Complex vs. Complicated Systems, Problems and Solutions

by | Apr 25, 2025 | Physics/Christianity/Life

The Wisdom To Choose Action or Inaction

In Dr. Robert Malone’s recent post he made the following observations and proposed the following resolution.

Premises:

  • Western society believes problems must always be met with action
  • Modern society assumes science and engineering can perfectly predict outcomes
  • There’s a fundamental difference between complicated systems (like computers) and complex systems (like biology and society)
  • Complex systems are inherently unpredictable due to their chaotic, self-assembling nature
  • Modern technocrats mistakenly view human society as a complicated rather than complex system

Arguments:

  • Complex systems cannot be controlled with the precision of complicated systems
  • Complicated systems (computers) can be fully understood and predicted
  • Complex systems (biology, society) have unpredictable emergent properties
  • Large-scale social interventions often fail
  • Historical examples like the “war on poverty” demonstrate unintended consequences
  • The “butterfly effect” makes long-term outcomes impossible to predict
  • Current global initiatives reflect dangerous hubris
  • UN’s Agenda 2030 assumes predictable outcomes
  • Centralized planning ignores the complex nature of human societies
  • Decentralization and incremental change are preferable
  • Allow societies to evolve naturally
  • Test changes on small scales before broader implementation
  • Avoid censorship that prevents natural adaptation

Conclusion:

  • Wise leadership requires:
    • Recognition of the difference between complex and complicated systems
    • Humility in approaching interventions in complex systems
    • Understanding when not to act is as important as knowing when to act
    • Favoring decentralized, incremental changes over large-scale interventions
    • Allowing natural adaptation and evolution of societies rather than forcing engineered solutions

The article advocates for a more cautious, humble approach to social change that respects the unpredictable nature of complex human systems.

To understand Dr. Malone’s arguments, we need a deeper understanding of the difference between a complex and complicated system
The terms “complex” and “complicated” are often used interchangeably in everyday language, but in systems theory, they have distinct meanings:
Complicated Systems:
  • Structure: These systems have many parts, but the relationships between these parts are generally well-defined and predictable. Think of a Swiss watch or a jet engine.
  • Predictability: Given enough information, the behavior of a complicated system can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy. If a part fails or needs adjustment, experts can usually diagnose and fix it because the system’s operation follows known laws or rules.
  • Hierarchy: They often have a hierarchical structure where components are arranged in levels, with control flowing from top to bottom.
  • Change: Changes in such systems can be managed through detailed planning and engineering because the outcomes of modifications can be calculated in advance.
Complex Systems:
  • Structure: Complex systems are characterized by a large number of interacting components where the relationships are not just numerous but can also change and evolve. Examples include ecosystems, human societies, or the economy.
  • Emergence: These systems exhibit emergent behavior, meaning the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Properties and behaviors emerge from the interactions among the parts that could not have been predicted just by studying the parts in isolation.
  • Adaptation: They often adapt and change in response to external or internal stimuli. The parts of the system can learn, evolve, or adapt, leading to new patterns and behaviors over time.
  • Nonlinearity: Small changes in initial conditions can lead to dramatically different outcomes (the butterfly effect).
  • Feedback Loops: Feedback – both positive (amplifying) and negative (dampening) – plays a significant role in how the system behaves over time, often leading to unexpected results or self-organization.
Key Differences:
  • Control: Complicated systems can often be controlled or managed by understanding and manipulating their components. Complex systems, however, might be influenced but not controlled in the same straightforward manner because of their adaptive nature and emergent properties.
  • Understanding: To understand a complicated system, you might need deep knowledge of how each part functions and fits together. To understand a complex system, you need to observe its behavior over time, understand the patterns of interaction, and often, accept that there will always be elements of unpredictability.
  • Management: Management of a complicated system can often be reduced to following a set of procedures, whereas managing a complex system requires more nuanced strategies, often involving learning, experimentation, and adaptive management.
While a complicated system might be difficult to understand or build due to its intricate design, a complex system is difficult to predict, control, or manage because of its dynamic and adaptive nature.
Commentary by Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
11/10/2024
There is a common distinction between complex and complicated systems, but they are very different in their behavior and predictability. Complex systems typically have a non-linear cause-effect relationship between their components, and the imprecision of measuring the initial conditions yields wildly inaccurate results when calculating the system’s future state based on initial conditions. However, even though a system is complex and incalculable, it is still just a sequence of physical actions that strictly obey the law of cause and effect and render a world of complex interactions as mechanical as a more well-behaved system.
There is a deep cause for the imprecision in predicting the future states in complex systems. Namely, the exact current state of the universe is impossible to measure, even in principle. The velocity and momentum of a quantum of energy or mass can only be measured with the certainty the Uncertainty Principle allows.
Another deep factor related to the Uncertainty Principle prevents knowing the exact initial conditions of a system (mass/velocity, time/energy). I postulate that each quantum of mass and energy is composed of smaller, more elemental components, which I call Conscious Points. Each Conscious Point has an actual position and velocity, but those parameters are unmeasurable by human senses and instrumentation, which can only detect units the size of energy quanta. Conscious Points have a dimension smaller than every quantum of energy. This puts Conscious Points at a size dimension below the level of detection and measurement in a realm where the smallest measurable dimension is the quantum.
These subquantum components, the Conscious points, are enrolled in a Group Entity, which is the essence or spirit of the photon or mass. Each Conscious Point operates independently, but when it is part of a mass or photon, it is part of a group entity. I define a Group Entity as an ad hoc spiritual entity that forms when a quantum of energy forms. The function/purpose of the Group Entity is to conserve the energy of the quantum. Each Conscious Point carries a portion of the momentum of the quanta. Each Conscious Point considers the forces acting upon it each Moment before moving. One of those forces that may act upon a Conscious Point is the instantaneous change required to execute the energy conservation associated with being part of an entangled photon pair.
A world composed of humans with consciousness and free will in a biologically adaptive world is inherently unpredictable because the viewer cannot know the force-direction of the spiritual input being applied to the mechanical/physical/complicated but predictable body-mind. The ability to see into the spiritual realm and choose any action I want in the next moment truly gives me free will. Because of this layer, we introduce the fact/reality of unpredictability. This unknown input makes human systems complex and unpredictable even when knowing all humans’ state of mind and intent at a given time.
Humans have free will, meaning that any/every human can make any choice in every successive Moment. On its surface, the brain appears to be only a complicated system (knowable, linear, binary, and identifiably physical and mechanical). However, the nervous system is a complex system. The synapses take milliseconds to integrate and fire for each sensory/input stimulus cycle and neural response. While the brain produces complicated patterns of neural firings in response to the inputs of other neurons and the afferent sensory signals, even this does not rise to the level of unknowable complexity.
There is another input level to the brain’s complicated neuroanatomy/neurophysiology. This input is not physical. I believe there is another input, one from the spiritual realm. Decisions and spiritual forces from God, angels, demons, spirits, and others can influence the nervous system. It is from this realm that complexity arises. We all have a spiritual vision, meaning we can all see forces operating in the spiritual/non-physical realm. And we have free will because we can operate on that level.
We are not constrained by the determinism of physical beings who respond to the impulses produced by complicated sequences of synaptic firings. Instead of the limitations of physical sequence, which is mechanical, the human brain-soul-spirit includes another variable, another force/factor/input to the neural-synaptic network equation, the free will choice arising from the spiritual-metaphysical realm. If an unobservable metaphysical force were to affect and influence the synaptic network physically, the brain-neural network would be both a complex and in-principle unpredictable output system.
Thus, the human nervous system is complicated and complex, and it has free will. God, the divine mind, has free will, as it has no sequence of cause and effect that it must follow. Likewise, the human mind can exercise volition/free will.
Natural systems, such as biology, ecology, and weather/climate, modify themselves in complex ways because of non-linear feedback loops between variables. There is nothing fundamentally indeterminate about natural systems. Still, the future state of all natural systems is uncomputable/unpredictable because the system’s initial condition cannot be known at its ultimate level of precision. This limitation is because the positions of all Conscious Points, which compose the masses of all natural systems, cannot be determined in principle.
In my Theory of Absolutes/Conscious Point Hypothesis, I postulate that the universe is unknowable in its exact condition at any Moment by human consciousness because of our dependence upon sensory data to take measurements. All sense detectors (whether human or instrumentation) measure only quantum-sized units, and as detectors, they are composed of quanta. Quanta cannot measure any increment of distance smaller than themselves.
The quanta can be seen and measured (their location and momentum are uncertain, meaning they cannot be precisely located. But it’s even worse than that because the position and motion of each quantum are unknowable in principle. The Conscious Points constitute each quantum and are unobservable because they are smaller than a quantum. To make matters even worse, the quantum forms a group entity that keeps track of momentum, and if one of the Conscious Points in the mass/group entity were to have its entangled pair be measured, then that mass would experience a change in motion and position.
Note that each time a quantum collides and exchanges momentum, all the Conscious Points associated with that quantum communicate with every Conscious Point in the colliding system and with all Conscious Points with which it was previously entangled. This constellation of interactions influences the next-moment trajectory of every Conscious Point.
Thus, each Conscious Point responds to 1) the sum of the fields in the local space of the Conscious Point, 2) the presence of charged particles in its local vicinity (whose position cannot be perfectly known, and 3) the measurement of its entangled Conscious Point pair. Thus, the universe is composed of energetic entities that maintain their identity. Still, because their actual position and velocity are mediated by Conscious Points, which cannot be measured, the quanta we can and do see cannot be precisely located. Hence, the phenomenon of complexity arises. The initial conditions can never be precisely known, which will cause them to be in disparate states of alignment.

Against Thee Alone Have I Sinned

by | Apr 25, 2025 | Physics/Christianity/Life

Against Thee Alone Have I Sinned
By, Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
11/13/2024

This post was inspired by an essay by Mike Shreve, a pastor in Florida, about why he did not practice yoga as a Christian. Mike and I were in 3HO (Happy, Healthy, Holy Oreganization), the American Sikh movement led by Yogi Bhajan. I was a member of this yogic religion from 1976 to 1982. Mike was one of the Yogi’s first students and became a prominent yoga teacher. Mike left 3HO in 1970 when he had a life-changing insight into the truth of Christ as the Way. Mike eventually became a pastor, with a ministry focus on comparing world religions and Christianity.

Mike’s essay, “Seven Reasons I No Longer Practice Yoga,” came to mind as I read Psalm 51:4, which I read in verse of the day from the Berean Newsletter (published daily by www.cgg.org). Note: I am not affiliated with the Armstrong movement, but I enjoy their daily newsletter and commentary. In this verse, the Psalmist confesses that he has sinned and that his sin was against God alone. This verse indicates that all sin is only against God, which implies God is present in all and is all.

Psalms 51:1-4, (1) Have mercy upon me, O God, According to Your lovingkindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, Blot out my transgressions. (2) Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin. (3) For I acknowledge my transgressions, And my sin is always before me. (4) Against You, You only, have I sinned, And done this evil in Your sight— That You may be found just when You speak, And blameless when You judge. 

From our perspective, sin seems to be against people. An ordinary/typical interpretation of this verse might be that we have sinned against God because God did not like how we acted toward another person. Such an interpretation is plausible and certainly our most natural interpretation of this verse. It seems that most people conceive of God as a distant paternal disciplinarian, judging and punishing us for behavior He doesn’t like and loving us when we behave in ways that please Him.

But Psalm 51:14 says. “Against You, You only, have I sinned.” Such strong wording implies that no one other than God has experienced anything. Such a concept is radical because it contradicts our sense of individuation. When I introspect about my feelings toward another who has offended me by murder, theft, infidelity, and perjury, I don’t naturally feel or think that I am God or that these acts hurt God.

However, Psalm 51:14 clearly states otherwise. Every sin is against God. He feels it. This issue is perhaps the defining distinction between a Christian and a pagan/pantheistic worldview. This issue appears irreconcilable, as the two views are mutually exclusive. Either God is separate from creation or immanent within it. The two worldviews cannot both be true. But, as is the case in all paradoxes, the resolution of the paradox involves finding a larger context that includes both mutually exclusive perspectives. In that larger context, both are seen to be true under the constraints of each’s limited perspective.

This is an important issue because all (or at least most) religions except Christianity hold/believe/teach that God is immanent/intimately present within the entirety of the created physical universe. This leads to an alienation of the believers in religions, which believe their religion is the only way, which is true of Christianity. Other religions believe there are many paths to truth and thus view Christianity as intolerant/closed/primitive in comparison to their expansive embrace of all religions as valid paths to God.

Which conception is true? Is God completely separate from the universe, or is He embedded intimately within it? The first piece of the puzzle is solved by accepting/realizing and interpreting verses that indicate the Bible acknowledges that God is immanent within the creation. If this is true, the next issue is postulating how God created a universe based upon a single consciousness while still allowing for the experience of separation, unique/self-only perspective, and a relationship between self and others.

I believe the solution to the problem of creating another consciousness besides God alone (a limited consciousness capable of recognizing boundaries defining self and others) lies in knowing how God created the universe. As per John 1, the Father and Son are identical but have a unique/separate existence. I think the Father created the Son by looking back at Himself. The nature given to Him by the Father (identical to Himself) and the perspective of the Son is His identity. The Father is the Son, but the Father has given the Son a unique perspective.

The Son was charged with creating all things in Heaven and Earth. The Son took counsel from the Father and did as the Father directed, but there was a degree of separation between them because of the distinction of perspective. The Father was still the only existent consciousness in the universe, but because the Father allowed the Son to have a choice in every moment and control the consciousness that He gave the Son, the Son was an autonomous being operating within the space of the Father’s consciousness.

The same method was used when the Son created the substrate of the creation and implemented the laws of physics. To implement the creation, the Son created innumerable Conscious Points. The Son declared each Conscious Point into existence by/from/in His mind/spirit. Thus, using the same method, the Father created the Son. The Son visualized/declared/spoke each Conscious Point into being and gave it a character, a set of capabilities it could execute. As in the case of the Father and Son, each Conscious Point was, in essence, the Son looking back at Himself and perceiving all other Conscious Points He created.

The aggregate actions of all Conscious Points, each following the rules of type,  distance, and motion, given to them by the Son, manifest the laws of physics. The Son created four types of Conscious Points (two electron-type Conscious Points and two quark-type Conscious Points), each with a different force-distance response to each other. The Son declared them all into existence, filled the universe with these points, and created a sufficient asymmetry in the number of positive and negative charges to allow mass formation.

The forces acting on each Conscious Point are computed, and the new position is assumed at the end of each Moment. The net result is the motion/change/evolution of that frame/context/vignette into a new configuration of Conscious Points. The Moment is the interval during which all Conscious Points in the universe simultaneously measure the relative distance and velocity of a specified number of Conscious Points surrounding each Conscious Point. They then process this data and compute how they should move at the end of the Moment. The aggregate effect is the formation and movement of particles, the carrying or transforming of kinetic energy, the holding or transforming of potential energy, the transmission of order and record of motion through the Sea of Conscious Points as photons, and the disturbance of the Dipole Sea as mass moves through the Dipole Sea.

Creating such a universe requires that each Conscious Point be aware only of its perspective. The Father creates the Son as a separate Consciousness, which begins individuation. The Son creating all of the Conscious Points as individual entities is the second iteration of creating individuated consciousness. The third iteration is the Son creating the human spirit. The fourth interaction in creating individuation may be the Son creating a generic animal spirit consciousness, which each species modifies based on its brain organization/ function.

This concept of consciousness having only an individual perspective is the key to its differentiation. By the Son giving consciousness to each point and not allowing each point to perceive the perspective of the other, the Conscious Points are given a single perspective and thus perceive themselves to be self and recognize others.

The Son is the source of all the Conscious Points. He has probably automated their generation and maintenance to make their continued generation effortless. He could focus on the perspectives of any Conscious Point, but His attention is probably on higher-level organizations of Conscious Points.

I postulate that any collection of Conscious Points can form a “Group Entity.” An example of a group entity would be any collection of mass, such as a planet, a mountain, a school, a town, an ethnic group, a team, a nation, a geographic entity, etc. The Group Entity is an ad hoc collection of Conscious Points. It is in the formation and perception of the group that the group entity becomes an active player. Such entities are called idols.

We do not see God everywhere and in everything because our perspective is naturally limited to the single perception associated with the spirit/perspective given to us by the Son. Because of having a single spirit perspective, we have a sense of individuation. This separation is so apparent to ordinary human consciousness that the idea of only one Consciousness populating the entire universe seems unfathomably absurd. Thus, by the Son allowing each spirit to perceive only one of His perspectives, He has created a separation between the conscious experiences of the spirits of men, animals, and the Conscious Points.

However, underlying all the specifics of how the Son created the universe from His mind and separated the spirits of men, the fact is that there is only one consciousness in the universe. That fact/perspective is so profoundly hidden that it is almost impossible to break through from human consciousness into God’s consciousness in any meaningful way.

The Father created the Son as a Point of Consciousness (with The Father’s characteristics). The Son has declared into existence all the Conscious Points (with the four characters of elementary types), the spirits of men (with the character of the Father and Son), animals (with the animal spirit), and plants (also with the animal spirit). The Son is the filter of what the Father sees. The Son only allows the Father to see the good portions of the creation. The Son is a filter for what the Father sees. The Son only allows men committed to the Godly/holy principles of goodness into the presence of the Father. This is why the Son is the way, the Truth, and the Life.

The Son created heaven on earth and walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden. But evil arose in man’s mind when he ate of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. Before that time, man’s heart was pure, unaware of the ways of being that violated God’s categorization of good and evil. The Father stands as the standard of goodness. The Son is aware of all that is good and evil, and he protects the Father from seeing the violations of His way. Morality was simple before man ate from the Tree; man only had to comply with one requirement, one prohibition.

Was it rebellion against God that opened man’s heart and mind to evil? Was there a spirit that invaded the hearts of men from the tree, which could enlighten/awaken men to the possibility of violating God’s way? Was it simply that man was confused by the possibilities of evil/prohibited action (murder, theft, perjury,  and adultery) and was unable to distinguish good from evil? Or were men opened to their animal lusts by taking in the tree’s spirit? Was it simply that the idea/concept of prohibition was present before the fall, but the specifics behind that prohibition were opaque?

The knowledge of good and evil was opened to man by his choice. God warned man against eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But having been made aware of the possibilities of animal lusts, men were confronted at each moment with the choice of whether to obey the commands and His way or satisfy his lusts.

In this way, the Father remains pure, entirely without evil in His consciousness or vision. Evil exists because God has chosen a set of behaviors/actions/choices that He has defined as evil. The complete set of actions is available in the physical world because all possible configurations of mass and energy are available. The physical universe does not evaluate/label/judge the morality of any action. In the physical universe, everything is categorized as a “what’s so” and an “is what it is” fact.

Thus, evil arises because of God’s definition of evil. The Father has chosen to limit His vision and see only what is good. The Father remains spotless, undefiled, perfect, the only one who is good. Because the universe is filtered through the Son, the Father can separate Himself from the evil possibilities naturally occurring within the Son’s creation. Thus, the Father stays pure/undefiled and unchanging.  The Father is the very definition of Goodness.

The Father’s ability to see only goodness through the Son and man only seeing from the single perspective given to him resolves the issue of why we don’t see/know/perceive the oneness of all and have a consciousness of everything in creation, all the time. Yes, the universe is a single consciousness, but by a few commands and prohibitions, consciousness can be compartmentalized into the individual consciousnesses of the Son, man, animals, and plants.

The Son exercising the authority and power to create the creation gave the Father a degree of separation from the evil possibilities available in the creation. This is relevant to our discussion because this paradigm/model of creation explains how the oneness of God and the Creation are both rational/logical/reasonable paradigms and that they are based upon Biblical concepts.

Incorporating the concept/paradigm/model of God’s oneness into Christianity as an orthodox, accepted concept allows Christianity to participate in a nuanced discussion with theologians and followers of other world religions. To be blunt, the different world religions have incorrect ideas/conceptions/beliefs about the oneness of all consciousness.

The current worldview/theology/catechism of Christianity has mostly rejected the concept of the oneness of all consciousness, considering it a pagan/pantheistic doctrine. Denial or misunderstanding of such a fundamental fact about the universe places Christianity out of the mainstream of discussion with world religions.

If Christianity were to embrace its scriptural references and implications of the oneness of all consciousness, then it would be able to authoritatively reframe and sanctify Eastern religions’ seeking to reunite into the unity of all consciousness. When the concept of how the creation was created from God, from a single consciousness, a concept consistent with the Bible, it becomes evident that seeking to unify with the oneness of all consciousness is antithetical to the purpose for which God created the universe. It is fundamentally a rebellion against the structure of the universe that God intended to create.

