Congruence vs. Obedience

Note: I found this essay while surfing the Internet this past week.  I took it from the mormon_anarchy Yahoo group.  Wake_Up posted it there on Sun Oct 8, 2000, as the fourth message and now I’m re-posting it here in a slightly edited fashion (I tried to correct some typos). I have also re-posted three more of his essays.  (See Why Father is an Anarchist, What the Priesthood Is, and Agency: The Single Principle for a Continuous War.)

Please keep in mind that I did not write this article. I tried to contact the author, (whose real name, according to Stirling D. Allen, is Jahnihah Wrede), but my email was returned as “Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender.”  If you want more information about him or his views, I suggest you visit his (now defunct) web site, which you can view by using the Way Back Machine.

Congruence vs. Obedience

It is self-evident to any lover of free agency that obedience to law is wholly Luciferian.

You are wanting to discontinue reading, aren’t you?

It’s totally backwards, right?

It’s so backwards that this is what the definition of something being self-evident means, correct?

That something is so obviously erroneous that to continue to give it space is a waste of time, yes?

It is obvious that if someone came along and proposed a system of governance that required a fabricated punishment beyond the natural consequences for any type of infraction or breach, you would recognize it as being a fraud filled with agony under compulsion and even tending to abusiveness, right ?

It also would be glaringly apparent that if this same fellow proposed such a system no one would volunteer into it, for to force them into such a system would be giving away the true intention and nature of this fellow, OK?

So, to make a statement like the one at the top of this article, it is self-evident WHO the author is, right ?

The author is Jesus Christ Himself and He said it in D&C 121 :34-40 and to Ancient Israel about the 10 Commandments, and most specifically in 1 Timothy 1:9:

“Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers…”

Breathe Neo, just breathe… Heck of a way to start out, huh ? It’s OK. A very wise man I know and love said,

“Put your preconceived notions on the shelf for a while, and after you have considered this info without bias, if you like you can pick up the old perceptions right back off the shelf where you left them.”

I don’t mean to preach anything new to you. I only wish to clarify something eternal that we somehow allowed to escape our view.

We define different words with their own meanings even though they may be very similar to one another. We might describe someone as ‘eccentric’ and another as ‘insane’; or ‘zealous’ from ‘fanatical’. Indeed it is what the whole of being ‘politically correct’ is founded upon. Most people have a good understanding of what the terms ‘law’ and ‘obedience’ mean, and also of ‘order’ and ‘congruence’.

There is literally a world of difference between ‘law’ and ‘order’, and between ‘obedience’ and ‘congruence’.

Let us take the typical understanding of ‘obedience’ found in the scriptures. Of course, most Christians believe that if you are not obedient, you are going to wind up in Hell, but obedient to what?  The law of God, of course. So, to be obedient, you have to know what God’s law is. Where is the law of God found?

Some Christians believe that the 10 Commandments are the law of God, and others believe that The Beatitudes of Jesus on the Mount of Olives is God’s law, and others say both. I don’t have to convince you one way or the other to make my point. The mere fact is that as long as there is a ‘law’, then it is of NO EFFECT without a consequent punishment. Do the ‘laws’ of God assert a punishment? If you believe God has laws, then you must concede that punishments follow for breaches of the law, and rewards or blessings occur for obedience to the law, right?

Let us review Isaiah for a moment. Isaiah tells us of a War in Heaven that occurred as a result of the Son of the Morning’s plan of salvation through compulsion to save every soul was rejected for Father’s chosen plan of salvation from His other Son to save every soul via free choice. It is self-evident that the single premise for the War wasn’t over going to Heaven or Hell, but over the freedom to choose which plan to be saved under – that of compulsion to do righteousness, or that of freedom to sin and to repent.

In speaking about the ‘authority to act in the name of God’, a.k.a. the Priesthood (PH), Father has said in no uncertain terms that ‘…ANY degree of compulsion is cause for immediate withdrawal of PH.’ and that such a man was ‘…left unto himself… to be an enemy and fight against God.’ It is D&C 121: 34-40.

