Babylon Revisited (with some revisions)

Whoever finds me [Wisdom] finds life and obtains favor from YHWH; but whoever misses me does violence to his very being [nephesh]; all who hate me love death. Proverbs 8:35-36 NASB with revisions

Love death – “Since the culture of ancient times tended to value a person in light of the role performance, personal values also follow that path. Van der Toorn finds a ‘priority of shame over guilt, of honour over self-esteem, and of success over integrity. Since misfortune of any sort was inferred to derive from having offended deity, the “offender” inevitably experienced social rejection. No one wanted to suffer from guilt by association and likewise attract the ire of some god. Therefore, though the sufferer felt no guilt (the sufferer had no idea what he might have done wrong, though he was ready to acknowledge any offense if only he were informed what to acknowledge), he was overwhelmed with shame from society’s response to his difficult circumstance. He felt that humiliation of public disgrace and suffered consequences in disintegrating relationship in his town and in his family. Prayers therefore seek restoration of the god’s favor, which is expected to result in the renewal of one’s social well-being rather than in the renewal of one’s personal or spiritual well-being. Shame would be resolved and honor restored.’”[1]

Imagine life in this ancient world. When tragedies strike, when circumstances go against you, when success turns to failure, you are left wondering, “What did I do wrong? What god did I offend?” This is a world where invisible deities rule the affairs of men, where the favor of the gods is the single determining factor of well-being. But it is also a world where the gods hide their thoughts and their expectations. This is a world where you are left to guess what you must do in order to survive. Therefore, when bad things happen the only reasonable assumption is that you did something wrong to cause these bad things to happen. You guessed wrong. The problem, of course, is that you have no idea what it was.

In this ancient culture, God’s revelation of Torah makes all the difference. For the first time, men know what God demands. Men are able to act according to the revealed expectations of God and can therefore anticipate the consequences with regularity. Life is no longer a guessing game. God tells men what to do. The ancient problem of the hidden gods is solved. Ancient Israel knew what God wanted. Life became a matter of obedience, not guesswork.

The loss of Torah in contemporary religious circles is not simply a loss of rules. Torah resolves the question of how life should be lived. Torah establishes the bridge between God and men. When the Church sets aside Torah, it sets aside the resolution of the problem of the hidden gods. Men are thrust back into a world where guessing governs well-being. However, contemporary religion without Torah offers a different solution to this ancient problem. First, it moves the discussion from the public arena to the private experience of the individual. In the ancient world, my identity was determined by my public, social behavior. The shame of public humiliation was far more important than personal guilt. My honor and my family’s honor trumped any concerns about my personal self-worth. My display of visible success was so important that it mattered little how it was achieved. But in the modern world, guilt, self-esteem and inner spiritual restoration replace the social and public nature of being human. Therefore, as long as I have a personal sense of right-standing before God, as long as my personal guilt has been resolved, the rest of my life is of little spiritual concern. There is obviously a direct connection between this interiorization of religious status and the idea that once I am “saved” my subsequent behavior doesn’t count. Since Torah is principally the explanation of correct behavior in the public arena, the priority of inner religious conviction no longer requires this external legislation or validation. For example, as long as I have Jesus in my heart, it doesn’t matter what I eat. My internal religious conviction simply erases any concern about living in a way that acknowledges God’s external behavioral requirements. When the modern world replaced social identity with private self-esteem, Torah became obsolete.

Secondly, contemporary cultures no longer views the world as divinely saturated. Cause and effect have replaced the whims of the gods. Modern society believes that reason has overcome the superstition of a universe under the control of the gods. This implies that the principles of causality are the true determining factors of life. If I can find an explanation within the causal system, I do not need the gods and since the metaphysics of the causal system asserts that all events are causally connected, the real implication is that God is entirely unnecessary. This is why Aldous Huxley could claim that religion was simply a crutch for the feeble-minded; a useful support that could be cast away when Man eventually threw off the shackles of his delusions of dependence.