When viewing the Bible through this lens, it becomes clear that the Oneness of all consciousness is a central concept around which the universe was constructed. Instructing men in the Truth about the universe, its origin, structure, and processes is profitable. With correct knowledge and facts about reality, people can make better choices.  The Bible reveals, by implication, the oneness of all consciousness as the universe in many verses. With this paradigm, we, as Christians, can retain our concept of the inerrancy of Biblical purity/inerrancy and appeal to the other world religions to correct their concept regarding uniting with the oneness of God and consciousness. The Biblically revealed path to unifying with the nature of God is to accept Christ as the only way into the presence of, and fellowship with the Father. The oneness of all consciousness is an implied concept in the Bible. When addressed in the context of the metaphysical considerations God faced when designing the creation, it becomes evident that God had no choice but to create the Son and give Him the authority to create all of creation. In this way, God can maintain absolute purity and remain untainted, not influenced by evil.

Such a doctrine is offensive to those who believe that such an interpretation of these verses implies a pantheistic view of God. The worship of other gods, the division of the spiritual realm into a battle of the gods, violates the Biblical precepts of placing other gods before/ahead of the One, the creator God. This command is reiterated and restated in Deuteronomy 6:4, the Shema, “Hear oh Israel the Lord our God, the Lord is one. “

The Shema is a Hebrew word meaning “the call to listen.” It is a declaration of God’s oneness and an explicit prohibition against the conception of a pantheon of gods. Thus, the Shema reinforces/declares/affirms God’s unity and His indivisible identity. This concept distinguishes the Jewish faith from polytheistic beliefs. It is such a strong antagonistic declaration against the idea of the oneness of all consciousness that this concept is considered axiomatically false/heresy. This error must be corrected if Christianity is to make its full worldwide impact.

My search for truth as a yogi was my first exposure to the “oneness of God and creation” idea. This concept is considered pantheistic/panentheistic by many conventional/orthodox Christian theologians and laymen. Thus, a concept of God in which the universe and God are viewed as intimately connected in source and substance is a heretical theology to nearly all Christendom. The animus against what is considered a pantheistic/panentheistic conception of God and the universe is strong. To the Christian theologian, teaching this concept is a hallmark of being Eastern, pagan, unorthodox, a new ager, syncretistic, heretical…

The problem is that the Bible makes it clear that Christ is the only way to salvation.  This was what I was raised to believe as a child. However, as an intellectual, I am a person who can only function in a world that makes sense. I had to know the fundamental rules of cause and effect governing the world I was living in. The world is made of durable structures (mass and energy) and there are rules of interaction between the elements of this structure.

For me, high school (SHHS, science, college prep) and college (UCLA engineering) were also exercises of frustration. I wanted to know how the world worked fundamentally, but that wasn’t what I was taught. Instead, I was taught a high-level manipulation of concepts proposed as axiomatically true and existent (e.g., force/electromagnetic/strong/gravitational, mass/particles/charge/spin, energy/kinetic/potential, momentum, time, space, quanta/number/exclusion/entanglement, and relativity/time/space). I spent much of my time in school contemplating what was the underlying reality behind the macroscopic world of physical appearance. I had that realization in my 1987 vision, and it has proven to unify the concepts of the Bible with Science. It has given unity and simplicity to the various domains of science (fields, particles, quanta, relativity, and Newtonian).

I could not make sense of Christianity. What kind of world do we live in, where Jesus Christ dying for our sins could save us? How could this possibly be true? How could this make sense? I was missing something. I needed to understand the universe more deeply. I needed to know how things worked to think, judge, and evaluate properly to make good decisions.

I searched for another way. I saw an advertisement for a yoga class on the University of Hawaii bulletin board. When I attended my first Kundalini Yoga Class, I knew this was for me. I would do this and take it as far as I could. At the end of the trip, I knew it would not take me where I wanted to go, but it was worthwhile. It exposed me to the world religions. I understood the yogic path and Eastern religions from the inside. I put on a turban, chanted, meditated, did yoga, and read the Sikh holy book (Guru Granth Sahib – the Book of the Guru) for 2.5 hours every morning. I faded away. I left without incident or upset. I moved to Portland, leaving the LA Ashram, Yogi Bhajan, and the Sikh community behind.

People who oppose practicing yoga argue that the yogic worldview is based upon a pantheistic conception of God. They argue that if God was the substance of everything in Creation, then He was also the source of evil. They argue that this cannot be true because God, being all good/pure without any relationship with sin, makes such a theological conception inconsistent with Christian doctrine.

I left my childhood upbringing as a Christian to become a yogi because I could not understand what kind of world we must be living in where Jesus dying for our sins 2000 years ago could affect our salvation and forgive/pay the debt of our sins.

Six years as a yogi and studying around forty different religions did not give me any understanding of this question. But in 1987, in an altered state, I had a vision. I saw a symbolic representation of what I interpreted as representing the mechanics and structure of the universe. I saw how God may have constructed matter, energy, space, and time from His mind/consciousness/spirit. From this experience/realization, I saw how there could be a fundamental oneness of the creation. From that conception, I developed a theory of everything that incorporated and integrated the Biblical narrative with the physics of relativity, quantum mechanics, field theory, and particle theory. This miraculous personal revelation gave me a new perspective on the physical universe, God, relationships, purpose, and the context of the Bible. It allowed me to assign forces of cause-effect and rules of interaction to every interaction (whether Newtonian, modern physics, or interpersonal.) The remaining question is, “Is it True?” I shall continue to elaborate my Conscious Point Hypothesis/Theory of Absolutes and develop my conception of the sub-quantum universe, with its Conscious Point entities populating space and interacting according to rules of interactions given to it by God/the Son, when He created the universe.

Psalm 51:4 is one verse, among many, that supports my postulate of the fundamental Oneness of the universe as united by its origin in/from/by God’s mind. Several other verses support this postulate, the most prominent being, “In Him, we live and move and have our being.”

Considering the entirety of the Bible, Physics/Science, History, Psychology, Theology, etc., this insight is seen as the unifying theme of human knowledge and philosophy. With this paradigm, the purpose of life is illuminated. I have come to rely on the Bible as the definitive guide to morality. It is the story of God’s work to create life and bring His way into the willing governance of men’s hearts. The purpose of life is implied as being to love God, serve Him, and be served by Him.

The intersecting of multiple perspectives confirms the deeper meaning of this verse. God is the consciousness underlying all and the witness of all acts. As such, He feels everything and is closer than our breath, knowing all the hairs of our heads and loving each of us. The agreement with the totality of the Biblical perspective and the other domains of knowledge and human endeavor is a possible indicator of the validity of this insight/perspective/worldview. Given the universality of this revelation/insight/teaching in the world’s religions, including Christianity, I believe this perspective/insight/fact is likely true/actual/reality. I don’t think the concept of the oneness of all consciousness is merely the teaching of false religions or the delusion of a vision.

I use Psalm 51:4 as one of my cornerstones to illustrate and defend the concept of the universal oneness of God and all creation. I often heard this Oneness-of-God concept in my New Age/Eastern spiritual pilgrimage. I explored many different teachers, books, cults, and religions in my journey, but I could not understand it until I experienced it in my 1987 vision/awakening/enlightenment.

I believe my vision was a miracle, a divine gift that I was given because I wanted to know the truth so badly. This new perspective, seeing that God was alone in the beginning and that He created the Son as His duplicate and authorized Him to create all things that were created, was the turning point of my life.

I saw and understood how Christianity could be True from that seed vision. I understood the symbolism of that vision because it connected and put into perspective the many religions and teachings I had explored. This concept seemed universal—a central principle of every religion.

I don’t think the Oneness of All is a commonly recognized concept in Christianity. And I don’t believe its depth, reality, or significance is recognized even in the religions that teach and pursue it as a central tenant. Nevertheless, the implications of this concept allowed a new understanding of the difficult-to-rationalize concepts in the Bible, namely, Jesus’ declaration that the Father and I are one. I saw how the other teachings of Christianity were tertiary; they were implied as necessary complications associated with the unity of all consciousness. For example, the unjustified death of Jesus Christ and his subsequent resurrection indicated His lawful supremacy of authority in this world. Death cannot hold a man who does not sin against God.

Jesus Christ proved it was possible to conquer Satan by resisting his temptations and living a sinless life. By being murdered by the henchman of Satan and resurrecting from the dead, Jesus proved that death could not hold a sinless man. He declared that His spilled blood was a gift that all could use as an effective commutation of a death sentence for sin.  In the spiritual realm, His blood, which Satan unjustly spilled, could be used for the forgiveness of sin.

That fact/insight/realization of the oneness of all consciousness allowed me to see the truth of Christianity, a religion I left to explore other faiths. I left because I could not understand how the concepts, premises, and foundation of Christianity could be rationalized in terms of the structure of the laws of the physical universe and a philosophical connection with purpose and cause-effect. But seeing the oneness of God and the creation in so many different religions, and seeing hints of it illustrated and represented within Biblical scriptures, and connecting this concept to create a conception of the physical universe that connected God with the physics, biology, and purpose, allowed me to adopt its precepts and living practice of Biblical Christianity with full ardor and without reservation.

It was in this way that I benefited. I saw that conceiving God as immanent within the creation and seeing the commonality between Christianity and the other non-Christian world religions was not demon worship. I saw a unifying truth that allowed me to elevate my conception of Christianity from the realm of ad hoc cultural myth or metaphor to the realm of a religion that included the profound factual nature of the universe into the fabric of its theological conceptions.

I had seen a fact about that universe in other world religions, and I had seen it dramatized in a vision personalized to meet my need for a conceptualized illustration of function. I am defending and rationalizing the benefits of studying other world religions. I saw an invisible truth previously hidden within the Biblical text and not included in the canon of Christianity. The truth of the oneness of consciousness was in the Biblical text, but I could not see it. It was likewise invisible to the majority of theologians and followers of Christ. Since that time, I have attempted to defend my thesis against the accusation of endorsing and teaching a heretical, polytheistic gospel of demon worship.

Regarding other elements of faith, I believe that every religion teaches many elements of Godly morality, and I believe many practitioners believe they are Worshiping the one true God. Each should be applauded for the Godliness that they teach and practice and their intent to worship God.

I do not think that any religion except those that teach Jesus Christ as the only way leads to salvation/forgiveness of sin/purification of a person’s soul to be in the presence of the Father. I believe only Christianity offers that possibility/way.

As Christians witness to other world religions’ followers, we should emphasize their religion’s truths/common beliefs and then examine the differences. By Christianity acknowledging the Oneness of God in the creation, a commonality has been established that need not be criticized. The sincerity of the search for truth in all religions should be acknowledged. With this posture, I believe we will be more effective in witnessing to the unbelievers and followers of other religions who are sincerely seeking to worship God. I think this was Paul’s message in Acts 17:22-23.

Many would recognize the truth in the words/teachings hidden in the Bible if they 1) deeply understood the universe’s structure, 2) could rationalize its concepts and see how they correspond with reality, and 3) see that its teaching/wisdom/worldview leads to a good life. I believe that Christianity’s disagreement with the teachings of the world religions regarding the Oneness of God and the Creation is misguided. We should agree with world religions on this issue and focus on correcting their errors in worshipping other gods.

The God of the Bible is the only true God. Whether they worship a demon or a lesser god is unknown, but we do know that there is only one way to the Father: through Jesus Christ. Other religions may desire to reach/worship/follow the one True God, but if they are following another god by mistake, or if their method of reaching God is mistaken, they will not reach the God they desire to worship and serve. The existence of the pantheon of other gods probably does exist, but only the one True God should be worshipped.

All other gods may be demons since they do not teach the way of Jesus Christ. We are in error to the extent that we worship any other god above the One True God. The first Commandment, to have no other gods before God, does not state that there are no other gods. Instead, it says only that other gods should not be worshipped.

My experience of participating in many religions was that every religion is populated by sincere people seeking truth and trying to live the best way possible. However, sincerity and good intentions are not determinants of truth. I was able to be a Christian when I saw and understood 1) that the Bible acknowledged the concept of the immanence of God in the creation, 2) that the Son was of the same character/essence as the Father because of being declared into existence by Him, 3) that the Son created all the Conscious Points of the creation by declaring them into existence by the same method that He was created, and 4) the moral and theological implications of this foundational structure of creation.

I realize that my Conscious Point Hypothesis/Theory of Absolutes postulates require more study and validation before they can be used as dependable tools for witnessing. My intended audience for this theory in its mature form is the scientifically literate atheist. I believe these are the thought leaders, the priests of the religion of Scientism and Secular Atheism. I intend to continue developing my postulates to the point where they will withstand the most critical scientific scrutiny. Nevertheless, even with the above minimal development of the concepts, I think you will agree that when viewed through the lens of the Bible alone, disregarding my scientific postulates about how and why God is immanent, the Bible has sufficient clearly articulated verses to cast doubts on the postulate that God is not immanent.

The unifying factor that allowed me to divine the purpose of life was the conception/model/postulate that everything, both good and evil, the spiritual and physical universe, arose from God. In my conception of God’s evolution/creation of the earth, I believe He was alone before He began the creation. The Bible is mute on this subject, so we have no scriptural authority upon which to base such a presumption.

But, using the logic of the physical universe, it does not make sense that God created the universe from a storehouse of matter or spiritual substance if He was alone before the creation of the universe. If matter was available from another source besides Himself in the pre-creation space, who created it? Did another God create it? Who are these other gods/creators that created evil if He did not make it, or give authority to another God-like creator to create the polarities of good and evil? Declaring into existence the substrate from which the physical world arose (the Conscious Points) is the only rational explanation I can postulate.

There will still be those who find the above postulate repugnant because it 1) states that God is immanent within the creation, which is like Hinduism, which ascribes all the various functions of deity to different gods, which is polytheism, which the First Commandment expressly prohibits, or 2) posits that God cannot be within the universe, because God is only good/perfect, and therefore cannot be immanent within a physical universe that is populated with evil spirits, and people who embrace/practice evil, or 3) some other implication of the above postulate that seems to contradict a particular doctrine of your denomination. If such objections remain, please comment on this post and email me at drthomas@theoryofabsolutes.com.

These considerations about the limitations God faced as initial conditions and requirements for the creation He was building make me believe that there was no other source of building materials besides Himself.

Another significant consideration for me was the issue of salvation, atonement, and substitutionary sacrifice. These issues were of such importance to me that I left the very strong/radically saved/fanatical devotion to the faith of my childhood, youth, and young adulthood to explore other religions. I am a man of reason. To understand something requires a full elaboration of the substance, process, and laws governing cause-effect. These were missing. To be a Christian, as an adult, I was asked to accept Christianity with a childlike, not-understanding why, faith.

I believe I was named Thomas for a reason. I doubt everything. I don’t consider any proposition believable, worthy of belief, or acceptance until all the elements of proof are present. I see no reason to extend my faith to endorse and place my eternal destiny in a religion that offers no understandable explanation. I know those who hear and believe are blessed, but I was not blessed with this level of faith. I had to put my hands in the nail scared hands to believe.

I feel like the most blessed person to have been given what I consider to be a miraculous vision that gave me the clues, the missing information needed to derive the backstory on how God created the creation in the detail I needed so that I could have faith. I do have faith about the size of a mustard seed. I have a little. I don’t even consider myself a believer – I know it’s true. I only have enough faith to say, “If the Bible is literally true, and if the universe was built with these methods and for these reasons, then this religion, this understanding of God, is sufficiently rational and self-consistent that I am willing to trust eternal soul to follow and promoting it with my whole being.”

Before I started my spiritual pilgrimage, I didn’t see any possibility of rationalizing God by using the Bible as my sourcebook of explanations for how God created the universe. Given what I knew and saw of the universe, I could not rationalize how Jesus Christ could die 2000 years ago, and His blood and death would be effective in washing away my sins. I did not see how belief in His resurrection would be effective in saving my soul.

So, I took an alternate route. The path of yoga, the path of directly experiencing God, seemed to be a more certain/verifiable method of ensuring my path was, in fact, True. If I could not rationalize the system, I was surrendering my volition to someone else. I could only do that if I trusted their experience or belief sufficiently validated that they were on the true path to God.

Until I understood the rationalization of why a path to God was correct and effective (whether the path of Christ or the path of yoga), I was relying on other people’s valuation. Either way, I was only following people. It seemed like everyone was convinced that their way was the authentic/best/right way to God. One billion people each follow Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism. Listening to the testimony of the followers of each religion, reading their respective sacred texts, or participating in each of them seems unlikely to be definitive. There are chauvinistic religions that believe their religion is the best/only way (Jehovah’s Witness, Mormons, Christians, Islam…). There are Eastern/New Age religions that declare that “All paths lead to the same truth,” so there was no need to discriminate or choose; just dig and keep digging in the spiritual garden where you are planted, and you will eventually get there.

As a young adult, I was faced with the prospect of blindly following Christianity and not knowing if it would ever produce fruit. Instead of doing the same thing, with no possible change in sight, I did something different. I decided to be a yogi and see if meditating, chanting, doing asanas/poses, and reading the Guru Granth Sahib would end my karma, release me from the cycle of birth and death, and give me an experience of union with God. This sounded like a more sure method of finding God than just believing in Jesus. At least the yogic path was one where I would know I had experienced God. So, I chose the path of works. I decided to do a method that gurus and yogis said would give me a magical/transcendent personal experience. At least I would know whether it worked or not. ***

more satisfactory understanding of our relationship to god. ave me a rationalization for the Biblical concept of salvation and how the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ were effective for salvation. It allowed me to rationalize why His death was necessary for resolving the separation between God and man. It answered the myriad of questions about life that cannot be answered without a deep philosophical and reality-based understanding of the spiritual-physical foundations of the universe.

Of course, the belief in a God who is immanent within the creation is not a sufficiently granular concept to rationalize all of science, philosophy, theology, and psychology. In fact, without the guiding influence of God’s revelation (the Bible), we can use this fact, the immanence of God, to justify worshipping trees, nature, statues, etc. It is this concept that we, as Christians, should stand against.

It is unnecessary to stand against the concept of God as immanent as a Christian; the Bible has sufficient implications of its factuality to accept it as a fact of nature/God’s creation. The first Commandment is even more meaningful when we recognize that God is in everything. A natural temptation must be resisted when we see that God is in some way present in everything in the creation. It is this temptation we must resist. Our love and singular worship of God is even more meaningful and love-expressing when we recognize there truly are aspects of Him within the creation. When we see divinity everywhere, we must resist the temptation to worship a portion of Him. It is His fullness/His personhood/His beauty, perfection, and love that we must worship. It is possible to look at the various aspects of creation and worship the gods of nature, the elements of His creation. Yes, He created them, and they are real, but they should not be worshipped. In essence, He has created the creation with tests embedded within it that challenge people, that test people to worship gods other than Him. In this way, man’s love is tested/challenged. That is why he gave the First Commandment. There truly are other gods, they are real, and they can be worshipped, but God warns us to love only Him. When we see the immanence of God in a Christian/Biblical context, we are led to a reverence for all of life, people, the earth, and nature. Every moment reminds us of His majesty. We worship the creator, not the aspects of the creation. We worship the fullness of who He is as author/creator of life, not the works of His hands and the spirits that occupy, influence, and administer the creation.

This argument about whether the non-Christian world religions are demonic because they believe that God is immanent is a distraction from the real issue. The real question is how should we live and establish a proper relationship with God. We should focus our discussions between religions on what is True regarding the purpose of life and how to live a life that pleases God. I believe there is only one way to the Father: accepting the sacrificial offering of Jesus Christ for our sins and making Him the Lord of our lives. More specifically, giving Him the Lordship of our lives means adopting His moral code, His way of being, and listening to the Holy Spirit (His spiritual representative of the Son, which guides us in all righteousness).

Christianity, as a formal belief structure and people taking the Good News of Christ’s salvation, should be taking this doctrine/distinction, this unique revelation of the nature of God’s creation into the world. I believe accepting the oneness of God and the creation in at least the causal/creative/initiatory sense of God as the source of all creation is important. The gap between Christianity and other world religions is narrowed by acknowledging that God is immanent in the creation. At that point, the debate is about doctrinal issues, about our proper relationship with God. When Christianity acknowledges that God is the source of all, we are on a common ground for examining the rationality of morality as taught by Christ and embodied within His being. The immanence of God is such a repeating theme in all religions, including Christianity, throughout millennia and cultures that this is likely a universal underlying truth about nature and the creation.

