29 April 2022
This expands on my comment to a post on Sigma Frame blog. I wrote:
Excellent, Jack. Civilization is a cheap, man-made substitute for the Covenant. Under the Covenant, the male hierarchy turns out very differently than the one Ted worked up. Under the Covenant, it’s not about who gets the nooky, but who gets peace with God.
I've already written on this blog several times about how civilization is a failure, a human knock-off of the Covenant. It's not that we hate civilization, but we don't trust it. Civilization is the human attempt to gain the blessings of the Covenant, but without including God in the calculus. It can't work. This is why civilizations always fall.
If we were to bother with a male hierarchy, it would all be tied with the image of the shepherd. The only question in a Covenant society is how you seize the domain God has given you and shepherd the flock. There are many ways to offer guidance in this fallen world, and it often has little to do with what humans call "leadership". Spiritual dominion is a wholly different, and generally indefinable, quality.
But one very obvious difference we can talk about is the way the shepherds who really get it are concerned about the men who tend to follow them. In the man-made hierarchy, the herds are necessary to provide the substance of stability, but aren't in any way admirable. In the Kingdom of Heaven, every man has a chance to reach for honor with God. The best shepherds in the Covenant are always trying to ennoble the men in their flock. It's part of the definition of spiritual dominion.
Of course, a critical element in divine honor is humility. Do you understand that serving is greatness? That's what Jesus said repeatedly. Your rank in Heaven is quite different from how men measure such things. You cannot rise in the divine hierarchy without first willfully deciding that human approval is the last thing you care about.
As I keep saying: We have no idea how wonderful the Covenant life can be, because we have invested almost nothing into it. The coming catastrophes, both man-made and divine, are a blessed opportunity to get back on the right foot. This is our chance to make His glory apparent.
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