While the Church continues to claim a role for God, strands of metaphysical causality are also present in contemporary religious systems. For example, the proposal that God is the uncaused cause (the cosmological argument) already assumes the priority of causality. In fact, the argument is an argument for the existence of God, an argument that is only necessary when the culture no longer views God’s existence as unquestionable. Modern theological assertions of sovereignty wrestle with the problem of evil, once again demonstrating that metaphysical causality has set the stage for the entire debate. Creationism falls prey to the same metaphysics.

At the more pedestrian level of the ordinary believer, there is very little awareness of God’s active presence in every aspect of living. Most believers embrace a laissez-faire God who shows up when necessary or appropriate but who, for the most part, quietly sits in the bleachers while we play the game of life on the court. Acting as spectator, God offers color commentary rather than active engagement and must be “invited” to join our worship services and our lives. Furthermore, since Christian ethics is no longer directly connected to Torah, ethical guidance for living amounts to not much more than the endorsement of good behavior principles (“do unto others” or “love one another”). Because religious experience has become a private, interior commitment, there is little behavioral conformity in the application of these general principles. This lack of conformity is justified by an appeal to the witness of the inner experience. Circular arguments are, of course, immune from criticism.   More importantly, these circular arguments are also removed from public scrutiny and alignment with the culture of Scripture. If God has assured me that my experience of salvation is confirmed by the feeling of His presence, public display of conformity to His external instructions is no longer a requirement.

Finally, we must recognize the enormous difference between the ancient world of Semitic cultures and our own when it comes to the priority of individualization. In ancient Semitic cultures, isolation, solitude, self-sufficiency, and independence were considered “symptoms of death, dissolution, and destruction. Life is interdependence, interconnection, and communication within webs of interaction and interlocution that constitute reality.”[2] Only a moment’s reflection is needed to recognize how radically different our perception of reality has become. The very symptoms that the ancients considered anathema to life are now the primary forces that shape our world. From an ancient perspective, we are living in a culture of death.

Torah reflects these ancient views. Torah is not a modern religious invention. It wasn’t a modern religious invention in the first century. It was an ancient way of life. That’s why Gentiles who embraced the Jewish Messiah were ushered into training in Torah. Those Gentiles already shared the same worldview as ancient Babylon. They were undoubtedly overjoyed to find a God who had revealed the proper way to life. They did not convert to a system of religious belief like our contemporary culture of death. They adopted an ancient path, a path where God actually told people what to do and how to live. It would have been unimaginable for first century converts to live according to some inner experience or witness of the Spirit. Life was public and religious conversion meant public transformation. A first century Gentile convert who stepped into our contemporary congregation might wonder how in the world we expect to do what God demands of us. He would be thrown right back into the guesswork of Babylon.

Many Christians think of Torah as rules. With the Enlightenment emphasis on personal liberty coursing through their veins, they reject the specifics of Torah, opting instead for a personalized ethics of principle application determined by their particular point of view. This tragic mistake goes unnoticed because the metaphysics of causality has also replaced the immanence of God. In combination, modern men no longer quake under the ancient question, “What does God demand of me?” Modern men think that they already know the answer, and what they do not yet know, they can rationally determine. Modern men have cast off Torah restraints and unwittingly thrown themselves into the dark. Of course, since they have closed their eyes, they don’t even know that the lights are off. They don’t know they are dying, and no one is telling them they are.

Whoever finds me [Wisdom] finds life and obtains favor from YHWH; but whoever misses me does violence to his very being [nephesh]; all who hate me love death.

Topical Index: Proverbs 8:35-36, death, Torah, self-identity, individual


[1] John Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, p. 146.

[2] Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, p. 148.

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laurita hayes

Skip, this is so rich and comprehensive I am just in awe. Thank you for nailing the source of modern angst!

The love is death is the instinct to hide (action of shame).

