wayward children led by an Anglican god of Greek decent.

Most of us believe that what we believe is true.  It is difficult to say just how many of us believe it is true because we believe it while it is highly unlikely that we could conceive of or would believe a thing we know or consider to be a bogus fiction.  Then there are even more of us who believe what we believe because we were told this ‘truth’ by someone who was quite possibly a SME or by someone we hold in trust.  There is a calculated historic reality around belief which has oriented the emphasis on the ‘what’ of our beliefs over the ‘why’.  There will be long standing historical evidenced in traditions born out of theology where the majority of us either claim to believe or would never deny believing.  The truest test of a belief is our ability to in great detail premised on logic and most of all facts, describe the ‘why’ of our belief. 

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4 And answering, Yahshua said to them, See that no man deceives you.  5 For many will come in My name, saying, I am the Messiah. And they will cause many to be deceived.  Matthew 24:4-5HRB

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We can never deny our flawed duplicity giving rise to less than virtuous motives which are exponential contributors’ even drivers of our beliefs.  These considerations must include the nefarious overlay of deception none of us are impervious to. 

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9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is incurable; who can know it?°  Jeremiah 17:9HRB

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If we are to apprehend to any degree, the existence of or phenomenon of our own deception we must arrest both the antagonist as well as his influence on the greater world around us and by proxy its effect on we the formed.  We are all aware of the cliché more often than not framed in a joke or irony, ‘the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist’.  The word trick carries the insinuation of lie, deception, or con and we are its would be marks.  My question is, is this really the greatest deception the devil ever pulled?  If it were it is more likely that none of us would be cognizant of such a con especially were we the ones on whom it was played.  By definition deception is the longitude where we are unaware, we are unaware and do not, cannot know what we do not know.

The greatest con the devil ever perpetrated on humankind was fooling us into believing he did not exist, or was it?  Why was Lucifer bounced from Heaven?  What would be the nature of his followers?  They would become those who follow rebellion Torahless, lawless the very definition of sinful.  The whole of the evangelical believe themselves as well as their doctrine to be inerrant even infallible all from within their cocoon of fatal certainty.  Am I saying that certainty is not available to us?  I think we are all certain in varying degrees over an array of issues but is our certainty unadulterated TRUTH?  If we are as honest with ourselves as possible about our situation can we truly be certain about anything?  Take the ten chaste virgins; half of them were, while virgins, unable to ascertain their deception as they carried empty lamps into the dark.  If we are willing even capable to in some degree at some level contemplate the reality of the primacy of deception over the primacy of sin such that we might embrace the possibility however diminutive it may be that we live in a world steeped in deception then maybe just maybe we can begin to arrest it in our lives.  If instead, like most we reject even the prospect that we could be deceived as we live out our deception, we incriminate ourselves.  For those who embrace fatal certainty, know that you are or have been alleviated of your humility as well as your willingness even capacity to be accountable.  We must all ask ourselves if Adam & Eve who we know to be perfection were susceptible to deception in the utopia of the Garden where even YEHOVAH Himself resided then how is even remotely possible for us to make a claim, any claim to be impervious or to any degree resistant to deception? 

The greatest deception the devil ever accomplished in our world is found in the aberration of the primacy of sin where sin morphed into both its underlying causation and its symptom where sin became both the cause and the effect leaving deception forever obscured.  When was the last time you have within the most well intending of gatherings in the theater of religion encountered the primacy of deception?  In this single solitary move the devil achieved checkmate, forever shackling we the formed into the slavery of sin never to encounter liberation. 

To put it a different way as a long-time veteran of the realm chronic diseases I spent some time in the symptomology of the medical industrial complex's perpetual tail chase.  They did not explicitly say that my pain was the causation of my disease, but they didn’t say it wasn’t either.  What they did say and do say is ‘there is no cure’ and we do not know the underlying causation of your disease only upon having made the inquiry.  What they do is treat the pain with a protocol of medicines the last of which was some form of chemotherapy.  So, in their actions they implicitly imply that the symptom is the disease and proceed as such. 

We have embraced the symptomology of religion for decades under the primacy of sin as it has long since been the marquee player within the religious theater.  In so doing the devil made TRUTH irrelevant, obsolete, and non-essentially extraneous so that we can continue to readily and willingly dismiss the TRUTH of TORAH. 

