Hosken-News Blog: September 2020

Saturday, September 26, 2020

Freedom, Vices and Virtues

virtues and vices Most people have the idea that "freedom" or "liberty" means you can do whatever you want, or more limited - whatever is legal. But is that correct?

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

In Galatians 5:1, the Apostle Paul writes - "Stand firm therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and don't be entangled again with a yoke of bondage." There are two extremes of freedom or liberty. The first extreme is its limitation: in verses 2-6, St Paul the extreme limitation of legalism -

"Behold, I, Paul, tell you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will profit you nothing. Yes, I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. You are alienated from Christ, you who desire to be justified by the law. You have fallen away from grace. For we, through the Spirit, by faith wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision amounts to anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love."

By mentioning "circumcision" St. Paul is referring to being initiated into Judaism and swearing to keep all the detailed ordinances of the Law of Moses as spelled out in the Talmud, hundreds and hundreds of items you can and cannot do. St. Paul, on the other hand, was preaching the Gospel of God's grace to all mankind, the Good News that the promise of blessings given to Abraham before the Law was given to Moses are now available to everyone through Christ. But Judaizers came around after Paul preached this Good News: they insisted that in order to be a Christian, you first must become a Jew and follow the Law of Moses.

The other extreme of freedom or liberty St. Paul mentions is in verses 13 and 14 - "For you, brothers, were called to freedom. Only don't use your freedom as an excuse to gratify the flesh, but serve one another through love. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" This tells us that freedom doesn't mean we can do whatever we want, whatever our passions and desires urge us to do. Rather, it means we are enabled by the Holy Spirit to be considerate of others, to love for them just as much as we love for ourselves. Paul write in verses 16-18 -

"But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you won't fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, that you may not do the things that you desire. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law."

So we can summarize the meaning of freedom this way: Freedom is the Holy Spirit-given ability and responsibility to follow just the two great commands: love God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

The Apostle Paul continues in Galatians 5:19-21 to explain the consequences of thinking that freedom means we can do whatever our desires urge us to do -

"Now the works of the flesh are obvious, which are: adultery, sexual immorality, uncleanness, lustfulness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousies, outbursts of anger, rivalries, divisions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, gluttony, and things like these; of which I forewarn you, even as I also forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God."

When most people hear the word "sin," they think it only refers to adultery, sexual immorality, uncleanness, and lustfulness. Or they laugh it off as old-fashioned thinking, saying "Love is love, it doesn't matter who you love!" But St. Paul includes "uncleanness" - homosexuality and lesbianism - as sins, adding lustful thoughts to the list too, just as Christ taught.

Next comes idolatry and sorcery, to which most people say - "Well, that was then, this is now: we know those things don't really exist anymore!" But what do those words really mean? The Greek word "eidolatria" means the worship of false gods, not only gold, silver, bronze, or stone statues, but also anything other than the true God that becomes the center focus of our lives. And the word "sorcery" or "witchcraft" in some translations is the Greek word "farmakoia" taking chemical subsances that induce altered states of consciousness, which can open the door to evil spirits. This illustrates the interconnection of body, soul and spirit.

Then comes a whole laundry list of vices: "hatred, strife, jealousies, outbursts of anger, rivalries, divisions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, gluttony, and things like these." Some of these - jealousy, anger, rivalry, envy - might seem not so bad, but they can lead to hatred, gluttony, and murder. If we open the door of our hearts to the former little demons, it's like letting the camel's nose into the tent: the bigger, fiercer demons can follow in after.

So here we have a whole laundry list of vices, 18 of them, that make our lives harder, baser, and uglier. But the antidote comes next, in verses 22-24 - "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts." Just nine virtues, making our lives beautiful and glorious. These nine angelic spiritual forces can overcome the 18 demonic forces... if only Christ has taken control and we have"crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts."

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 26 Sep. 2020.)

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Sunday, September 13, 2020

"Rule by Experts" is Pseudo-Science

The article "Rule by Experts" Is Tyranny Shrouded in Science begins with - "Does the COVID-19 crisis support Neil deGrasse Tyson's call for 'Rationalia,' a world in which 'science' reigns supreme? Here's how C.S. Lewis would have answered." Read the whole article!