Some people have come to faith based on the belief that all other religions are incomplete and demonic because they believe in the immanence of God in all creation. In Mike Shreve’s pamphlet, “Seven Reasons I No Longer Practice Yoga.” he makes the following points, to which I respond under each point:

  • 1. Yoga is based on Eastern religious beliefs that contradict Judeo-Christian teachings. Hinduism and Eastern religions believe in concepts such as prana, chakras, and kundalini.
    • I believe the Bible is True because sincerely living its precepts produces a better/higher-quality life for the individual.
    • I believe that when people practice Christianity as a reflection of the morality/character of Jesus Christ, there will be world peace. Until then, there will be significant strife.
    • The Bible’s historicity has been validated to a great extent by archaeology and extra-Biblical texts.
    • The poetic descriptions of the physical universe are consistent with a universe as conceived in my Theory of Absolutes/Conscious Point Hypothesis.
    • The Yogic concept of the unity of all creation, the illusion of reality, is consistent with the duality of good and evil. The Bible is not a comprehensive exposition of all metaphysical or physical concepts.
  • 2. Yoga aims to achieve union with Brahman, the Hindu concept of the universal oneness of God.
    • In my Conscious Point Hypothesis, I postulate that God the Father was alone in the beginning. There was no one else. He was alone. He could not make the universe from a substance other than Himself. As the Father’s first and only creation, He declared the Son into existence.
    • Given that there were no other spirits or substances available to create the physical or spiritual universe, the Father created the Son from His mind/consciousness/spirit as a duplicate of Himself. Hence, Jesus said, “The Father and I are one.”
    • The Father gave the Son the authority to create all things. The Father and Son were sufficiently separated as unique identities so that the Father could maintain His purity/separation from evil when the Son created the creation. The Son either created evil spirits or good spirits/angels that rebelled and chose to oppose God and His way. Either way, evil exists, and the Son created the substance from which evil arose.
    • The Son created the creation by declaring innumerable Conscious Points into existence. Each Conscious Point is conscious of its source and all other Conscious Points. He gave them independence and rules to follow to carry and be the substance of creation. He densely filled the universe with Conscious Points of four types, from which he created all matter. He filled all space with Conscious Points, giving mass and photons a medium to transit. He retained ultimate authority over their placement, giving Him the right and power to form the universe. With this authority, he created miracles and life in all forms. He evolved and adapted plants and animals to their environment over the ages. And he gave man His light, His spirit, His essence is the light of life that animates men.
  • 3. Practices like chanting “Om” invoke Hindu gods.
    • Chanting may be meaningless/thoughtless repetition, which is not profitable.
    • Or, chanting may resonate with spirits and allow them to enter and influence one’s life.
    • Worshipping other gods violates the first commandment.
    • These other gods may be demons, or they may be principalities of nature.
    • We should pray, dwell on what is good and positive, and emulate His character in our relationships.
    • We should meditate and be still and know that He is God.
  • 4. Yoga postures have symbolic spiritual meanings relating to Hindu deities.
    • God has commanded us to have no other Gods before Him.
    • Imitating the postures of earth spirits may resonate with those spirits and allow them to enter and influence us. Having said this, intent is of great importance. Is the asana, the posture/pose taken as part of a ceremony, as a ritual dedicated to that earth spirit/god/power or other lifeform? We can place our posture in any position, and if we are committed to simply moving our body into various poses, and there is no openness to possession, there is little chance of being possessed.
  • 5. The goal of yoga is to realize one’s divinity, to unite with the oneness of Brahman, the large face of God.
    • While we are a part of the divine (just as everything is), we are not God.  As Jesus said, “We are gods.” We are not God. Uniting with God in the complete, ego-dissolving sense is to destroy the separation that was a cornerstone of God’s creation. This type of yogic union is unholy and opposes God’s plan for man as a separate being who chooses to love Him, and whom He loves.
    • Dissolving the barrier between God and man makes it impossible for God to be in the love relationship He created us for. Being separate from God is a very important aspect of holiness.
    • The other important and more conventional aspect of holiness is choosing to be separate from evil.
    • The Word/The Son is the light of men. We were made in His image. We are gods, but we are not God.
    • God is the source and substance of everything. We cannot help but worship Him in every moment, situation, and location when we recognize His immanence. Our rational understanding and acceptance of Him as the Lord of the universe by scientists and skeptics can more readily be accepted when we can rationalize God as the source and substance underlying subatomic particles.
    • However, uniting in God’s oneness, like a drop of water in the ocean, is the opposite of relationship and the purpose of creation.
    • He is holy and has declared Himself separate from evil/sin.
    • This is the miracle of creation: to create an observer and observed, a subject and object, a seer and the seen, from a starting point where there was only God and no other and no thing. God created the entire creation from His oneness. The Father distanced Himself from evil by delegating the Son’s authority/duty to create physical reality, with its polarities of good and evil. Thus, the Son, who is also God but separate in a significant/God-declared way, created the world where evil exists. The Father desires to be in a relationship with other spirits who have free agency. The process of living in the creation is to battle evil, which pulls us to worship other gods and engage in their morality. His plan, his creation of the creation, required that His Son be sacrificed to bring people into a purified relationship with Him. We can only marvel at the magnificence of our God, who was able to create significance and meaning from a single consciousness. The Father arose from nothing or existed for eternity, but this is an insoluble mystery. But assuming God/the Father’s existence, He created the entire creation, and without any substance or spirit from any place other than His own being. It is by this method that we can rationalize God’s immanence and His separation from evil. God created the creation from His being, but He established strong barriers between Himself and the Son. This allowed Him to be of the same fundamental substance that carried evil but not be overtaken or sullied by the evil spiritual entities that must exist in a world where evil exists.
    • Man has a fallen nature, which can only be redeemed through Christ. We cannot short-circuit entry into the divine realm by meditating, chanting, working off karma, devotion to other gods, serving gurus, or following the teachings of men.
    • We are to unite with God in the sense of uniting with His Way. His Way is living His principles of loving neighbor as self and loving God. We love God by following His Word, which is making Jesus Christ the Lord of our lives, feeding on the Word (the revealed Word of God), and listening to the speaking of the Holy Spirit/that still small voice of conscience.
  • 6. The spiritual experiences and energy experienced by mastering the yogic disciplines are deceptions produced by demonic powers rather than the miracles produced by God’s grace and prayer.
    • When we chant words, meditate on the names of gods, do positions and movements, or devote our life energy to channeling prana, life energy, this is a trick, not actual spiritual growth. The purpose of life is to be in a relationship with God and to love Him. In this life, we do that by choosing to love His way, do His works, and resist the temptation of the world/other gods.
  • 7. Yoga is a type of New Age spirituality infiltrating Western culture.
    • Yoga/Hinduism is a path of works with a slightly different moral code than Biblical Christianity. The most pronounced difference between yogic and Christ-centered morality is the belief that the purpose of life is to get out of life.
    • The popularity of yoga may be its promise of enlightenment and liberation from the endless cycle of karma through various practices. But such a conception misses the point of life. The end/purpose/reason for life is a relationship with God. This relationship is produced when we love God, our neighbor, and ourselves. The Father wants us to love each other because He feels and enjoys the sensation of loving each other. When we do so, the Father and Son dwell with us. There is a separation, even though there is unity in God. The struggle/challenge of life is to unite with His character/way of being. That is the holy yoga. That union is what we are called to do, not the union of dissolving back into Him or the union of breaking through the spiritual barriers He erected to experience a relationship between independent/free will beings.
    • Jesus said, “I am the way, the Truth, and the life, and no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” Indeed, it is impossible to come into the Father’s presence without covering our evil/imperfections with the blood/sacrifice/atonement of Jesus Christ.
    • Living a moral life is excellent and necessary. Even so, it is impossible to be good/pure/holy enough to enter God’s presence by one’s efforts. Likewise, God does not recognize or authorize entrance into his presence through yogic/Eastern works (chanting, meditating, breathing, eating, serving, worshipping, rituals, symbols, or magic).
    • We can only enter into God’s presence by the approval of the Son/Jesus Christ. He was the sacrificial lamb. He was guiltless/innocent/pure and was murdered by Satan without a legal warrant for His death. His blood and death were unclaimed/unused to pay His debt of sin, as he was guiltless. That credit can pay the debt of blood and death that we owe.
    • We must willingly give Him our lives to appropriate His grace, His gift of forgiveness, and reconciliation with the Father. With total commitment to His Way and submission to His will, the debt is canceled; we are seen by the Father as pure by the filter/cleansing of the Son. We are creations of the Son, He is the light of men, and He looks through the Son to see us. If the Son has authorized us, we are cleansed and may enter into God’s presence. The advocacy of the Son is our covering and cleansing. Forgiveness and reconciliation with the Father cannot be purchased with money or work. The debt is paid only by giving him our entire being. As we make Him Lord of our lives, living His Way, we are born again with a desire and commitment to live a life pleasing to the Father.

Objection to Yoga because of its Roots in Hinduism

Yoga has its origins in ancient Indian spiritual traditions, most prominently Hinduism. The word “yoga” comes from the Sanskrit word meaning “to yoke” or “join,” reflecting the goal of uniting one’s individual consciousness with the divine Brahman (the vastness of all consciousness). The earliest foundations of yoga are found in Hindu scriptures such as the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. Here, the philosophy and practices of yoga were developed as part of a broader spiritual system aimed at liberating one from the obligations of karma and the endless cycle of rebirth.

Core concepts in yoga, such as prana, chakras, kundalini, and mantra meditation, all have roots in Hindu cosmology and theory. They may reflect an aspect of reality, and manipulating these forces, substances, and processes may have spiritual effects. However, in Judeo-Christian theology, such practices will not bring a person into the intimate fellowship relationship with the Father offered by following the way of Christ Jesus. The ultimate aim of yoga is to achieve samadhi, or absorption into Brahman, the impersonal supreme reality of Hinduism. This is done through physical, mental, and spiritual disciplines designed to control the subtle energies of the body and quiet the fluctuations of the mind.

The spiritual path to God-realization in Hinduism is different from the way revealed in the Bible. The yogi’s absorption into the oneness of the Brahman is not about bringing the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. The method may be similar in that part of the teachings of Hinduism/yogic life may include excellent moral advice about living, staying healthy, having good family relationships, and respecting the laws of God and government. But, at its core, Hinduism aims to reunite with Brahman, which is the opposite of the Christian path. The way of Jesus Christ is to remain separate but holy. The Christian path is to unite with God by adopting His rules/the way exemplified and personified by Jesus Christ.

Contradictions of yogic practice with Judeo-Christian Teachings, as per the pamphlet “Seven Reasons Why I Don’t Practice Yoga” by Mike Shreve

The Eastern religious underpinnings of yoga contradict core tenets of Judeo-Christian theology on several fronts:

  • Traditional Judeo-Christian teachings espouse belief in a personal, transcendent creator God, not an impersonal pantheistic divine essence as in Hinduism. Union with this personal God comes through faith and grace, not individual mystical effort.
    • I agree that the God of the Bible is a loving, caring Father God who created the world because He wanted to be in a relationship with the souls He created and gave free will to.
    • I believe God the Father is, in essence and lineage, the source of all substance. To this extent, He, through the Son, is the source of all. We live in a universe populated by many gods, but He is the source of them all.
  • Judeo-Christian scriptures do not teach concepts like karma, reincarnation, chakras, prana, and kundalini that assume a cyclical rebirth process and energy body that can be manipulated to end the cycle of death and rebirth.
    • I do not believe there is a cycle of birth and death. I believe the Bible teaches that there is only one birth and death, and then the judgment.
    • Karma is similar to sowing and reaping, and sinning and paying the consequences.
    • In Hinduism, prana is the life energy of the breath. Science has not detected another life force besides oxygen’s chemical effect of accepting electrons in producing energy as ATP. If there is another life force, such a fact would not be evil or to worship or acknowledge evil. If it is a fact, it’s just a fact. If it exists, it is just part of God’s creation. There is nothing evil, demonic, or Satanic about the Eastern concepts of prana, kundalini, or chakras. Either they exist, or they do not. If they do exist and they are worshipped or take the focus off of living a good life, then to that extent, they hinder our proper relationship with God. If they exist and are used as facts, just like any other anatomical reality, they are just as valuable/useful/helpful in living life well as any other fact. Things must be dealt with in their proper context.
  • Yoga aims to unite with the Brahman (the oneness of God and creation) by various methods to end the cycle of death and rebirth.
    • This is not the Judeo-Christian method of uniting with God. The natural man has the instincts and drives of the animal kingdom. He is driven to survive, reproduce, satisfy hunger, avoid pain, seek pleasure, etc. Man must choose to bring these drives under control to behave in a Godly way in every circumstance. There is a time and place to satisfy every animal instinct in a Godly way, but desire tempts men to choose sin instead of Godliness.
    • The transformation of a man’s animal desires is possible. Transformation of the heart, soul, and mind may include: 1) asking and being called (prayer, study…), 2)  The transformation includes knowing God’s way (feeding on the Word), 3) Committing to live with Jesus Christ as Lord,  (honoring His Way as revealed in Scripture), 4) Listening to the leading of the holy spirit (prayer, fasting, meditating on the words of the Bible), 5) Accepting His resurrection as demonstrating the authentic/real and effective (the power that raised Jesus from the dead has the power to transforms a man’s man’s heart). By transforming his heart, a man can choose a life pleasing to God.
    • But by default, by birth, man’s nature is sinful/unpleasing to God. We can never be holy or perfect enough in attempts to be holy to be worthy of being in God’s presence. We can only be saved by grace. But that grace comes by complete submission to Jesus Christ as our Lord. Only then does He become our Savior.
    • The Bible teaches that humanity is distinct from the divine, and we will never unite with the Oneness of God and the creation, nor is such a unity desirable. This oneness is factual/real and true, as everything is formed from the substance of God’s spirit/mind. However, reuniting with this primal essence is not an appropriate life or spiritual endeavor goal.
    • God created man and creation to be separate and in a relationship with Him.
    • God created man perfectly, but there was no , but when man sinned in the garden,
    • with the desire for sin in the hope that man would choose to love Him. The way of man showing his love of God is to follow His Way. God created the world to satisfy His desire for love. God is love. We are dependent upon God for our redemption. In one sense, everything is divine because all is from Him. In Him, we live, move, and have our being.
    • God has created strong barriers between His divinity and our humanity. Methods, such as yoga, can circumvent His spiritual defenses. But those who enter His realm through methods other than the authorized method, which is submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, will be expelled. The consequences of unauthorized methods of entry into the spiritual realm are seen in John 10:1 and Matthew 7:21-23.

For these core philosophical and theological reasons, yoga’s spiritual foundations are not compatible with Judeo-Christian doctrines.

  • The physical aspects of yoga may not be problematic. However, when attending yoga classes, the Eastern worldview is typically used to explain the benefits of yoga. Prayers and chanting are often used, and familiarity with Eastern religion is gained through exposure to a non-threatening, pleasant, and growthful physical, emotional, and mental experience.
  • Those attending yoga classes will most likely hear only the Eastern/Hindu/yogic theory of God and the journey to spiritual freedom through chanting, meditation, yogic asanas, and spiritual theory. With such seeds planted and without a competing/fair/rational comparison of the Christian path, the recreational/fitness/spiritually exploring yogi risks being enrolled in a yogic lifestyle, belief system, and membership in a yogic cult or Eastern religion.
  • The concept of the Oneness of God and creation and the promise of stopping the endless cycle of births and deaths is seductive. When life seems painful or pointless, the goal of leaving life and reuniting with God’s bliss can seem seductive.

The promise of yoga classes/practice/mastery is perfecting of focus and mastery of life, uniting with the spirits of the poses, becoming conscious of the illusion of Maya/reality/the physical world, vibrating your chakras with sounds to open up psychic abilities, meditating on the silence/stillness to develop the siddhis/powers, the enlightenment of seeing/knowing/being in the oneness, liberation from the pull of karma and the cycle of births and deaths, and entering the bliss of unity with God.

  • The casual fitness/recreational yogi risks adopting these goals and benefits in an environment where there is typically not a fair/in-depth comparison with the Biblical worldview. A yoga instructor may declare the superiority of the Eastern/Yogic path, claiming the Church has corrupted the Bible to subject the masses to slavery. At the very least, a complete discussion of the path of other religions is not undertaken in yoga classes or after joining the Ashram. It is for this reason that it is best to avoid participating in yoga or studying Eastern religion.

But having said that we should not attend yoga classes, I did not follow that advice, and followed Yogi Bhajan for several years. I didn’t get enlightenment or liberation from anything. The guru asked me for all of my money, and I gave it to him. I got married and divorced while in 3HO. I worked in one of the “family businesses.” I saw inconsistencies in how the yogi acted, the advice he gave, and his theories of God and the universe. I decided that I could not trust him to lead me to enlightenment. Later, I read a book by Premka Kaur (Pamela Dyson), his most trusted disciple and secretary, which contained a complete expose of her experience with him in her book, “White Bird in a Golden Cage.” All was not as it seemed. But does the failure of one guru damn all gurus? No, it does not. We must look deeper than just the failures of a single man to provide a compelling case for why not to follow the path of Eastern religions and yogic practices.

  • In a strange turn of events and personal changes, I became a Christian, at least in part because of what I had learned from Eastern religions and my yogic practice. I intensely studied and lived the life of a yogi to the fullest extent possible within the structure of a householder group.
  • Because of my exposure to the Yogi’s teachings and many other religions after leaving that group, I was introduced to the concepts of “the Oneness of God and all creation.” Likewise, I heard numerous times that “all spiritual paths lead to the same truth.” Both memes/slogans made sense as literally true/accurately describing the spiritual path to God. Thus, I placed as a requirement for a true religion would satisfy these criteria.
  • The maxim declaring that all paths lead to the same truth was satisfied by Christianity when I realized that two quotes by Jesus made two opposing/mutually exclusive declarations. 1) All who are not against me are with me, and 2) all who are not with me are against me. In looking for a resolution to this paradox, I realized that all spiritual paths seeking to know God are going toward the same truth, but in the end, there is only one Truth.
  • The Bible declares that Jesus Christ is the truth and the way, and no man comes to the Father except through Him. If this is True, and I believe it is, following other spiritual paths without comparing them to the Truth of Jesus’s life and His direction as Lord and creator will put the spiritual seeker at risk of being distracted by disciplines that cannot restore our love-relationship with God in the only way that He has authorized.

 

Summary Essay:
“Divine Singularity: A Theological Analysis of Psalm 51:4’s Implications for Divine-Human Relations”

Abstract:
This scholarly analysis examines the theological implications of Psalm 51:4’s declaration “Against You, You only, have I sinned” within the context of divine-human relations and universal consciousness. Through examination of scriptural evidence and comparative religious analysis, this paper presents an argument for understanding God’s omnipresence as fundamental to the nature of sin and consciousness.

Introduction:
The concept of sin’s relationship to divine consciousness presents a complex theological question, particularly when examining David’s declaration in Psalm 51:4 that his sin was against God alone. This statement appears to transcend traditional interpretations of sin as primarily interpersonal transgression, suggesting a more fundamental relationship between divine consciousness and human action instead.

Theoretical Framework:
The traditional interpretation of sin typically focuses on its horizontal dimension – the harm caused to other humans – while acknowledging a vertical dimension regarding divine disapproval. However, Psalm 51:4 suggests a more radical understanding: all sin is fundamentally and exclusively against God. This perspective aligns with Acts 17:28’s assertion that “in Him we live and move and have our being,” suggesting a more comprehensive divine immanence than commonly recognized in traditional theological frameworks.

The Conscious Point Hypothesis: A Theoretical Framework for Divine Ontology

Theoretical Foundation:
The Conscious Point Hypothesis (CPH) presents a novel theological-philosophical framework for understanding divine creation and consciousness. This hypothesis posits a fundamental ontological structure wherein God the Father, as the primary consciousness, generated all of reality through discrete conscious points, with the Son as the first emanation.

