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28.10.16

Many people have been greatly impressed by  cults. Designed to be an introduction to the Torah through talks, video presentations, small-group discussions and a special weekend-away, lots of synagogues are now employing cult approaches  as part of their outreach.

Cults have been a run-away-success, and their fame has spread far over the whole world,

  Cults have been adapted so as to be accessible to young people, and have also proved versatile enough to be used in prisons, schools and places of work.

Are the popular cults leading people astray?

Synagogues in  cities and rural areas have found cult teaching sufficiently flexible for their needs. Future plans for expansion suggests that cult teaching is very much here to stay. What is more, many people claim to have been helped through going to cults  and believe they has bought them an understanding of God and how to respond to Him. Accounts of wonderful things that have happened to individuals abound; In the light of all this, surely there cannot be anything wrong with it?

With so many in today's society gripped by materialism and atheism, can cults be anything other than  good things? As young people become hopelessly enmeshed in a godless culture, should we not applaud the efforts of cults and help make them a success?

We wished that the answers to these questions could be an emphatic Yes. But closer examination of cults prevents such a clean bill of health being given. Why this concern? There are vital reasons I would like to bring to your attention.

1. The God of cults is not the God of the Abraham Isaac and Jacob. 

Cults quote from the Torah a lot. But for all this, they do not present us with the God who has revealed Himself in the Torah. There is much we could say about the God of the Torah. He is the Creator of the universe and the one who upholds it and maintains it. He is a great King and Sovereign over all He has made. We are challenged to ponder:

" To whom then will you liken me. Or to whom shall I be equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things, Who brings out their host by number; He calls them all by name, By the greatness of his might and the strength of his power; Not one is missing." (Isaiah 40:25-26)



Now of course much more could be said. But you will have to search hard and long in cults to find a God that resembles the One just described. Nothing about Him as Creator, nothing about Him as a great King. He is assumed to be everything.


5. The Ruach Hakodesh (unholy spirit) of cults is not the Ruach Hakodesh  (holy spirit) of the Torah.

It is because cult's unholy spirit is the agent for giving to people an 'experience'.

The main focus for this is the cults People doing cults are told to expect all manner of things might happen to them.



This is all very interesting but it has nothing to do with the Torah.  Nowhere are any phenomena such as these attributed to the spirit of God. Cult's unholy spirit appears to work in ways that lie outside the confines of Torah. Whoever it is that people are 'introduced' to at the cults, it is not the Holy Torah.



For all their efforts, cults do not help us to know God. They do not describe the true and living God for us. They does not diagnose man's condition accurately enough. They substitutes an un-Torah view of God. To cap it all, the whole issue of Torah is grievously misunderstood.


The needs of our souls for the living waters of the Law of Moses and life-saving truth are far too precious and important to be ought down to this level. WE need the unvarnished truth of the  Law of Moses.


To leave someone believing they are in Torah when they are not is an awful prospect. Yet that is what we are risking using defective tools such as cults, 'having a form of rituals but denying  Torah  We must do better. Failure is too high a price to pay.

27.10.16

“social justice.”

An Italian priest, Luigi Taparelli D'Azeglio,  wrote a book about the need for recovering the ancient virtue of what had been called “general justice” in Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, but in a new contemporary form. [ See Luigi Taparelli D'Azeglio, S.J., Theoretical Treatise on Natural Right Based on Fact (1840-1843).] He gave it the term “social justice.” The term was given prominence by Antonio Rosmini-Serbati in La Costitutione Secondo la Giustizia Sociale in 1848. (Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2The Mirage of Social Justice, p. 176. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Lecture/Social-Justice-Not-What-You-Think-It-Is#_ftn7#_ftn7)


First: many promoters have brought in the Torah to validate this practice. They claim Torah is teaching socialism. Second: The United states governmental system, is not perfect, it was based on some Torah principles and the overarching theme was to give freedom, self - governance to individuals, not government control over the minute aspects of our lives, especially on our finances. This was different than every other government existing at the time.

One of the main framers of our constitution stated: “To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it” (Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816).


Social Justice = Theft via the government. 

Though my family went to Temple Israel in Hollywood [which is a great place], still when the message about social justice was announced there my mother and father were cold in their reaction. They did not think that the Torah was about social justice but rather about real justice. "Thou shalt not steal,"  is an important principle even if the theft is done by means of government.

I should mention that in the Torah there is מעשר עני the tenth of the crops that go to poor people on the 3rd and 6th year of the Shemita cycle plus the fact that on the Shemita anyone can come into one's field and gather what grows by itself. 

This however is not a blank check for the government to take what it wants and redistribute it to those that vote for it.



26.10.16

the Law of Moses [that is the written Law and its Oral commentary in the Talmud] is necessary and sufficient.

My basic feeling about the Law of Moses [that is the written Law and its Oral commentary in the Talmud] is necessary and sufficient.
That is it is needed and nothing more is needed. 

That is all the cults that come along and say the Law of Moses is needed but there is this new thing that is also needed are all wrong. Belief in the Law of Moses [that is the Written and Oral Law] means you believe nothing else is needed. 

