Curtis

This is my site. I'm basically a Christian, Husband, Father, Neighbor and in that order. I'm a thinker, how well I do at it is for others to decide. I drive a truck delivering gas for a living and spend most of my time listening to downloaded audio on my favorite subjects. It is mostly these that spark my articles here.

Jan 092022
 

Sound doctrine and proper theology are very important!  Never forget I said that and I believe it deeply.  Now, forget I said that because it’s not the point.  Also note that I am proud of the folks at The Bad Roman and this isn’t aimed at anything I’ve seen or heard here.

My impetus for writing this came recently as I was running down the wall of a social media group of Christian Anarchists.  I saw a bible verse that had to do with sin followed by a simple question, “Does anyone here NOT believe in original sin?”  I’ve long given up my guilty pleasure of social media battling over proper orthodoxy.  I thought I smelled what the post was about.  I still engage sometimes, but from a different perspective that is also not so relevant to my topic.  I engaged with this one and to my surprise it turned out okay.  Because I’ve changed?  Because it wasn’t Facebook or perhaps, I chanced upon someone who didn’t just want to pick a fight?  Anyhow, that got me to thinking about part of my journey.

I’ve been into The Bible and theology since my late teens.  I’m not formally trained and have no letters after my name, nor am I ordained.  I’ve often referred to myself as a well-read hick.  In my years in a truck, I’ve absorbed thousands of hours of theological material from every perspective I can get my hands on.  I’ve had the privilege of rubbing shoulders with some very well-educated scholars and theologians over the years both online and a few in person.  Good and Godly men and women.  They have given me reason to believe my self-education has some quality to it.  I have been told by a couple of lettered pastors, when discussing some topics, that they couldn’t help me much as it appeared I was way more familiar with the material than they were.  Not to toot my own horn but just to say, I’m no dummy.  I take my doctrinal and theological positions very seriously and they’ve been pretty consistent for over a decade now.  One thing I’ve learned is I still have much left to learn, but most of the major issues are settled for me.  But how has that changed my life?  In two ways.

First was putting a big piece of practical theology in place.  That deeper academic stuff is good to know and useful as well.  Of course I think I’m right (don’t we all) and I think others should care (don’t we all).  However, nothing is more important than keeping the main things in focus as the main things.  I always knew that but something made it more personal for me.  One of my cousins’ children died too young.  I was flattered and terrified when she asked me to give the eulogy at his funeral.  I couldn’t refuse and took the responsibility very serious.  Eulogies in my family are often part sermon.  I knew that often the living want to know that their loved one was ‘saved’.  The circumstances of his death and life may have led some to wonder and I’d didn’t want to compromise on what I believe to make people feel good.  Thankfully she answered a couple of questions that put my mind at ease fairly quickly and simply.  I did some study that yielded the result I’m sure they wanted and taught me something along the way that gave me the sermon portion.

What I found was the simple truth of Acts 16:22-34, Paul and Silas and the Roman Jailer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved…”.  Not all by itself or just that verse or out of it’s textual context, but with historical context and other things I’ve always know through the years.  Those few days of preparation, prayer and inspiration gave me a different outlook on who was in, who was out and how I should think of and act toward my brothers and sisters in Christ.  Not that I didn’t know the passage before.  Not that there isn’t so much more packed inside that word ‘believe’ that is important.  But, if you put that together with, ‘the faith of a child’ knowing what a child can and can’t fully grasp then you have a solid basis for grace toward the rest of God’s family.  How is that the first change?  Because I know, with all the other nitty gritty nitpicky positions I understand and have firm positions on, that this simple truth is well founded and biblically sound.  I don’t need to know more than that from someone to know where we stand as family.  One can hold very complicated and sophisticated truths that are good and helpful in life, but I just can’t divide humanity any further than that.  If you say you believe that, I take you at your word.  You are my brother/sister even if you don’t consider me so.  Even if you hold some very weird or even what I consider to be heretical positions.  We can be in error, even heretical error, myself included, but if we believe, we are in the same family and we should remember that.  We may see the absolute contradiction between that basic belief and other biblical positions others may present.  That’s an error of knowledge or understanding, it’s not a sin that separates us from God who knows our hearts.  Don’t get me wrong, he also knows our minds and if we could/should know better and we should try to reconcile all things, and we will give account for that, but that isn’t the main thing.

