Everyone is a unique individual. Everyone has been gifted with a unique set of gifts and talents. Many times, the difference in strategy is that of personality, or as the old saying goes:
There are more than one way to skin a cat
I know, PETA types have been triggered, however, this saying from the mid-1800s is from a Yankee author, which explains some things but I digress. The meaning though is clear, there are many paths to a destination, and one can force it in one extreme, or just let things happen in another.
While I am not a fan of “evangelism” to the extreme, many do make it their primary agenda to force a conversion of other people to a religion, a worldview or a narrative. I am not that type. I would rather “let the chips fall where they may” but others might have the patience to engage in dialog to bring about a change of mind and heart (or the other way around) which brings me to this quote in the Target Liberty post on 17JAN:
If you want to change how people think the first step is to understand the world as it exists in their mind, convince them that you understand it and do so without using the opportunity to give them shit for it. Most libertarians lack the social skills to do all three.
In my mind, I am not into wasting time proceeding to dialog with someone who might either be slow to track OR resistant because they are part of a cult (just know, Statism is a cult!).
Here is a great leading question that is also offered in this post:
.. I asked him if he was a “logical person or an emotional person,” ..
That question right there can save BOTH of you some time.
Most emotional people at the extreme are easily triggered and are following some Rx/narrative that helps them believe they are helping with “good thoughts” alone.
Most logical people at the extreme can also be on the rails towards some solution that they believe with all their mind is the way forward.
However, those that can do both, engage their mind and heart in critically thinking out of a love for self and others, is a unique gift and talent. These people were considered to be part of the remnant that a 1930s author, Albert Nock, would focus on in his life’s work. (see the last few paragraphs of my previous post that talks about this concept and where it came from)
Here is what Nock wrote about the prophet’s job. He used Isaiah as his example. The prophet’s job is not the job of the promoter.
“.. Isaiah, on the other hand, worked under no such disabilities. He preached to the masses only in the sense that he preached publicly. Anyone who liked might listen; anyone who liked might pass by. He knew that the Remnant would listen; and knowing also that nothing was to be expected of the masses under any circumstances, he made no specific appeal to them, did not accommodate his message to their measure in any way, and did not care two straws whether they heeded it or not. As a modern publisher might put it, he was not worrying about circulation or about advertising. Hence, with all such obsessions quite out of the way, he was in a position to do his level best, without fear or favour, and answerable only to his august Boss…”
Let the chips fall where they may (if that suits you, not trying to convert you) .. life is short!
In my previous post I opened up the whole concept of the remnant as it was offered by Albert Jay Nock in the 1930s to describe those who could see what the masses could not. His thought was that is was a huge waste of time and effort to educate the masses, and that it was much more effective to address the remnant, even if it meant a much smaller audience and rarely any reward factor.
I talked about my school experience transition where I was able to see it for what it was by age 10 as my parents separated and I moved with my mother and sister to California for my 5th grade school year. My whole personality changed with this new adventure in the midst of a time of crisis, where my parents were heading toward divorce.
My second of three major transitions came in the part of life that many people talk about the least. While most see this as religion, I see this more as faith and hope. Many, like myself were introduced to faith through religion, especially in my generation ( #60ish ), and that experience could have been good or bad, however, if you are one of the remnant, you might be “gratefully disillusioned”.
In hindsight I would change nothing, because my faith journey toward who I am today required that I navigate (with the assistance of the Great Navigator) my own way to the understanding I have today and where I might be going in whatever tomorrows I still have. I had mentioned last week:
I think it is by design that truth makes itself know in a process verses just being taught. While knowledge helps, there is nothing like a crisis to unpack that truth that had been simmering for months and years before.
This holds true for me in my own process of developing a faith worldview.
The process started in my earliest memories of attending a fairly large conservative church where a majority were of Dutch ancestry in the Midwest. The typical cycle of weekly religious life was church attendance TWICE on Sunday, at 9:30am and 6pm with almost NO “fun” allowed on that “day of rest”.
