13 October 2023
This is going to be very hard.
I want you to disassociate imagery from reality in your mind. The videos and still shots are lies. I've seen specific evidence of this; some of you have, too. Often, a story headline will feature images and videos that have nothing to do with the story. Sometimes the source will flat out lie about it. Even more dastardly, the images are real, but so carefully selected and slanted as to deceive about the facts. If they broadcast, it's guaranteed to be a lie.
And now, we have AI fully capable of generating fictional images and video. Don't think they aren't already using that.
So, when you see ghastly images of the warfare somewhere in the world, tell yourself it's all green-screen drama, total fiction. However much fact is actually there is buried in propaganda. The medium is so heavily abused that it must all be rejected, and then carefully vetted to accept just a little here and there.
Humanity was able to find peace with God for millennia in the past without any realistic imagery of any kind. All they had was their own imaginations and what they could build from mere words transmitted mouth to ear. That world is gone, but the underlying moral truth is not.
I know that most of you could not avoid extending compassion to a battered and bloodied child right in front of you. Don't make the mistake of pointing that compassion at photographs and videos. Those aren't real children, at least not to the propagandists who bring that imagery to your attention. They will not do anything for those children, just film it all for the sake of manipulation. Keep the children in those images abstract. You can do nothing; you have no power to touch them.
That really is the biblical standard. Have compassion on those you can touch. That's real. Steel yourself against the sorrow for those you cannot help directly with your own hands. If the Lord does not bring you and the victims together, then stop the strong feelings. He does not empower you to bless those over whom you cannot exercise some measure of dominion and covering.
Reserve in your mind a separate space for all those unreal people thrust at you by liars who want to plunder your very soul, away from the real people.
I'm not saying you can't learn to love someone you've met only online. However, the barriers to trust are much higher in the virtual realm. We have built into us an engine of trust that is anchored in Christ. He directs you to trust or not trust; learn to hear. Don't assume, as we are taught in our American culture, that there must be a universal level of trust for society to operate. Learn to distinguish between real trust and that tactical kind of provisional trust that counts the cost of loss against what you can actually do.
People from northern European cultures have a very nasty flaw that we carried out of the snowy wastes of our ancestors. They could not survive without a high degree of trust. Thus, that culture is a notable high-trust culture, with a rigorous enforcement system to back it up. Have you noticed that the rigorous enforcement has been taken from our hands, while the demand for trust remains in our laws? We are suckers to play along. It's not paranoia to realize you can't trust this world, after all.
I've been in close contact with people who worked in a couple of very famous religious charities. Even when most of the money actually went to the provisions they claimed to bestow on various needy people, there was some other kind of corruption going on behind the scenes. There is a great value in situations that cannot be bought any other way. It's possible to plunder from people more than just dollars; hedonism knows no boundaries.
By extrapolation, it's fair to assume that any other charitable organization is likely just as corrupt. The only way you know better is to be in charge of the operation so you can testify it is clean. We cannot trust even big piles of reputation heaped upon any organization that we did not work with directly. This is holy cynicism; if you cannot verify it in your heart, be suspicious. Your flesh is gullible.
This is a fundamental issue with Covenant law: Do not invest in any enterprise where you do not work with your own hands. Proxy ownership is anathema to the Covenant. If there is no personal connection, it is a sin to invest in it. Whatever limitations that might engender, you cannot disregard the underlying command not to trust anyone you cannot touch. "Do not cosign a loan for a stranger" has implications far beyond what's on the surface, just as, "Don't muzzle the ox." It's not just practical wisdom; it's a whole range of expectations from God that you keep your hands directly on anything that He has granted you, unless He tells you it's fine to let it go.
The more difficult question is discerning what constitutes a personal connection that satisfies this fundamental demand from God. Do not invest your compassion as directed by propagandists. Don't give your energy and resources to causes they present to you. Their whole objective is to pacify and keep you passive against the mobilization of national resources for evil. I'll grant there may not be much you can actually do to stop them, but you need not allow yourself to be morally pulverized by false claims on your compassion.
The images of bloodied children should anger you; not that anyone might harm them, but that anyone would lie like that. There are no good guys in the battles in the Levant; there are no innocent victims. The only children there that don't hate are the ones who have not learned to talk. Give them a little time. These people have been at war for centuries.
I can tell you that my knowledge of the strategic and economic situation is limited; I specialize in the spiritual and moral situation. This is an apocalypse, and the issue is really not all the bad things happening on a human level. There is simply too much that is hidden from us. But a heart that belongs to Christ will know the moral situation with divine clarity. It won't be like the fiction we've been fed, and are still being fed, but it will be bad enough.
The worst part will be all the evil done in Christ's name. That's what we have to fight: the lies about what is and isn't evil. It's back to the Garden and the Tree of Judgment. Stop eating that rotten fruit.
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