Shalom Tai, author of Religions of Theonomy, I ask, "Where are you!!!" It has been over five years your article appeared on the internet, now it has disappeared. Thank goodness you do allow the article to be copied, provided that all contents are still in tact. I will copy this article on this blog and it remains forever!!! May I remind ALL, that not ALL the contents of this article totally represents the views of Post WCG Life and Theology!
RELIGIONS OF THEONOMY
As much as I dislike Christianity, with its condemning the majority of human beings to eternal torture after death because of thinking "incorrectly", and its pompous, prideful feeling of righteousness because of trusting in faith and not in works, nevertheless, given a choice between Christianity on the one hand or Judaism or Islam on the other, I would choose Christianity any day. The Christian religion talks of men as flock of sheep, sinners needing salvation, and other condescending terms, but at least it does not treat men completely like little children, that is, Christianity does not tell people the proper way of urinating, for instance. Judaism and Islam do; they are theonomic religions, with a fixed set of rules for the believers in every aspect of their lives, from shoelace to king's throne. Whereas Christianity theonomy is seen as a deviation from the mainstream, in Judaism and Islam the "divine" code of law forms the core of the religion. Ex-Christians regard their past lives a being "Robots for Jesus", but this is nothing in comparison to the real robotism to which one is driven in Judaism and Islam.
Totalitarian Regulation
I, during the two years of being a fundamentalist Orthodox Jew, kept meticulously the laws of the Halakha (הלכה , the Jewish code of law). The regulation of the life of the believer by Jewish and and Islamic law is total, all encompassing. Here are a few activities ordered for every Orthodox Jew upon waking up in the morning:
Upon waking up, the first thought of the pious Jew must be: shiviti HaShem lenegdi tamid, meaning "I have framed the Lord [as] facing me always". He must acknowledge that God is always watching him, and he must behave accordingly. He must not behave in an indecent manner, for the King of Kings of Kings is watching what he does; as he would not behave indecently before a king of flesh and blood, so much more will he be wary before the Sovereign of the World.
Sleep is one sixtieth of death; in sleep, the soul goes heavenward to give account of the deeds of the past day before God, and if God wishes then he may keep the soul there. It is by God's mercy that the soul has returned to the body after sleep, thus enabling the person to wake up. The Jew who has just woken up must first say, before doing anything else: Modeh ani l'fanekha, Melekh hai v'kayam, sh'hehezarta bi nishmati b'hemla, rabba emunatekha, meaning "I thank before thee, living and existing King, that thou hast returned my soul into me in mercy; thy faithfulness is plentiful'.
He must then wash his hands: he will take vessel for washing hands, fill it with water, hold by the left hand and pour water on the right hand , then pass the vessel to the right hand pour water on the left hand, and repeat it two more times, so that each hand gets three pourings of water alternately. Then and only then is the spirit of impurity which had accumulated during sleep banished.
Those are just the opening activities of the day, of every day. After a few weeks of waking up every day, they become ingrained, mechanical, as do the prayers, which are prayed three times a day out of a book of prayer. There is also emphasis on sexual purity, meaning not only the avoidance of sexual licence, but even the natural and inescapable urge of the male to masturbate. A few examples:
The pious male Jew must never spill a drop of semen in vain. Ejaculation of semen is to be done only into a female Jew for purposes of reproduction, and only when she is twelve days after her menstruation period (five days of bleeding plus seven "days of cleanliness" for safety).
When he urinates, the male Jew must never hold his member in his hand, for that may lead to a state of hardening.
The male Jew must sleep on his side, never on his back or torso, so that he may not reach a state of hardening.
If he walks in the open and sees a male animal copulating with a female animal, he must turn his eyes away immediately, so as not to be tempted to do so the same in his own beastly desires.
Obviously such repression of natural sexual desire makes the male human animals very irritable and violent. Such is also the case in the Islamic world, where the females are covered from head to foot to avoid temptation (but the religious leaders, as in all religions, view porno films in secret). However, those are petty matters, although the pious may think they are destroying the world if they neglect them; more serious are the social laws:
A Jew who publicly desecrates the Sabbath is to be stoned to death.
