The Relationship Between Fearing God, Walking In God’s Commands And Meaning

The name of God occurs in Ecclesiastes no fewer than 37 times and that in such a way that the naming of Him is at the same time the confession of Him as the True God, the one who is Exalted above the world, the Governor and the Ruler over all. And so while the Teacher in Ecclesiastes draws out the vanity of searching for meaning apart from God, he constantly returns to the idea that “Fearing God” is the beginning place where meaninglessness (vanity) might become meaning.

Ecclesiastes places the command “Fear Thou God” (5:6-7, 12:13) in the foremost rank as a fundamental moral duty. Fearing God is central to happiness of men (8:12-13). Man’s final destiny is based upon the necessity of man to fear God (7:18, 11:9, 12:14). Ecclesiastes contemplates the world as one that was Created by God as very good (3:11, 7:29) and as arranged and directed that men might fear God (3:14).

And this fear of God that is put forth so clearly finds its concrete meaning at the end of the book.

“Fear God and Keep His commandments.”

There is thus struck a natural relationship between a life that is supercharged with meaning, fearing God, and walking in the ways of God’s commandments. Distinctions may be drawn between these three realities but they can never be divorced. No one can say that they fear God and not walk in the way of His commandments. Similarly, no can say they have found meaning in life without fearing God. Just so, fearing God, and having meaning exhibits itself by walking in God’s commands.

Ancient Egypt & Communist Russia — A Unifying Thread

Yesterday I was doing some reading on the religions and philosophies of the Ancient world. I came across an explanation of the Egyptian Ma’at religious / philosophical systems.

“The concept of the State was a necessary corollary in the total cosmic ideal of ancient Egyptian culture and religion. And central to the idea of the state was the divinity of the King. ‘The State was not a man made alternative to other forms of political organization. It was god-given …. it continued to form part of the universal order. In the person of the Pharaoh a super human being had taken charge of the affairs of men….’ In consequence the service of Pharaoh was a religious, not a purely secular function, and sense of duty was strengthened by faith. The ancient Egyptian’s culture was a slave culture, one of absolute servitude to the power and authority of the King…. The fiat word of Pharaoh could brook no opposition. The life of the Egyptian was in the hand of his king as in the hand of his god…. It is not strange, then, that his conception of Ma’at (right order) should be viewed more in terms of what it is not, than of what it is; that he should be more concerned with what threatened to destroy it than what justifies its nature and existence. Ma’at has been established. That is axiomatic. The wise man will live so as to not upset the rule of the right order. He will bow in submission to Ma’at. He will submit unreservedly to his god-king….

Simply put, Ma’at was an order that could not be violated with impunity.

Michael Kelly
The Burden of God — pg. 34-36

This social order philosophy was known as Ma’at. The Ma’at system, as the quote above indicates was a slave system. In the pecking order in Ancient Egypt all were the slaves of someone above them in the pecking order and Pharaoh was the Slave-master of all. (Though one might argue that Pharaoh himself was slave to a religious / philosophical social order he knew was not true.) The Pyramid thus becomes the perfect symbol of Ma’at because in the Pyramid you have the pinpoint apex of the triangle representing Pharaoh as at the top of the religious / philosophical social order and everything under the apex of the Pyramid triangle serves and supports the Pharaoh apex.

As I was reading the above quoted description suddenly my reading on the Communist show trials of the 1930’s came to mind. Here were many of the Old Bolshevists who created the Soviet Ma’at system revealing their loyalty to the religious / philosophical order confessing their guilt even though they were clearly innocent f the charges preferred against them. All they had was the Ma’at State. That was their reality. They could no more deny the Communist State then they could deny themselves. If the State said they were guilty then they must be guilty.

And though the Bolsheviks insisted they were Atheists it is clear that they viewed the State and the Party as god walking on the earth. As such, if their god, as apotheosized in Stalin, said they were to be shot for false crimes committed against the party then they would go to their execution singing songs of praises.

Nikolai Bukharin (1888-1938) was one such example of this. Even though Bukharin wrote a series of very emotional letters to Stalin protesting his innocence and professing his love for Stalin, in his final plea the Old Bolshevik who worked with Lenin to establish the Soviet Ma’at State could explain,

“For three months I refused to say anything. Then I began to testify. Why? Because while in prison I made a revaluation of my entire past. For when you ask yourself: ”If you must die, what are you dying for?” – an absolutely black vacuity suddenly rises before you with startling vividness. There was nothing to die for, if one wanted to die un-repented. And, on the contrary, everything positive that glistens in the Soviet Union acquires new dimensions in a man’s mind. This in the end disarmed me completely and led me to bend my knees before the Party and the country.”

This is nothing but Ma’at speak. All in the Party / State. Nothing outside the Party / State.

Stalin had become the new Pharaoh (God-King) and all below him would serve him as slave, even if that meant bowing to the Pharaoh’s desire for Bukharin to lie in order to support the god-king’s false accusation.

But shed no tears for Bukharin. The man sowed the wind and he merely reaped the whirlwind.

