The Wonder Springs Chronicle

Going for the gold

9 February 2011

Volume 13, Issue 6

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When we speak about outstanding human achievement, many times it is in the context of athletic excellence. While “going for the gold” specifically relates to working hard to win and Olympic gold medal, for most of us, even becoming an alternate for the Olympic team would be considered one of our life’s supreme achievements.

Since the beginning of the year on our corporate website we have been commenting on the Discovery Channel’s “Gold Rush: Alaska” reality series. For the last couple of weeks within the context of the article there has been a statement something to the effect, “gold is quite happy to segregate itself from all of the other worthless materials.”

It is thus far obvious from the program that the gold rush team has yet to understand this reality. We humans believe that we are rational beings and we make rational decisions based upon what we have learned through our past experiences. The extreme kick in the pants comes when we move beyond our comfort zone into the wilderness. In this Gold Rush case it is the wilderness, or perhaps more precisely, the wildness of a placer gold mine in Alaska.

For the last couple of weeks we have been discussing a Moses Model of human leadership, and how that geopolitical model will service us nicely in the wilderness of the uncertain times ahead. In the United States our geopolitical leadership is still firmly planted in the twentieth century. Probably oversimplified, those paradigms of the future either will lead us to a New-New Deal or a Reagan Revolutionary-Revolution.

When we broaden the scope, in our worldview we see a similar twentieth century strain, this time based upon western colonial or anti colonial models. A militant Islamic caliphate being a precursor to the western model, if we limit views to the last three hundred years or so.

The wonder of it all, is that the founders of the American Republic were really, forced into forming this nation, through the wilderness thought of geopolitical reality in and on a wild continent. As educated men, they too looked to the wilderness success of Moses to show them the way.

What the American Enlightenment added to Moses however, was the understanding of then Natural Theology, which has since evolved into atheistic material science. The founders called this specific revelation — Natural Law and from that reality constructed a geopolitical legal system based upon common (to all) inalienable rights.

This week if we look beyond our twentieth century desire for past security, the wildness of people longing to be free is the driving force of the great awakening in the Islamic world, not just in Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and Yemen, but is visibly present in Iraq, Iran and even to some extent Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Bringing this back to North American shores, the Tea Party is truly a wildness departure that the political class of the United States is unwilling to understand. This is just like King George III of England thought of those unruly and uncivilized colonists across the Atlantic.

If we lump together all of these wild and wonderful changes, what we see is change we don’t want to believe in. King George believed in the Divine Right of kings. Early in American history we saw the rise of manifest destiny. Then came the refining of progressive elitism, which is still our bipartisan geopolitical worldview. This is collapsing because underlying the whole premise is atheistic materialism.

Putting this in the context of highly esteemed globalism, we have developed a world elite of special interest and mutual benefit societies, clubs and cartels and we the people are just pawns to be used in the furtherance of the game of world domination.

As this elitist intellectual economic game falls apart, we must deal with the human reality there are no atheists in the wilderness. And all the religions of the world said, “Amen!” That is even true for the atheistic materialists, because they have made themselves gods of human understanding.

This brings us back to gold, both natural and human. Gold is the currency of turbulent times, in our context that includes both natural gold and human gold.

Our concepts of capitalism are no longer based upon free markets and Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand. Rather our markets are based upon limitless baseless money, speculation and greed. Historically that has been called in theological terms “total depravity.” Today we call it reality and we look to China as the model of stateism that is to be our evolving future.

In western culture, we have historically looked to the Bible as the Word of God for turbulent times. In the twentieth century we allowed elitists and despots to give the people tokens of materialism; for we truly believed that this would secure the future.

In Haggai 2:4-9 the Bible speaks of a time of the shaking of the world and how God will recall all the true gold as his possession. Back in November 2007 we began discussing the Dry Bones Valley of Ezekiel 37. Over time we have used that illustration a number of times. Could it be that we are seeing those dry bones of the prophet coming to life, all around the world?

We have a tough time believing that concept, because just like Moses and the children of Israel in the desert, as bad as Egypt was, and is for its current residents, the reality of being alone with God in the wilderness, sounds even less appetizing.

The problem is, no matter what you hear on your television screen, we still don’t make the rules. Following the golden rule of these times, “If God calls back all the gold for himself, God makes the rules.