Methodological Analysis:
The CPH proposes the following sequential ontological development:

Prima Facie State
Initial condition: God the Father existing as singular consciousness
Absence of external substance or alternative consciousness
Complete ontological solitude

Primary Creation Event
Generation of the Son as divine duplicate
Establishment of first conscious differentiation
Maintenance of essential unity (“the Father and I are one”)

Secondary Creation Phase
Son’s generation of innumerable Conscious Points
Implementation of governing principles for these points
Formation of physical reality through point manipulation

Theoretical Implications:

Metaphysical Structure
Reality as fundamentally conscious rather than material
Physical phenomena as expressions of conscious point interactions
Universal divine immanence while maintaining transcendence

Theological Consistency
The hypothesis provides potential resolution for several theological challenges:
The unity and distinction within the Trinity
The mechanism of divine omnipresence
The relationship between spiritual and physical reality

Phenomenological Consequences
Matter as derivative of consciousness rather than fundamental
Miracles as conscious point reorganization
Divine sovereignty over physical laws while maintaining their consistency

Critical Analysis:

The CPH presents several advantages:
Offers a coherent framework for understanding divine creation ex nihilo
Provides mechanism for divine-physical interaction
Maintains biblical consistency while engaging modern philosophical questions

However, certain challenges remain:
Empirical verification difficulties
Questions of conscious point individuation
Relationship to quantum mechanics and modern physics

This hypothesis represents an attempt to bridge traditional theology with contemporary philosophical questions about consciousness and reality’s fundamental nature. Further research might explore its implications for:

Quantum theology
Mind-body relationship
Divine action in physical systems
Free will and determinism

 

God is Everywhere
By Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
11/13/2024

I recently read an essay by Pastor Mike Shreve about why he stopped practicing yoga. It made me think about Psalm 51:4, which says “Against you, you only, have I sinned.” This verse means that all sins are against God.

To me, this verse shows that God is everywhere. When we sin against others, we are also sinning against God who is present in them and experiencing our acts. This view is very different from the normal idea of God as a judge who is far away. But I think it fits with my own experience of seeing how everything is connected to God, who is intimately and always present in everything, feelings, seeing, hearing life at its deepest level.

In 1987, I had a vision where I understood how God could have made the whole universe out of His own spirit. This helped me see that everything is one with God at the deepest level. I heard this oneness taught in many religions before I became Christian. But only after my vision could I fully embrace Christianity, and that because I saw how the Bible was consistent with this concept, and it explained how all other religions were speaking about the same truth, but did not extend it to the singular truth at the top of the mountain, where there is only one Truth. I believe this truth is embodied in the character of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. It is when we make Him Lord of our lives, that we attempt to emulate His character.

The oneness of God is hinted at in Bible verses like “in Him we live and move and have our being.” When you look at all human knowledge – science, psychology, and the world religions – we see evidence that God is the source of everything. And with some extrapolation and interpretation of  the implication of Bible verses we can reasonably postulate that the purpose of life is to love God and be loved by Him.

Most (non-Christian) religions acknowledge the oneness of God and the creation in some way, usually overtly and as a primary feature of the universe. The realization of the Oneness may be thought of as enlightenment. As Christians, we can create a bridge of rapport with followers of other religions by acknowledging that the Bible likewise has verses which indicate that God and the universe are emanations from God/The One.

As Christians, by recognizing the oneness of God and all creation, we remove a large barrier of difference in the conception of the universe with other religions. Such acknowledgment allows us as Christians to examine finer distinctions/differences in the principles, promises, and pursuits of other religions. By examining the articles of faith remaining, a more bridgeable gap is revealed. At this point, we may be able to confront the wide spectrum of questions typically asked by the seeker about the practicalities of life and how they are regulated by the Biblical perspective of life and how it should be lived.

The goal of Christianity is living a good life. In Christianity, the separation between God, the creation, and man is the foundational creative imperative/principle/dictate/design parameter. The unity between God and all of Creation may be a fact, but there must be a separation between God and man. In the Biblical worldview, the separation between God and man is not something that we are trying to dissolve in an experiential way. Rather, as Christians we are using it as a foundational principle that must be honored to the point of creating individuation.

The truth we uphold as Christians must reflect Biblical principles and cosmology, and other religions will hold different beliefs about moral principles and the construction of the universe. The difficulty in studying other faiths is that the precepts can be mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, such dialogue and examination can be valuable. The goal is to identify distinctions which are at odds with reality, but metaphysical reality is usually outside the possibility of determination of truth/factuality.

The purpose of engagement with followers of different beliefs should not primarily be to prove them wrong, but rather to challenge our own conception of truth. We should seek to understand the principles that may be revealed through the practices and beliefs of others. Ultimately, there is one Truth, and examining how various religions highlight certain principles, questions, and dilemmas about life can deepen our understanding of that Truth regarding life and God.

Mike Shreve sees other religions as incomplete or simply wrong compared to Christianity, but as a seeker. I agree, there is only one truth, but I needed to learn about the spectrum of world religions to truly understand Christianity. By discussing beliefs with followers of other religions in the spirit of trying to find the truth, we will expose the areas where we have a well connected rationalization of our faith, and where our justification is weak. We should speak about our faith. We should deeply share our faith about important issues that can guide how we live life.

State-Governed vs Stateless Societies

by | Apr 25, 2025 | Politics/Economics/Culture

The State vs. Stateless Societies
By: Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
2/20/2020

Background: John H is a Libertarian turned “Anarcho-Capitalist”.  When asked the difference, John is fond of saying, “About 6 months.”  The Libertarian desires a a society that allows men the freedom to make contracts between consenting adults, and judges behavior according to the “Non-Aggression Principle.”  The Libertarian becomes an Anarcho-Capitalist as he realizes government inherently interferes with these prime tenents of Libertarianism.  Thus, John advocates for a Stateless society – a world without nations, without government, where people choose their actions and associate with others by contract, providing all the services of government, but without the authoritarian power of government forcing actions authorized by a majority.

TLA: The conflict between the Libertarian and Democratic State begs the question, “What is the best method of making a decision for group action?”  You passionately believe the best societal organization preserves the individual’s right to choose non-aggressive and loving contracts between consenting adults.

You believe the modern State, with its democracy-based and police-enforced laws and regulations violates your libertarian ideals and your God-given freedom.  The State diminishes your happiness by forcing you into compliance with majority-imposed laws to which you morally reject.

The individual should choose his work, associates, culture, and the legal principles governing his group.  Every community should choose its own laws and judges, and enforce its standards with private police, and provide all other community services through private contracts and voluntary participation.

You believe the Democratic State is a crude tool of social organization that forces participation in majority decisions, thereby dening men to exercise non-aggressive and loving actions of their choice.  You believe the Stateless Anarcho-Capitalist society is superior, in that it allows men the granularity of individual choice vs. the blunt tool of democratic majoritarian mandate.

You believe the Stateless system provides greater productivity and happiness by giving men the freedom to work more creatively.  You believe individuals, businesses, and industry are more productive and happier when given the opportunity to exercise their free will and negotiate for their best interests in the company of people with common values.  You believe the individual experiences the highest quality of life when he can exercise free will in the marketplace of ideas and merchandise.  In a free-will world, he will suffer or prosper according to his actions, and is most motivated by the self-chosen reward.

The ensemble of principles of free will choice resonate deeply within the human heart.  Given the powerful motivators internal to the human psyche unleashed by the dissolution of the State, how can the Democratic State compete with the manifestation of the idealized Libertarian utopia?

The Constitutional Republican State can function better than the Stateless Libertarian world, but only when men rule themselves according to the Law of God.  Such a society must be composed of a majority of Godly men, mature in guiding their hands, hearts and minds according to Biblical Law and the Love of God.  Such men submit to the principles of Godliness and the people benefit from their self-disciplined compliance with His ways.  The individual is sovereign over his own body-space, only if he is submitted and obedient to God’s law.  Natural law contrains the man against his will, unless he complies with the way of Godliness.  Such citizens fear God, and willingly submit to the laws of nature and nature’s God.  Ignoring or rebelling against God’s Laws subjects men to suffering.  The Stateless society can also work in a nation of mature Christian men, but the lack of an organizational focal point diminishes its efficacy.

You emphasize that people make poor choices in terms of judging the requirements of God’s Law as revealed in the Bible, and then impose their interpretation of scripture upon others.  You, therefore, advocate just letting people learn from the feedback of life.  You worry that imposing the laws of the Bible on people will cause suffering because of the errors that men make in their interpretation of God’s law.  So, even though the Bible is right, you argue that the State should not impose Biblical law upon people, because man’s law will contain errors, and inflict its own type of suffering.

I agree with your concern about the fallibility of men in judging divine intent from Scripture.  Nevertheless, we must crystallize the society and its legislative code around Truth.  Legislating based upon man’s tastes and desires, wants and feelings, will almost certainly produce suffering.  Standards-based upon man’s native instincts of right/wrong and the Biblical patterns can diverge greatly.  The standards embedded in each man’s heart shapes the group behavior, and can bring the Kingdom of Heaven or hell on earth.  Men can only institute righteous Republican government when they agree individually to live according to the constraints of the Biblical worldview.  The group mandates merely codify the principles of individually chosen Godly conduct.

The Kingdom of heaven can come on earth by:

  1. The return of Christ to earth to rule and reign.  When he comes He will impose God’s Law on earth
  2. God is the ruler of each life and heart when every man commits to implementing the Word, will, and way of God in his life.  The success of this prescription depends upon adults guiding their lives by a mature interpretation of the Bible and teaching their children to follow the way.

Many/most people don’t read scripture and interpret its words in the context of its entirety, and many only listen to someone tell them what the Bible says and means.  A Christian matures by reading the Bible, repeatedly, and considering each verse deeply in the context of the whole, and the mature Christian applies its commands to his life and thereby develops Godly character.

The Left, the rebel, the lovers of the flesh interpret the Bible opposite to its intention.  The Bible reveals the absolute standard of good and evil, but the man of the flesh calls good evil and evil good.

The Biblical Libertarian incorporates and applies the Law of God in his life and government.  In Christ is the greatest possible freedom, which means living by His principles and following the Holy Spirit’s guidance.  The government should be a small part of life and legislate, judge, and administer according to Biblical principles.

The codification of Biblically-based standards into the laws of a nation provides a foundation for a nation conducting itself as a Godly government.  Such legislation stabilizes the group’s moral ethic and gives conscious cultural recognition to the Biblically-based wisdom of a people.  The implementation of such a Biblically-based government is stable in judgment and flexible in its adaptation to the circumstances of the current world.  It allows for freedom within the limits of Godliness, allows for practical/adaptive change as recognized by the group, while maintaining the backbone of Biblical standards which limit and allow the acts of men.

JH: What is wrong with letting those who see the truth, follow the truth, and letting those who do not follow the truth be left by the wayside, where they will probably not survive?

This is the Darwinian process of morality.  Offer Christianity, extol its virtues, and live its example.  Wise people will observe, learn, and emulate it.  Idiots will do what idiots do – falter and go extinct.  It’s the way of the world, apparently.  Why do you see an impetus to drag everyone along, even using force against their will?  If they choose extinction, isn’t that their free will to do so?  Didn’t Jesus and the original Christians ask for voluntary adherence?  They didn’t force others to follow them, right?

I had a visit with two libertarians last weekend and spent the whole afternoon walking and talking.  It was a beautiful hike and a great talk.  I came to learn more about my own views, and perhaps I grew somewhat.  I think I am coming to regard the libertarian mandate of the “non-aggression principle” as just as flawed as the communist imposition of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.  I think mankind is so self-deluding that we will justify any aggressive action as moral.  Even Hitler considered his actions moral – he was merely eliminating pests and filth from the people he held dear.

I think the unique libertarian distinction is the elimination of democracy and elimination of the State, which uses your own money to enslave you, and uses other people’s money to go to war that only the leaders want.  At the very least, if each of us is limited to our own resources, and the resources of those we can enlist voluntarily, then we will be greatly curtailed in our aggressive urges.  We won’t eliminate them, but at least, if I want to prevent others from doing whatever they do, I am limited to using my own resources to intervene and force them, not use the resources of my victims against themselves (as is done with the State).

Example:  If my daughter is captured by Islamists and falls prey to Stockholm Syndrome, and begins to agree with her captors and wants to live an Islamic life, I may decide, in my own interests and in the interests that I BELIEVE are my daughter’s interests, to INTERVENE, KIDNAP HER, AND ATTEMPT TO RESTORE HER SANITY.

That is NOT a libertarian position!  But it is a flawed human self-deluding position that humans naturally justify!  In doing so, I would be limited to my own resources!  I cannot vote and force the losers to PAY TAXES to support my cause.  Many people will commit an aggressive act and justify it on moral grounds.  That is not libertarian.  But it would be an element of a free society.  I see that now.  I did not see it before.  Of course, we will also defend ourselves from such aggression by others, and we will feel equally high minded and moral in defending ourselves.

TLA: John, you have taken a large step away from mainstream libertarianism with your rejection of the Non-Aggression Principle as an absolute standard of judging morality.  You are correct, inside of their own perspective, people can justify any action as moral.

This begs the question, “How can we define morality?”

It appears you are struggling to find a solid standard upon which to define morality.  You have chosen honoring free will as your solid moral ground.   Your illustration of the terrorist kidnapping your daughter as an example of how seriously you have taken this principle.

In effect, you have taken the position of radical non-interference with the choices of another person as the ultimate good, their sovereignty of self-determination as the standard to honor above all others, and free will as the highest principle in God’s Law.

But, the elevation of free will to the pinnacle of the moral-standards hierarchy is immediately contradicted by experience. We can project that Hitler thought it a positive moral good for the group to kill Jews.

I note the combination of Free Will (allow all to do as they will), the Non-Aggression Principle (do not initiate force against another person), and the Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you) together produce a reasonable approximation of a workable moral standard.

The actual absolute moral standard is, “Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, soul, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”  The trio of free will, NAP, and the Golden Rule is very close, missing only the loving of God as the context of all moral action.

Free-will/choice/self-determination is an important principle, as it gives significance to our choice between good and evil.  Free will is the context for action.  By itself, Free Will is neither good nor bad.  Free-will allows us to choose our actions, and the choice of actions reveals the state of our heart and soul.  God desires that we choose His way.  Our choice of actions determines our direction – toward fellowship with God, or away from Him.

God wants us to use our free will to choose to love Him.  Loving God implies and entails emulating His Way by following His Law.  Without purity, we cannot be in His presence.  We see this principle illustrated in from the Sermon on Mount, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”  Unless we are cleansed of sin, we cannot fellowship with Him intimately.

The Golden Rule requires loving our neighbor, and one of the principles of love is advocating for his soul.  By challenging, correcting, and encouraging him to right action we have served our friend greatly.  Confronting a fellow traveler on his judgment of right action is an act of love.

God has a plan for the creation, to create a universe populated by souls with whom he could love and share a relationship.  But, that relationship is meaningless if it is automatic, forced by structure, design, or natural law.  If He imposed His will and way upon every soul, He has retracted His gift of free-will.  We can assume we have free-will, and we are responsible for our actions.  The mechanism by which God implements free-will is miraculous, and we must take the fact of free-will as axiomatic.

I agree with your emphasis on the importance of free-will.  You are correct, free-will is important, it is the principle that allows meaning in life. Without free will, we are merely gears in a machine in the play of another.

As humans, we appear to have free will, but the mechanism of free will is a mystery.  From the materialist perspective, we are matter and force, sequential, cause-effect machines, which exclude the possibility of free-will.

If free will exists, it is a miracle and inherent to the structure of the creation.  The question underlying this concept is whether God can create consciousness which can exercise free will.  In another thesis, I have developed the metaphysical sequence by which God created every point of the creation with free-will.  Thus, without repeating the development, we shall take as axiomatic the hypothesis that man does have free-will.

Thus, the question is not whether a man has free-will (he does), but rather, what he chooses.  In normal life, a man makes decisions based upon evidence, tastes, and standards.  The question confronted by the libertarian consideration is whether it is ever right/correct/moral to force a man to comply with our demands?

You have presented a hypothetical situation, where your daughter was forcefully abducted, and during her captivity a new belief was implanted within her.  The question is, “Is it wrong to abduct her forcefully and confront her with the (il)logic of her captors and allow her to confront her error?”

In short, the answer is yes, it is moral, and loving to forcefully kidnap her again.  She was unable to make a free will choice in the captive situation, and is now living in a permanent hostage state with invisible captors.  By intervening with force, we take break into the stronghold of the captors and free the captive.

Another aspect of this question is, “Whose life can we intervene in?”  In general, those who trust you and would authorize your involvement.  Because of the trusting relationship between you and your daughter, you have standing in her life.  You have the right to enter into her life as a family member, friend, or intimate partner to advocate strongly for her sanity.

Obviously, you have the right to confront her ideology when she consents to such discussion and consideration.  But, the question you have raised is whether we have the right to kidnap and rescue her from her captors when she desires no such rescue due to her altered state.  At its essence, we are advocating for her return to loving the God of the Bible.  In other words, this authorization for intervention is not symmetrical or universal.  It is not OK for mafiosa parents to kidnap their children who were in protective custody, to bring them back to a life of crime.

By contrast, consider the case of the unrelated individual.  In general, we do not have the right to detain and confront the random man on the street and challenge the basis of his thoughts, speech, and actions.  Thus, the level of commitment, connection, and trust we have with the victim influences our authorization to intervene intimately.  We have the right to challenge a man’s values and choices if we have procured permission for the challenge.  This principle underlies the sequence of the rapport, confrontation, and change progression in the counseling intervention.

Again, we are honoring your daughter’s free will by confronting her, by asking her to examine the process to which she was subjected and challenging her to examine if those choices were justified by logical sequiturs?  Obtaining permission to challenge her is the critical component.  By challenging her to think logically about the premises and conclusions preceding her decision to change religions.  We are not forcing her to change her mind by challenging her logic.

Rather, the confrontation is a challenge to the forceful acceptance of her captor’s belief system.  In short, love confronts destructive thoughts, words, and actions, (and, all ideologies that oppose the Way of Christ are destructive of the Soul) and attempts to convince a man to remove his Soul from the fire.  Intervention in a respectful, logical, adult consideration of values, worldviews, decision processes, honors your daughter’s free will.  And, by challenging her on her new beliefs, we are expressing our love by helping her process her commitment to a new religion.

The Non-Aggression principle and the principle of honoring of free will underlie the libertarian belief that no one has a right to forcefully impose their will upon another person.  By extension, this implies that God should not impose His will on anyone.  And, in fact, God does not forcefully change the state and mind of a soul, but he does exert force on a man’s life circumstances.  God has established natural law, and natural law imposes itself upon the individual.  Thus, God exerts forces on a man to change his will and way, to turn him toward Godliness.  In like manner, we should attempt to serve those we love by administering an analogous force and thereby forcefully confront the evil a man has embraced.

The fact that natural law imposes itself upon a man opens the door to the possibility of good/right/authorized force exertion upon another man.  Obviously, natural law exerts a God-authorized force upon a man.  Using the action of God on man as our precedent, we have the authorization to act on a man in the same way God acts.  In short, God acts to oppose and correct men, and we are His hands extended in this world.  God’s will and way IS the law, and He enforces it with natural law and by the miraculous organizing of consequences.  The Bible provides a template of the types of violations that God may judge.  Thus, using God as our pattern, we may confront various violations of His law with appropriate force to cause a man to confront the error in his moral standard.  Of course, we risk being wrong in our judgment of God’s will.  In which case, we risk being subject to God’s corrective action.

So, in summary, in your example, your daughter was kidnapped and subsequently rejected her family’s values and adopted the terrorists’ religion.  Should she be captured and deprogrammed?  My answer is yes.  She was taken by force and subjected to indoctrination, not by her choice.  She was unable to rationally consider the logic of their indoctrination and adopted their beliefs based upon coercion.

Her adoption of the religion of her terrorist captors was not a free-will act.  Leaving her in such mind-captivity without a fight against the evil of her captors is to surrender the battle to the enemy.  She was subjected to an unGodly belief system by force.  To capture her, and subject her to the consideration of reason, and the analysis of her new beliefs is an act of restoring her free will.

Any person, forced into subjugation to a lifestyle, philosophy, or belief should be given the opportunity to reprocess the decision, and in some cases, the confrontation may require the use of physical force.  The appearance of her making a free will choice to adopt her captors’ religion is deceptive.  She was forcefully programmed and adopted a new religion/belief/loyalty/family, based upon a forced indoctrination.  Upon erecting the bars and walls on her mind, she was released and appeared free, but she was still a captive.  Taking her captive by force, and confronting her decisions, giving her alternatives, countering her objections, gives her the opportunity to make her decision and restore her free-will.

Regarding people who have adopted false religions from life interactions.  The same force should be applied to them as that which programmed them.  Life circumstances give people the opportunity to choose the content of their character.

Men should freely choose the content of their minds, hearts, and bodies.  God intends that men be free to act within the boundaries of His Law.  The continued embrace of unprocessed indoctrination does not fit into the pattern of God’s intention for men.  God’s method for releasing a captive mind is to administer consequences to the errant soul.  Life presents lessons in the man’s life who strays.  He is always free to heed or reject these lessons.

