I've long wished for a magic button that would turn the tables on marketers and crash their servers under a deluge of TellyTubbies videos.

Ok, once upon a time there was a Preacher. On Wednesday evenings about twenty or so members of the church, including the Preacher met for prayer, study and discussion. They studied Ephesians and then started on John's Gospel getting as far as chapter 7. Taking as long as necessary, the group intended to get through to the end. In the meantime, the Preacher every Sunday makes an altar call for those who "choose" to "accept" Jesus as savoir. I wonder if the fellow is paying attention at all to what has been studied on Wednesday nights?
Here's a unrelated curiosity, I took this silly quiz titled "What denomination are you?". I answered the questions as honestly as I could. Apparently, I'm a Lutheran, the curious thing is, I've never been in a Lutheran church in my life and apart from knowing who Martin Luther was, I know nothing of their doctrine.Weird.

Something I read this morning said it so clearly.

Quote:Markets and states do so by fostering ‘imagined communities’ that contain millions of strangers, and which are tailored to national and commercial needs. An imagined community is a community of people who don’t really know each other, but imagine that they do. Such communities are not a novel invention. Kingdoms, empires and churches functioned for millennia as imagined communities…

The two most important examples for the rise of such imagined communities are the nation and the consumer tribe. The nation is the imagined community of the state. The consumer tribe is the imagined community of the market. Both are imagined communities because it is impossible for all customers in a market or for all members of a nation really to know one another the way villagers knew one another in the past…

Consumerism and nationalism work extra hours to make us imagine that millions of strangers belong to the same community as ourselves, that we all have a common past, common interests and a common future.

People abandon the God that provides them with a community for a “god” that provides them with “free” stuff. The government is much easier to satisfy. You don’t have to be polite and grateful to your neighbors when they help you. The government obscures where the help really comes from, and leaves people with a sense of entitlement.

Ed has posted on his blog many times that he sees a future judgement on America resulting in dissolution into smaller nations. I have to agree there are issues in which there can be no consensus. One example; here in NC the citizens overwhelming supported the Defence of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between one man and one woman. A Federal judge far outside of NC deemed it unconstitutional and we were FORCED AGAINST OUR WILL to accept same sex marriage. This is tyranny, pure and simple. It is but one example of many where an outside entity through regulation and the courts forces my people to swallow that which find we deem unseemly. This is repeated in red states across the country and is a major factor in the election of President Trump. Folks are fed up and angry with the continued intrusion and increased dehumanizing tyranny of the Federal government. The Fed Govt is an unaccountable entity dedicated only to itself and it's continued centralization of all power. It uses fear and intimidation to scare  us into surrendering our liberty piece by piece. Those who resist are killed outright or are demonized by the propaganda networks so that when the frame up happens the people are conned and cheer when the target is imprisoned or murdered by paramilitary thugs. The "war on terror" is bogus. The war on drugs is the war on brown people. What will be the catalyst, my guess is economic. A severe depression combined with conservative balanced budget states being forced to bail out profligate deficit spending states might do it, especially if there are large numbers of unemployed struggling to stay afloat. What happens when police officers who aren't being paid are ordered to use deadly force to break up protests made up of friends and neighbors, same with the national guard. Whatever happens the current power structure will not go peacefully into the night. There will be blood, we who are protected by God must minister to those in need teaching them the heart per way that leads to shalom.

Someone who does share some of my thinking and teaching, but his style is in many ways quite different: Les Visible. I do read his blog from time to time, but a steady diet is sometimes monotonous and sometimes just too off-the-wall. From what I can gather, he is a syncretist, in that he claims to worship Jehovah, but also some pagan deities, particularly those typical of India. He's a fan of Jakob Böhme, and I'm afraid you'll have to look up that guy yourself. I'm not a fan.

Still, there are times when reading Les's stuff gives me just a tiny flicker of warmth somewhere inside, if for no other reason than he can be quite funny. Your mileage may vary. Here's the link to one of three blogs I know about; the other two are linked there: Smoking Mirrors

I ran across an article that referenced George Walter Chyz of the Soul Covenant Organization.  https://www.soulcovenant.org

He has just published a book, "The Magnificent Soul", that talks about "the divine soul that resides in the human heart". 

"This 330 page book offers a consciousness based view of reality that focuses on the human soul. Remarkable scientific research provides compelling support for the theory that a soul resides in the human heart. Excerpts from a wide variety of spiritual texts further endorse the age-old soul in the heart concept. Additionally, a gut-mind is included to form a novel "Triality" of human consciousness.