The tragedy of today is that Christians are marching in that death march with all the rest of the world when they succeed in HIDING their allegiance to heaven. That is the same as saying that you are ashamed of it! The insistence of the world that we become all things ecumenical demands that we subsume all things offensive to the practices of death of those around us. Torah, being the epitome of the practice of true community, gives the lie to this false community, and so therefore is offensive in the extreme. Torah must go before the false god of conformity with the world and the new supreme deity: tolerance. When we demonstrate our allegiance, by means of obedience, to the One true God, we offend the god of tolerance of all the other false ones. The world today says “make all the temples you want, just make them ecumenical”.

The world’s design for the new temple on Temple Mount is a circle (it really is, y’all – go check it out!), where all the ‘faiths’ join hands and sing Kumbayah together. It is going to be impossible to be a light on this hill unless we are willing to be obedient to the externals of Torah; chief among them, incidentally, the Sabbath. Internal, personal ‘application’ keeps us fractured, where no one can see what LIFE looks like, but how can anyone figure out what the true choice is if they cannot see it? We are supposed to be able to be seen! Obedience always was a communal activity. Obedience to WHAT is going to be the question. If I am not obeying Torah, I AM being obedient to the New Order of keeping my head down and making sure I do not offend anyone. Um, wrong circle!

Beth

What you say is so true yet most of the language of it is over my simple-minded head. I do get it though. You have an eloquence with words I can’t always fathom. As I see it, the problem is that most Christians have no idea what they are doing and they refuse to admit that what you’ve said is true. They don’t respond to simple logic. They are blinded by the lies that have been passed down to them for centuries, especially the lie that to obey Torah is an attempt to earn salvation. Even if they finally see a bit of the truth, they can’t handle it. After all, how could the church have passed down lies for so long? Instead, they willingly choose to cling to their traditions instead. They choose the comfort of what they are familiar with because to embrace truth has serious challenges and consequences. This whole thing truly frightens me. Once I know this is the case with someone, there is no point but to back off and let them go the path they have chosen and hope there can be mutual respect for differences of belief. It is really hard when married couples divide over the truth. Ridicule and sarcasm become nasty weapons that cause division and hurt feelings. This is meant to bring the wayward one back into conformity. Where once unity of belief resided, a mixed marriage has evolved. The risk of divorce soars. As I see it, there is only one hope left for those who reject truth: put the information in cyberspace with an incredibly easy searchable layout/format so if they eventually choose to search for truth, they can find it. The burden is on them. When questions arise, point them to the right articles. There is no need to repeat the same mantra/basics over and over again; it’s too time consuming. If you don’t, you and those you are leading never grow and mature. Of course, there are probably other ways to bring newbies out of Babylon and into a new fold while nurturing the more advanced but you have to choose something that works. If you have more than one session per meeting, you might have one for newbies (first session) and one for old timers (2nd and 3rd sessions). Even when you talk about Greek vs. Hebrew thought, you have to include the reason for this discussion and some applications because people still might not get the point. To say that if you want to see your future (where you are going), you have to look to your past seems odd and illogical. The aha moment you are hoping for might not come until another person comes along and says something else that puts it all into perspective. You can be the first and second person in someone’s life. People need bridges between their current mindset and where you want to take them. Sometimes you have to build a Y on its side in order to take them from points A and B to C.

Pam

I’ve come to prefer that particular methodology. Great post Skip. I’ll be sharing this one.

Rich Pease

“And there is nothing new under the sun.”

Either a person has an intimate and active, vital and real relationship
with God, or they don’t. This has never changed throughout history.

The evidence of these people is unmistakably seen in their changed
hearts of obedience and the resultant loving and caring behaviors
extended to the community at large. “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give
to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.”

These unusual people are hard to miss. Their actions speak louder than words.
“You are the light of the world.”

People of all ages have missed the mark as their determined natures of
self consumption kept them rigidly walking in the darkness of death.
“For many are called, but few are chosen.” “Because narrow is the gate and
difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

God sees the heart. “I know who I have chosen.”
Likewise, Abraham ” believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him
for righteousness.”

God has His hand on all that goes on. Make no mistake about it.
Pray for the lost. Pray for changed hearts.

Daniel

“… the metaphysics of causality has also replaced the immanence of God.”