A Jew must not marry a non-Jew
A Kohen (priest)must not marry a divorced woman.
A bastard cannot marry a Jew until the passage of ten generations from his or her line.
Such laws divide the Jewish society between secular (non-observant) and religious Jews. The two groups in Israel are almost as two nations, who do not each by each other or marry between each other. And of course there are the political laws, of appointing kings and going to war, which in the days of the Diaspora were officially neutralized by saying they were inapplicable because there is no kingdom, but today, with the great Messianic anticipation, some religious Jews feel compelled to put them in practice,
Judaism, like its overgrown derivative Islam, is inimical of the separation of religion and politics. When onlookers speak about "Jews politicizing the Sabbath" or "Muslims politicizing the Hajj", they imply that there had been a Sabbath or Hajj free of politics and then the religionists manipulated them political purposes. Not so; there has never been a separation of religion and politics in either Judaism or Islam, for those two religions do not believe in a two separate realms for God and for Caesar. The believe is to sanctify the name of God in every facet of his life, and to say that the religion is only for the synagogue or mosque and not for the throne or battlefield is to make light of it,it is like saying to God, "push off from our ordinary life". In Judaism and Islam the physical world is not a fallen, hated creation to be shunned' but it must be used according to the will of God, other wise one leads a life of idolatry. For Orthodox Jews, using computers to learn about ancient Chinese art is a waste of time for the which the waster will account before God, whereas using computers to scan Torah scrolls against scribal error is the true purpose for having such inventions in the world. In Islam too the pious Muslim should beware never to bring his own desires in preference to the will of Allah, for that is shirk, ascribing partners to Allah. Truly Judaism and Islam are the religions of Gott uber alles --nothing is worthwhile unless it is for the service of God.
Great Danger of Theononmy
From this short survey, one can see the great danger which the theonomic religions pose to the free world. Separation between religion and politics cannot be achieved with such all-encompassing ways of life. Secularism in Islam has been the target of constant opposition by clerics who call it it "ruling by other than what Allah has revealed", that is, by man-made laws instead of Allah's laws. the trouble with pious Jews and Muslims (and to a lesser extent with pious Christians as well) is that they take their religions too seriously, they see them as relevant real-world solutions and merely lifestyles for making people feel better. They fail to perceive that the laws of the Bible and Qur'an are just as man-made as the secular, democratic laws. Even in Turkey, where secularism has been officially decreed,the persistence of personal theonomy, such as praying the mosque five times a day, keep the flame of political aggression alive. the Islamic states of the Middle East blame secularism for their troubles, they see it as Western conspiracy. Muslim clerics say Allah has forsaken the Muslims for deserting the true faith, and only by returning to absolute religious observance will all the problems of the Islamic world be solved. This is nonsense, of course. First, Iran did in 1979 a massive return to religious rule and observance, yet things got only worse there; second, supernaturalist, divinely-ordained explanations, which link between the causes far removed from effects, are all false, irrelevant to the totally materialistic cosmos in which we are sustained. Even the clerics know that the starving cannot be saved from death by reading the Qur'an, but only eating.
The colonial period of the West may be partly to blame for the distressing situation in the Islamic world toady; but even if it were totally to blame, it is past. The Islamic world still speaks as if Western imperialism is in full activity. But it is not a plausible explanation now, because Islamic states are sovereign. Let it be said, in due time, illi faat maat ("that which is past is dead', or "let bygones be bygones", spoken in Arabic), and concentrate on what is troubling the Islamic world in our present time. Thenonomy has almost everything to do with it, I think. the notion that observance of Allah's law has anything to do with the real world, the idea that Allah is in control of the whole creation, is causing people to trust in fairy-tale solutions instead of curing woes on a cold, calculated materialistic basis. In other words, it is time to kill Allah. I discuss in my next article.
Editor's note, isn't some of this is all too familiar in Armstrongism??? I will say here with a theonomic religion like Armstrongism, isn't it is time to kill it's angry, demanding, psychopathic, vindictive and hateful god (and yes, god with a small "g" because I have nothing but contempt for that kind of a god)???
Labels: theonomic religions