The second thing that changed for me was how I interacted with people who are just needing help.  A couple of years ago I met a fella at work.  I avoided him a bit at first because he seemed odd and I’m a bit of an introvert.  I’m a local fuel hauling trucker by trade so having to talk to my fellow employees if I don’t want to isn’t usually a problem…. Usually.  But he was new to that niche of trucking and I’m always willing to help anyone do the job right so when he got my phone number and called, I answered.

I quickly found out my instinct was correct.  He was certainly odd but our relationship had begun and I try not to be mean to folks and he clearly needed help with more than the job.  We’ll call him Jim.  Jim is quite gregarious, and we got to know each other casually until he suspected that I was a believer.  I affirmed and he warmed up and opened up to me more, for better or worse.  Over time he began to tell me more of his story and about his issues.  Long story short, Jim is a basket case.  He knows it and wouldn’t be offended by me saying so as long as I didn’t identify him.  Jim has pretty severe anxiety issues stemming from OCD and moderate bipolar issues.  Other ‘diagnoses’ are possible but I’m not sure if his professionals (as I began to call them) gave them to him or he determined them all by himself.  The listed ones matched well with my experience of him and the meds he told me they prescribed for him for those conditions.  Yes, I checked because some of his stories are pretty wild.  His issues may stem from oxygen deprivation at birth doing some brain damage as well, however I find he is pretty smart though he doesn’t apply his intellect very rationally, probably do to the mental and emotional problems.  I heard his adopted dad in the background on a phone call once and determined that, yes, his childhood was probably as bad as he had said.  I don’t like judging strangers much but the man I heard in the background and what he said sounded like a pretty horrible human being to me.  Jim doesn’t handle money well and is a gambling addict on top of all that so he was back living with his parents at 37 years old.  He really knows the math and strategy of poker very well and could probably be quite successful at it if his mind was in order, but it’s not.  That’s the very short version of Jim’s life and issues.

Now, here is what gets him way off track, off his meds and once, ‘checked in’ for a few days out of all touch with reality and on the verge of breaking down completely.  He knows his bible fairly well, listens to various preacher’s recorded sermons and shares the gospel often with strangers.  Of course, he gets various views about scripture and challenged by some that he is evangelizing.  He takes these things to heart, internalizes them then begins questioning his own salvation.  His faith is very sincere and deeply held and he is easily terrified that he might be missing the mark.  Did I ‘do’ it right?  Did I say the right words?  Can I, did I, loose my salvation?  These are questions he would agonize over to the point of sickness.  Anyone could hear it in his voice.  Physical sickness, fear and anxiety.  I already held my above point of view of the main thing in salvation and would walk him through all the facts and do my best to get him squared away so perhaps he could sleep that night.  These conversations would last for hours almost every day.  Some days better than others.  Sometimes I’d just keep him in a good place for the day with conversations about other things and some days I would be walking him back through the minefield of his own compulsions that were messing with him.  It was mostly the same things over and over again.  He seemed to forget today what we had worked out just yesterday or even a few hours before.

I decided what might help him better was if I could drill something simple into his head that he could recall, ask himself about and always come to the same conclusion.  This is where Acts 16 comes partly into play.  Previously I had used different explanations for whatever detail was bothering him that day and worked out the particular thing that had stuck in his head.  We went through the range of theological positions on salvation (soteriology) but as I said, he’s pretty smart actually and could often challenge me with why this or that explanation might not apply to him and he could be doomed after all.  We both agreed that salvation was about what you believe and who you trust so I could deal with many of the standard things.  But he would dig into the particulars of what one had to believe and ‘how much’ they had to believe it as well as if and how it should be expressed to God.  I went down that rabbit hole with him to show him the absurdity of where he was going each time.  For instance, he would constantly want to pray a sinners prayer expressing what he believed to God to ‘make sure God knew’ he believed the right things, repented properly and didn’t have ‘bad thoughts’ intrude while doing it.  Dozens of times in a row he would do this thinking he left something out or had a ‘bad thought’ pop in his head in the middle of it that made it all void.  I pushed him and would say, wait you didn’t tell God that time that you believed Jesus was born of a virgin, oh and you missed telling him that you believe he turned water into wine and walked on water.  I know things like that would torture him but he got the point eventually that his salvation wasn’t based in those details of the faith. I sometimes wouldn’t even need to challenge him.  He would pray his prayer on the phone with me, say ‘amen’, pause then ask me, ‘did I say this thing or that thing?  You think I should pray again?’  He began to realize that it would be impossible to remember and confess all the truths he believed.  I tried to make it simpler for him to have assurance by giving him simple things to remember.  I finally struck on the question! 