Thus, the key pattern, the strategy used by God to restore the wayward Soul is by administering consequences.  God continues to bring consequences into the life of men, both positive and negative to awaken the sleeper to turn from his ways.  He desires righteousness, and if we act in concert with His will and way, we move His Kingdom forward.

Thus, we need not respect as final the choices a man has made under the duress of threats, captivity, and seduction.  Rather, all such decisions should be confronted and processed.  The counselor may judge the programming as good or evil.  Either way, the victim of kidnapping and programming should be given the opportunity to confront her logic and reprocess her decision using multiple perspectives and lines of reason.  Arguments confronting the implanted belief system, and administering life consequences that confront the implanted acts and beliefs, are appropriate.  Properly processed, a man chooses his path in the moment and long term based upon an open examination of the relevant facts and factors.  He should revisit decisions made from a single perspective or testimony.

Of course, confrontation of a decision with talk, advice, and argument does not interfere with a man’s free will.  Argument and examination are the essences of the method by which God changes people’s minds.  God brings life-experience into people’s lives.  The law, the environment, the way of God confronts their decisions and choices.

Which brings us back to the question, “When is a forceful intervention into a man’s life justified?”  In general, force is justified when his actions materially affect the lives of his neighbors.  If a man’s actions threaten to violate the space or ideology of his neighbor, he should be restrained and confronted with corrective counsel, and aversive training such as fines, incarceration, labor.  Men should respond with corrective force to violations that correspond to God’s law.

 

TLA: Here is an article that I read today.  The replacement of Godly character with Leftist values in our children and society will eventually overtake the society in Godlessness. It is for this reason I fear for America.

In response to your question about whether a society is better organized as a State or Stateless, there is a factor that makes the State a better system.  The State, organized as a Constitutional Republic, can only function as an optimal societal organization if it is instituted in a mature, Biblically-Christian culture.  We don’t need angels to rule us in government, we just need mature Biblical Christians populating a society for the State to work well as the organizing governor of the group.

We cannot isolate ourselves from evil, and we can’t escape from it.  It infects everyone, everywhere.  The question is only how well we contain it as individuals and as a group.

As you note, your perspective is a Darwinian selection of the fittest.  The ones who do not love the truth, either die, change, or rebel against the forces of life.

I rewrote the first sentence from your last email, since it seemed like it didn’t state what you wanted to say overtly enough to be unambiguous.

(Rewrite of a sentence): “What is wrong with letting those who see the truth, follow the truth, and letting those who do not follow the truth be left by the wayside, where they will probably not survive?”

Did I capture what you were trying to say properly?

JH: You said it correctly but from a more paternalistic and “less respectful” perspective.  I would say “ …left by the wayside, WHERE THEY CHOOSE TO BE” instead of “ …left by the wayside, where they will probably not survive”.  I think the ultimate respect for another human being is to recognize their sovereign right to decide for themselves based on whatever information they themselves deem necessary.  Conversely, I think it is paternalistic *and condescending* to impose one’s own judgment call on the sovereign actions of others.  “They probably will not survive” would be YOUR or MY judgment call, not theirs!  Or, they may even agree with us and still choose their action despite the risks.  Isn’t that their choice to make?  Aren’t we giving them the *ultimate respect* to keep our opinions to ourselves and respect their sovereign human dignity to choose for themselves?

TLA:  I think it is important to let people choose their consequences, but warn them.  In the case where their choice will harm others, they should be restrained with force.  Letting a man suffer his own consequences vs. forcefully restraining him gets complicated when their choices affect my world in subtle ways, where it is not obvious that harm is being done.  The problem is that all choices have an effect on the world, it’s simply a matter of degree.  There really is no such thing as a victimless crime.

There is no contract between consenting adults which has no effect on the larger world.  A man’s actions are either Godly, or they are not.  No one can hide their actions completely from the world.  So, the decision of whether a community allows, or does not allow a behavior is based upon the community’s judgment of the magnitude of the degradation of the community by that behavior.

By not intervening, at least with words, we are assuming that the individual and his actions are disconnected from the group, and thus will have no effect on the group felicity.  Or, we assume the detrimental effects are insignificant or others can compensate.

Allowing the individual to go down the path of self-destruction, knowing that it is a violation of God’s Law and that destruction awaits him, without warning him clearly and in strong terms, is the equivalent of hating him.

But, there is no private action.  With a sufficient population of violators, the degradation of the individual will seep into society and have a noticeable detrimental effect on quality of public life.  In particular, some of those men with character distorted by the habitual and committed violation of God’s law will occupy the offices of government.  Such men do not have the foresight, insight, and standard of Godliness by which to properly judge, legislate, and administer.  Such men are subject to the temptations of the flesh and are subject to the corrupting influence of monetary gain at the expense of the public good.

Thus, a Constitutional Republic with a government of the people will be subject to the influence of would-be-tyrants and thieves.  Men who cave to the tastes of the flesh in one area of life have a weakness of character in resisting the flesh, and/or the discrimination of Godliness.  Such men are susceptible to the corrupting influence of women, gold, and power.  As such, these men can be bought, and their representation of the group can be used for self-enrichment at the group expense.  UnGodly men and immature Christians bring foolishness, ignorance, and corruption into the guidance of society.  At its roots, the State and Constitutional Republic are at risk when governed by immature men.

Your point was what to do with people who did not listen to the truth.  In a survival of the fittest worldview, we should just let the individuals who flounder and rebel, experience the result of their own errors.  Either such men learn from their pain or die from the consequences of their life of unrepentant errors.

One of the overriding principles of Christianity is loving neighbor as self.  And, this includes the warning, counseling of him in the avoidance of his error.  In a society of mature Christians, such a man would be recognized and barred from public service or removed promptly upon revealing his character.

JH: YES!  I totally agree with “the warning, counseling of him in avoidance of his error”.  That means expressing my own opinion.  Whether that person chooses to listen is up to them!  Remember, there is always the very unlikely and remote possibility that OUR JUDGMENT IS WRONG and THEIR JUDGMENT IS CORRECT.  In any event, isn’t freedom defined by the right to be stupid?  If we are forced by others not to make mistakes, we are not free.

TLA: I don’t think the best definition of freedom is defined as the right to be stupid.  There are many times when we do things that are stupid, and we suffer.  That isn’t being free, that is going off the track of life into a ditch.  There is a moment of freedom in choosing the path of destruction, choosing to go down the unGodly path.   But almost immediately the options of life become limited for a period of time.  The maximization of freedom comes by sustained conduct of life along the path of Godliness.

The most meaningful definition of freedom is, “I have the freedom to do anything that is right, good, and Godly.”  This is would be the most applicable definition to the phrase, “God-given rights.”

I recognize that you are pushing against the group/State telling the wayward soul to do/not do XYZ behavior, and forcing prohibition or action, as determined by legislators and bureaucrats.  Of course this can be abusive.  But, when the laws of the State are Godly, as are its judges and administrators, then the State is a reasonable surrogate for God.  The State acts as God’s guide and enforcer.  As such, the State serves as a living standard to God’s rule on Earth.  And, because men are being shepherded by the efforts of mature Biblically Christian men, the benevolent, wise, and Godly State, enhances the cooperation between men.  When men are united in purpose, and their hearts are committed to excellent action, they can accomplish great things.

If the nation is composed of Leftist atheists, the Constitutional Republic is vulnerable to usurpation by evil men, who use the power of the state for themselves.  The same is true of every other form of government.  Each system has its own deficits.  A socialist system is already a covert oligarchy of government officials who decide many/all aspects of your life.  Thus, an Anarcho-Capitalist society, where the strong survive, may function as a workable system.  But, a pure Anarcho-Capitalist system has never matured or established itself.

Thus, the debate gets ambiguous in the case of a non-Christian or immature-Christian nation.  There are advantages and disadvantages to both a Stateless world and a State-controlled world in these cases.

JH: The advantages and disadvantages depending on whose perspective we are speaking from!  If we are speaking from the controllers’ perspective, certainly having others obey us is advantageous.  If we are speaking from the subject’s perspective, being dominated by the controllers is never advantageous unless the controllers happen to demand the same behavior that the subject would choose himself.  There are no other perspectives other than those of the individuals in the situation.

TLA: You are certainly correct in your assertion of the desirability of a submissive populace from the point of view of the controller.  But, I intended to speak from the perspective of the governed.  The purpose of the Constitutional Republic as was given to us by the Founders, was to ensure the free exercise of the God-given rights of the people.  The question is whether the group would experience more or less happiness in a State-regulated world or in an anarchic world.

In a generally secular/humanist/non-Christian society, the type of men who seek office are most likely those who have not disciplined themselves in the principles of Biblical Godliness.  Such men are less likely to be mature in resisting the temptations of the flesh.  By nature of the power inherent to government, the power of the State temps leaders/bureaucrats/officials/administrators to use their positions to satisfy their own selfish passions to enrich themselves.  Such men rule for the thrill of power or otherwise govern for their own benefit.  Being governed by such men will almost certainly cause hardships for the people of such a nation.

This is in contrast to the men who should be chosen to serve in government when the general culture of the nation/State is based upon Christian values, ethics, morals, standards, and worldview.  In such a population, the electorate should choose their most mature Christian men as their representatives.  The character of the State is personified by those who administer, legislate, and judge.

If the body of laws from its history are based upon Biblical/Godly values, the legislature considers new legislation based upon new social circumstances, and appeals for reinterpretation and reconsideration of old legislation based on Biblical principles.  The purpose of the legislature is the codification of right/Godly/Biblical responses to those social/economic situations.

The judiciary judges disputes about situations as per the standard of the legislation and the administration carries out the mandates of legislation.  When the government is populated by mature Christian men, legislation is based upon Godly/Biblical principles, and the power of the State is checked by the three branches of government.  The society so governed can realize the benefits of a Godly State, which are the same as living in the Kingdom of God.

The problem is that group behavior affects the individual’s milieu, environment, ecology, and wellbeing.  In other words, the individual’s happiness cannot be separated from the behavior, attitudes, and moral tone of the group.  The question is, what is the best way to affect group behavior?   If the good behaviors embodied in the individual are not adopted/ normalized/ enforced in the group behavior, then the individual will suffer.  Ideally, every man would follow the truth and wisdom of the Bible, but that will not necessarily happen, even when men are unconstrained by the State.  Those who break God’s law will suffer the consequences of their choices, and the group will also suffer because of the man who violates His law.

In general, men follow a lower law, the pulls of the flesh, and they argue strongly for others to follow their basic natures.  The problem with the State, is that men of low character can rise to positions of power and may prevail in their pressure for legislation to normalize such behaviors and prohibit punishment for the same.

Of course, this is a major deficit of the State.  If there was no State, evil people could not legislate against good behavior and authorize bad behavior.  So, the problem from this perspective appears to be law/the State, since that is the tool used by evil people to suppress goodness and normalize evil.

JH: Well said!  I will add that dictatorial power appeals more to evil people than to righteous people.  A righteous person doesn’t need power to be happy.  An evil person gets their jollies by dominating others.  They are more driven to achieve positions of power, especially if their power hunger is driven by hatred of righteousness.

TLA: Power-hunger is one of the passions of the flesh, and literally anyone can fall prey to its seduction.  The hungers of the flesh are like a lion at the door, always ready to pounce on the unprepared and undefended man.  But mature men, committed to Godliness and service, know the standards of Godliness and can resist the temptations of the flesh (money, women, and power; the lust of the flesh,  the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life).  The electorate of a Godly society can recognize such men, rejecting those who use appeal to vanity to manipulate others and submit to the temptation of self-enrichment at the expense of others.  A society without Godliness at its center will likely elect vain, power-hungry men, being deceived by their disguise, or voting for such men because of their familiar spirit.

And, this is of course a true deficit of State rule.  But, the cost of the lack of a centralized/public standard of enforced prohibition of bad behavior is the lack of the creation of a body of goodness which can stabilize and guide the individual throughout his development from immaturity into a mature/righteous citizen/soul.  And of course the Libertarian would argue, that such standards should be taught in the family.

JH: Or anywhere else where the individual sees value in gaining guidance.  It could be a counselor, school, church, family, unrelated father figure.

TLA: Yes, the whole society can, and should, train its citizens in right behavior.  But, the optimal society embodies the Christian belief/worldview.  Only a populace with these beliefs/values deeply embedded into the character of the individuals, and reflected in the laws of a society, can properly implement the State.

But, as important as society is in training the individual in right action, the nuclear family is the center and most important carrier/educator in the implanting and nurturance of personally embraced Godliness.  The larger society supports and teaches the child the application of Godly principles in the larger societal context.  But, without a Godly family embedding the principles of faith, service, justice, love, and belief in appropriating the role of Jesus Christ in restoring our relationship with the Father, the foundations of the society will be weak.   Without a Godly culture, the good seed planted by the family will be uprooted by the example of a society that models and exhorts toward selfish satisfaction of the hunger and passions of life.

The problem an individual can have in his growth as a moral being is that he can come to a place of realization about life-principles where he believes he has found the absolute moral pinnacle in his worldview – only to find he was blinded by his own concepts and limited personal experience.  Every individual is necessarily limited in his perspective.  The adoption of the Biblical standard of life is the rock we can hold onto.  Humility in learning wisdom is an important trait.

JH: Absolutely agree!

TLA: All of us can grow and mature in Godliness throughout life, and many people learn very good lessons and morals from simply observing/experiencing/learning from life.  Nevertheless, there is a difference between the man who is raised in the humility of Godly Biblical instruction his entire life, and the man who only learns the principles of life from his experience and the lessons of living in the world.  I believe it is possible for the man raised in the faith, taught by wise and experienced parents, living in a Christian society, to come sufficiently close to the embodiment of the principles of Godliness that he can be trusted as a State or national governor.  Such men of Godly maturity are the only ones who should be elected to govern.

I do not believe we need to defer to angels or wait for the Lord’s return for Him to rule and reign on earth before we can have a good and Godly State on earth.  It will require hard work, a huge renewal of the hearts of men to restore the faith our nation once had in the Bible and the Christian God.  And, once established, it will take vigilance to maintain it.  The flesh is eternally hungry, and it tempts us to indulge inappropriately.

If there is to be a State, then the ideal is the establishment of a righteous State, a purely Godly government which can divinely establish the limits of actually good behavior.  (The self-judged “good” behavior of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot are clearly unGodly.  But, politicians who are trade influence for money, or stand for legislation that opposes the Biblical standard are likewise unGodly, and their belief and acts will degrade the nation and inappropriately limit freedom.)

Your point is that such a State cannot be established by men, and that it will always be flawed, with evil embedded with good, thereby producing a de facto imposition of evil on innocent men by the protocol/law-bound leviathan State.

JH: YES !!!

TLA: And, while it is true that no man is ever perfect, the question is whether a man, or group of men checking and challenging each other, can be adequately mature, righteous, and Godly to administer, legislate, and judge the affairs and people of a state.  And, I believe the answer is yes.  Our government was appropriately and wisely established with 3 branches, each of which considers an important and qualitatively distinct domain of human action.  The division of government into equally powerful branches allows men to evaluate the work and judgment of the other branches from a distinct perspective.  Under such scrutiny, errors of intent and bias will likely be detected and corrected.

If the laws and culture of a nation are based upon Christian principles, and if the people are raised and disciplined on Christian principles, then administrators dedicated to living Christian principles will populate the government.  When government is properly populated with Christian men serving in the 3 branches of government, they will all check and challenge each other’s judgment, to ensure that Godliness pervades all aspects of the governmental process.  The self-approval of tyranny and self-benefiting acts of a man or group will seldom prevail in the milieu of such mutual scrutiny.

And, of course, you are right, some injustice will always be embedded within any State that man imposes upon himself.  But in a fully/deeply Christian nation, the errors will likely be small, and time will illuminate the error, and men committed to righteous administration, legislation, and judgment will correct the error, resulting in a small length of time when the erroneous act suppressed the appropriate rights/happiness/acts of the people.

But, you have taken the extreme polar position of declaring that the State is the problem, and that man cannot establish a State where goodness/justice/freedom can prevail.  Instead, of establishing the State and risking State-imposed consequence, you prefer to live in a State-less, Anarcho-Capitalist world where each man suffers the consequences of evil as a result of his own choices.

JH: Or enjoys the success of their goodness rather than suffering the injustice of State-imposed consequence.

TLA: I understand the attraction to anarchism since it seems as though the State is regularly/predictably hijacked/ by evil because of the seduction of power and misplaced enthusiasm for one’s personal moral view, etc.  The question is whether the extreme rejection of the State and authority-based law and adoption of anarchism, is the correct/best worldview, that will produce the best possible outcome on earth?

JH: I don’t know that “best” is ever possible.  I think it’s more a question of which is better.  Which is the least flawed?  Which will result in the least oppression and imposition by the will of others?

TLA: This is exactly my point.  I believe the Godly/Christian State will produce a superior outcome.  You look at Stateless anarcho-capitalism as the least flawed system.  Your bias is against control because you have seen the abuses of power been done in the name of democracy.  You have been deeply disappointed by men who have perverted the words and vision of the Founding principles and twisted their intentions to support a socialist vision for society.  You have seen how the democratic will of the majority has force unwilling people to support policies and expenditures antithetical to their own values and interests.  You feel that the Stateless AC world would make that magnified abuse impossible, and therefore it is the better system, since it allows for freedom, and prevents abuse by the power of the State.

I look at the Republic, as it was envisioned by the Founders, and I see a system that can literally manifest the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.  I see the flaws you notice in the State and acknowledge that they all are real possibilities, and they have all regularly manifested.  But, I see the possibility of men living in a Godly State in a nation fully committed to living according to the Biblical standard of Godliness.  I see the quality of the Christian Republic being higher, as it allows the maximum possible freedom.

I don’t think a judgment as to the better choice of State/no-State is trivial.  There is no obvious royal road to societal efficiency, maximum liberty, and justice.  The radical anarchist/anarcho-capitalist world has the obvious flaw of human taste/nature being drawn toward satisfaction of personal flesh desires.

JH: I don’t think so.  I think our human nature is for certain people to be drawn to those failings.  Some people are never drawn to those failings.  Others may be drawn, but possess the will and character not to succumb.

TLA: It is this universal pull of the flesh, and our inevitable failure to properly control those flesh-hungers to which I refer.   All men are tempted to satisfy the hungers of the flesh – this is the nature of humanity.  We were created as animals, and the hungers we feel were all designed to give us the native instinct to survive as individuals and a species.  The problem is in the improper satisfaction of that hunger, the improper/unGodly actions that the hunger drives us toward.  Some do better in controlling their actions in response to the temptations of their hunger, but no one is perfect, and all can fail in the next moment.

We see that principle in verses such as, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” and “There is none righteous, no not one.”  This concept, of all men violating the appropriate/right/Godly standard of hunger satisfaction is at the center of Jesus’ teachings.  It was for the rescue of men from the terms of that debt/contract that Jesus was incarnated and sacrificed on the cross.  His death was a spiritual transaction that paid the blood debt man owed to that dark realm.  That is the origin of the concept of the Faustian bargain – men get boost by sin, but the cost is their soul.  By claiming that gift, the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus blood, we are freed from the debt if we pledge our allegiance to righteousness.  Jesus’ death was necessary to cleanse us from the stain of our spiritual debts.  Only pure spirits can be in the presence of the Father.

I agree that some do a better job of consistently saying no to excess/inappropriate satisfaction of the flesh.  But, there is no one who is perfect in his avoidance of error.  I don’t think we can separate out the wolves from the sheep fully, because there is a little of both in us all.

My point is that all men have the nature of being drawn to the satisfaction of the flesh.  It is not possible to be otherwise (we all are drawn to satisfy the drives of breath, sex, hunger, warmth, shelter, life, repulsion from pain, attraction to pleasure, companionship, control, pleasure…).  There is no one who is not subject to these hungers.  The hunger for satisfaction of the flesh desires is not the issue.  All hungers, and all satisfactions of them, have their proper place and time.  The issue is the proper/right satisfaction of the flesh-hunger.  As you note, some are better than others in their control.

In both the Statist, and Anarcho-Capitalist societies, men are drawn to satisfy these hungers.  We cannot escape fully from men who yield to their improperly regulated hunger.  It is a spectrum of weakness, some are better regulated than others.

In the anarchic world, there is an inherent lack of a formal societal codification of ethics of enforceable law.  There is no clear society-wide lines of restraint and enforcement, so the nation/world becomes a patchwork of jurisdictions with possibly wildly disparate standards of behavior, judgment, and enforcement.