That cuts to the core, and is ironically one of the threads that keep the otherwise bitter enemies of Catholicism and Calvinism connected. (Scholasticism!)

Mark Parry

Thank you Skip, most erudite. Yes Rich pray for changed hearts and I might add changed minds…

“The whole modern world is at war with reason; and the tower already reels. The sages, it is often said, can see no answer to the riddle of religion. But the trouble with our state is not that they cannot see the answer; it is that they cannot even see the riddle…In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind…. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it… you cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves… We have no more questions left to ask. We have looked for questions in the darkest corners and on the wildest peaks. We have found all the questions that can be found. It is time we gave up looking for questions and began looking for answers” (G.K. Chesterton)

Ester

Hi Mark Parry,
If I may, heart and mind is one and the same in Hebrew. We often, if not, at all times, ‘think’ with our hearts, which does not comprise solely of emotions but the entire being.
Scriptures say-out of the abundance of our hearts, we speak, not from our minds.
All moral conditions from the highest to the lowest are said to center in the heart. The heart would represent a person’s true nature or character.
The heart is the field where seed (the Word) is sown, In addition to being the place where the commandments of YHWH are to be written; the heart is the place of renewal.
Wisdom and understanding are located in the heart – 1 Kings 3:12 ; Prov 16:23,
and perceived with the heart- Prov 18:15 ; 22:17 ; Eccles 1:1 8:16.
Moreover, it is the heart that plans or purposes to act.
So then, if and when our hearts are aligned to YHWH’s, we do well. Shalom!

laurita hayes

Ester, I really appreciate how you understand the mind/heart thing. Western understanding thinks of ‘mind’ as the brain activity, and we tend to revere the brain as the epitome of the human, but science is proving that thinking wrong. The work of Dr. Caroline Leaf, as well as many others now, confirms that the brain is just a processing center (albeit a very fancy, self-regulating one) that does what it is told. It has been proven that we can choose to think, or to not think a thought before we think it. What does that choosing? (We have no excuse to not obey the instruction to capture all thoughts and hold them captive.) Also, theta waves do not originate in our brains, but theta precedes the other waves (alpha, beta) of conscious thought. Where does theta originate from? The heart region. The succession of activity of these waves have been documented. Heart rules!

Ester

Amein! There is LOVE, your favorite topic, Laurita, when the heart rules, not in an untamed emotional state (that may constitute as lust!), but in all purity!
Interestingly, 想 ( xiǎng ) to Think,
思 ( si / sī ) thoughts, coming through the heart,
just as Grace is 恩

Notice the ‘Heart’ character below these words – 心 How meaningful.
A lesson in Chinese? LOL. A scriptural language, pretty close to Hebrew, written from RIGHT to left, and read that way as well.

Blessings and 愛 (love)

Debra mays

Not too long before I read this post I was thinking “what did I do wrong?” This post answers a lot of questions. Thank you.

Teth

“”While the Church continues to claim a role for God, strands of metaphysical causality are also present in contemporary religious systems. For example, the proposal that God is the uncaused cause (the cosmological argument) already assumes the priority of causality. In fact, the argument is an argument for the existence of God, an argument that is only necessary when the culture no longer views God’s existence as unquestionable. “”

to be fair this has preoccupied thought for sometime, Augustine reformulated Platonic explanations to account for the necessity of a super-natural reality, and the human condition is far removed from a Torah orientated awareness, but this held true for Israelites as well (Isaiah 42:21, Matthew 5:18) and we might continue assume the same of ourselves (John 16:12)

Seeker

Wow. Too much detail for me to understand. Never the less a few questions… Wisdom was before the foundation of the earth. Yeshau from the beginning. God s word our wisdom and knowledge. Christ the anointed or as Paul also explained the wisdom and power of God. Are we too seek wisdom or follow Yeshua s application principle of God s will?

Don B

Seeker, wisdom comes from God who is the source of all wisdom.
We certainly do need to seek wisdom first and foremost, to receive wisdom.
Yeshua provided us with a living example of walking out the Torah there doing God’s will.
It is not difficult to understand. Just keep seeking as we all need to do.