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

So, what did C.S. Lewis actually write about this? The article continues - "C.S. Lewis wrote of this 'man-molding' in The Abolition of Man. He observed that the innovators and conditioners attempting to reshape society were doing so by attacking traditional values and mores." -

"A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional or (as they would say) 'sentimental' values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process. They claim to be cutting away the parasitic growth of emotion, religious sanction, and inherited taboos, in order that 'real' or 'basic' values may emerge."

When "science" goes beyond the boundaries of its definition - "the investigation by experimental trial and error of what can be known emperically by our five senses and instruments" - then it becomes "Scientism" or a "pseudo-science," an ideology based on the mistaken notion that the only things which really exist are those things that we can know emperically by our five senses and instruments. Thus it exceeds its own boundaries, transforming itself into a semi-religious worldview which denies the existence of the religious, the supernatural: only "natural" things are real, it says. We can't know God or the supernatural through our five senses, so that realm is simply a fairy-tale dreamed up by primitive man's overactive imagination trying to make sense of the world and life.

When faced with the problems of the limits of human knowledge and the seemingly endless number of events interacting with each other in this vast universe, Scientism says - "Everything is relative to everything else, there are absolutely no absolutes, and that's the absolute truth!" Do you see the paradox, the logical contradiction, there? It's like the high school sophmore who barely passed Beginning Algebra where he struggled with equations that had one variable, so when he got into Advanced Algebra with multiple-variable equations, he simply threw up his hands and said - "This is impossible to solve! There's no way anyone can find an answer!"

Yes, life can be frustrating, and not only for high school sophmores. But then the teacher patiently calms down the student and says - "What we need to do is to find just one fixed value and from there, we can start to solve the equation for all of those variables. Let's search for the constants." Searching for the constants, the real, unchanging, true truths, isn't easy - it takes time and effort... plus the conviction that there has to be an answer, or else our human rationality is itself irrational, so there would be no reason to search for an answer!

In our everyday experiences, we filter out roughly 95% of all the sensory input coming into our eyes, ears, touch, taste, and smell. If we didn't learn to do this as a child, we'd be overwhelmed by all of the "firehose of data" coming at us, which is what happens with autistic children. Then our brains try to process that 5% of raw data into useful information. But "we don't know what we don't know" - physicists are now saying that their delicate instruments indicate there must be something "out there" that those instruments can't detect, but by their calculations, this "dark matter" accounts for 95% of what exists in the whole universe.

So it comes down to this: our five senses and instruments can only perceive 5% of what exists, and of that 5%, our brains filter out roughly another 95%, meaning we can only ever possibly know 5% of 5%, or 0.0025 (that's 1/4 of 1%) of what exists. And most people know much less than that! This ought to make us very, very humble about how much we can ever know by scientific method or any intellectual endeavour. How could any "rule by experts" possibly know all of the unintended outcomes of their decisions?

So we need to go back to that "Advanced Algebra teacher," the ancient wisdom (Sophia) of God revealed to Moses and the prophets in the written word of God, the Old Testament, then to all nations through the living Word of God (Logos), Yeshua Meshiah in Hebrew, or Jesus Christ from the Greek language. He said - "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30) and "I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father but by Me!" (John 14:6). He is the only Way to ultimate Truth. The Apostle Paul wrote -

"For though we walk in the flesh, we don't wage war according to the flesh; for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the throwing down of strongholds, tearing down false ideologies and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ; and being in readiness to discipline all disobedience, when your obedience will be made full" (2 Corinthians 10:3-6).

Scientism leads to a dead-end: we must tear down this false ideology. We can, however, know the One Absolute, that One Fixed Constant to which everything else is relative. But it isn't easy, it comes only by "pursuing holiness, without which no one will see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14). "But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Mankind was created in the image and likeness of God, but fell into sin and rebellion against the knowledge of God. Then Jesus Christ, Who is the image (icon) of the Father, came to "make purification for our sins" (Hebrews 1:3) and restore us back into His image and likeness. That is holiness, that is the true knowledge of God!

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 13 Sep. 2020.)