When put in the proper perspective, 1971 began the slow but significant economic decline of the United States. Faced with the choice between a war in Vietnam and a Great Society, geopolitical reality forced Richard Nixon to proclaim that we can have it all — supported essentially on baseless money.

Going back to our illustration of Gold Rush: Alaska, the team that struck out from Oregon to the mine on Porcupine Creek, were probably better prepared for that wilderness journey than virtually one hundred percent of today’s American public. Having said that, through the eight episodes that have been televised thus far, it is obvious they really don’t have a clue of what they are doing. Furthermore their religious faith has been stretched a few orders of magnitude beyond what they have been taught in church.

Glenn Beck this year has been presenting four E’s to bring about what I would call the redux of America. It would not be that hard to expand the scope of those E’s to include what his happening in the rest of the world. Those four are: Enlightenment, Education, Empowerment, Entrepreneurship.

This is really sort of a continuum, in that it begins with the enlightened understanding that something is wrong and something needs to be done about it. This leads to becoming educated, and ends in entrepreneurship.

What I have yet to see in his presentations is the reality that the first two steps of this journey are basically focused upon the individual, the last two require a true functioning community. Not only that, the first two steps can take place where you are planted, the final two require movement and faith, operating in some undefined wildness scenario.

In our context of this article, empowerment and entrepreneurship require you at least to move from a twentieth century returning desire, to burning the bridge behind you and moving completely into the twenty-first century and all the hazards this move of God might call upon you to endure.

If you are anywhere close too normal, that should scare the hell out of you, which is first and foremost the beginning positive effect.

Then we need to know this empowerment and entrepreneurship location is a true wilderness, for the infrastructure for neither existed in the late twentieth century and it isn’t going to miraculously appear ex nihilo in the now, as manna from heaven.

We will have to reconstruct empowerment and entrepreneurship from essentially the Moses model of the natural laws of human self-sustaining communities. In this new community that award they gave you for just participating in whatever you never achieved, won’t buy you a cheap cup of coffee.

The first lesson that true wilderness teaches you is the rule of law. This begins within the confines of natural law. Simply put, if you transgress certain natural laws you are dead. This transcendent reality opens you to the need for human based common civil, moral and eventually specific religious law. In certain instances transgressions of these laws again end in death or other punishments. Law by its very nature is based upon absolutes, generally defined as truth.

In the recent dead past however we attempted to create a world in which truth is relative and hence absolutes are in the truest rendition oxymoronic. What we will learn in this new century is that spin, wishful thinking, and arrogance, still have natural repercussions.

The amazing thing about the founding of the American Republic is that it attempted to take control of the nation and place it not in rulers, but in the fruit of common and natural law of the individual, thereby creating a community tension upon the human desire for excess control by the power seeking few.

Within the context of (American) exceptionalism, these power excesses have taken religious faith and transformed it into religious moralism, which is really not that different than secular moralism and social justice. What all this will lead to is the stark reality that all forms of law only lead to death, just has the Mosaic Law led to death in the wilderness of unbelief.

Christianity, as perceived around the world, is just another major religion because over time it has become just another purveyor of religious law. In that sense, the Christianity becomes just another venue of all godly paths, and keeping of religious law leads to heaven or a positive eternity.

Christianity however is unique, not that it is exclusive, in the sense of all religions having exclusive tenants, but rather it simply states that true law keeping is beyond the scope of human compliance, hence a scapegoat is not a satisfactory sacrifice. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for the propitiatory sacrifice of the sins of mankind and his bodily resurrection from the dead; is not religion but unmerited grace.

Finding that teaching of unmerited grace is truly what all the world’s current turmoil is all about. That you will not learn from Glenn Beck and his Mormonism, for neither his Mormonism nor his Roman Catholic upbringing teaches that reality. Instead they and much if not most of Protestantism teaches a path to heaven, that is the essential geopolitical law codified by America’s founders.

What some of the founders understood, and by human nature realized, that much of our culture needs be left in the hands of Divine Providence alone. The law, without God’s grace, can only help to maintain civil society — somewhat civil, and then not for very long.

It is through the geopolitical application of this grace that empowerment and entrepreneurship will take place. It is only God that can use specific revelation to overcome the limits of entropy and create, or recreate order and beauty out of chaos. Those are really wonder types of experiences that will create the future gold of true human achievement.