Many families would have cooked their Sunday meal the night before and prepared for a day, the “Sabbath”, to reflect on where they came up short with their creator. The church service was designed by John Calvin’s followers to be a rather dour experience where man’s degenerative nature was emphasized and I was quickly aware of the sour faces around me for that hour of organ music and hymns followed by a sermon from the “dominie” ( minister / professional pastor ) who spoke God’s Word at us in no uncertain terms.
Dominie is a Scots language and Scottish English term for a Scottish schoolmaster usually of the Church of Scotland and also a term used in the US for a minister or pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church
By Monday morning I was on my way to Christian school where the underlying emphasis was still communicated as almost all our lessons came from the Bible’s Old Testament and God was someone you always feared. Staying on the right path performance wise seemed to be the only way to avoid God’s wrath and judgement until one went to Heaven to be with Him forever. Midweek there was a Catechism class taught at the church and so we were bused from the Christian school to the church for another hour of instruction on what is called the Heidelberg Catechism, a question and answer format that was foundational to this Calvinistic theological matrix that emphasized total depravity of man, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints. ( known by the acronym TULIP, how Dutch is that? ) The only day without religious expectations was Saturday, which to me meant Little League, college football and playing with neighborhood friends except for weekends when our family went to my grandparent’s dairy farm for the day to visit, which itself was an interesting experience that I plan to talk about someday.
Inside this rhythm of religion, I started to explore the only option I had during the minister’s sermon on Sunday mornings, the Bible. Instead of paging through the Old Testament, I started reading the New Testament books where I discovered a whole new “lens” to see what faith was beyond the typical religious wrappings and trappings. I found it interesting that Jesus came humbly into the world and took His time to start His official ministry, that he was marginalized in His own hometown and that He chose gnarly fishermen to be on His team. This was not an exclusive religious performance culture, but an inclusive relationship-based friendship culture. The nautical culture that Jesus introduced His friends to the real loving Father he had, would impact the early Jesus-follower’s vocabulary for generations. The anchor symbol meant a hope to a future, whether on this earth or not.
“At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.” ~ CS Lewis
So in the middle of religion, I found a relational faith that would take years and decades to unpack. I will post an “Episode 2” in a few days that expands on my journey during the balance of my school years from 5th grade and beyond.
In hindsight, towards the end of this journey, I have learned to relax in this relational faith in the middle of the storms of life.
As opposed to religious obligation says that it is all up to you, where, if God isn’t doing the things you want, you have to work harder, stand firmer and pray longer. The religious focus I have found is on your performance, your obedience, your righteousness.
Outside that box, you will learn to rely on Him ( Abba Father or Papa ) alone and recognize that any time you give up responsibility for your spiritual and faith nourishment to another person – whether friend, pastor or author, you’ve already traded away a bit of your freedom, for life in a box.
So in these days I picture this:
.. and I leave you with this:
Peace out ..
The anchor holds
Though the ship is battered
The anchor holds
Though the sails are torn
I have fallen on my knees
As I faced the raging seas
The anchor holds
In spite of the storm
Crisis events does tend to make one a bit reflective, at least for me. As I reflect on a couple of my previous “crisis events”, it was evident that my resulting worldview change took years and then took a crisis for me to make the final step into my own new land and new worldview.
I think it is by design that truth makes itself know in a process verses just being taught. While knowledge helps, there is nothing like a crisis to unpack that truth that had been simmering for months and years before.
I have wrote about this just last month when I said:
May a new generation and a new remnant of Americans see though the infectious nature of government and decide for the future that they will take responsibility for themselves, their livelihood and the education of the next generation and never trust any government again.
However, I do not think that the masses ever achieve this kind of mind shift, for I think there are limits for the typical broken person to make that transition well. What I mean by that is, that in time, to be “well” on the other side means to actually be grateful for the process. That the new land is much more freeing than the old. I call this being gratefully disillusioned.