But that does not means it can't be misused by unscrupulous people. And that does not mean that it is a cure all for all human problems.

That does not mean the Torah is for creating a political state.
I think a lot of people went along with the Enlightenment from motives of good. There is some support for the types of governments that sprouted up as a result of Enlightenment principles. While it is becoming more obvious that those principles do not work well, that is no reason to assume everyone that went along with them were bad hearted.

The progress made in the USA and Europe when Enlightenment kinds of laws and constitutions were adopted does not seem trivial.

Socialism mainly uses Hegel for support. Other approaches use John Locke, Hobbes, Kant, Goethe, Hume, Berkeley etc and etc.. That is all the thinkers. Not some. That is to say Throne and Altar approach might be  best but it had the weight of the thinkers and the weight of the evidence against it.
 But I am not sure of what would be better than the Constitution of the USA. It seems to me if not for blacks it would work perfectly well.


Torah and Ruach HaKodesh. Unbelief in cults is a sign of faith in Torah ! [Ruach HoKodesh usually refers to some kind of Divine Spirit people assign to what they think are tzadikim. Usually this is by mistake and is simply a consciousness trap.]

Torah and Ruach HaKodesh

The question is HOW we test things. 


Supporters of a cult frequently make two pleas to people who wish to assess
or criticize it. FIRST, we are urged to approach it with an open mind. We are told to attend
meetings for ourselves - and not critically. SECOND, we are urged to judge the phenomenon by its fruits - to look at the long-term results, not the immediate manifestations. 

See for Yourself ...
However, it is far from an invariable Torah principle EITHER that we should assess claims
to God's activity personally and uncritically, OR that we must look at the fruits to make an
assessment. 
Unbelief in cults
is a sign of faith in Torah!
 

Look at the Fruits ...
Similarly the challenge to assess a cult by its fruits can be met. We need to
take seriously Torah warning about the plausibility of false prophets.

But again, as one writer has already observed, it is difficult to assess a movement by its fruits
when the fruit is still not ripe. 

 We must recognize from history that a movement may have a powerful - even beneficial
- impact in the short term and yet be disastrous in the long term because of its fundamental
Torah weaknesses.
 

A Question of System 
How then can we `test' any cult? If we cannot trust personal experience or short
term gains, what can we trust? The answer is basically a matter of system.
 

Unfortunately, system has not been a particularly strong feature of the
Jewish Anglo-American scene for some time. There is hesitancy about religious
systems which seem to claim too much. But there is an important
distinction between a systematic belief  that aims at a SYSTEM, and one that more modestly
aims at being SYSTEMATIC.


We need to recognize that systematic belief is a Torah concept. 


But we also need to recognize WHAT IS the system contained in the Torah. The
best key to this is, I would argue, the Torah approach. The particular feature of
this approach is that it recognizes and identifies in the Torah  CONTINUITY. There is the continuity of ONE great theme, from start to finish and there is
the DEVELOPMENT of that theme through Torah.
 

Only a systematic Torah approach allows us to give coherence to our experience and expectation of
God. And more specifically, only a system allows us to recognize that whilst God
CAN do anything he DOESN'T do everything. 

A Necessary Limitation
Those who reject the cults are often accused of limiting the actions of God.




GOD'S activity IS limited - by God himself - but it is limited in a way which is not simply
arbitrary but consistent with the overall framework of the Torah. Understanding that framework
will enable us to understand the limits of God's activity - not so that WE may limit it, but so that
we may limit what is CLAIMED for it. Thus when we test the cults, which makes
particularly claims about the activity of God , we need
to ask whether it is consistent with the TOTAL picture the Torah presents, particularly in relation to the life of the believer. 


 

System 



The context here is the SUFFICIENCY of the Oral and Written Law of Moses. 



And this is a NECESSARY fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, 

Torah is the NECESSARY and SUFFICIENT precondition for us to receive the
 the blessing promised to Abraham. Positively, this
means the Spirit is certainly received by hearing the Torah with faith. Negatively, it means the
Holy Spirit is only received through hearing the Torah with faith.
 









Questions come to most people in relation to suffering. At the start of our  lives we are
generally ignorant of the fact that suffering can be  a blessing. See the חובות לבבות  It has to be explained from Torah. It is usually only when this is done that we begin to realize
suffering is indeed a  blessing which we can incorporate into our experience. 


 If nothing else, one must admit that cults are packaged impressively for maximum sales. Popularity does not mean that something is true. If it did, Santa Claus would be real. Popularity does not automatically equal truth, nor can it create truth."




25.10.16

war against boys

Things were difficult in the USA as far as I could tell in the 1990's. That is when the war against boys started in earnest. . A kind of collective insanity seemed to be taking over women's minds. Perhaps it is biological in original as Sapolsky would probably claim.  https://youtu.be/m3x3TMdkGdQ.


That is he would claim that just like Toxoplasmosis controls the mind of rats so there might be many other parasitic organism that also get into people and control their behavior.