“Jim, do you believe Jesus did everything necessary for you to have eternal life?”  I spent several phone calls pouring theology into that question so he would understand.  That it was Jesus that did it and He did it for him.  That it was everything necessary.  That we don’t need to list every detail of all those necessary things every time we think of that question.  They’re in ‘The Book’.  You’ve read them all and believed them when you read and understood them.  We had discussed most all of them. And finally, that believing that means you have eternal life.  I even specifically chose ‘eternal life’ rather than saved because of the many uses of ‘saved’ in scripture and in our conversations that could confuse him.  That did the trick most of the time there on out.  He would head off on some tangent of doubt and I’d stop him and make him say it by simply asking, “Jim what’s the question and what’s your answer?”

It would frustrate him because he learned over time that these obsessions could keep his anxious mind occupied but eventually he would stop, calm down and answer me, “Dang it! You always ask me that.  Yes, I believe Jesus did everything necessary for me to have eternal life.”  I made him memorize exactly those words and made him say it again if he left something out or started adding stuff to it.  I felt it needed to be that consistent because if we left part of it out or improvised more stuff in, that would be the part he would fixate on to produce FUD, fear uncertainty and doubt.  Sometimes we’d have to break down parts of the theology that went into that statement again.  Sometimes I would stop him from digging deeper and ask what more he needed to know than that.  Eventually over months of drilling that into his head and making him recall it explicitly and exactly and apply the conclusion to himself it began to have an effect.  One day he called me and said, “Curtis!  It’s awesome brother!  Last night I started having doubts and obsessing and it just popped into my head, I believe Jesus did everything necessary for me to have eternal life!  I am saved!  I really am!”  He was able to get his mind under control, calm down and sleep.  I admit, he was wearing me out after about a year of this, every day, several hours a day.  (I did finally make him give me weekends off.)  That little victory made those hundreds of hours worth it.  He still has setbacks, but that simple truth makes a world of difference in his life as a trustworthy anchor.

Conclusion, theology and sound doctrine are important.  They helped him get there.  But once there, placing that well concluded marker in his mind made life and faith easier for him.  We disagreed about other points of doctrine and he made me work, win or loose the point in his mind, but we could agree that this statement was biblically sound and he could stand on it as solid rock.

Broader conclusion, we’re brothers and sisters engaged in a struggle for the church universal to come out from the state.  Discussions about doctrine are good.  The basic lable though is only twofold, Christian Anarchist.  Not Catholic Christian Anarchist, Baptist Christian Anarchist, Calvinist or Arminian Anarchist, Anabaptist, Orthodox etc… Anarchist.  Just Christian Anarchist.  I believe that all stripes of Believers have a solid basis within the orthodoxy of their denomination or sect to oppose entanglement of believers in the state.  Therefore, this should truly be an ecumenical effort and we should avoid criticism and dividing humanity within this goal beyond, do you believe (Acts 16) and is statism of any stripe a proper thing for believers to be involved in.  As an Anarchist, I wanna change the world.  As a Christian Anarchist, I wanna change The Church (universal).  I think we could all agree that changing The Church in that way would surely change the world.  Let’s start there and burn the heretics later, if you still want to after working together in love to make The Church more like Christ in a way we all agree on.


Your brother together in Christ,

Curtis

Oh… the title.  My brain often works in pop culture.