It seems that as long as you want to infringe on another’s agency in any degree, you are totally out of sorts with the plan of salvation of Jesus Christ, and His PH. How then can we justify ‘obedience’ to ‘law’ when it requires us to exact a punishment upon our fellowman for his ‘disobedience’? Where did we get the idea that ‘obedience’ means what we typically believe it means? Where did we get the idea that ‘law’ was an excuse to exert dominion over another without becoming an enemy to God?

Have we not heard so much of ‘obedience unto God’s law’ that we are all afraid of going to Hell? Lots of people are going to Hell then, huh? In fact we are so afraid of going to Hell, that we blindly obey the law without giving thought for the truth – that God ceases to BE GOD if any degree of compulsion is used to get us sinners to repent, right?

What kind of God would fabricate a law, assert some punishment in addition to natural consequence, and enforce it by compulsion (else the law would be of no effect), and claim to be Just when it contradicts His own explanation of how the Powers of Heaven and the Rights of the PH operate??? A Luciferian ‘god’ would. A light should have just gone on. What was self-evident at the top, is now taking a serious beating in your mind if you are paying attention.

Is it too far fetched to say that God is lawless right now? It would at least keep Him from violating the PH and the Powers of Heaven they are inseparably connected to, huh? But, is God an Anarchist?

Evidently the PH has no beginning of days, or end of days; no mother or no father. In short it is eternal. It also is inseparably connected to the Powers of Heaven, which God obviously has at His disposal provided He doesn’t exercise any degree of unrighteous dominion and fall from Godhood. This means that indeed there is an ‘order’ to everything that is eternal, but it isn’t what we have corrupted into ‘law’, and ‘obedience’ isn’t required, but ‘congruence’ is. Apparently, suffering the natural consequence of being incongruent is enough ‘punishment’ in God’s reality. No fabrication of abusive punishments are required to drive fear into the hearts of men so via this compulsion they ALL are saved.

So, what’s with all the fear about Hell? Let me define ‘Hell’ here as merely ‘separation from Father’ regardless of its degree or the imaginations of men. If one truly loved God, separation from Him is ‘Hell’ just as being separated from a spouse who has died is Hell regardless of the length of time of separation.

In the same manner are we to remain separated from God until we become congruent to His nature and attributes, which doesn’t include exerting laws and punishments via compulsion upon our fellow men, a.k.a.’obedience’. We either are seen as He is seen, and are known as He is known, or we remain separated from Him to some degree regardless of our level of ‘obedience’. As long as we play the part rather than Being true to the core, then we are deceiving ourselves and can only achieve something less than exaltation. It naturally would behoove us to come to a complete understanding of who God is, and what His nature and attributes are so we might KNOW if we could actually be happy living as He lives.  Good thing Joseph gave the King Follett Discourse.

Wake_Up

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Why (Heavenly) Father is an Anarchist

Note: I found this essay while surfing the Internet this past week.  I took it from the mormon_anarchy Yahoo group.  Wake_Up posted it there on Sun Oct 8, 2000, as the first message and now I’m re-posting it here in a slightly edited fashion (I tried to correct some typos). I have also re-posted three more of his essays.  (See What the Priesthood Is, Congruence vs. Obedience, and Agency: The Single Principle for a Continuous War.)

Please keep in mind that I did not write this article. I tried to contact the author, (whose real name, according to Stirling D. Allen, is Jahnihah Wrede), but my email was returned as “Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender.”  If you want more information about him or his views, I suggest you visit his (now defunct) web site, which you can view by using the Way Back Machine.

Why Father is an Anarchist

I was once accused of being an ‘anarchist’. Because of the negative meaning attached to it, I rejected it. Most people perceive of anarchy as being total chaos, when in fact, in it’s purest form, it is the simple absence of compulsion or a system of enFORCEment.

From Bovier’s 6th Edition (1856):

“ANARCHY. The absence of all political government; by extension, it signifies confusion in government.”

I do not espouse ‘confusion’ or ‘chaos’, and it is ONLY by extension that government is presumed to EXIST so as to have confusion within it in the first place. As the definition states, “The ABSENCE of ALL political goverment” is anarchy; which is a far cry from the definition of ‘confusion’ or ‘chaos’ itself.

Anarchy is therefore JUST AS VIABLE as an orderly and sane existence WITHOUT political government, regardless of what anyone would like to assert, just as the word itself testifies to.