Ideally, the standard around which counties, states, and nations are crystalizing is Godliness, but that standard could be anything in a totally anarchic world.  A nation which is dedicated to establishing the Biblical standards of Godliness has a higher chance of codifying and enforcing them than a society that is relying on men’s best intentions to develop a system of optimum laws without a guide.

Some granularity in interpretating the Biblical code is good, especially in terms of local conditions and specific circumstances.  Both absolute individuality and homogeneity are bad in moral judgment.  The median that incorporates two desirable principles is usually the optimum when they are combined.  The states, with their individual county jurisdictions, provide for variety.

The hope of that radical Libertarian world is that those who follow the ways of error will self-extinguish, or congregate together in enclaves of like-minded degradation, or be punished by the more enlightened/truth-followers or those who can afford defense and offense,  or otherwise receive their just consequences.

JH: Maybe not “the hope”, but the “likely outcome”.

It seems like people who submit to evil, animalistic, low-life behavior spring eternal.  I’m not sure that those who follow degraded paths will self-extinguish.  But, if society were to follow Paul’s rule to the Thessalonians, “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” this would rapidly extinguish the problem of sloth.

We all hope the world will manifest as we desire it, and we all believe that if the world changed as we hoped, that it would be much better.  But, it is hope because the experiment has not been done.  In my opinion, with a nation populated by men of Christian character, an excellent, corruption-free, tyranny-free, and injustice-free Constitutional Republic, is the likely outcome.

The radically anarchic world proposal is interesting, dynamic, and interactive.  It includes much internal feedback and experimentation with individual and group behaviors.  The problem I see with this system and its evolution is that I don’t see it reaching a high, or steady-state, of optimum goodness.  The number of variables and forces acting in the system is so great that I see this system being in a continual state of significant oscillation.  This may be a good thing, to have variety, and be free to choose whatever, and have no one tell you want to (other than those who can afford to impose it on you), but it isn’t obvious that this is the best organization of the group.

JH: Really well said, and you are getting me to start thinking…

But first, let me say that I see a free society as clearly superior in the following particular respect.  That, regardless of the degeneracy and depravity of any others, THOSE WHO CHOOSE TO BE GOOD always have the ability to break free from the evil people.  Always, always, always!

TLA: I have concerns about your statement, “Those who choose to be good in a free society people always have the ability to break free from the evil people.”  The problem is that moving one’s colony, family, job, housing… is not easy.  The cost of relocation is high.  There is a cost barrier to exercising one’s freedom to escape the evil surrounding them.  To move, there is a loss of support on all levels.  Typically people have to re-start their lives in many ways to escape an evil culture.  Those who choose to be good and break away from evil must pay a significant price, and that price may be too high for the amount of current pain.  Thus, even when the option to move is possible, exercising that option will always be a cost-benefit analysis – what is the cost of staying in the evil, compared to the cost of moving away from it.  Many will choose to stay in an evil situation, just because the cost is so great to leave.

JH: And that is the ultimate good of a stateless society.  But in a statist society, no matter how Godly most people become, there is still the chance that the evil will gain power and oppress the good people.

TLA: Sadly, evil will likely invade or follow the man who leaves one community to go to another in a Stateless society.  At some point, and at some level, evil is always attempting an invasion into the Statist and Stateless society.

JH: So, we are weighing one situation where the righteous ALWAYS have a means to escape and live free, against the opposite situation where the evil MIGHT (and probably more than just MIGHT) gain power over the good people and oppress (perhaps extinguish) the good people.  This balance, with good people ALWAYS having an escape route, comes out in favor of pure freedom, in my view.

TLA: I see the problem of escaping the contact and influence of evil people as a universal problem.  The pilgrims came to America and established a Godly society, and to a large extent, America grew from those roots, and that original seed influences the national spirit, even to this day.  It isn’t that clear to me that it is possible to escape the influence of evil.  There is always a Judas, even among the 12.  There is always the temptation and taste for excessive satisfaction of the flesh hungers among every human, which can influence a faction of any community.  Such factions which prey upon the sheep of the community are a threat to both the State and Stateless communities.

As per my taste, I would rather have a world where I was free to operate within the limitations of action associated with Godly law.  There is still a degree of instability/flux and uncertainty with regards to the social order because of changes in technology, resources, climate, and the influx of children/new immature souls who must be trained in right-action.  I am willing to sacrifice the degree of absolute freedom for the security of a world which has encoded Godly law, which is enforced upon me and all others.  I recognize the vigilance giving someone else authority over me requires.  I don’t think that is widely recognized in our current culture.

JH: Brilliant.  Really well said, and perhaps the best thing I have ever seen you write!!

TLA: There is a cost of making that acquiescence to external control.  There is the possibility that evil/selfish/self-deluded people will take the reigns of power and institute unjust administration of righteous laws, and legislate unrighteous laws, and judge unjustly in the prosecution of offenses.  These are the types of violations of unGodliness against which we must be vigilant.  It is this to which Jefferson referred when he said “The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots.”

JH: Agreed!

TLA: Thus, the eternal debate between liberty and the existence/rule of the State.  Eternal vigilance against unGodliness is the price of the stability and order of the State.  No vigilance against the excesses and perversions of the State is required of a world without the state.  Only vigilance against the violation of neighbors and groups with sufficient resources to fund their particular form of space violation/aggression is necessary in an anarcho-capitalistic world.

JH: YES !!!

TLA: Maybe it’s only a sense of tidiness or simplicity, but focusing on the State as the opponent, seems easier than focusing on the writhing mass of humanity and all their possible coalitions to advance self-interest.  The use of my resources by the State to prosecute me is of course a concern, and this single issue can be of overwhelming significance.  Nevertheless, the State is a point of focus, an identifiable enemy against which to be vigilant.  The group debate can be influenced by individuals of good character, and victories won can be established as standards for future reference and applicability.

What this debate illustrates is the extreme degrees of freedom present in this world.  We can choose to be Statists or ACs, and there are points plus and minus on both sides.  I believe the State in a strongly Christian has a high likelihood of producing a good living environment for the people.  And, you believe the AC system is better because people will be held to account locally when there is no government to function as the intermediary to justice.

JH: Tom, that is awesome!!  And you just made me grow and reach a new conclusion.  Let me run this by you…

Someday the technology will exist for people to reasonably expect to leave the earth for other planets and establish themselves, either in orbiting man-made structures or by colonizing other worlds.  Once this technology is widely available, it will last for eternity, for the rest of mankind’s existence.  Living off-planet will be a viable choice for everyone.  At some point, the number of days of human existence having that technology will FAR EXCEED all of the days of human history up to that point.  We will describe human existence in two fundamental eras:  The brief LANDLOCKED era of being stuck on earth, and the unlimited EXPANSION era of humanity spreading out into the universe.

But there was also an earlier EXPANSION era!  All of human history up until the last couple of centuries was also an EXPANSION era because there was always a place on earth to settle and escape from civilization.  So, our current LANDLOCKED era is quite short and unique in all of human existence!!

I think the answer about the state hinges on this perspective.  When we are no longer landlocked, we will be able to live in a free society.  People will be able to leave earth and be free to their own standards.  Goodness won’t need to co-exist with evil.

TLA: This appears to be our major point of contention.  I do not believe it is ever possible for man to not coexist with evil.  Man can act out the ends of evil one moment, and goodness the next.  Children can be born who have controlling, manipulative, surreptitious natures and their passion to satisfy the flesh will not necessarily be well controlled by the discipline of parents and the group.  Such seeds can form communities of like-minded souls, and create their own potent form of evil.  Without strong and effective parenting and Godly community standards, these tares will grow and contaminate the purity of the harvest.

Such growth of bad souls, and bad colonies of souls, is not the province of only the State or the Stateless community.   Both groups are subject to the same consequences of uncontrolled passion.  In other words, the common solution is men of right moral understanding banding together to enforce the standards of Godliness on the community.  If the Stateless community has a strong and right commitment to Godliness, that system can work as well as the State.

In other words, I see the issue not as to whether the State or Stateless societal organization is better, but whether a society chooses to organize itself around Biblical Godliness or some other standard.  I think it is easier to implement a State governed by the principles of Biblical Godliness than an amorphous Stateless group, hence I think the State is a better organizational unit than Statelessness.

JH: But, as long as we are landlocked on earth, it is as if we are all locked, shoulder to shoulder, inside a small room with potential lunatics who might destroy us.  We cannot live “freely” in a room with insane and potentially violent people.  As long as we are landlocked in a small room with evil, we will always need to struggle against EVIL for our survival.  It may not be moral to dominate others!  It may not be wise to have a political structure where evil might dominate!  But our ability to achieve raw power over the insane, during this brief landlocked period in human history, is the best excuse for the temporary existence of the state that I can think of.

TLA: It is, and will always be, necessary to dominate evil in the Stateless community as well as in the State.  Evil is ubiquitous, inherent, and unavoidable.  It can arise in any person at any time.  It must be defined, its practitioners identified, and their behavior extinguished by effective punishment, and the soul retrained in right action and control of passions.  It is impossible to leave evil behind by escaping to virgin territory.  It is only possible to advocate and educate for good behavior in each community/group and administer effective consequences and training for bad behavior.  To my mind, such is the definition of a Godly State, and such is the Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven.

What do you think?

TLA.

Privatized Police

by | Apr 25, 2025 | Politics/Economics/Culture

By: Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
5/05/2011

John, I read the article but did not comment on it extensively, although I was tempted to. I began with a quote and then commentary upon it. And then proceed with prose about a weak point I saw in Hoppe’s system of society. http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe26.1.html

“That is, the state is the ultimate arbiter in every case of conflict, including conflicts involving itself. It allows no appeal above and beyond itself. Second, the state is an agency that exercises a territorial monopoly of taxation. That is, it is an agency that unilaterally fixes the price that private citizens must pay for the state’s service as the ultimate judge and enforcer of law and order.”

The issue of no authority higher than the state is the concept that I have been referring to for repeatedly. There is a law higher than the State, the Law and Rule of God. Of course, God does not come down and enforce His law against the state, (but He does exact vengeance against the State eventually — but this is not my point). The people, the body politic, the church, the people of God who make up the democracy, are the necessary polarity to the rule of the State. For the State to be civilized, and an actual servant, the government should be composed of those who hold allegiance to God’s Law and attempt to form a body of law that reflects God’s Law for the issues in the situation. Manifesting such a government requires a huge amount of vigilance against the demons that inhabit the soul by each governmental employee, and by the public who hires them. A great deal of supervision and commitment to such a state of moral

Taxes should be voluntary. The government should be required to sell the proposals to the people as a benefit. Likewise, funds should be optionally withheld from the government if morally objectionable programs are being funded (abortion, illegal alien support, education in evolution-only schools, wars of aggression….) Taking the mandate away from taxes, and making their donation voluntary is a median solution between public and private. Such a government is still a monopoly, but if it is kept small, local, and accountable, then much of the objection to government is alleviated. Those who wish to live in states/locales which enforce moral standards of whatever level should have the right to engage in such enforcement. There are no victimless crimes. The moral crimes change the tone of the individual who engages them, and then they take that personality into society and inflict it upon society. The state/locale that wishes to raise the tone of its milieu should have the right to do so.

The moral solutions of the Muslim and Catholic cannot be merged. The separation of the two societies is all that is possible. Proving that the solution of one is better than the other by its fruit, and witness of the sweetness of the life it produces will probably be the only way to proselytize one to the other. Currently, Islam feeds upon the poor and captive as its new converts. In the past, and probably presently, their method of expansion has been by domination by violence and propagation. It is a religion which does not allow free migration from its ranks. The social pressure maintaining its adherents is extreme, to the point of being almost irresistible to those who wish to maintain a social network of support. Some are truly moderate, and those who hold such beliefs, I have no problem with allowing to live within a free and open society. They are men who are open to other opinions and the feedback of another way of life/belief system that could be superior to the one they have embraced under duress or inheritance.

I enjoyed the essay. He is eloquent and has developed many novel and well thought out solutions/alternatives to the problems of monopoly, protection, and insurance.
His criticisms of the flaws of government are valid, when takers, users, selfish men populate the government. And of course, they always will, until the character of the populace embraces a higher solution. All the governmental solutions will fall prey to the criticisms that Hoppe mentions if the society, and the people of it, are not dedicated to following God’s law.

In a privately funded society, the security offered to the richer will be better, and the security offered to the poor will be correspondingly poor. Insurance and protection solutions are necessarily related to their capability to pay. Thus, the rich will benefit more from this arrangement than the poor. This will be an unavoidable aspect of a private pay system. This type of pay for what you get system may be what is needed to get the poor out of their bad situations by making it worse. Or, it may perpetuate and accentuate the cultural divide. The rich may like the solution because it reduces the forceful giving to suppress societal violence and protect them from it more effectively. Or, the rich may suffer greatly as the poor rise up to take from the rich.

I don’t think transferring protection and insurance to the individual will be sufficient to resolve the societal disease. The rich and poor will benefit most when there is voluntary charity (rather than enforced charity through the medium of government/taxes) with associated accountability of the poor for the gifts they have received. The society pathology may move toward resolution when the rich take on the poor as a type of mentorship project. The training/rehabilitation of the poor may include giving them adequate protection but requiring of them education, discipline in moral rectitude, self-protection, skill development, industry, and production. This complex of skills will enable productivity to those who take advantage of it. This is a private solution that should be part of any society. Groups of the wealthy could form pools of resources to hire teachers, people to work with the delinquents, and train for useful work. Such a system is a reparative public/private education system with a moral center. It is of advantage to the wealthy because it reduces the need for protection and increases the general wealth available in the society as more people are productively employed producing wealth.

Hoppe probably addresses the issue of charity in his body of work, and probably proposes a similar plan. My only addition, possibly, is the insistence that the education and help include moral training at its center.

Without the piece of charity, and responsibility to the benefactor, the poor and badly behaved will simply balkanize and two camps will form, one armed in defense, and the other attempting to invade.

Ultimately regardless of the form of protection, insurance, or education is used, there must be a moral education in the ways of Righteousness to bring society to its maximum potential.

T.

Godliness as the Prerequisite for Limited Government

by | Apr 25, 2025 | Politics/Economics/Culture

Limited Federal Government
by: Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
8/12/2008

I write this piece from the perspective of a Christian, a patriot, and an advocate of Limited Government. Its intended audience is all people of all political and theological persuasions but is primarily written for the conservative and believer to give apologetic support for Limited Government and America’s return to its foundation as a Christian Nation.

I believe America’s foundation and her Constitutional Republican form of government were ordained and inspired by God. I believe the Constitutional Republic, with its 3 separate branches, and its capitalism-based economy, contains the necessary elements to manifest an operationally perfect system of government. But, the economic-governmental system by itself is lifeless and will not mechanically bring forth the optimum experience of societal function. Rather, the Capitalistic Republic must be given life, spirit, and direction by an entire nation of men, representatives, and citizens, who are unambiguously committed to manifesting the will of God on Earth. The impersonal forces and machinery of government and the market can be bent to any purpose, and neither liberalism, republicanism, nor a libertarian government formed only by the requirements of a free market has sufficient internal boundaries or incentives to guide men into a state of fulfillment in their public and private lives.

Our nation, governed by the limits of the Constitution, can only reach its potential of maximal similarity to Heaven when the citizens continuously struggle to manifest Godliness in their private and public lives. I believe America’s first immigrants, and the framers of our founding documents, intended to establish a Christian nation, and that America is falling from greatness because of our rejection of the Judeo-Christian ethic and commitments. The responsibility for restoring our land lies squarely on the backs of believers. It is not the pagans, atheists, and humanists who must first become holy, righteous and repent so that our nation may prosper, rather it is we as Christians who must lead. When Christendom truly lives the holy and righteous life implied by the name “Christ-in”, the brightness and righteousness of our lives will shine, and enroll the world to imitate that goodness and share in the rewards such a life offers.

2 Chronicles 7:14 “if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

Human nature is primarily driven by self-interest, which includes a lust for power, a desire to maintain its own existence and lifestyle at the expense of others, and a drive to control its environment by coercion, criticism, and force. A society populated with people who have not dedicated themselves to balancing these human traits with Godliness will manifest elements of these passions in their institutions of government and industry. The unsanctified human drive in the institutional, corporate, and governmental group-expression results in various forms of societal abuse. The compassionate Liberals now campaign on the promise to raise taxes to transfer wealth to the entitlement class. The holier than thou Liberals impose unGodly moral standards in the name of gender and sexual orientation equality and tolerance. The freedom loving Liberals legislate infanticide in the name of choice. The progressive Liberal declares Secular Humanism as the de facto state religion in the name of separation of church and state. The one world globalist Liberal opens our borders to illegal immigration, trade without restriction, and trilingual instruction pamphlets in the name of multiculturalism.

The stimulus to write this piece came from an email that raised the issue of imminent excessive government surveillance and regulation of personal decisions. A Godly government needs information to help facilitate the coordination of its various limited duties. But, surveillance as a tool for governmental quality control and management can be redirected to intimidate, coerce, and enable enforcement of laws that benefit the ego and unGodly social engineering of government more than it benefits the social order. Unless Godliness directs the individual and group spirits of a society, the government will pursue its own best interests at the expense of the populace. History is replete with examples of societies overtaken by tyrants. On some level, all people who have succumbed to tyranny have suffered from a deficiency in discernment and response to budding evil embedded within the social/political environment. Even the best government will be forced to engage in ever more draconian surveillance, legislation, and enforcement to fulfill its charter of maintaining the social order when the people abandon Godly self-regulation.

The philosophers from both sides of the political divide have offered solutions for social issues. The Liberal solution is, in general, an increase in government control, more spending on social programs, less religion, less government intrusion, and more enforcement in the areas of freedom of choice, tolerance, and equality. The Libertarian solution is little or no government and regulations while allowing the forces of the market to regulate human behavior. The Conservative seeks to reduce taxes, balance the budget, minimize government, and return God to public life. The following essay is largely an analysis of the Libertarian perspective of a society without government. The examination concludes that a central nervous system is required to control the movement of the body. Likewise, we need to fully represent the metaphor of the body in the society, by the organ of government, with its executive branch, courts, laws, and bureaucratic administration of those laws. But, having noted the necessity of government, we then emphasize that most of the duties of our current “New Deal-Great Society” government can be transferred to the private sector if the society is well organized and interconnected with the purpose of cooperation, and the people adhere to Godliness.

The essential hope of a Market-based government (Libertarian) is that the society will self regulate because the force of self-interest will be so strong and detailed that the regulation by law will be made obsolete. Such a system is value-free in the sense of not regulating anyone by any set of governmentally chosen set of supernaturally attributed morals. The essential hope of the Government based economy (Liberal) is that the wisdom of man will provide direction that will be higher than the pandering to base desires produced by the market and its appeal to man’s base appetites. The Limited Government (Conservative) seeks to take the best from both, and produce a synthesis of Godly Law that establishes the basic ground rules within which economy can function in its robust effort-rewarding manner that gives men the incentive to work and produce for profit and consumption.
The non-Christian population of the United States may see the common adoption of a Christian form of Godliness as the establishment of a theocracy or a Church-State religion. But, it is only returning America to its foundation, which has always tolerated other faiths, but it maintained the Judeo-Christian moral standard as the foundation for law and common civil relationship. Religion in a Christian nation would be self-imposed. But, without a majority who choose to vote, legislate, and manage the private sector on Christian principles, the social standard will revert away from the Godliness that produces the stable and lovely group ethic that allows Limited Government.

Prayer and Bible reading should not be mandatory, nor should church attendance, but if these good practices are not broadly maintained in the culture, the seeds of destruction will be sown in society. Limited Government allows people to choose their philosophical-religious beliefs, but social behavior that crosses the line of violation of others must be restricted. A judiciary comprised of men holding Godly standards is the only group that should try, convict, and punish on behalf of the state. But, the enforcement of most forms of antisocial behavior involving self, family, work, should be handled within the social unit close at hand. Likewise, the excellent behaviors such as prayer and Bible reading in school should be allowed and encouraged, as parents should be able to extend the teaching of their children to the large segments of imprinting time occupied by the classroom. Educational choice should be universal, as this makes the educational establishment accountable to the demands of a Godly marketplace. When people are enfranchised to vote with their feet and their money, the market responds to give them what they want. But again, the market is not the solution; it is only one tool of the society that must be sanctified.
I use the word “Godliness” extensively in this essay. The reader should understand that the intended meaning and implication of this word is love of self, neighbor, and God, as the Laws of God are summarized in this principle and spirit. Godliness refers to the entire spectrum of good and right manners, rules of relationship, ethics, and morals established by God as Right. Forgiveness of offense releases the soul to live in love and authorizes God to deliver justice. Love repays evil with good, but this does not mean accepting violation without response and letting evil prosper without resistance. Love informs the violator of his injury to person or property, and restraint is delivered in the form of boundaries, reduction in degrees of freedom and instruction. Love speaks the Truth but does so in love. To allow the evil to perpetuate unopposed enrolls the victim as a party to the violation. Confronting and establishing boundaries expresses love and creates a strong relationship with the violator. Confront the violation with humility, and have faith that the message will eventually be received. Always be open to the possibility of an error in my own judgment of right and wrong. Know that God loves each person, regardless of his or her political persuasion, economic standing, educational background, moral compass, or religious belief. But, there is a way of life that brings men into relationship with the Father God, and many ways that separate us from His fellowship. Following the path and pull of selfish human passions, un-moderated by love, separates us. It is our duty to be God’s light in showing that we actually care for the prosperity of every man’s soul and body.

