The Wonder Springs Chronicle

Coping with the current stupendous geopolitical change reality

23 February 2011

Volume 13, Issue 8

Access now the fresh insights of The Wonder Springs Chronicle - Front Page. Be sure to check out the grizzly times wisdom and fresh insights of Brute’ Griz every Friday. This column also now appears each Wednesday on Deep Woods Moola, Redux Rendezvous and The Creation Leadership Center.

To make a donation to the Wonder Springs community please do so at the address below, or follow the donation links on the website.

PDF Print

Setting the people free! What a job. What a difference just a week makes anymore!

There seems to be no limit to the mini would be messiahs today. Sadly most of them cloak their speeches in terms of democracy for all. Keeping with that geopolitical theme, most of these saviors, in the process of implementing their dream world, seek to subjugate that democracy to their own glory. So instead of being a messiah, their secret goal is to become Pharaoh, enslaving the people to the perverse will of a perverted enlightenment.

Islam seeks this reality through a collective theocracy called the caliphate. What we see happening today is the beginnings of a power struggle, not just between authoritarian leadership and the people, but also between Shiite and Sunni divergent wings of the Moslem faith.

We, who are fortunate to live in secular western cultures, believe that this tension is no big deal, for we self-righteously understand, beyond a shadow of any doubt, that all religions are essentially the same, and are really crutches for those who have not evolved enough to comprehend the wonder of our collective exceptionalism.

In that same illumination token, we think that the new democracy direction that began in Egypt, will end with them buying off on our vision of gross materialism through debt leverage. Of course that model isn’t working all that well at the present time, but you just need to have faith that we will quickly get that economic ship headed in the right direction and it will be full speed ahead.

The problem with this wishful thinking is that western culture was successfully built upon the concept of individual private property rights that extend well beyond your consumer conveniences. That wonderful wealth producing reality is the great divergence within those of Semitic cultures. Both are forbearers of our present worldviews. Private property rights are the gift to the world through the lineage of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — not Abraham and Ishmael.

When you fully refine the sources of the Ten Plagues of our modern world, which we discussed last week, they really don’t believe in those individual rights either. In essence to develop the way human society must evolve, we must give up those rights, essentially to save the planet.

Along that line I was thoroughly chastised last week because I fail to see the requirement of Cap and Trade, either through legislation or regulatory fiat, to provide economic incentives to save the planet and to grow the green sustainable world.

Of course during that pontificating deluge, it was inferred that I was too stupid to see the light.

Actually I personally think the reality is quite plain. The goal is to monetize carbon pure and simple. That seems to me to be a slightly better scheme of monetary responsibility than the current system, but in that light I am very primitive, for I believe that money must in someway relate to the real world. Except as we describe below!

The American Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing II, is just dealing with electronic bits and bites, which become money when the FED “purchases” some other form of fictitious debt, in this case American government bonds and the like. Historically in the last half century, this bubble to burst monetary expansionism has helped get us to these unsustainable stupendous times.

Those unsustainable times and FED policies can be linked to the turmoil in the Middle East through inflation in energy and food prices. Those price increases are present in our developed world, only we have a significantly bigger economic cushion. This will also be accelerated by any form of Cap and Trade. Those unintended consequences have direct linkages to nasty times.

Cap and Trade does at least relate to the real world in a tangible basis. Let me see if I can explain, without all the hyperbole, so that all this column’s sophisticated readers might understand.

Free carbon, (not that bound in the crust of the earth) most notably in the form of carbon dioxide and other related greenhouse gases, is the fourth most abundant element in the universe. In the United States, in an effort to achieve the common salvation of the world, we must decide to sequester our self-evident inalienable rights to use this elemental requirement for life, through arbitrary and capricious rules. Thereby we monetize those regulations, into carbon credits, and in the process convert the fourth most abundant element into a fixed form, to become the fifteenth most abundant element in the earth’s crust. In the process we just create another elitist Ponzi scheme, or crony capitalist opportunity. Like we don’t have enough of any of them already?

In a world that really doesn’t recognize either private property or individual rights, people are unable to forego, what they never possessed, and carbon is just about as common as it gets. Cap and Trade makes sense to only those who have too much time on their hands to overcome real challenges, not create a fantasy world.

Historically gold, one of the ten most rare elements on earth, and silver the sixty-third most common element, have had the honor of providing a basis for human commercial dealings. However we believe that we can’t build a modern global marketplace of goods, services, and ideas upon such a limited foundation. So we have created an elitist market of money in which, the golden rule of he who has the gold makes the rules, is exchanged with a slight modification. That monetary rule is now; he who creates the money makes the rules.

This was the basis of America’s prosperity during the reign of Alan Greenspan at the American FED. It is the legacy that Ben Bernanke is attempting to maintain. The problem is that the rest of the world, now more prosperous than in anytime in history, no longer is willing to follow the FED rules. There are those moneymakers around the world who want to make their own rules, or at least level the playing field.

Tracing the history of humanity from the creation, we see over that timeline two mutually divergent paths, with a large center that just wants to live their life in peace with a measure of domestic security. As a general rule that common culture realizes their own individual nature and takes it for granted, as truly a personal self-evident inalienable human right, or natural law.

There are those however not satisfied with this arrangement, from extreme poles of this common normal distribution of souls, they try to make everyone else see them, not as part of common humanity; but somehow better. In other words they attempt to change the world by making those who do not agree with their worldview, less than human, as common animals or even primitive machines.