This does not mean there are no consequences for one’s behavors, in fact chaos is the result of the reactive infliction of consequence as a response to an unfavorable choice.

When everyone reacts to reactions, the resulting environment is comparable to the 3 Stooges. At some point, people develop a method of ‘order’ to curb the resulting chaos because everyone knows that we are terribly undisciplined as a society that we need compulsion to prevent all these knee-jerk reactions from causing a domino effect. Instead of learning to be self-disciplined in a manner absent of excessive, artificial pain, we develop a compulsive artificial system to inflict a consequence upon people for not behaving like we want them to behave. Usually the artificial consequence is made so unpleasant, it curtails the ACTION but not the desire that leads to the action itself. Fear is the motivating force in this system. Compulsion is equally applied to everyone. Infliction of force against the will of a minority is mandated by the majority, even if the majority is completely incongruent to God – and that is where we begin to see the futility in developing and maintaining artificial systems of ‘order’.

Let us look at the very nature of ‘law’. It isn’t too difficult to define ‘law’ into two separate categories: God’s law, and men’s law.

God’s law is unchangable; men’s law consistently changes.

God’s law is Eternal – meaning it never had a beginning or will it have an end; men’s law is merely ink on paper and has a beginning at it’s writing, and has an end whenever it suits them.

God’s law allows complete freedom of choice and the consequences are applied by nature – be it blessings or condemnation; men’s laws asserts against free choice an artificial consequence of condemnation above and beyond that of God’s law, and provides no blessing whatsoever.

God’s law is merciful or just based upon the intent of one’s heart; men’s law denies the existence of intent and of truth for ‘facts’ alone.

God’s law is enduring reaping what you sow; men’s law is enduring whatever un-natural pains contrived beyond that of nature, and the only relief is an absence of pain – and an absence of pain does NOT equal happiness.

That is enough evidence to justify a separation between the two.

It is a matter of common sence that any law that has no consequence attached to it is of no effect – it is as though it didn’t exist at all. Nothing would happen if a law was violated if that law had no consequence attached to it. Scripturally we find this very principle espoused – that a law without a punishment is of no effect.

The dilema occurs when we look at the parameters of the methods of operation of PH power in relation to free choice. God’s ‘law’ is thus: When any violation of freedom of choice occurs, the powers of heaven, and the inseparably connected rights of PH authority are immediately withdrawn and are ineffectual. Thus, if God wishes to enFORCE a punishment upon you against your will, He falls from Godhood for violations of your own will. Seems like a catch 22 for God, right? If He makes a law, then He MUST enFORCE that law, yet the enFORCEment of that law violates your free agency,  so God is no longer congruent, and ceases to be God.

Sounds like either God has laws, but better not attempt to enFORCE them for fear of falling from Godhood; or, God has no laws and is an anarchist in the purest sence. So, which is it?

If God has laws, then He better have a way to enFORCE them else they become of no effect. Problem is that even the attempt to compel people by law is the intention that violates the natural congruence of who God is. If His heart is to inflict force against other’s will, then He isn’t true to what He espouses, and makes
Himself to be a Liar. Is God then a Liar? No, so we must conclude that something else is the reality of things.

Let me take another tact for just a moment so that things should begin to come into focus here.

What law does God require Himself to adhere to if He is already naturally congruent to it? What purpose would a law serve if God is already the type of person who wouldn’t break it? Don’t laws exist to curb the behaviors of those who otherwise WOULD violate it? If God already knows how to behave, why would any law be of use? Besides, who would enFORCE a law against an all powerful God? Why should He even regard it as it would be impossible for Him to suffer the consequence of it’s violation?

Could it be that God needs no law to be compelled into behaving any particular way, and that His perfection is in that He is wholly congruent and above the law? Would this status of being ‘above the law’ seem logical for a God who is the Greatest Sovereign? If so, then He is absolutely chaotic by standard paradigms  because in this type of existence there can be no ‘authority’ to curb His behaviors, and no ‘order’ for God because the standard paradigm believes a system of authority is required in order to have ‘order’ and eliminate chaos. Perhaps it’s we that have it backwards.