—————————–

The following essay was initiated and stimulated when John, a Libertarian, sent me the following email dramatizing how much personal data could soon be collected and made available to government, corporations, law enforcement, federal and state agencies and bureaucracies.

From: John
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 3:38 PM
Subject: FW: Ordering pizza in 2010

Ordering pizza in 2010. This is funny, but scary because it’s probably not too far from becoming reality.
John

Dear John, I enjoyed the future-reality shock humor. The point of the piece was no doubt to illustrate that big government wants to control us in every aspect of our lives, and you are undoubtedly right about the propensity of Big Government to expand and control. But, in the vein of our previous discussions about adopting a Libertarian style economy-only society, I believe it would be necessary to implement even more data collection than was illustrated in the 2010 Pizza piece if we do not have a governmental system.

T.

Not sure about that, Tom. A completely private society could offer any services a government can offer, but services would be offered competitively, not monopolistically, and costs would be distributed more efficiently to those who benefit. You use a road and you pay for it. No collectivist taxes on everybody regardless of whether they use a resource or not. Etc.

There are private models of justice adjudication, private roads, private currency, etc. This pizza thing is a vision of a corporate society propped up by government protection from competition. In a private property society, one would agree to only the level of surveillance one chooses.

With government, you have monopoly power, and legislation, and if one does not participate in the national database one is a criminal and hauled off to jail. Government is about giving super-human rights to ordinary humans. I contend that nobody has the right to take my money by force regardless of whether he has a mask over his head or a shiny badge and a gun. We cannot hire others to steal, and yet voting is precisely a sanitized and respectable form of that. There must be something inherently immoral about giving certain human beings the right to steal with immunity or to initiate force against others.

Please don’t take my word for it! There are people smarter than I who have thought through all these issues and written books.
Cheers, John

John, according to the “Let go and Let the Market” article by Gladish that you recently sent me, one way of implementing a Market-Only system that replaces government would be to use RFID monitoring of the entire populace. Gladish uses the data collection capabilities associated with modern technology at the center of his theory. To implement a cashless society, where credit is given based on service to the society and credit is withdrawn from the individual’s account due to moral violations, requires a great deal of information about the person so that the society/market can make these kinds of judgments. The Gladish article illuminates the fact that any system that seeks to eliminate government will introduce other institutions or methods to serve the same function, and other remedies must then be applied to fix the unexpected and often unpleasant side effects. Upon examining this subject, I have come to realize that Limited Government can only exist for a righteous and Godly people. When the people, their representatives, and commitment of government is to Godliness, it is possible for Government to shrink to its minimal necessary size.
I understand and agree with your point about the intrusiveness of government, and the possibility of delegating and reallocating the functions of government to private enterprise. To summarize, you believe that it is not necessary to have a system of top-down government-imposed laws, (or at most, that government should be very limited), and that private citizens or corporations can organize to perform many of the functions of government such as police and justice, allocation of resources, punishment of moral infractions by economic sanctions of various sorts, and in short do all the functions of society without governmental direction. I agree that such a system is possible. But, my comment about the need for a strong information collection and surveillance system being necessary to implement an “economy-only government” was given credence by the concept introduced in the Gladish article.
From that essay, I was alerted to the likelihood that a vast databank about each person’s life-transactions was possibly necessary in order to give proper feedback to enforce economic sanctions against those who do things that some people might consider wrong (such as murder and theft). Gladish proposes that it is possible to implement market sanctions against people who have engaged in trespassing of various sorts simply by making their behavior available known to the market. This appeal to the market for an impersonal, non-law/government imposed response, was meant to show the plausibility of creating a society without any appeal to, or definition of, moral standards.

(Note: the lack of any religion/mysticism based moral system seems to be a primary point in the Gladish theory. He really wanted to develop a society that could implement a perfect market-based regulation of the society without the acknowledgment of God in any way. He was really arguing against the need for government, and the laws and moral codes they imply. He was using the elimination of government as a surrogate opponent to show that God and His standards were unnecessary. He sought to create a system where the humanistic understanding of “best practices” could be reflected in the economy and executed to show that an entire society could be regulated without an appeal or reference to Godly morality. Proverbs 14:12 “There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.” The Founders intended that our government reflect Godliness in its structure and laws, just as God Himself intends that righteous government reflects His righteous will and way.)

But in order to give concreteness to his theory, and to implement this Godless system of economic feedback he noted that information would be needed to give indicators of each person’s credit-worthiness. Thus he introduced the solution of RFID or Biometrics tracking of each person’s productivity and violations of property and person. With this information included in the personal database, the raw data would be available for the market to judge a person’s creditworthiness. The combination of collecting detailed data about the person’s life, and the absolute power to grant the credit that sustains life and lifestyle, makes it possible to apply economic consequences upon them. Such force in a cashless, credit-only, society provides a near-irresistible force on the violator. If the data collection were extreme enough, the economic pressure on the individual would create a nation of sheep. The force and judgment of the economic system would be so precise that the economic feedback would shape everyone to fit the algorithmic judgment of the system.

And yes, society can agree to any level of surveillance of its citizens, just as it can organize its own police force, currency, independent territory, defense, research, and education system, etc.

(Note: any time a regulatory function is exercised by a subset population over the larger whole (e.g. police, judiciary, housing association executive committee, etc.), that subset is operating as a de facto government. These mini-governments are simply of a smaller size, and offer the possibility of more local control and participation than the macro-federal and state governments; i.e. entities that exercise the onerous duties of taxation and foolish appropriation of those resources. And, if this is the goal, to reduce the size of government and make it more personal and wise, then the privately employed system can do that. But, even the private system can grow and become impersonal, rude, and foolish. If the goal of privatization is to eliminate governmental, parental, rule-making bodies entirely, this is not logically possible. If the private system executes or enforces any rule-making or regulatory function, it has power over the participants and is a type of government.)

If we are to use only the forces and tools of the market to regulate the interpersonal behavior of the citizens, then the amount of finesse, dexterity, nimbleness, and agility of the economic system to do all these functions, without government, will require a huge amount of data collection. And this is the point where the potential slide into tyranny enters the market-only solution. The database must be available to all people so that they can each individually evaluate the creditworthiness of a person before rendering them goods or services. Otherwise, if each person does not judge every other person’s creditworthiness, the database of service credit, consumption and violation debits must be computed by the impersonal judgment of the credit-debit algorithm. The entry of the credit-debit algorithm into consideration illuminates the potential for abuse and tyranny since the algorithm will necessarily reflect someone’s judgment of Truth and Right behavior, or “best practices”.

Gladish clearly wishes to implement a society without the embedded morality of law imposed upon society. He wants to show that it is possible to create a society which does not even refer to a moral system at all and thereby shows the irrelevance of God. He desires to prove that by appealing only to the sense of best practices within humanity that society can function in a good, peaceful, and well-regulated way. And his alternate system is to show that the market-alone can make judgments of people’s creditworthiness and that this tool will give social feedback that alters behavior and shapes it toward that excellent pattern that we all desire of our fellow man. Gladish is proposing a society-wide cybernetic feedback system to shape behavior using economic incentives and disincentives. He proposes using RFID implants or biometrics to track the movements and transactions of all people at all times doing all things seems. With this raw data, he then applies an algorithmic analysis and gives people the reward of credit for good behavior such as work, volunteer service, kindness, voting, etc. And, for consumption of resources, carbon footprint, rude behavior, and criminal conduct, credit is subtracted from his account. I must admit the system is brilliant. It will produce an incredible society. This will work! Government will absolutely be unnecessary using such a system. It appeals to the most powerful tools available to shape human behavior, reward/aversion training, Operant conditioning, the Pavlovian signal, and the cybernetic loop. With society hooked up to such a loop, it will not be necessary to use force or government to control the society. Thus my comment, that the 2010 pizza story sounded very similar to the society of an economy-only government.

Gladish’s economy only system transfers the central nervous system function of the traditional government to impersonal enforcement by an economic algorithm that judges our creditworthiness. Instead of government using laws, the courts and police as enforcers of moral standards, our behavior is “shaped” according to the judgment of the best practices of the group mind of that society.

A nation without any data collection system, and no government, would be regulated much like the economies of the pre-industrial and information age. The economies in these times were subject to frequent boom and bust cycles, which appear to have been smoothed out somewhat.

(Note: This smoothness lasts as long as we follow the rules of good monetary and fiscal policy both publicly and privately. I refer in particular to the laws that Congress passed which forbade lending institutions to discriminate against people who could not qualify for a loan for lack of sufficient collateral, thus precipitating the current housing crisis.)

My point is that without any (or only a small amount of) data collection about the internal workings of the economic system, the potential for huge disparities between production and demand, or monopolistic entities arising that take over the economic landscape are real possibilities.

Likewise, it is possible for the tipping point of loans and credit to extend past the place where a person could realistically produce the value associated with that credit. Without calculations, without data, without monitoring of transactions and comparing creditworthiness against the proposed purchase, the aggregate societal economic balance sheet could easily become unbalanced. When the supply and demand do not match, the system can go unstable and produce shortages, recessions, and even depression. But, even these problems may be eventually solved by various limits, and systems put in place to reduce the risk and consequences even without intrusive data gathering.

I do not wish to impugn the economy-only government solely on the issue of the need for excessive surveillance, although I think it is an important consideration for those who wish to advocate for this solution to the problem of intrusive, corrupt, and ever-expanding government.

Rather, the more important criticism that I wish to confront about the economy-only government is its basis upon self-interest. This criticism may be shocking since its advocates tout the superiority and advantages of the market-based government because of its dependence upon this strong natural human emotion. Structuring a system that caters to the self-interest of every man yields a most productive society. Each individual naturally purses his own best self-interest by whatever means he deems most effective. If society values production and does not give him food, shelter, and entertainment if he does not produce value, then he will receive strong feedback that production is required.

In such a system, every man is equal and is forced by the natural demands of fairness to produce value so that he can receive value from others. And as sovereign controller of his credit expenditure, he can choose to transfer that credit to farmers in exchange for food, or he can give that credit to charities, agencies, research, education, or any other entity of his choice.

Every person desires freedom from forceful domination. We desire a society that regulates the passions of men and honors our inalienable rights. We desire protection from the bullying of other private citizens, the monopolistic practices and tendencies of corporations, and from government corrupted by the influences of power, fame, and wealth. The economy-only system has been presented as such a system. But, we should be cautious in placing our full trust in a system that is free from an acknowledgment of every citizen’s responsibility to embrace Godly self-regulation.
I see polar expressions of the world in all circumstances.
In the axis of government, the extreme poles are tyranny and anarchy. Note that tyranny and anarchy are only an infinitesimal part. The economy-only government is a type of anarchy. No man is superior to another in this system, and each made advocates for his best interest economically and morally by judging the creditworthiness of his trading partners in the society. But, for each person to judge the creditworthiness of his partner accurately, he needs a strong database to fully know his partner, so as to properly extend him credit. But, to do this he needs a data collection system which gives him that information. As a result, every person in that society, wishing to execute the same totally-independent judgment of their trading partners, agree to institute a data collection system and algorithmic computation of creditworthiness. The result is total independence from each other, but total reliance on the computation of the algorithm. The result is the tyranny of the algorithm. By this example and analysis, the point of connection of the opposite poles is illustrated, as is the unification of tyranny and anarchy.

Moving a small distance away from the extremes on both ends, and toward each other, the left wing polarity would be the strong central government with a socialistic control of the economy, strong bureaucracies, and many laws. The right-wing polarity would be a small government, private ownership of production, an information-rich society about self, others, and groups that enables social decision-making, plus an algorithmic recommendation for voting and consumption.

Moving closer to the center, we see a government like our current Constitutional Republic with its strong bureaucratic control of all phases of economic life. And, on the other side of that polarity, we see an economic system with less data collection, without algorithmic enforcement, and the use of cash instead of the cybernetic tracking and feedback system.

At the center we find a blend of the two polarities – the government and economy mixed together to form “Limited Government”. In this expression, we see the vast mix of credit and cash, economic indicators and social trends guiding production, corporate and professional self-regulation, transparent accountability of the public officials, common defense, and a people committed to moral self-regulation. But, such an ideal blend of the government and economy in the context of a Limited Government will only occur when the people have a deeply rooted, and personally lived commitment to God and His Way.

In the extreme expression of any system, the power is more concentrated and hence there is the possibility of exerting undue influence for personal benefit or to manifest a personally held belief about a greater good (such as we see in the jihadist philosophy). Human nature is strongly tempted to take advantage of available power.

In the case of the world governed by self-interest only, the system is likely to allow the cultivation and growth of an extremely virulent strain of self-interested individuals. These people make an art form of evading the modest barriers erected within polite society. This is the predator species; the trusting people who simply do their job, think about others and expect truthfulness are the societal prey.
The more a society promotes the pursuit of self-interest (without a sense of moral/Godly regulation to temper the desires of the self), the greater the probability that it will evolve a subpopulation of predators. Such a system is closely akin to the law of the jungle system, and while efficient and free, it is brutal. Charity, kindness, and heart must be incorporated into a “self-interest” based system so it produces more than an abundance of products at low prices.
I believe that for the self-interest based world to actually produce the joie de vivre that people really desire, it must incorporate the personality and properties of Godliness into the individual and societal values. This point is the major theme of my essay and is the only force in which I place my faith in the possibility of man creating a successful and stable Limited Government.
One possible transition scenario from our current state of Traditional Government to Limited Government, is for the entirety of the nation, individuals and groups, to suddenly embrace Godliness. Such a scenario is obviously unlikely but is considered to note that any system of government could be sanctified if all the people in the society and government spoke, acted, and thought in terms of legislating, adjudicating, and governing under the influence of Godliness.

Limited Government could evolve from any governmental system. Limited government at its “sweet spot” nourishes private ownership, rewards the risk of investment, labor, and invention; it collects extensive but non-intrusive data about production, consumption, and opinions; it provides easy ongoing interim, official non-binding voting on issues to give feedback to professionals, corporations, government agencies, judiciary, legislators, and executives; it has a media that reports the facts as objectively as possible, provides a place for the expression of opinion, and allows a forum for discussion about the issues, and is committed to presenting the news through the lens of Godliness. Ideally, Limited Government optimizes the establishment of limits and the satisfaction of desires and does it through mechanisms that are largely generated by the community debate and arise as a social consensus.

In the society that expresses itself according to the moral bias of Godliness, and under the social organization of Limited Government, the behavior of each man is properly respectful of the property and interests of his neighbors. And, various other intangible “best practices” of mankind optimize interactions on many subtle levels. To coordinate public activities, the Limited Government will require some level of data collection. Likewise, the majority of citizens must participate in some level of active community and professional involvement such as staying informed and voting about issues within the profession, union, or corporation. And, unless volunteers handle the duties of management and decision-making, the group would need to assess (private tax) its members to support administrators that serve in each cluster.
Without a set of standards for performance, behavior, and goals, and actual data regarding these parameters, it will be impossible for a private society, or government to intervene to improve performance. Intrusive monitoring of personal behavior is not necessary when the principles of Godliness are widely inculcated into the group, and every person supports and confronts his family members, friends, business associates, customers, and leaders with the principles of moral self-regulation. Likewise, the social monitoring machinery established for purposes of safety and defense can be trusted when the governing agencies are dedicated to the principles of Godliness.

Next, we examine another transition scenario starting with the Strong Central Government, and follow its gradual evolution into the optimum Limited Government. The first step in this transformation is the installation, election, or miraculous conversion of the heads of state and their cabinet. The leadership enforces Godliness from the highest level, and with this commitment to Godliness, the parental government exerts an influence on the citizens and institutions at each successively subservient level in the society.

Any system of Government can be endured and reasonably well enjoyed as long as the leaders of business and industry, the bureaucrats, professionals, labor, and homemakers bow to the rules of Godliness in conducting their professional and personal lives. Any system of government can transform into the optimum mix of government and private enterprise to form a Limited Government if the entire populace is likewise transformed. There will always be a problem with the stability of the system though, since the heart of man has such great affinity for pleasing self, over the Godly regulation of desire to love God’s way and to love neighbor as self, that after the horrors of one historical vignette has past, they forget, and seek to increase their pleasure over the amount allowed by the moderated consumption of pleasure available to the Godly. People are greedy, they want more, and they take more than is fair, more than they deserve for the amount that they have earned. God has created evil to tempt us, to continually challenge us to choose Him over the pleasures of the flesh at the expense of someone else. Thus, the only way to maintain the ideal society where limited government thrives in perpetuity is for the people to continue to warn their children of the dangers of the spirits that lie inside. The children must be taught the principles of goodness, and the evil they express in their temptations and transgression in lying, cheating, stealing, and fornicating must be confronted and used as object lessons to awaken the soul to the dragon that lies within. The parent that does not reign in the child and teach him the ways of the Lord and embed the spirit of self-regulation in his heart is a violator and puts the entire society at risk. Only one strong charismatic deluder needs to enter the world stage for a nation of unprepared sheep to be led into slavery. Therefore, parents need to teach their children the patterns of truth and lies in the public arena, and impress upon each one the personal responsibility that he has to confront evil in his fellow man. Assuming that “it isn’t my fight,” and “what right do I have to confront another person in their sin,” is the method by which the wolves grow strong and eventually terrorize and control the herd.

If the people are forced to be good and Godly by men with guns and shiny badges, the society will prosper. The good people will love the enforcement of righteousness, the evil will hate it, and those without a Godly moral compass will not be able to tell the difference. When the general population adopts the spirit of Godliness as an internal commitment, the authority of the State can be gradually transferred to a Godly strong private sector to self-regulate. Such is the natural progression toward the appropriate level of freedom.

People have the “right” to do Right, but they have no right to do Wrong. It makes no difference whether government or hired security corporations enforce right behavior. The argument is over who is more likely to enforce righteousness, and who is more likely to use the power of force to perpetrate and use their authorized power to steal and enslave. The Libertarian argues that government is inherently susceptible to the seduction of power because of the lack of personal consequence and investment.
This argument and consideration are true, and for this reason, we must populate the ranks of our civil servants with Godly men. We must ensure that the charters of each bureau and agency have the service of God written into their charters. We must require that the leadership of agencies, be men committed to Godliness in character, discrimination, and courage. Such men should be able to examine law, policy, and intent and confront error in their construction and execution. The manager in government and industry often only sees his position as oversight, rather than as judge and advocate for righteousness. Such a frame cannot be allowed in a Godly society. Every day, every person must take on the job of advocating for righteousness in his sphere, and do so without fear of livelihood and status.

The person serving in the governmental machine clearly faces temptations. He faces the challenge of falling into bureaucratic malaise where anything is acceptable that is dictated by law or his superiors. The standards of right and wrong become blurred and questionable as he sees arguments for both sides of the issue. The numbing effects of peer pressure, management, repetition, and moral complexity cause him to lose courage and conviction to confront the wrong he once saw clearly. He conforms to questionable policies and enforces them out of fear of loss of position or promotion if the commands of the hierarchy are questioned, challenged, resisted, or exposed. Still, all these temptations can be overcome by a commitment to Godliness.
We have clearly identified the fact that government has difficulty solving the problems of wealth allocation, poverty, job security, health care, drug addiction, and unemployment. But simply turning these problems over to the private sector will present its own set of challenges. Ultimately, the same requirements for Godliness that we considered above in the governmental hierarchy are active in the private sector. The major difference between the two realms, public and private is that the private sector is subject to the feedback loop of wealth creation. If no wealth or value is created, and if there is no demand for the product created, then the private enterprise fails.