For he wounds, but he binds up; he shatters, but his hands heal.

They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.

“In this world of sin no Christian individual and no Christian organization can be positive and constructive till after it has been negative and destructive. To deny and ignore this fact is to deny or to ignore the fact of sin.”

Cornelius Van Til
Essay On Christian Education, p. 187

When I was a lad I contracted a serious infection. This infection required the scrubbing of my wounds until they bled followed by the administration of the proper ointment on the bleeding wounds. To this day the memory of those scrubbing sessions jolts me upright. And yet, without the cleansing work of the scrubbing, the ointment could not have done its work. The medicine that was intended to heal could not work until I was first wounded.

In many quarters of the West today the Church is deeply wounded. There are no solutions that do not start with being scrubbed of her infected wounds. And because of the necessity for her wounds to be scrubbed (the negative and destructive work that Van Til speaks of) she will not submit and so will not be healed.

“Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.” Hosea 6:2

Prayer

God of all sufficient grace, be so kind as to wound us that we might be healed. Cease not with thy severe mercies that lead us to rejoice in thy tender mercies. Deliver your church from being stiff necked and cause us to yield to your hammer blows of grace as you shape us on the anvil of thy rough kindness.

In Christ’s name,

Augustine On God’s Providence

“It is the LORD of hosts whom you should regard as holy. And He shall be your fear, And He shall be your dread. Isaiah 8:13

“And even if the demons have any power in these matters (events of history), they have only that power which the secret decree of the Almighty allots to them, in order that we may not, set too great store by earthly prosperity, seeing it is oftentimes vouchsafed even to wicked men like Marius; and that we may not, on the other hand, regard it as evil, since we see that many good and pious worshipers of the one true God are, in spite of the demons, pre-eminently successful; and, finally, that we may not suppose that these unclean spirits are either to be propitiated or feared for the sake of earthly blessings or calamities; for as wicked men on earth cannot do all they would, so neither can these demons, but only in so far as they are permitted by the decree of Him whose judgments are fully comprehensible, justly reprehensible by none.”

Augustine
The City Of God — pg. 66

In Seminary I was taught that the Devil was God’s devil on a leash. This is exactly what Augustine is articulating here. We have no need to fear that which either wicked men or wicked spirits can do to us, who are God’s people, for whatever comes to us needs come to us through the hands of our loving benevolent Father whose every action towards us is one of Fatherly compassion and tender mercy.

Second, note Augustine intimates that we would do well to be careful in judging our estate or the estate of others by circumstances. Providential ordering that looks to be good on the surface happens to wicked people and providential ordering that looks to be good on the surface happens to God’s elect. We can not look at a persons prosperous circumstances alone and adjudicate a person’s standing with God.

Third, Augustine reminds us that we should not be consumed with concern regarding demonic beings he obviously holds to exist. It is somewhat refreshing to read of Augustine’s conviction that Demons exist. The Church in the West today is so caught up in the Scientific nature of Modernity that we forget that their is a very real spiritual realm that doesn’t answer to the cold scientific calculations of Modernity.

Still, despite his conviction that Demons exist, Augustine reminds us that Demons are not to be propitiated (appeased) or feared. Men ought to only fear God. If men will fear God and move in terms of His Law-Word, resting in His favor, what need is there to be consumed by either evil men or evil spirits?

Fear of anything or any one in the created realm is an act of Worship and so a violation of the 1st commandment. When we fear anything or any one but God we are guilty of having a god before God that will be able to, because of our fear, command our allegiance and control our behavior. Such command and control is the essence of worship. Such fear of wicked men or demons is a sin that needs to be repented of. It is a sin I repent of constantly.

As God’s Holy elect we need daily to pray that God would grant us the grace to only fear Him. As frail and weak humans we are prone to allow our fears to push God out of our reckoning and so to not venture out in obedience to Him. Men that cannot overcome their fears are men that are compromised before they begin.

Prayer

Almighty Excellent and Sovereign God we pray that thou would make us a people who fear only you. Grant us grace to understand that there is a Spiritual realm that is very active but at the same time grant us grace to remember that thou art the absolute ruler and commander over this Spiritual realm. Teach us we pray thee to take delight in reality of thy Sovereign decrees that rules over the affairs of men. Remind us that thou art a God who is favorably disposed towards us at all times, for the sake of thy and our Redeemer — the Lord Christ. And being confident of your favor aid us to not fear any lesser being.

In Christ’s name

Amen

McAtee Contra Bahnsen

www.davidbahnsen.com/index.php/2013/01/01/i-can-not-believe-how-badly-some-people-miss-the-point/

First, understand that Bahnsen writes like a neo-con. This means he is a progressive though he interprets everything from the right side of the left. He is not a conservative in any legitimate sense of the word.

Bahnsen

There is nothing to celebrate or bemoan in what happened over the last 24 hours. A little rule-of-thumb of mine may be appropriate to share here: When BOTH parties say they want a certain thing, you can bet that after a whole lot of posturing or politicking and time-wasting, that thing is going to happen. It is not that easy when only one party says they want something. BOTH parties said they wanted the bottom four tax rates to stay where they were. BOTH parties said they did not want the estate tax exclusion amount to revert to the preposterous $1 million level. BOTH parties said they wanted a dividend tax rate at 20% or lower. It is no surprise that all these things are happening.