There’s a million ways to laugh.  Every ones a path….
Do you really think I care, what you eat or what you wear?
Won’t you join together with the band?

Pete Townshend, The Who, ‘Join Together’

 Posted by at 3:28 am
Sep 092021
 

This is not a political, legal, constitutional or religious statement.  The only reason to mention or allude to anything any historical figure has said is to show that these things were/are supposed to be commonly held by most of the people of the world especially here in America.

My liberty is not granted by any government.  My liberty does not morally, ethically or reasonably need to be argued for at all, ever.  It needs merely to be claimed.  To violate it one must make a case against me, me personally, where I am shown to be deliberately or negligently harming others directly.  Further I do not have to show the source of my liberty or claim that source as my justification for that liberty.  We have long been told that all of liberty in its manifold expressions are self-evident and unalienable.  This means that no justification need be offered in order to claim it.  Therefore, I make the following specific claims and declarations.

Claims

  1.  My body is mine.  What goes into it, or not into it, is my business and mine alone.
  2. What I have or have not put in it is also no one’s business.
  3. What ever I claim for myself, I must rationally and morally accept when anyone makes the same claim.
  4. I should stand in solidarity with anyone in jeopardy for claiming these liberties in some way to the best of my abilities.

Therefore, Declarations Concerning Covid Related Policies

  1.  I will not tell any governing personnel or business what I have or have not put in my body.  Even if I’ve been ‘vaccinated’, I stand in solidarity with all those who have not, will not or cannot provide documentation or affirmation about that status for any reason.  That is a liberty I will not give away and I will stand beside all those who are victims of such coercive aggression.
  2. I will not submit to any testing until I believe it is medically prudent for myself.  I will not give the results to anyone that I don’t choose to based on my own ethics and choices while considering others I’ve been in contact with.
  3. I will not apply for any medical exemption for anything.  I don’t accept that I need to ask permission in these matters from anyone and I stand in solidarity with those who cannot get such an indulgence from those in power.  They shouldn’t need one either.
  4. I will not apply for or claim any religious exemption.  My status in that regard is my business alone.  Whether my claim for my liberty is religious to me or not is irrelevant.  I will not justify my liberty by my or anyone’s religion.  I just claim it.  It is self-evident and unalienable.
  5. I will not falsify documentation or affirmation of my medical status to evade mandates.  I stand with all those who cannot or would not comply whether any or all of us could evade such mandates. I will not leave behind those who cannot or would not evade them by evading them myself.

I claim no more in this regard than what is above.  I make no pledge or declaration to anything more but nothing less than what is above.

Now is the time for me to stand!  I believe we should all make such a stand and state it forthrightly to the world.  To comply is to jeopardize myself and others.  To evade is to leave those who cannot or will not comply standing in your stead for your liberty as well as their own.  Standing in solidarity in my case personally commits me to no more than what I declared above.  It is not a commitment to take any other actions.  I may, as I so choose as a free human according to my convictions and conscience, do more at my own discretion. But I will do no less.  I have felt this way for some time but it appears that soon I might have some skin in the game and want all to know my position.

To paraphrase the spirit of Martin Luther (who did not say ‘here I stand’ in that speech):  I do not accept the authority of the state and it’s councils in this matter, for they have contradicted each other – my conscience is captive to the rationale of what self-evident and unalienable mean, which everyone claims as so. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me.

And I further declare that here I will stand, like it is said of Athanasius, Contra Mundum (against the world) if it must be.  May I and all that join me be granted the courage of their convictions.  Amen!

The world will be a better place if you stake these claims and declarations for yourself and encourage others to do the same. You needn’t reproduce the commentary but please leave the claims and declarations pretty close to the way they are presented. This will show agreement and unity (solidarity) in this matter. If you would like to add claims and declarations to this minimum level, please do so in a separate document or in your comments for the sake of continuity and unity in these basic minimums. Feel free to link it or copy and paste it everywhere. Claim it as your own if you like. I don’t care. Just STAND!