But, the private institutions are subject to their own fatal flaws. The requirement to produce quarterly profits causes companies to shortchange R&D expenditures. The drive of wealth and greed causes the captains of industry to seek to consume their competition and raise prices as they establish monopolistic control. The drive to produce more faster, cheaper, and better pushes managers to push workers to higher levels of stress, with longer hours, and lower wages.

Thus, for the society to truly be a pleasant and joyous place to live, the private institutions should require their employees to behave in the ways of Godliness. The citizen should realize that supporting the cheapest foreign brand may place workers, the environment, or prosperity at home in peril. Simply instituting private enterprise in lieu of government will not immediately solve all the problems of society. But, the dog eats dog competition of free enterprise will provide pressure to produce results. Thus, these various social problems will probably get better under the automatic disciplinary hand of free enterprise. But, until Godliness is instituted as part of the corporate culture the workplace will still be a painful experience.
When the individual, corporation, and government embrace Godliness, the system will assume relative stability and righteousness. It was the intention of the Founders in their framing of the Constitutional Republic to establish a system of Limited Government based on the broad embed of personal self-government.

In our modern wired world, we can each begin the process of pushing to establish Godliness in our sphere of influence. The chances of Godliness taking hold and pushing back the sea of hedonism and Godless self-indulgence is slim. But, there is no point in just sitting back and capitulating. More than likely we will have to suffer some very great disaster, where people realize that we are not adequate to hold against the powers of darkness without the help of a miracle working God. At that time, we should be ready with our testimony and our plan of action.

Much discussion is held bantering the term “Limited Government” among the conservative circles. But, the meaning of this term is so ambiguous that we could easily argue that the best government is no government. But, reason, history, human nature, the Bible, the Constitution, and the metaphors of nature argue for an ecologically complex system that incorporates government and private enterprise in a single system. The complexity of moderation associated with competing and mutually interdependent systems creates ecological complexity and system robustness.
Personal self-government according to the Biblical principles of Godliness was the intention of the Founders in their establishment of a Constitutional Republic. If we take the Constitution and its implicit standard of Godliness as our national charter, we will begin to transfer the various functions of government to private enterprise.

When Godliness is the primary rule in a man’s life, only a minimal level of government is needed to coordinate, enforce, and focus the individual and group activity. Regardless of the path to Limited Government, Godliness is the central key to allowing societal stability, security, and satisfaction.

From this point on, I shall dispense with the discussion of the “Economy-Only Government” and shall instead focus on the optimization of the “Limited Government”. The perfect mix of government and private enterprise will not be advocated or explicitly elaborated, other than to recommend that a limited Federal and State government as advocated by the Founders. I believe the Constitutional template was divinely inspired, and I believe it will function well as the initial template for the implementation of a consciously chosen system of Limited Government in a complex ecology of private enterprise and a family of nations.

There are many possible mixes of government and private sector functions that society may choose. A large body of people will necessarily require the performance of many types of functions. Thus, people will specialize according to the needs of the time, and talents of the individual. These disparate activities of individual and groups comprising the economy-society must be coordinated and centralized at various levels, whether by a governmental or private institution.

Each society must decide how much personal data and monitoring is needed to regulate personal behavior, ethics, environment, and educational standards, etc. Laws, policies, agreements, or contracts will be made to guide industry and private behavior and to thus institutionalize the wisdom of experience. Likewise, the contingencies for change must be built into the system to adapt to internal and external pressures such as new technology, environmental concerns, resource scarcity, and international relations.

Note: In this essay, we have not stated how Godliness will arise, or even how to make it arise. Obviously, this is a critical consideration because the foundational consideration in establishing the Limited Government is a Godly society. Nevertheless, in its implemented state, Godliness will be a form of non-denominational Judeo-Christian ethics that will permeate society. There will be no creed or standard of orthodoxy that anyone must believe, but the general standard will be the hologram of Biblical Truth. This will leave the specifics of what Truth is, and how it is to be implemented, open to debate in every situation, personally, publicly and in government. No act of Congress will establish a religion, people are free to believe or not believe anything. Still, the Constitution is to be recognized as being based upon the general principles of Christianity and governing a Godly people. Law will be established with its foundation based upon the moral principles of the Bible, and a body of cases with precedent, argument, and justification. There will be a spirit of reverence and respect for God as creator and author of life that is held by all respectable members of society. Parents, educational establishments, courts, businesses, and bureaucracies will all speak, teach, and legislate overtly in terms of Christian ethics. There will be no law passed requiring a particular denominational worship, and no law passed declaring a particular doctrine as orthodox. But, there will be an open consideration and acknowledgment and debate at all levels of government, business, and family about the righteousness of any rule, policy, or fee as it relates to the Judeo Christian concept of Godliness.

But, we currently live in a society without an overt commitment to Godliness. We once were much more committed to life governed by this principle and spirit, but, in our current era, we have a socially liberal contingent that actively campaigns against any acknowledgment of Godliness in government. Our money still says, “In God we Trust” and our pledge still says, “One nation under God”, but these are straggling remnants that are crumbling as the generations and traditions are being replaced by Humanism, selfishness, greed, personal satisfaction, and desire.
The fundamental commandment of the Bible is summed up in the following verses:

Matthew 22:37 Jesus said to him, ” ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’38 “This is the first and great commandment.39 “And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’40 “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

The above principle is the foundation of all social systems whether government or economy-based. Regardless of whether a nation is governed by law or by equity in trade, the nation and its people must have a respect for the Law of God and have the Spirit of God in their hearts. Godliness is expressed as acting on the spiritual insight that reveals how life really is to be lived in perfection as seen by God. Godliness is perceived as a vision, feeling, and/or sense of knowing of the way of God. Every person has the rudimentary leading of God in his heart, but it becomes much more refined and accessible when a person engages in daily Bible reading, accepts Jesus as his Lord, and immerses himself in the Holy Spirit. Thus, the personal vision of Godliness is available to every man who puts his heart, soul, mind, and strength into seeking to know the Truth.

For the sake of completeness, we must ask the age-old question, “What is Truth?” And, the simple answer is, “Truth is what God sees as objective reality.” Every moment has an actual content of physical position, a content of momentum, radiating forces, impending external forces, and intent. The momentum will provide a large force directing us toward our next moment’s position. Likewise, external forces (spiritual or mechanical), seen or unseen at the moment will influence us in the ensuing moments and may overpower and thus redirect our momentum. As spiritual and physical beings, we have a place in the universe as an active actor, and our presence, momentum, and intent will inherently influence the world around us. And finally, our intent can introduce a force into our own trajectory and alter it. God has a plan, a perfect template for our movement, and it is up to the individual to seek and find His way, and in that way is the optimized life.

Embedded in the very essence of life is the fact that laws govern the very structure and substance of the universe. These universal laws of nature extend outward from the conscious particulate understructure of nature, and they emanate outward from the structure and nature of our soul. Thus, the universal laws of nature penetrate into our volitional world and require us to function in various ways to avoid pain, experience pleasures, and maintain survival. As a result of the boundaries of movement that were built into the physical universe, we can only follow certain paths. As a result of the boundaries of pain built into the soul and the psychic universe, we are repelled from engaging in activities that threaten life and well being.

Regardless of our awareness of God and His Law, we are all subject to it. Consciously acknowledged or ignorant of the allowed pathways of the universe, they must be obeyed as a fact of life; no man operates outside of God’s laws, we just fail to optimize our experience by choosing a lesser subset of life rules. Attempting to escape and rebel only initiates forces that move to restore the errant soul toward the path of life.

We may feel that we are captains of our fate, and free to choose our moral standard. And, to an extent this is true. We can direct our lives toward a goal, and we may to a greater or lesser extent reach that goal, but ultimately, if forces larger than our will and physical power direct our lives and influence our minds, we will be blown by that wind. Disease, famine, war, pestilence, quakes, weather and death all demonstrate the existence of a force larger than our own. But these forces are not random or mindless; they all work together to manifest God’s purpose. The formative source-power is awesome, mysterious. Two paths can always be chosen, rebellion against God and hopelessness, or Hope and Faith that all things are working to move us toward the centerline of Righteousness and Truth. The framing of life as positive or negative, hopeful or hopeless, hating God as evil or loving God as good, seeing life as random or seeing life as God’s play, is our fundamental power of controlling destiny.

John, your premonition dream years ago of the cars piling up behind you on the freeway; and then shortly later in real life having a shopping cart actually appear in front of you, swerving, and seeing the cars pile up behind you, was a graphic illustration of the lawful, mechanical progression of life. It likewise demonstrated our ability to intervene to a degree in the sequence of life’s progression. We live in a Lawful universe, and we are subject to laws that in turn affect our sense of satisfaction and sorrow. Our free will is still operative even amidst this great mechanical progression, and our free will choices determine to a great extent our happiness and contentment with our state of life. Thus, the advantage to following the patterns of the larger Lawful universe; we will benefit by patterning our own lives along the paths of the God-given regulations and rules. We should follow the rules, not as a mindless true believer, but rather as a man filled with the Spirit, feeling, knowing, and riding the waves of direction by the Spirit. Such is where the mystery and adventure of life are experienced at their maximum. We are called to combat the forces of dissipation, disobedience and rebellion and enroll our fellow man in the way of Truth. We are to seek to manifest righteousness in the larger world by enrolling willing men to labor in the service of the Spirit of God in manifesting his plan of Goodness for mankind.

Thus, “self-interest” is just as important as “other-interest”, but both are subservient to the superior Laws of God, nature, and Life. No real wisdom is possible until we see the perspective of God. Until then we simply speak from example, experience, cited authority, or theory. Thus, self-interest is only one of the factors which must guide life. To hold self-interest too highly, places one of the gifts of God, one of his implanted desires, above God in our hierarchy of respect. When doing so we worship a false god, which produces its own failures. The only best, most satisfying paths of life are God’s paths; all else are suboptimal dreams and passions of man that seem good but produce less fruit than the bounty possible when following God’s leading and way.

We wish to progress from our current government as a Constitutional, Corporate Representative, semi-socialistic, Big Brother Nanny State, Globalist, Industrial-Government Alliance, to the optimum balance of market and government which we shall call “Limited Government”. The following sequence may produce this evolution.

1) Revival: This is a revival of the Spirit of God moving with power across the nation, moving people to conviction, repentance, and holiness. Either a renewal of the majority of the nation or all its leaders must overtake the nation. This could come by an act of war, natural calamity, Jesus returning as King with Power, the Spirit of God moving on the hearts of men such as in the First Great Awakening before the Revolutionary War, the Second Great Awakening before the Civil War, or by convincing proof that God was real by science or broad personal experience.

When the nation returns to God in a true, Spirit-led way, where every man knows that God is real and that His way is True, then the entire framework and spirit of the nation will change. Until then, the battle will rage between government, industry, nations, races, and the people. Currently, the battle for Godliness is being lost. The putative experts of our Secular Humanist nation, the physicists, biologists, and psychologists have used their interpretations of quantum mechanical uncertainty, relativity, evolution, and psychology to deny the Truth of God’s existence and give archeological, mythological, and theoretical credence to their claims of humanistic divinity; and the people have followed these false prophets like sheep.

The Humanistic path has won the hearts of man due to the combination of expert opinions of doubters in the specialized and esoteric fields of physics and biology; the desire of man to be free of external regulation so as to elevate the himself to the level of a god subject to no one; the lack of concrete daily experience of God and the associated plausible possibility of His non-existence; and God’s allowance of immediate pleasure associated with following the flesh.

As a result of God’s non-existence in the minds of men, the passions of the soul are elevated to the point that their satisfaction is the goal of life, rather than being the gifts of God whose proper satisfaction give life its texture and fullness. Every thinking man knows that the pleasures of the flesh are fleeting; that fame, gold, women, and power flare brightly, fade quickly, and leave us depleted. The long slow burn of moderation in all things gives us the daily long term satisfaction of a life well lived. The life lived with such balance in all things is its own reward; that path is the experience of Heaven on Earth, and the character one develops living in such a way maximizes our pleasure and reward in the life to come.

Godliness in its most practical terms means treating your neighbor, children, wife, employer, employees, superiors, and institutions with proper respect and love. That respect and love may at times appear more harsh than soft when discipline and boundaries must be established. The violator must be loved, but confronted, coached, and given proper instruction as to the fair and right boundaries of his territory. Fairness, justice, kindness, temperance, truth, and other virtues comprise the quiver of Godliness.

2) After a national Revival of Godliness, the sequences toward Limited Government may proceed from the top down, commencing with the commitment of the nation to Godliness at the highest level of national priority. a) The reversal of Everson vs. Board of Education bill that established by fiat Judicial activism the previously unknown, and unconstitutional precedent of “Separation of Church and State”. b) The reversal of Judicial decisions that take the 10 commandments from public buildings. c) The reversal of Judicial decisions preventing prayer and Bible reading in school. With this restoration of law that allows the next generation to carry on the faith of our Fathers, we can without impediment reinstate the extension of Godliness to every phase of government.

3) The sanctification should proceed in a parallel fashion, with all members, groups, and strata of society studying the Bible, learning the principles of Godly relationship, debating and studying how this applies to their particular life, making policy, and extending the discussion and enrollment to their superiors and inferiors. If we are to consider the transformation of the society from the top down, as in a leadership model, then the highest-ranking leaders (chief executive, cabinet and judges) will be the leaders in establishing Godly policy in their Agencies, and the leaders at each successive layer of management would do the same.

4) The people have the vote, and they must use their discrimination to elect governors, legislators, and judges who are mature in the faith, committed to putting on Godliness and restoring our way of life to its Godly heritage.
5) They are at the heart of government and give laws their power by interpreting and enforcing legislation. The bureaucrats must frame their reading of legislation in terms of the spirit of Godliness so as to properly direct the professions, trades, and corporations in righteous activity.

6) The influence of Godliness on the highest management throughout the society will trickle down through the layers of managers and workers in the professions, associations, administrative bureaucracies, corporations, managers, professionals, families, and children.

7) The media biases and shades the entirety of perceived reality. We no longer live in a world that is directly perceived. Our concept of the universe beyond our horizon is filtered, processed, and presented through the lens of someone and their agenda. The Bill of Rights gave us freedom of the press, but corporate interests and biases toward social radicalism have monopolized the information-space. They have directed our choices and made voting an exercise in giving public support to private enterprise large enough to pay for buying the public mind. Information must be made objective by intent. Commentary should be allowed, encouraged, and expected that frames the events of the day in terms of Godliness. Many commentators and much debate should be offered from many sides, but it should overtly confront how the daily stream of current events relate to Godliness.

As the society becomes more righteous, as per Matthew 22, placing God’s Law first in each man’s heart, and in turn loving neighbor as self, the society will become more refined at each layer in its functioning and relationship in Godly manners.
The society is affected from the top down, and the bottom up. As the people making up a group become more Godly, and they learn to give and take equitably, the professions and trades they occupy will become more Godly in their service of society. As the Associations learn Godly discipline, teaching, and regulation of their members, then the Administrative layer of Government that regulates the professions and trades becomes less necessary. Eventually, the Associations of professionals, trades, and corporations can take over the role of the Administrative Law, and this layer of government, which is currently so expensive and populous, can be largely eliminated.

An example of a profession regulating itself is seen in the Bar of lawyers, a privately operated, self-regulated, enforced, funded and administered group that is trusted by society to maintain the standards of Godliness among their practitioners. Of course Godliness has been lost as the standard by which Lawyers regulate themselves, and as a result, the trust society has placed in them is unfounded. But, this is an example of privatization of administrative law that has already been implemented, and it also illustrates the futility of expecting that privatization by itself will produce the intended result of moral optimization of professional self-regulation.

The same retreat of Government may occur in all arenas of regulation: energy, education, law, commerce, environment, etc. When the commitment to Godliness in control of self and in relationship to others is present, then there is no need for the overbearing force of Government to enforce Godliness. Rather, when those in society embrace Godliness as their primary directive and purpose, every layer and element within each layer of government and private industry becomes an agent of unified regulation to manifest the mind of Christ.

When Godliness is the prime directive of society at all levels, the layers of government become less and less necessary. Administrative government can be seen as a temporary teaching and modeling role to guide the Associations into establishing the proper machinery for Godly self-regulation. The layers of regulation by government can thus be abandoned, as their duties are relinquished to their corollaries in the private sector.

Of course, the dismantling of government agencies means that former public servants will be released from their duties and must be re-integrated into life as private employees. A note that may provide a bridge is that they could migrate into jobs as officers of the professional guilds in their regulatory functions. But ultimately, we wish to increase the labor force and hope that most will retrain and become productive members of society creating value by using their skills.

The natural outcome of this adoption of Godliness by the people, and their unions, associations, and guilds is the diminishment of government. As Godliness and the training and enforcement of right action are transferred to the people and their privately run organs of self-regulation, many of government’s current functions become largely unnecessary.

Such is the goal of Godliness, to let God be our king. Note that the cry of the Revolutionary War was “No King but King Jesus.” This is the goal, to have only righteousness and the spirit that directs righteousness be our overarching ruler to which we all submit. Until we all bow at that altar, we will be slaves of men and institutions that keep our animalistic passion underfoot. Such subjugation is well and right and all that man deserves until he has put on the adult maturity of Godliness. We must ultimately subject ourselves willingly, with awe, respect, and love to our Father God. He is the source of all, and to whom we bow and worship for the magnificent creation.

The overarching problem that must be solved is that,
Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?”

Thus, the self-interest of man must be properly regulated in some way. The individual who asks for too much is like a cancer, occupying too much space, and taking too many resources. Those around him, unless they are effective warriors that beat back the aggression, may be damaged by his excessive consumption and occupation of space. If the individual grows in influence and organizes a company, gets elected as a legislator, appointed as a judge or administrator, he can extend his malignant influence to a greater degree and cause an industry or governmental bureaucracy to revolve around his desire for expansion of influence. There must be some force to oppose the bullies and cancerous tumors of life, industry, and government.

We should all have the standard of perfection, the pattern of health, the Law of God in our hearts, and when we see the invader, the unrighteous man and his action in our midst, we should take it upon ourselves to exert a force to stop him. Such is the place of personal power. It is our personal responsibility to make the world a Godly place by expelling the evil which seeks to manifest through the hearts of men. When the bullies and tyrants of youth are poorly controlled, they can become tyrants and lead a nation to wars of aggression and enroll the entire world in destructive wars of containment or defense. The police with shiny badges and guns are needed and appreciated when they enforce and judge according to the standards of Godliness, but when they are the agents of bullies, tyrants, and megalomaniacs we shudder in their presence and hate their subjugation.

Thus, it is not government that we hate, rather it is unrighteous and unGodly government that we cannot tolerate. It is the bonds of evil, unGodliness, and the intrusion of the agents of Hell whose bonds we seek to cast off.

Limited Government is a realistic goal as a later stage in the development of a Righteous society. When a Godly government develops, and the society follows suit (or is the reflection of the righteousness of the people) the various layers of government may fall off. When the government is no longer needed to create and enforce the righteousness that we all desire, government should follow the Framer’s intent of limited government and cheerfully execute the process of dissolution and transfer power to the private sector.

This progression toward dissolution of the bureaucracies will happen most strongly when the nation has committed itself to Godliness. The people will fear letting corporations, trades, and professions rule themselves if there is no commitment to Godliness in that sector; the fox should never be put in charge of watching the henhouse. To allow a self-interested profession to regulate itself is to invite abuse in the form of bullies and thieves.

A primal desire of the heart is to understand the origin of the universe and life and to feel complete in its relationship with its creator on all levels. If society has not embraced God as its overt source, then the miraculous will be missing at some level, and the creatures will still be longing for completion of their hearts’ desire.
Taxes, for the purpose of supporting the regulatory bureaucracy, become less and less onerous as government shrinks. But taxes may take another form, such as association, bar, union, or guild dues. If the need for group coordination still exists, employees must be hired or volunteers must execute those duties. Thus, the forceful arm of coercion may not disappear completely even in the post-Administrative Law era. The professional standards must still be enforced, and due will go to enforce our proper professional standards and duties. But, given the structure, where the people will more readily submit to the jury and rules of their colleagues. These laws, regulations, and policies are self-imposed. Since the professional associations are committed to righteousness, we know that the regulations at least have the intent of Godliness. We can thus hope and expect that the penalty for violations would actually reflect an appropriate chastening that is needed to restore rather than mechanically punish.

The majority of the functions of government can be transferred to the private sector when sufficient infrastructure in the private sector has been established. But again, the manifestation of Limited Government as a realized actual possibility arises out of the intelligent expression of Godliness. The perfection of Godly and Lawful Righteousness in a people makes Limited Government possible.

T.