God is a God of Order, but not of compulsion. His order derives from pure intents which leads to proper action, not punishment which curb actions out of fear but do nothing to change the intents of men. Man’s law’s only desire is to obtain feigned peace by the heavy hand of force and compulsion to ‘eliminate chaos’ without any consideration for the eternal progression of each soul that REQUIRES becoming the type of BEing (within and without) that God is in order to return back home to Him. Man’s law ignores the heart and intent that must eventually become congruent to the very powers of Heaven for a counterfeit ‘order’ that requires only strict obedience without regard to what type of people we are inwardly.

Do you think God will allow unrepentant liars to exist in Heaven with Him? The scriptures say He won’t allow ANY unclean thing to abide His presence. The liar couldn’t anyway. To abide in the same existence with God requires us to be as He is. It requires being congruent to all that He Himself is congruent to. It would be like a non-smoker living amid an entire population who smoked constantly. It would be Hell to live with God if you are not that type of person.

Either you are the type of person who can live in true peace without being forced to do it, or compelled by fear to ‘behave’, or you are the type of person who requires law in order to live in a feigned peace. Jesus said,

“In me is the law of Moses fulfilled.”

That meant simply that He didn’t need the law of Moses to dictate how He was to live because He had already internalized the true intent behind it. We have further evidence that this is the case be cause of His enlightened Sermon on the Mount of Olives, a.k.a. The Be-attitudes.

If you love God sincerely, you naturally gravitate to becoming just as He is. Who He is is the reason you love Him, not because of what He can do for you, or what you hope to be rewarded with. To be obedient to God because you want the rewards promised, or because eternal salvation is offered is the same as marriage to a weathy person merely to obtain riches. It is to make love a lie. How many of you want a spouse or children that behave as you want just for what they can obtain from you, and not because they want anything to do with you as a person? What is ironic is that people believe that if they merely believe that God will save them, and/or if they do all sorts of ‘good works’, then He will save them regardless of what they are truly like inwardly. They believe that as a person, as long as you can behave outwardly according to God’s law, then it doesn’t matter that inwardly that someone is a house divided against itself. The spirit of the law has no life in them because they believe that ‘obedience is greater than sacrifice’, but are obedient liars instead of being congruently true to themselves, and hopefully to God.

Why should God have laws among those who already know how to behave as perfectly as He does out of a matter of true desire and BEing? Why should we lie to ourselves about what we really feel and desire as long as God knows the truth about it already? To succeed at such an attempted denial prevents us from changing because we refuse to even acknowledge our true state of being, or to feign justify our mere obedience thinking that God will accept us as we are. When we reach Heaven and realize that all those artificial, compulsive laws no longer exist, out true nature will surface and we will alienate ourselves from a God we are nothing like having never learned the lessons of congruence and thought only of obtaining reward by obedience.

God is an anarchist that already knows how to BE. He knows laws are a curse for the disobedient, and that they serve no purpose for those who already have the true principles written upon the tablets of their hearts. He allows mankind to choose freely in self-discovery of what they truly desire to BE, but that no one can live as a God, or with Him, as long as they can not become congruent and that the natural charater of a person is in harmony with the powers of Heaven and the rights of the Priesthood.

Wake_Up

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Stateless in Somalia: How Clannish Anarchy Works

On 9/12/2007, Spencer Heath MacCallum posted his article entitled, The Rule of Law Without the State. In the article he discussed how Somalia is better off without a government, living in anarchy, than it was when there was a government. He also discussed how the Somali-type of anarchy works via a body of customary law called the Xeer. The Xeer varies from clan to clan, but is uniform enough to provide a natural order in the absence of a State.

Somalia busts wide open the myth that anarchy equals chaos. It doesn’t. Anarchy is order, even the natural order of things (if left to settle into that natural order.)

Somali clannish anarchy may be of particular interest to Latter-day Saints, as the Lord has put us into tribes and tribes are just one step up from clans.