 Posted by at 11:10 pm
May 282012
 
This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Anarchy

brando  “What do ya got?”  That’s what Johnny (Brando) asked when a girl asked, “what are you rebelling against”.  That’s a good place to start today.  After all if ‘what we got’ is good or good enough then why rebel against it?  I mean anarcho-capitalism (AC) seems like such a radical departure from the status quo.  Things would have to be pretty bad for most of us to consider such a change and the risks that seem to come with this one seem so large.  There is another possibility.  AC could be so good that what we have, even if we like some of it, might jusy pale in comparison to what we could have in a free land.  But, lets stick to the first question.  What do we have?  Is it free?  Is it even good?

 

Lets paint the rosy picture of the ideal.  We live in a land under The Constitution which is a constitutional republic, governed by law.  Or take the other view.  We live in a democracy where majority rules and The Constitution defends the rights of the minorities from the majority.  Right from the beginning we see that it isn’t even clear what we have and we’ve had it for over 200 years, what ever it is.  Both views agree it has something to do with The Constitution.  So lets start there, shall we.

What is a constitution.  The World English Dictionary defines it as:   3.  the fundamental political principles on which a state is governed, esp when considered as embodying the rights of the subjects of that state.  Okay, where did ours in the US come from?  It didn’t just fall out of the sky on tablets of stone.  The Constitutional Convention began as an effort to revise the Articles of Confederation which was our first document governing the 13 colonies and then sovereign states.  Yet even at that level many of the revolutionary fathers declined to attend as they though the Articles of Confederation were sufficient.  Among them of note, Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, and Patrick Henry.  However even this controversial goal gave way to something much more radical.  Some of the delegates openly intended to make a whole new government at the convention.  Strange.  We had just won independence from England and had a constitution that was drafted by representatives of all 13 states and ratified by them all.  This convention was not so unified and thus did not represent the will of all sovereign states.  Rhode Island refused to even send delegates.  In all, the new document of governing principals was crafted and voted on by 55 people (only 55 of 74 who were appointed participated) and only 39 of them approved enough to sign it.  Three years later the first census in 1790 recorded the total population of the US to be 3,579,638 people including slaves.  After all we should include slaves as whole people under the constitution, whether it did or not.  Right?  Document of freedom?  Most states who ratified this document did so with a promise of the Bill of Rights which was added in 1791.  This means that the document these folks offered and other folks ratified wasn’t even complete when it was offered.  Remind you of any health care bill that wasn’t even read before it was voted on?  Old habits die hard.  Anyhow, The Constitution was written by 74% of the delegates sent to do so, signed by almost 53% of them (what a consensus) and 1071 people voted in state delegations for ratification which took over 3 years due to the disapproval of the expansion of federal power.  That is in the end, 1071 people decided on the fate of 3.5 million of whom only 39 signed the document.  This certainly isn’t a democracy.  At best a “representative democracy” but we would have to look at how the delegates to the convention and ratification conventions were selected to decide that.  Surely the slaves weren’t well represented, or the Indians.


SpoonerNow lets look at who these principals govern.  I recently finished reviewing the audio book,  “No Treason” subtitled “A Constitution of No Authority” by Lysander Spooner (click picture to listen free).  It may be found and downloaded from The Ludwig von Mises Institute  (http://mises.org/).  You can read the entire text at:  http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/No_Treason/6.

The basic idea here is that The Constitution is basically a contract between free peoples.  If it is not then we are subject to it without our consent thus no freedom from it or the government it imposes on us.  If it is a contract then who is this contract binding upon by basic principals of law and reason?  Those who sign it.  Okay, that’s 39 people who were bound by it.  Their all dead so I doubt it binds them any longer.  It could be considered binding on those who participated in the system of representation that produced it, i.e.. the generation surrounding it’s production and ratification, except the slaves and Indians of course, they weren’t given a free voice.  But again they are all dead as well.  Okay well, it says ”to ourselves and our posterity”, so there we have it, it includes us.  Spooner answers this rather clearly and directly.

It does not say that their “posterity” will, shall, or must live under it. It only says, in effect, that their hopes and motives in adopting it were that it might prove useful to their posterity, as well as to themselves, by promoting their union, safety, tranquillity, liberty, etc.