Seeker

Don thank you. Accepted. But what is it… How will we know we have found it… Etc.

Don B

Hi Seeker,Good Question! Wisdom is defined as right judgement learned through experiences, as in profound discernment, foresight, insight and accumulated knowledge and having good understanding to act wisely.

“The beginning of wisdom is: Acquire wisdom;
And with all your acquiring, get understanding. Proverbs 4:27 (NASB)

Wisdom in this TW is staying in Torah Ways, that is choosing life versus staying in Babylonian ways which means
death.

Seeker

Don so wisdom comes from searching for it. Not applied knowledge but rather experiential insight into in biblical terms God s will. In human terms life s peace…
Laurita and Ester is Babylon human ways or the wealth of human creation which opposes and suppresses God s will?
Laurita you may be right. Nothing has changed. There is advantage in living by the commandments and teacing others to do it, but we are no wiser on why!

laurita hayes

Seeker, great questions! Babylon is ‘confusion’. We confuse our ways for God’s ways.

God’s commands in the Torah guide us in HOW to love. We don’t know how to love. The advantage in obeying His commands is that we succeed in loving. Sin is unloving. Sin fractures us from God, ourselves, others and creation. Love restores that connection. The Commands show us what that restoration looks like. Yeshua retaught (and strengthened!) the commands and showed how they looked at the heart level when He preached the Sermon on the Mount.

We can literally die if we become separated from God, ourselves and others. The commands give us life because they restore that connection so vital for life. If you don’t think connection is important, try living in solitary confinement for just one week. You will find yourself at some point thinking you just might as well be dead. A lot of diseases that are killer diseases attack people who lack those vital connections and therefore are suffering from broken hearts. Obedience to the commands is designed to heal those broken hearts, and therefore restore health. Society cannot run without at least some compliance with the commands, even though people do not know that they are following them. Remove all traces of obedience to them and you have no society or civilization AT ALL.

Ester

Seeker, as we sojourn along , through trials and testings, in diverse situations, through mankind’s yetza ha’ra/ evil inclinations, we will come to understand, to comprehend the WHYS, and that is HOW wisdom will manifest. That is from personal experiences, through ministering to others, one begets wisdom if we have ears to hear/listen, in our spirits. The saying that by your pupils/students you will be taught, are wise words!
Hebrew word natan means to give, but it’s also reversible, in that as we give, we receive! The more we give, more will we receive.
Shalom in seeking, not merely through head knowledge, heart changes through desires and hunger for truth, are crucial.
Blessings!
.

Ester

” They adopted an ancient path, a path where God actually told people what to do and how to live. It would have been unimaginable for first century converts to live according to some inner experience or witness of the Spirit. Life was public and religious conversion meant public transformation.”
If adopting an ancient path means staying on YHWH’s instructions on HOW to live, that is the path we would so choose to be on!
Our lifestyles,then must be followed by an obvious change in attitudes, mannerisms, manifesting that transformation outwardly.
It cannot be contained/ hidden! It FLOWS and overflows from within us as the living waters of abundant life.

So then it is high time to get out from Babylon and her entanglements, realizing the critical times we are in, to be established in the “ancient pathways”.

Shabbat shalom!

laurita hayes

You are right, Ester. We are “entangled” in Babylon; activated by foul motives that ally us with base and profane forces in our society. We are people pleasers, for humanism is our popular god today. We are unwilling to humble ourselves to show obedience to God, while we shame ourselves all day long with small and petty motives (obedience to the profane gods – gods being anything that forces a change in our allegiance and behavior – of this world) that block the love of God from flowing in us.

At Sinai the Ten Commandments were given directly from the Voice to the people by the God “with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning”. The Ten are not just random orders: they are the express revelation of the character of God, adapted to fallen man. The Ten give us a way to commune with Him, Who can only be Present with holiness. We are holy when we express in our characters what He expresses in His. There is no ‘new’ way to be holy, other than to copy Him, for He has not changed. He rests every week in commemoration of creation, and we meet Him in that place in time. That is a very peculiar and set apart way He has given us to meet Him. No other god has established such a thing! (Honoring Creation is very unpopular today, I have noticed!)