What do we know?  We know that satan is a liar, in all actuality the progenitor or father of lies.  A lie for clarity is deception by definition.  We know him to be the accuser of the brethren.  We know with complete even absolute accuracy the single solitary tool he has in his damnation toolbox is deception.  We know the solitary ambition of satan is to rule the world.  We know that his greatest recreational pastime is the destruction of Israel the Hebrew witnesses of a Hebrew Elohim having observed numerous attempts over the epochs.  Finally, we know him to be the antithesis of YEHOSHUA who we know to be the personification of Torah, the WORD, TRUTH, even the voice of Torah leaving only deception of the afore mentioned.

Slothfulness

We know that for satan to succeed in any or all of these objectives or evil enterprises that he must be successful in deceiving us relinquishing us forever to the dungeon of sin devoid of any hope of liberation.  We must move forward cognizant and mindful of deception which has permeated all our lives.  We must show resolve in our resilience in its disposition.

Slothfulness is a ‘signature sin’, the last of the seven deadly sins. 

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...[T]he most dangerous illusion is the illusion of objectivity: literally, the illusion that one is not hampered by illusions.

There are many among us who with a straight face insist emphatically that we are not deceived.  If we are going to be earnest even genuine in our approach to the primacy of deception over the primacy of sin, we must be willing to pursue the awareness of those things which support the underlying causation of sin, deception.  If we are candid, then we readily admit our deception along with the longitude that we do not know what we do not know is in greater part a self-affliction.  Our inability or unwillingness to embrace even make our way to such a longitude is merely a tell of our mental malady which implicitly proclaims our deficiency of or bankrupt state of humility.  Many might convince themselves that intelligence provides asylum over deception but curiously the brightest among us never walk through life unaware of their mental prowess more often than not leaving them overconfident even devoid of humility only to expose the Achilles heel to deception.  We must never forget; deception is an equal opportunity subterfuge. 

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15 And YEHOVAH Elohim took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden, to work it and to keep it. † Genesis 2:15HRB

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Our purpose by the formation of YEHOVAH beyond fellowship with Elohim was toward physical exertion.  While it is true enough that we are predisposed to slothfulness even selfleshness our trajectory has been skewed.  We know this to be true because we read it in the Hebrew book.

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23 And whatever you may do, do it from your whole soul as to our Master and not as to men, 24 knowing that from the Master you shall receive the reward of the inheritance. For you serve YEHOVAH the Messiah.  Colossians 3:23-24HRB

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We were formed for fidelity & devotion whose antithesis are laziness and slothfulness.  Even Torah the foundation of our covenant implores us into action.

We are all driven by what we want: socially, vocationally, spiritually, relationally, and physically.

The problem is that we tend to suffer from selfleshness, me centric, procrastination, shirking, lacking initiative, ungrateful, backward-looking, regretful, closed-minded, prideful, unaccountable, dependent on the diligence of others, poor finishers, lethargic, passionless, live vicariously through our words, full of excuses, blame others, denial, distracted, and indolence. 

If we are ever to overcome our maladies, we must perpetually engage in hedonistic calculus in an effort to determine those pleasures which should be averted as well as those pains that should be embraced.  Our natural instinct driven by our survival typically engenders chasing pleasures many of which do us injury while attempting to dodge pain at all cost much of which is healthy offering long-term benefits.  In truth those things we label pain often result in the greatest pleasure.  There are many examples of good pain.  Pain is a physiological alarm system built into our physiology which is incapable of differentiating the good from the bad.  Pain more often than not allows us to feel alive while having the ability to grow even enhance our pleasure in our experiences.  One such pain is the ‘runners high’.  It is understood that pain relief can increase our happiness quotient while reducing our sadness index.  So, somehow pain is an intimate contributor to our pleasure.  Pain is an integral participant in our feedback loops.  Pain is the greatest agent toward our connectivity with life giving us immediate access to our sensory experience of the world around us in the moment.  Legion was so absolutely consumed with deception he cut himself desperately longing to feel.  Pain is also one of the most profound relational and social bonding agents. 

Pleasure on the other hand is understood to be self-destructive at many levels.  It is widely understood that the general health of the wealthy is a great deal worse than the average population due to their perpetual indulgence of rich foods.  One example is Christina Onassis daughter of Aristotle Onassis who inherited incredible wealth only to spend it on extravagant pleasure in pursuit of happiness who died at the age of 37.  The truth is her mind-boggling extravagance was likely the greatest contributor to her physiological suffering.  In the 1932 novel ‘Brave New World’ author Aldous Huxley expressed the possibility that endless pleasure leads to dystopian societies. 

We are incredibly duplicitous in that we intrinsically dread boredom even idleness for some length of time which appears to be shrinking even while busyness appears to be a major driver of happiness.  Without a reason to be busy we tend