Humanity stratifies. Like as we might to have homogeneity, some take control, and others cede it. One might mistake homogeneity for “justice” — and work toward some ideal akin to “from each by abiltiy, to each by need”. But I reckon that justice is that the (temporarily) powerful people don’t do all that’s in their power. They pay their workers at the end of the day, for example. They don’t harvest to the edges of the field. They use true weights and coins which are not debased. They don’t go send Uriah out to the front of the battle because he’s married to some hottie.

And then there’s the jubilee… which I don’t much understand.

Anxiety over “what comes next” — is one means by which a group of people can use guile and deception and manipulation to control groups of people. One of the big distinctions between the cult of YHWH and all the pagan cults of the time of Patriarchs forward, was that the YHWH cult was not a death cult. Elaborate funerary was explicitly forbidden in the Torah. And certainly was augery and communication with the dead.

This grasp for power that pagan priests held was denied the priests of YHWH. As was sexual ritual. Still, the worry about the harvest and battle and “acts of God” — but much of the content of the prophets was either an exploitation of that fear, or a repudiation of those who exploit that fear, again assuring people that, despite the capriciousness of life and its many perils, the divine Protector was exactly that — not One to be appeased through ritual.

I see Christ, and to a lesser extent Paul giving some relief from the “what comes next” anxiety. Any church which crafts purgatory from whole cloth, is serving the institutional needs of the church more than serving the sheep it was commanded to feed. I’ve no idea how things will end up. Some people obsess on Daniel and Ezekiel and the Apolcalypse of John, and select quotes attributed to Jesus and think of little else but what might come next — how it will all end up. But I think that’s just going back to the flesh pots of egypt — all this “book of the dead” type speculation.

Just celebrate the person of Christ, and act toward others as He toward us. And let the end times happen according to a plan we cannot change or influence, nor be any more ready for diligence — despite stories of watchmen and such.

Judge the stories we are told by who they serve. That’s a post-modern teaching, and a Christian teaching. Stories that pretend sight of the unseen — they are not of the spirit of He who rent the curtain to the sanctum sanctorum.

A puff away from 3 packs a day