The Ten are our complete picture of HOW love acts. Holiness is, at bottom, love every minute, yes, but there is no ‘new’ way to love other than to copy Him. The first five Commands show us HOW to “love God”, and the last five show us HOW to “love your neighbor as yourself’. Love (God’s character) is what He says it is, not what we say it is, and so is holiness, or set-apartness. Every minute we are to be different from the world. “They will know us by our love” every minute. This is a holy, set-apart people, ready to be sacrificed on the altar of service, but love cannot operate from a polluted heart and motives. Obedience to (agreement with) the Commands allows Him (gives Him permission, if you will) to purify us so that only love will manifest. He detests all other forms of worship. Obedience is how He has given us a way to worship Him. When our lives are cleaned up so that only love is left, only then are we resting from sin and therefore holy. Worship is for all times and places, like Seeker said, but it can only be done the way that He gave us to do it: obedience.

The Jews were given a set of instructions as to HOW to obey, adapted for their place in the nations around them. Many of those instructions (given to Moses by an angel, not by God directly) are not applicable to us today in the form they were given, but the main principle behind them was to set apart, and make peculiar, the Jews from all other profane people. The Jews were to be a “holy nation”, so therefore everything they did was to be different in some way. There could be no mistake that you were a Jew! Every minute of the day, and all the ways they went about ordinary living, were to be in a clean, healthy, orderly and consecrated way that drew their attention, and the attention of the nations around them, at all times to the God Who was paying such close attention to them. They were to show all others what Love looked like on the ground, from how they responded to distress by man or beast, to how they safely built their homes to how they ate and related in their families: everything was orderly and healthful and clean and just. This is holiness!

We are no less called today to “come out” from the shallow profanity of motives that the world suffers from. Every facet of ancient man manifested the gods they worshiped, for the lifestyle exemplifies what the heart believes. Likewise, every minute of the day modern society is manifesting allegiance to either God or to false gods. To be holy, as He is holy, requires the heart to be purified from these foul motives we are enslaved to, and which the Ten outline. A person who is walking in purity from idolatry of self – which declares that only the things I have determined are ‘right’ are going to be how I am going to behave – is going to be as peculiar today as they ever have been, or even more so. Nothing has changed, has it?

Ester

Affirmative, Laurita! Love your comments.
Sadly, Torah keepers need to manifest transformation, having knowledge of YHWH’s expectations of us.
Having the mind/heart of Meshiach is to live like Meshiach has shown us, as a son, revealing Who the Giver, Creator of life is..

Seeker

Laurita I once heard that depression is spiritual cancer. And the biggest cause of depression is not a life without love but a life with to much or not enough money…

Ester

Seeker, depression is definitely not from lack nor, heaps of wealth. It is the evil inclination to CONTROL, to have power to go their ways, doing whatsoever they wish to, if they are permitted to, and lust to covet more and more, of whatever one can imagine, that WILL cause depression when it is beyond their reach! That is the constant struggle of mankind-to be manipulative, for control.
Whereas, in ABBA’s ways, we are to practice living in self-control, over our lustful desires/ covetousness and yetza ha’ra.
You are right, depression is a spiritual malaise, like cancer CAN be healed through right living. Shalom.

laurita hayes

Seeker, from what I can tell, money does not cure depression: in fact, it can make it worse. I drive the super rich around (taxi work in a resort area) and I feel sorry for so many of them: the unhappiness and desperation is really hard for them to conceal.

Seeker

Aaa the story of the rich young man… Then again Lazarus and the richman. For both the love of God reaches out you are there as the love. One word at a time will relieve the depression…

Seeker

Laurita and Ester thank you for sharing knowledge and practical experience with us. As we sojourn… The master becoming the student… Little bit of far eastern culture but so true. When the student gains more than the teacher then the teacher has left a legacy. Great words.. Thank you Chairette