The fact that the masses typically can’t or won’t make this transition is why in my quote above I used the word “remnant”. That word came to me over five years ago on one of my journeys through the political path that included people like Ron Paul and Jeffrey Tucker. Jeffrey had a libertarian hub that I was a member of for a few years that allowed me to purchase books at either free or $X levels. One of these was Albert Nock’s books written during the Great Depression that acknowledged that the masses were not to be prioritized in expending energy towards opening their eyes to a new worldview. Here is a quote from Gary North in his 2002 article about the remnant:
Nock warned against deliberately appealing to the mass-man. There is no audience there, he said, for any developer or defender of ideas on liberty. Individualism does not appeal to the mass-man. This is why he is a mass-man. Any attempt to whoop up the troops will fail to attract the Remnant. Indeed, it will alienate them. They will go elsewhere.
Nock took as his starting point God’s call to the prophet Elijah after Elijah’s public confrontation with King Ahab, when Elijah’s temporary victory in front of the assembled representatives of the nation backfired. Elijah was now on the run from the king. He despaired. God told him this:
Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him (1 Kings 19:18).
His ministry was to them, not to the masses, God reminded him. He had failed to persuade the masses. He did not need to persuade the Remnant, which already agreed with him. He merely had to speak the truth in the name of God before the Remnant.
So as you may see, a prophet in these days (not foretelling but forth-telling) is one who sees things differently than most, and yet to them, it is crystal clear.
I have done this truth-journey thing two or three times in my six decades of life here on this planet. The beauty of this is that there were overlaps to these journeys chronologically, which in a way helped with the process for me in hindsight.
My first worldview change journeys started for me as a 5 or 6 year old. I was not totally aware yet, but my parents were going through a huge change in their marriage complete with lies and distrust. For me, at this naive age, all I knew was that I had a new baby sister, but beyond that I was pretty clueless as my world was small and included just a few compartments.
Faith (is God real, what is this church service thing, what is this mid-week catechism thing and Sunday school thing)
School (what is this friends thing, why do some of the richer kids talk to me sometimes and not other times, playground unwritten rules all at a Christian school)
Home-life (parents who facilitated “home” but were not on the same page offset by an awesome 1960s freedom to play outside ALL DAY long on weekends and after school on weekdays).
In my youth then there was church and school, and what to believe about these two areas which was mandatory for me verses my free-range suburban neighborhood freedom which came naturally.
In today’s post I only offer one of these journeys and will cover the other two more major ones in subsequent posts.
My formal day school journey was probably the quickest one to unfold. Like I said before, my K-4th grade experience was at a Christian school which had an underlying caste system in place that separated at times the more wealthy middle-upper class kids from the ones whose parents struggled to pay the school tuition. My whole demeanor during those years was one of hiding in the shadows, hoping that the day passed quickly so I could get home to my neighborhood for my daily dose of free-range freedom. Besides my 2nd grade teacher who on the 1st day told the class to look at the ceiling and notice the holes in the tiles followed by “that is where I pinned the ears of the kids last year who misbehaved”. These were 10 foot ceilings!!! Other than that, most teachers were fine except when it came to reciting Bible verses in front of class, graded on the exact word for word repeating of various combinations of these verses every week. I guess I would have appreciated some context for each of these verses but rote memorization apparently is what this religion wanted. Most all complied and thought nothing of it, I myself thought that the exercise was misguided, but who would listen to a 6 year old?
The crisis that would finally diffuse my own distaste for much of the school environment would be the decision of my parents to separate, with my mom, sister and myself moving to another state (California) for the school year. To underscore my distaste of my K-4th grade experience, my first question to my parents when they broke that news on that August Sunday afternoon just a few weeks before school was to start was NOT .. “Can I see my school friends before we go?” BUT “Do I have to go to Christian schools in California?”.
The answer was “no” and with that I had no more questions actually. I felt so free and ready for a cross-country trip to arrive in a totally new neighborhood and a totally new school. This “re-start” allowed me to be who I was in this new environment. This fresh start overnight changed my personality so much that I did not really care for what others thought of me or my ideas. As Popeye would say “I yam what I yam”
This is a remnant characteristic, as Albert J. Nock would admit later in his life:
“And so it was that at the age of thirty-five or so I dismissed all interest in public affairs, and have regarded them ever since as a mere spectacle, mostly a comedy, rather squalid, rather hackneyed, whereof I already knew the plot from beginning to end. I have written a little about them now and then,”
― Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man
The journey out to California in a 1963 Chevrolet Impala towing a U-Haul trailer was eventful in itself, as my mom was not too good with directions, so my role as a co-pilot was great for my self esteem. I was needed.