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Book of Mormon Anarchy

In 3 Nephi chapter 7 there is the very interesting account of the destruction of the Nephite government and the introduction of tribal-based anarchy. A quick summary: The chief judge is murdered by the secret combination (v. 1) and it causes a great contention in the land, causing virtually everyone to become wicked (v. 7); the government and its regulations are destroyed (v. 2, 6); the people separate (v. 2, 14) into exceedingly large tribes (v. 4) with appointed leaders or chiefs (v. 3) consisting of family, kindred and friends (v. 2, 4, 14); the tribes have their own separate laws (v. 11, 14) including laws on how to interact with other tribes (v. 14); the tribes have no wars among them (v.5) and are united, but not according to their laws (v. 11, 14); the secret combination forms a monarchy with king Jacob as the monarch (v. 9-10); the tribes are united in their hatred of the kingdom of Jacob (v. 11) ; king Jacob and his subjects escape to the north (v. 12-13); the tribes stone and cast out any prophets that come among them (v. 14); Nephi ministers with great power and authority to the tribes, making but few converts, who also witness of their conversion through signs and miracles (v. 15-22.)

One of the arguments against anarchy, made chiefly by statists, is that anarchy cannot exist without a totally moral people. They argue, essentially, that since the natural man is an enemy to God, people living in anarchy would murder, rape, steal and do other very wicked deeds without a government to check their wicked ways. Nevertheless, 3 Nephi chapter 7 flies in the face of that logic, showing that even wicked people living under anarchy had “in some degree…peace in the land” (v. 14.) Obviously, “some degree of peace” applied to a temporal sense, as spiritually, these people were completely devoid of the peace of Jesus.

People normally learn about anarchy from statists, who have a vested interest to vilify and smear anarchy, because anarchy is the natural enemy of statism. Thus, a statist will say that anarchy breeds violence and chaos. Yet the Book of Mormon account of anarchy, an admitted account of a wicked people that stoned prophets of God, is one of an ordered society that, although separated into tribes, were still united and had strict agreements (treaties) between the tribes.

Some believe that once a government is removed and the natural anarchic order is allowed to settle in, family ties are strengthened exceedingly and families naturally start to coalesce into clans. (See the articles that Mary Ruwart and Phillip E. Jacobson have written on this very subject.) This is based upon historical, non-Book of Mormon data. However, the ancient books of scripture used by the LDS add to the body of evidence for this belief. Both the Bible and Book of Mormon examples of anarchy are tribal-based, a tribe essentially being a clan, or a very large clan. Tribal or clan-based anarchy appears to be the natural order of anarchy.

Jacob and his followers were king-men, attempting to establish a monarchy so that they could rule over the souls of men. These were die-hard statists and it is telling that as soon as the government was dissolved, they grouped together and created their own little state, a kingdom with a monarch (Jacob, not Jesus) to rule over them.

Another interesting point to note is that Mormon explains that it was the dividing of the people and their separation into tribes that destroyed the government (v. 2.) On the surface this might not seem like enough to destroy a government, but when you live in a tribe of your family, kindred and friends and your tribe has laws, your allegiances become torn. As they say, blood is thicker than water. These people are your relatives. To which laws do you owe your allegiance, the government or your tribe, if there is a conflict between the two sets of regulations? As long as families are nuclear and small (a mother, a father and children,) the power and pull of a family will be small and the power and pull of government will be large, but when families group together in common biological or friendship links (blood brothers), the power of a tribal family becomes large. The allegiance to it also increases. This may be why organized crime Mafia clans, which have blood ties and their own laws, command greater allegiance from their members than the legal government around them does. So, if you take the entire country, the USA, for example, and suddenly have everyone placed into a family clan or family tribe, suddenly the government loses all power, as allegiance to the government goes down to zero and allegiance to family, clan and tribe becomes all important.

A last thought: Before I learned anarchy from anarchists, I learned anarchy from state propaganda. I, like most, thought of anarchy as a great evil, to be avoided at all costs. I thought that any government was better than no government at all. Reading verse 5 of 3 Nephi chapter 7 seemed to solidify the propaganda. When Mormon used the phrase “all this iniquity,” I just figured he was talking about the anarchic, empowered tribal state, in other words, the destruction of the government. Now, though, I realize that tribes are not intrinsically evil. In fact, as LDS, we are placed into one of 12 tribes. So, Mormon was talking of different iniquities and not the ones that my state propaganda-ized mind was assigning, the iniquities of which he explains in this and the preceding chapter.

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