Suppose an agreement were entered into, in this form:

We, the people of Boston, agree to maintain a fort on Governor’s Island, to protect ourselves and our posterity against invasion.

This agreement, as an agreement, would clearly bind nobody but the people then existing. Secondly, it would assert no right, power, or disposition, on their part, to compel their “posterity” to maintain such a fort. It would only indicate that the supposed welfare of their posterity was one of the motives that induced the original parties to enter into the agreement.

When a man says he is building a house for himself and his posterity, he does not mean to be understood as saying that he has any thought of binding them, nor is it to be inferred that he is so foolish as to imagine that he has any right or power to bind them, to live in it. So far as they are concerned, he only means to be understood as saying that his hopes and motives, in building it, are that they, or at least some of them, may find it for their happiness to live in it.

So when a man says he is planting a tree for himself and his posterity, he does not mean to be understood as saying that he has any thought of compelling them, nor is it to be inferred that he is such a simpleton as to imagine that he has any right or power to compel them, to eat the fruit. So far as they are concerned, he only means to say that his hopes and motives, in planting the tree, are that its fruit may be agreeable to them.

Spooner answers all arguments that “bind” us as individuals or groups to The Constitution.  Even personal oaths to support and defend it are not binding, either morally or legally.  He deals with them all in stride with basic principals of law and reason to the extent that any argument for binding anyone to it at all looks down right absurd and somewhat silly.  In short as the title goes, The Constitution is of no authority over us whatsoever.  But who would want it anyway?


From our very foundation under this constitution we have higher crime, more imprisonment of nonviolent offenders, more poverty, lower education levels, more war, more debt, less freedom, poorer healthcare,… the list goes on and on.  Government in general, and ours under The Constitution is no different, has been the cause of all wars (no exceptions), overburdening of taxes, and loss of personal freedom of self and property since the beginning of human governments.  Spooner concludes with these words:

Inasmuch as the Constitution was never signed, nor agreed to, by anybody, as a contract, and therefore never bound anybody, and is now binding upon nobody; and is, moreover, such an one as no people can ever hereafter be expected to consent to, except as they may be forced to do so at the point of the bayonet, it is perhaps of no importance what its true legal meaning, as a contract, is. Nevertheless, the writer thinks it proper to say that, in his opinion, the Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. He has heretofore written much, and could write much more, to prove that such is the truth. But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain—that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

 

One only need to look around today, even more so than the condition of 1870 when Spooner wrote those words, our country is in very sad shape and approaching failure or national servitude of the masses to remain solvent for just a few more years.  Can “getting back” to The Constitution help us at all?  As Spooner said, it either authorized what we have or was powerless to prevent it.  Thus if we regress or ‘roll back’ some, many or all of the things that have happened since it’s ratification, what prevents us from getting here again?  What about our posterity?  No, I hardly consider ‘what we got’ as good or even good enough for me or my posterity.  But what then?  Isn’t this the best nation on earth?  Depends on whether you are currently in favor with the government or not.  The real question ignores the irrelevancy of whether there is a better plan currently in place on the planet.  The better question is, is there a better way?  YES!  There is!  Consider it.  Read about it.  Think hard about it.  Don’t settle for what is in current use.  Our forefathers didn’t.  Consider what could be, what should be if we own ourselves and the product of our labor.  Consider freedom in all that it means, without initiation of aggression against others or their property.  What we have may be the best by some measures but it still sucks!

But, how will justice be done without a state?  Murder in the streets!  Who will feed the poor?  Who will build the roads?  Okay, okay slow down.  First consider how well these things are being done now and you’ll climb off the statist high horse quick enough.  Second, if you just think a bit you’ll see that we don’t need government forced labor and taxes to achieve these things.  I heard a funny response to “who will build the roads” a while back.

Asking who will build the roads without forced taxation is like the southern textile mill owner asking how will we have clothing if the slaves don’t pick the cotton.  Gee… we freed the slaves and we are all still wearing denim.  I’m not sure we even saw much of a hiccup in the textile industry due to cotton shortages after emancipation.  Don’t panic.  The world won’t come to an end just because we have freedom.  More later in another post.

flag4So, what should we rebel against?  What we got.