Rules of the Rock

You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them, that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. -- Leviticus 20:22

Here at THE ROCK, we have two basic rules. Rule One: OBEY ALL RULES. -- Barney Fife

God does not say, "I am going to kick you out of the house if you don't shape up."  The cosmos is ordered and operates according to rules that are built into the network of interactions.  Matter forms into elements with properties that we can understand and make use of.  Matter and energy are the perceptible, passing forms of the is-ness that undergrids it all.  This is true up and down the spectrum as mentioned yesterday.  The rules rule.  The house will evict you when you are no longer fit to live here -- which, by the way, is the opposite of how I sometimes think about physical death. 

If we align ourselves with the truth and operate in right-standing and honesty, we can live in the Land of Promise.  The warning God gives comes in the midst of a section about sacrificing children to Molech, practicing witchcraft, dishonoring parents, and pursuing illicit relationships.  We cannot be people of God and live deluded and deceived.  We cannot be the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ while living a lie. 

I really think the whole world is about to experience a huge upheaval as a consequence of living in the illusions of Science! and humanism and license.  Islam's fundamentalism is clashing with the West's decadence.  Both are lies, colliding in the same way that lies of democracy and monarchy collided in the French Revolution.  The results will probably be about the same.  Muslims are burning Sweden.  The English Defence League is rallying against Muslims after the beheading of an unarmed British soldier on the street in Woolwich by Somali immigrants Muslims of Nigerian descent born in Britain (according to another report).

Reality is not a wall we hit so much as the laws that govern the attempt to abruptly penetrate granite with flesh. 

I feel like singing, "This world is not my home/ I'm just a'passin' through/ My treasures are laid up/ Somewhere beyond the blue."  You know, though, one of the reasons I have separated myself somewhat from organized Christianity (which ought to be an oxymoron) is that I don't find most churches and most Christians attempting put aside their illusions either.  Christian fundamentalism, for all its good points, seems content with a one-off revelation, sort of like some who wave the Constitution and shout about "constitutional rights".  The Constitution doesn't give me any rights; it only recognizes them.  I don't have those rights because I am an American citizen but because I am a human alive on the blue planet. 

The Bible is the same way, encoding or encrypting the truth, pointing us at the rules, and showing us the Word.  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us ... For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known (John 1:14-17).