When this occurs what is left is a focus on common salvation, led by the extremes, to build a life that is not just good, but better than those (stupid) normal people could ever imagine. The problem however is that these super dudes do not recognize — to be a true leader of humanity; you have to recognize your connection to all of humanity. We all have gifts and weaknesses, talents and temptations.

This elitism as ruled the religion of Islam from its inception. Islam is a religion of theocratic law enforced by a caliphate, in which the great elitist is not human at all, but Allah. In that light those who do not share that worldview are by definition Infidels.

We in the west do not comprehend the significance of the two divisions within Islam, one an anathema, or abomination to the other. The Shiites essentially are the northern wing of Iran, Iraq, the Ottoman Empire, or greater Assyria. Egypt and Saudi Arabia and the rest of Islam represent the Sunnis and the dominant form of Islam until the rise of Ottoman power. Both sides have their radical elements, but the Sunni’s shall we say are more temporal in their worldview. Shiites are much more messianic, seeking by force to create a world to expressly advance the return of the twelfth Imam.

What this means is if left to its own devices the current unrest in the Islamic world will continue until something or someone enforces order; or personal freedom through the grace of Almighty God brings about what we have defined above as a normal society.

This God, in contrast with Allah, did not consider himself to be above humanity, but in the beginning chose to create humanity in his image and thereby give expression of his goodness, by allowing for the unique diversity of all human personalities.

Furthermore, Jesus of Nazareth is recognized as the Christian messiah, because as God he chose to become human, and thus become associated with human sinful infirmities. Through his sinless life, his death and his resurrection from the dead three days later, not only did he fulfill the sacrificial nature of common geopolitical human law, but also the specific nature of the religious laws given to Moses on Mount Sinai. In other words he has paid the price required to become the leader of mankind.

This is a concept that no human religion can pronounce because religions are all based in some form of elitism.

Sadly, more commonly than we can understand, elitism has become a signature part of the Christian religion as well. This is contrasted with a quotation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, of a “Religionless Christianity.” This is best described as the proclamation of the gospel described in the preceding paragraph.

Just like God created the world by speaking it into existence, God creates the church out of the common ordinary words of humans, speaking this Good News of the gospel to all the common ordinary people of this world.

This illustrates that Christianity continues to this day through the grace of God alone, contrasted with much of historic and contemporary elitists who seek to adopt human methods to enlarge the Christian influence in the world. Law, both natural and specific religious revelatory law, give opportunity for human attempts to fulfill those requirements, in and by our own efforts are the basis for all sorts of abominations, both natural and specific.

Last week, when discussing a specific Bible reference to what was going on in Egypt we used Isaiah chapter 19. Within that context and spilling into chapter 20 are prophetic allusions to Assyria. This week we would like to add Isaiah 30 to that lesson, which testifies to those of us who would like to seek to maintain our lifestyle by finding security in not just Egypt’s typology or formal religion, but in any worldview that maintains that salvation can be obtained by human collective will.

More to the point however was a discussion I once had about the words of Jesus concerning coping with the end of time stupendous geopolitical change reality. Those words are found in what has been called the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 and continues into Chapter 25. Whether that relates to our current time, is a decision each “individual” will have to make and change our lives as dictated by our understanding of God’s grace and our unique human attributes?

At that time I was attending a Pentecostal Dispensational church and the discussion was with one of the associate pastors. Through the discussion he made the point that he was thankful that Christians would not be present during the Great Tribulation because The Rapture would have taken place and true Christians would be with Jesus in heaven.

Being quite new to this line of thinking, it seemed to me that since it was in the Bible, the whole book should apply to all people to the end of time.

Explaining the depth of that illustration, the pastor told me that the disciples were Jewish, and even if they were Christians, they would be subject to the Great Tribulation and hence would find solace and direction in the Matthew passage.

That was cool, except for one problem that seemed quite apparent to me. This was the fact that the disciples to which Jesus was describing these events, were within the Christian covenant of grace, they were indeed the only Christians, or a better description — the first true Christians were all Jews; there were no Gentile Christians that could be party to a pretribulation rapture. Hence any use of that specific passage to the reality that Christians would find security in heaven through the Rapture, rather than the grace of God is foolishness.

What does the future hold? The truth is that in the affairs of mankind, history repeats itself, but that truth depends upon your view of history. It seems quite apparent that this twenty-first century will not be all that similar to the twentieth.

For one reason our increasing desire to fuel prosperity based upon consumerism, demands material resources that are becoming rapidly depleted in the real world. Cheap stuff driving seventy percent of the economy and healthcare consuming another sixteen percent (left unchecked on its way to twenty percent) doesn’t leave much opportunity for other entrepreneurial adventures in the United States.

The United States is still the world’s leading manufacturing nation, especially when it comes to quality for the price. To manufacture more here really doesn’t alter that stuff dependence equation based in the middle of the last century. Then when you see a bumbling bureaucracy that can’t provide real cost effective infrastructure, both in the tangible and through intangibles like education, things begin to look a little dismal.

But if we look at the potential for personal freedom, supported by some diminishing role of actual materialism, the potential is almost unlimited. Life was materially difficult a century ago, but it was still the most blessed in all of human history. Perhaps we can awaken to the understanding that those who die with the most toys are the biggest losers.

Christianity can facilitate a beginning of a true advance in human civilization based upon the total revelation of individual human uniqueness. That can take place even though the end of the age may not be on the current short-term calendar.