This head-heart-gut model is used to resolve mysteries that have remained unsolved by materialistic science. For instance, the superconscious-soul is shown to be the elusive source of intuition, conscience, genius, love, happiness, health, infallible wisdom and more. The keys to unlocking these treasures of the soul are; opening the heart, following the heart, and opening to love. These vague concepts are demystified using plain language, illustrative examples, and clarifying diagrams. The depth of understanding conveyed reveals how to access these inner treasures.

To provide a realistic setting, a perspective of reality that's founded on consciousness is presented. With the antiquated materialistic view of reality flipped right-side-up, a consciousness-origin cosmology reveals a purpose for humanity that fits reality and solves evermore confounding mysteries."

The first three chapters are available on the website to read for free.  While his position seems to reflect a lot of "New Age" and Hindu philosophy, his references to putting the heart first and intellect second seem to be in line with RF.  Would be interested on any feedback you might have on his thoughts.

Blessings to all...   Dave

Context: It's typical for me to suffer a spring allergy attack. This one has been just a tad unusual. It hit my chest first, then grabbed my sinuses. The sinus trouble eventually went away, mostly. However, for the past week+ I've been dealing with dried thick mucus still clinging to my bronchial tubes. So I've been hacking this stuff up slowly -- very slowly. Whenever something in my throat runs across that "cough button" I'd have a fit of uncontrollable coughing.

Last night, in the midst of on such fit, I pulled a muscle in my abdomen. It's right at the bottom edge of my rib cage on the left side. Now, every cough, sneeze, nose blowing, and even my farts hit me with a stabbing pain right there. Yes, this is almost comical, so I'm not whining, but it makes it really hard to sleep. Pray with me, folks.

I think it's important to share with each other sources that we find that help us to grow in faith. Now we don't all have the same interests but, that doesn't matter if what we bring blessed but one of our brethren/sistren then that is worth it. My interests include history and language, not learning to speak another language but, in particular, how ancient language communicated the heart of people and cultures long dead.
So, I'm giving a shout out for christianthinktank.com, the dude has a wealth of academic stuff for a whole range of interesting subjects. Currently, I'm on OT, very interesting stuff. The home page has a topic index that is huge.I couldn't in a million years stay focused long enough to do stuff like that, I'm an old crow whose head is on a swivel constantly looking for something interesting.

You may encounter various brands of Christian belief that make Paul out to be a complete outlier. One of my friends is a total weirdo who hates Paul and hunted down a printed Bible that excluded Paul's letters. It should be no surprise that this is rooted in the Judaizers. They hated Paul as the ultimate traitor, because he had intimate knowledge about the nasty legalism of the Pharisees, and then did so much to expose them. Worst of all, Paul was a former Pharisee who dared take the gospel to Gentiles, of all things. 

None of the Apostles faced as much hostility from the Jewish leadership as Paul did. You can read between the lines and see how the Judaizers followed him everywhere, actively keeping track of him so they could go along behind and corrupt everyone who heard his preaching. This hostility never went away. Long after Paul died, there was a concerted effort to disparage his work and his motives.

Throughout Church History we can see moments when this flared up. It gave rise to a whole area of academic study that tried to characterize Paul's theology as somehow different from everyone else's. We have such fancy terms as "Pauline doctrine" and "Petrine theory" and so forth, striving to distinguish the preaching of the Apostles based on their extant letters. They try to create the image of rivalry and dispute between them. Such academic pursuit makes a mountain out of a molehill, so that the continuity between Old Testament, Jesus, and the various Apostles, is completely lost. (See 2 Peter 3:15-16)

Thus, today we have any number of little cults based on hating Paul's letters. Any excuse you can imagine is used; a big one is the LGBT community suggesting that Paul was the only one who preached against homosexuality. They flatly deny that Jesus taught the Old Testament. This is aligned politically with the Zionists, for obvious reasons.

This is more of a history lesson that anything else, but it serves the Radix Fidem mission to have some knowledge of these things.

While poking around as light research for a book idea, I came across this essay: "Women in Ancient Israel and the Hebrew Bible" (I attached the pdf of the essay to this post, for safekeeping). Below is an excerpt regarding the role of women in terms of musicianship.