I always love maps, and so this was an epic drive:
As a 5th grader, being ten years old, I then experienced my best grade in school to date. I met new friends from all over the spectrum (red, yellow black and white as well as Christian and non-Christian) and I was fine with all that. I walked home from school past strawberry fields, cow pastures and a golf course to our apartment and then proceeded to pick up my 5 year old sister from her babysitters, feed her a late lunch and then go to the apartment complex pool for a few hours of swimming. Livin’ the dream!
At the end of that school year my sister and myself would fly back to the Midwest on a TWA 707 to be with my father that summer.
Shortly thereafter my parents would divorce and I would complete my schooling in the Midwest, but I always treasured my school year out in California in the late 1960s! I was now part of the “remnant”, even if I did not know it yet.
Below at the end of this post are the words of Albert Jay Nock (available in MP3 from the Mises Institute) explaining the role of a prophet verses that of a promoter. The financial rewards of being a prophet are few, however, being true to one’s own soul is priceless!
Just be you! You have been made for a unique imprint on this earth for a time.
-SF1
Nock’s wisdom on display:
Here is what Nock wrote about the prophet’s job. He used Isaiah as his example. The prophet’s job is not the job of the promoter.
Everyone with a message nowadays is, like my venerable European friend, eager to take it to the masses. His first, last and only thought is of mass-acceptance and mass-approval. His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses’ attention and interest. . . .
The main trouble with all this is its reaction upon the mission itself. It necessitates an opportunist sophistication of one’s doctrine, which profoundly alters its character and reduces it to a mere placebo. If, say, you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which means an appeal to the masses; and this, in turn, means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character that the masses exhibit. If you are an educator, say with a college on your hands, you wish to get as many students as possible, and you whittle down your requirements accordingly. If a writer, you aim at getting many readers; if a publisher, many purchasers; if a philosopher, many disciples; if a reformer, many converts; if a musician, many auditors; and so on. But as we see on all sides, in the realization of these several desires, the prophetic message is so heavily adulterated with trivialities, in every instance, that its effect on the masses is merely to harden them in their sins. Meanwhile, the Remnant, aware of this adulteration and of the desires that prompt it, turn their backs on the prophet and will have nothing to do with him or his message. . . .
Isaiah, on the other hand, worked under no such disabilities. He preached to the masses only in the sense that he preached publicly. Anyone who liked might listen; anyone who liked might pass by. He knew that the Remnant would listen; and knowing also that nothing was to be expected of the masses under any circumstances, he made no specific appeal to them, did not accommodate his message to their measure in any way, and did not care two straws whether they heeded it or not. As a modern publisher might put it, he was not worrying about circulation or about advertising. Hence, with all such obsessions quite out of the way, he was in a position to do his level best, without fear or favour, and answerable only to his august Boss.
If a prophet were not too particular about making money out of his mission or getting a dubious sort of notoriety out of it, the foregoing considerations would lead one to say that serving the Remnant looks like a good job. An assignment that you can really put your back into, and do your best without thinking about results, is a real job; whereas serving the masses is at best only half a job, considering the inexorable conditions that the masses impose upon their servants. They ask you to give them what they want, they insist upon it, and will take nothing else; and following their whims, their irrational changes of fancy, their hot and cold fits, is a tedious business, to say nothing of the fact that what they want at any time makes very little call on one’s resources of prophesy. The Remnant, on the other hand, want only the best you have, whatever that may be. Give them that, and they are satisfied; you have nothing more to worry about. . . .
We all know innumerable politicians, journalists, dramatists, novelists and the like, who have done extremely well by themselves in these ways. Taking care of the Remnant, on the contrary, holds little promise of any such rewards. A prophet of the Remnant will not grow purse-proud on the financial returns from his work, nor is it likely that he will get any great reknown out of it. Isaiah’s case was exceptional to this second rule, and there are others, but not many.
