I don't like my current residence, and I want to move back into the house, but I can't seem to shake this ominous feeling that "the house isn't ready for me yet". It's like, the fact that it's finally done -- finally livable -- it's not credible; too good to be true. After all we've been through, is it really so simple now?
Certainly not, I know, because of the financial situation which is still unfinished, but, I mean, do we really have a place to live now? Can I really move back into MY house???
I could have moved in today, but I didn't. Instead I spent the evening rummaging through our storage unit looking for the internet stuff. I didn't succeed in finding it, so I think my only option is to go ahead and move in without internet, and slowly unpack boxes until I find the internet stuff.
But I also need to clean. I wanted to do that before I really got serious about moving in, but recent events have left me little choice but to move in immediately... and now that I'm the only person who will be working on the house, it's almost difficult to accept the idea that I'm permitted to work on it now -- that if I clean the floors, my work won't be immediately ruined by the dirty boots of contractors -- that if I clean the bathrooms, my work won't be disrupted by malfunctioning drains. Can I really resume my own aspirations for that building?
Is it mine yet?
Only, it isn't really. There are too many outstanding variables, and too few known equations. This isn't a solvable linear system yet. Give it time, though. God is in charge, as always... and at least I can count on time to be linear. What ever would I do if some portion of my memory suddenly reduced to a higher order differential? I don't think I remember even one formula from that class!
I want to live in that house so bad, but I was unable to bring myself to move in today.
Btw, encountered this song recently. It got me thinking about how much negativity and despair can be in something so attractive:
Also, I've been thinking about the theonomic state lately, too. It seems to me that the laws for Israel depended heavily on a sure knowledge of the quantity and tribe of Israelites in the land, especially when it came to redistribution of land. The consequence of that for a modern theonomic state is: if we were to redistribute land (as is a necessary prerequisite for many of the OT laws to make sense), we would have to know how many Israelites there are... that is, how many of God's covenant Israel there are (Romans 9:8), and we know that we are unable to know exactly who some of those people are (1 John 2:19, 2 Peter 3:9, Rev 6:11, experience...). So, there would be no easy way to divide up the land in a modern theonomic state, which would in turn make the economy very difficult to structure given the OT system. The only way to do it would be to divide up the land in the whole world by each family, and then enforce that each family maintain ownership of their land, Christian or not, but that wouldn't precisely fit the OT model, and not to mention it would be impractical. The only recourse, then, for the existence of a modern theonomic state, would be to find that all of the laws which depended on the land-economy were ceremonial and thus fulfilled -- not a difficult task, honestly, but I feel like "impracticality" is not a valid reason to label some law "fulfilled". Thus, a solid set of rules need to be developed for distinguishing between "fulfilled" and "abiding" principles in the law, and if we find that an "abiding" principle in the OT civil/governmental law is impossible for us to meet, in spite of its being unfulfilled, and not because of our sin but simply because of our available means, then we conclude without a doubt that it is not possible to establish a theonomic state in the years of our Lord Jesus Christ, without His direct and tangible rule, as physical and vocally communicating king.
I'm not aware of any such set of rules for distinguishing, apart from a point-for-point comparison of Jesus's actions with the law. I think that I recall some discussion about a closely-related topic in Calvin's Institutes, so I'll investigate the matter further. What I now need to do is be very careful not to allow my own confirmation bias to cause me to interpret a law as fulfilled when in fact it may be indicative of the lawless state of the world (indeed, the potential impossibility of a theocratic/theonomic/christofascist state is a threat to my current worldview and motivation for study). I should rather take God's word as it is plainly communicated; it's just that it is a very complicated book! I wish God would draw me a diagram of the topics and principles in it or something... but then again, that would take away my own fun in drawing diagrams. Learning is part of the adventure.
ETA: On second though, it may be the case that it is not so impractical to divide up the land in a fair, Biblical, and consistent way -- if it is not done by individual families, but by "tribes" delineated after some Biblical model. In any case, the problem needs further investigation.
"Infinite beatitude of existence! It is; and there is none else beside It. It fills all space, and what it fills, It is... What it thinks, that It utters; and what It utters, that It hears; and It itself is Thinker, Utterer, Hearer, Thought, Word, Audition; it is the One, and yet the All in All. Ah, the happiness, ah the happiness of being!"
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