Truth Over Tyranny: Biblical wisdom for defeating the Technocrats.
These are my insights for defeating the Transhumanist Technocracy movement, based on the teachings of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, on the weekly Bible portion.
I have found that many people standing up for freedom today are religious Christians and Jews. They feel very strongly that the tenets of their religion require them to confront evil, and fight it whole-heartedly. They see the attacks by the technocrats on our God-given rights as attacks on God Himself, and consider themselves “soldiers” acting in his defense.
They are truly doing His work.
For sure, many freedom fighters are not “religious” in the formal sense. They may have had a religious education when they were younger, and even lived a religious lifestyle growing up; but today they consider themselves simply “spiritual.” And some do not think along spiritual lines at all, and are driven purely by their instinct to protect themselves, their families, their communities, and their country.
They are standing up for what’s right.
These “non-religious” activists are probably the majority of the people opposing tyranny in all its forms. In a way, they are doing God’s work as much as the “religious” people. Their contribution to a higher cause is revealing His presence to a world that badly needs to see Him.
How is this possible? Rabbi Jonathan Sacks shows us in his commentary on Parashat Terumah called “The Gift of Giving.”
https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/terumah/the-gift-of-giving/
The focus of the Rabbi’s teachings is the effort by the Israelites in the desert to build a “home” for God. At first glance, it was a “mission impossible:”
“It was the first Israelite house of worship, the first home Jews made for God. But the very idea is fraught with paradox, even contradiction. How can you build a house for God? He is bigger than anything we can imagine, let alone build.
“King Solomon made this point when he inaugurated another house of God, the First Temple:
“’But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain You. How much less this house I have built!’
I Kings 8:27
“So did Isaiah in the name of God Himself:
“’Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. What house can you build for Me? Where will My resting place be?’
Is. 66:1
“Not only does it seem impossible to build a home for God. It should be unnecessary. The God of everywhere can be accessed anywhere, as readily in the deepest pit as on the highest mountain, in a city slum as in a palace lined with marble and gold.”
The key to the answer is understanding that while no place in the physical world can accommodate Him, the human heart is boundless:
“The answer, and it is fundamental, is that God does not live in buildings. He lives in builders. He lives not in structures of stone but in the human heart. What the Jewish Sages and mystics pointed was that in our parsha God says, ‘Let them build Me a sanctuary that I may dwell in them’ (Ex. 25:8), not ‘that I may dwell in it.’..
“…The key word here is the verb sh-ch-n, to dwell. Never before had it been used in connection with God. It eventually became a keyword of Judaism itself. From it came the word Mishkan meaning a sanctuary, and Shechinah, the Divine Presence.
“Central to its meaning is the idea of closeness. Shachen in Hebrew means a neighbour, the person who lives next door. What the Israelites needed and what God gave them was a way of feeling as close to God as to our next-door neighbour.”
But the question is: how can the everyday person get up close and personal with God in everyday life?
“…How do we come to sense the presence of God? It isn’t difficult to do so standing at the foot of Mount Everest or seeing the Grand Canyon. You do not have to be very religious, or even religious at all, to feel awe in the presence of the sublime. The psychologist Abraham Maslow, whom we encountered in parshat Va’era, spoke about ‘peak experiences,’ and saw them as the essence of the spiritual encounter.
“But how do you feel the presence of God in the midst of everyday life? Not from the top of Mount Sinai but from the plain beneath? Not when it is surrounded by thunder and lightning as it was at the great revelation, but today, just a day among days?”
You become a giving person, thankful for what you have, and eager to share it with others:
“That is the life-transforming secret of the name of the parsha, Terumah. It means ‘a contribution.’ God said to Moses: ‘Tell the Israelites to take for Me a contribution. You are to receive the contribution for Me from everyone whose heart prompts them to give’ (Ex. 25:2). The best way of encountering God is to give.
“The very act of giving flows from, or leads to, the understanding that what we give is part of what we were given. It is a way of giving thanks, an act of gratitude. That is the difference in the human mind between the presence of God and the absence of God.
“If God is present, it means that what we have is His. He created the universe. He made us. He gave us life. He breathed into us the very air we breathe. All around us is the majesty, the plenitude, of God’s generosity: the light of the sun, the gold of the stone, the green of the leaves, the song of the birds. This is what we feel reading the great creation psalms we recite every day in the morning service. The world is God’s art gallery and His masterpieces are everywhere.
When life is a given, you acknowledge this by giving back.”
Giving to support a higher cause brings you closer to God – even if you don’t “believe” in Him:
“The Torah therefore tells us something simple and practical. Give, and you will come to see life as a gift. You don’t need to be able to prove God exists. All you need is to be thankful that you exist – and the rest will follow.
“That is how God came to be close to the Israelites through the building of the sanctuary. It wasn’t the quality of the wood and metals and drapes. It wasn’t the glitter of jewels on the breastplate of the high priest. It wasn’t the beauty of the architecture or the smell of the sacrifices. It was the fact that it was built out of the gifts of ‘everyone whose heart prompts them to give’ (Ex. 25:2). Where people give voluntarily to one another and to holy causes, that is where the Divine Presence rests.
“Hence the special word that gives its name to this parsha: Terumah. I’ve translated it as ‘a contribution’ but it actually has a subtly different meaning for which there is no simple English equivalent. It means ‘something you lift up’ by dedicating it to a sacred cause. You lift it up, then it lifts you up. The best way of scaling the spiritual heights is simply to give in gratitude for the fact that you have been given.
“God doesn’t live in a house of stone. He lives in the hearts of those who give.”
I would add this:
We each have much to give to support the cause of protecting our freedom. It could be time. Money. Attendance at meetings. Signing petitions. Social media posts. Unwoke investing. Running for office.
A huge contribution can be made by simply speaking out in protest of tyranny: telling your doctor or pharmacist they are wrong to promote dangerous gene therapy as a “vaccine.” Or telling your child’s teacher or school principal they are wrong to encourage gender confusion.
Every single thing we say or do in the name of freedom counts. It can have a positive impact far down the road. And it makes us more of a giving person.
Pretty soon you will find that He is giving you more and more to give.