I thought the remark about the singers being specially trained was interesting. To me, it means they took the task seriously, and at the time we can assume singing--along with other "available" arts like sculpting or dancing--were some of the highest forms of expression of devotion. Besides making and eating food, which was a monumental task in itself given their technology and environment, there was precious else to distract themselves with. It makes some sense that whatever they chose to do with their free time would have huge impact. But, this is coming from a Western brain (my own): note that I use "chose" and "free time," which may not have the meaning it does given how different Ancient Near East and 21st century cultures are.

For the entire essay, as a broad rule, take it with a grain of salt. Undoubtedly, the author is writing from a Western, feminist academic tradition, and it shows in some of the sly editorials made throughout. There's some good tidbits there, if you can ignore the arrogant presumption that Ancient Hebrew women wanted or needed the same things, or held the same values, as the author does.

Quote:Women Religious Functionaries: Musicians

One final note should be made about Miriam: that in Exodus 15:20–21, where she is identified as a prophet, she is also described as taking up a frame drum and leading the women of Israel in drumming, dancing, and singing as they celebrate the Israelites’ miraculous deliverance from the forces of the Egyptians at the Reed [more traditionally, “Red”] Sea. Nor is Miriam the only woman to perform this role of celebrating Yahweh’s and the Israelites’ triumph in a holy war. Other instances of this “victory song” performance can be found in Judges 5:1–31 (Deborah’s song celebrating the Israelite victory over Sisera and his Canaanite army); Judges 11:34 (where the daughter of Jephthah goes forth to greet her father playing frame drums and dancing after he returns home victorious from battle against the Ammonites); 1 Samuel 18:6–7 (where the women of the towns of Israel serenade King Saul as he marches back from battle by playing frame drums, dancing, and singing of his triumph); and Psalms 68:11–12 (Heb. 68:11–12), where female heralds are commissioned to sing out the news of Yahweh’s victory in holy war. This tradition of women’s “victory song” performance is also evoked metaphorically in Jeremiah 31:4.

Other occasions when Israelite women assume responsibilities as ritual musicians may include women’s music-making during the autumn harvest festival of Ingathering, or Sukkot. This tradition is intimated in Judges 21:19–21, where, during the celebration of a festival commentators almost unanimously identify as Sukkot, the young women of Shiloh—the site of this particular Sukkot celebration—are said to come out “to dance in the dances.” The same tradition of women’s music-making at Sukkot, at the same site (Shiloh), may be alluded to in 1 Samuel 2:1–10, where Hannah is said to sing a hymn of praise and thanksgiving on the occasion of the Sukkot festival associated with the dedication of her newly weaned son Samuel to Yahweh’s cultic service. Another text that speaks to the special role for women as singers and dancers in conjunction with the celebration of Sukkot is found in Jeremiah 31:10–14, where young women are described as dancing at the time of the harvest of the grapes and olives—that is, the harvest preeminently associated with the Sukkot festival. The special place of women as musicians in conjunction with the grape harvest celebration is also suggested by Isaiah 5:1–7, a text that draws on an actual song of the Sukkot festival that originally must have been sung by a woman (as indicated by the reference to a male beloved in v. 1).

A third and final arena in which Israelite women assumed responsibilities as ritual musicians is in making music in conjunction with various life-cycle rituals. Particularly well attested is women’s role as singers of lamentation in conjunction with funerary rites and on the occasion of funeral-like events. A oft-quoted passage in Jeremiah 31:15, for example, speaks of how, at the time of the Babylonian invasions of the late 7th and early 6th centuries bce, the voice of the long-dead Rachel is heard performing a dirge over her devastated descendants. Second Samuel 1:24; Jeremiah 7:29; 9:17–21 (Hebrew 9:16–20); Ezekiel 8:14; and possibly Amos 5:16 also speak to the Israelite tradition of women as singers of lamentations. Indeed, in Jeremiah 9:17–21 (Hebrew 9:16–20), the dictum that the lamenting women should be summoned suggests a group of women specializing in lamentation, and this is also implied in the text’s reference to these women as being “expert” or “learned” in their craft (meaning, probably, specially trained). In v. 20 (Hebrew v. 19), moreover, these female lament singers are commanded to teach their daughters a dirge, possibly suggesting that the profession of the lament singer was handed down by women from one generation to the next.45

Coming-of-age rituals and weddings, too, may have been life-cycle events during which the women of ancient Israel were called upon to make music, although our evidence is sparse.