Bret

There is plenty to bemoan with this legislation.

1.) progressive income tax is a plank in the Marxist manifesto. The fact that any group of wage earner’s tax is going up is plenty to bemoan. Bahnsen has embraced the premise that progressive income tax is something that we just have to live with. I bemoan that we have a progressive income tax instead of a flat tax or something like a flat tax.

2.) The fact that we are getting more spending then tax cuts is outrageous. Not only does the McConnell Tax Hike stick it to the middle class, it raises taxes $41 for every $1 in spending cuts. Those spending cuts are ephemeral as there is $330 billion in new spending and a $4 trillion price tag over the next ten years. This plan is not fiscally responsible for a people who own their souls to the Chinese and are borrowing against future generations wealth.

3.) Keep in mind that with this deal more than 80 percent of households with incomes between $50,000 and $200,000 would pay higher taxes.

Both Hollywood and NASCAR get carve outs. So too do wind energy companies.

Bahnsen

Now, do I want my income tax rate going up? No, and I think it is immorally high even at 35%, let alone 39.6%. However, anyone telling you that the Senate or House voted for a tax increase is lying, and they know it. The law of the land was for a dramatically higher increase in rates across the board to kick in, and there have been huge reductions passed in the last 24 hours from all of those legally set levels. In other words, a tax cut was passed, not a tax increase. Did the Republicans hold their ground about not agreeing to see the top rate go from 35% to 39%? No. Did the always-pompous Obama keep his sworn campaign pledge for rates to go up on all incomes above $250,000? No, with all the leverage in the world he folded like a bad poker hand and agreed to a $450,000 income level for that increase. There are things to like and things not to like, but there is simply no debating that it is better than what we were going to get – by a mile.

Bret

This is typical compromise political speak. Bahnsesn doesn’t know what we were “going to get” so how can he proclaim that this is “better then we were going to get?” This is like a virgin being told that she has to choose between becoming pregnant or contracting a STD and then upon becoming compromise her chastity saying, “Well, I may have gotten pregnant but I didn’t get a STD and so being pregnant is better than I was going to get by a mile.”

What if she had just said “no.” What if the Republicans had just said “no?” Who knows what we would have got?

Bahnsen

So why are people like Erick Ericson so mad? Because this plan does not cut spending the way we want. Well, no kidding Sherlock (I like the real expression better). It does not tackle deficits and debts because THE WRONG PARTY WON THE ELECTION.

Bret

More compromise from Bahnsen. He is cut from the same cloth as Boehner and McConnell.

We are so mad because even though the Republicans won the house they cave at every turn. We are so mad because the Republican moderates (Boehner & Cantor’s people) are forging a ruling coalition with the Democrats against Republican conservatives. Has Bahnsen forgotten how divided Government works? Given the 2012 vote that gave the House to the Republicans and the Presidency to Democrats the people obviously wanted gridlock. All because a Democrat wins the Presidency doesn’t mean that he gets what he wants when there is a decidedly Republican Congress. Bahnsen reasoning is curious.

Bahnsen

The so-called resolution to fiscal cliff is a joke, but that is not because it is a bad piece of legislation. The bad piece of legislation was the initial bill that failed to build in tax reductions on a permanent basis back in 2001 and 2003. Elections matter. Do not ever set policy on the presupposition that your party will never lose again. And when you do lose, do not act like you didn’t. The time to flex our muscle and block spending where we legally can is coming. But there was no possible way to do that yesterday.

Bret

There was a way to do that before this deal. Boehner could have held the debt limit increase that Obama wants in a very short time hostage. He could have used that as a leveraging chip but he didn’t and when the time comes around to debate the debt ceiling limit the Republican will cave AGAIN. Why elect Republicans when they are not going to be fiscally responsible?

Bahnsen

For Republicans mad about this deal, I suggest you do what always has to precede real political improvement in a Republic: Win your elections. The Libertarians and Paul-bots have been sitting around crying in their beer for over thirty years while they capture 1% of the voting public’s attention. Do not stoop to their loser level. Win an election, then demand a harder line on spending. For now, we were facing something far, far worse, and we got an improvement. Keep your eye on the ball, friends. This is a long war.

Bret L. McAtee

This is a untempered statement by someone not thinking through the implications of what he says.

Republicans won MASSIVELY in 2010. Did they do anything? Did they stop the debt ceiling limit? Did they do anything to investigate this President? No .. instead what we got with a Tea Party propelled victory is a Neo Con Speaker. Clearly winning elections do not matter as Rockefeller Republicans dance cheek to jowl with Socialist Democrats. Boehner is not a conservative and neither is McConnel or Bahnsen.

And why is he moaning about the Libertarians if they are so insignificant? Me thinketh Bahnsen doth protest too much.

We are being turned into a slave people and the best Bahnsen can do is lash out at Libertarians?