Excellent article! You put in to words how I think (I do not gave that gift). Thank you! You mentioned tithing and taxes in relation to religion. Can you expound on that?
Thank you for your kind words and for reading my stuff.
It happens that tithing and taxes are a part of the traditions of my faith, so let's start there.
Who were the Quakers? We didn't call ourselves by that name an English aristocrat named Gervase Bennett came up with the name. He had been torturing George Fox in Anno Domini 1661. George was the founder of our faith and he had been telling the people who showed up to listen that it was wrong to pay tithes to the established church of England.
The Anglican church had been out of favour for a while because the Puritans didn't like them. The Puritans, as the name suggests, wanted to purify the faith, as they understood it. What they meant was they wanted their doctrines to be accepted by everyone. As it happens there were many prominent Puritans, such as Oliver Cromwell, in the parliament and amongst its forces. They are known by the cavaliers who wrote subsequent histories as "the roundheads." The cavaliers will tell you that it was the noble cavaliers, the aristocrats, who wanted to keep upChuck the first as "king" whereas the brutal roundheads wanted mayhem. As always, it wasn't really like that.
But, then, where did the Anglican church come from? Well, it came from Henry the eighth wanting to have a male heir, not understanding biology and blaming his wife, wanting to have sex with a lot of women to see if he could get a male offspring, and eventually divorcing his wife, Catharine of Aragon in favour of his mistress, Anne Boleyn. The Catholic church under pope Clement the 7th was against the idea of a divorce in 1534 or thereabouts. Why is that?
Well, Henry and Catherine had a daughter, Mary, born in 1516. She would have been about 18 when Henry wanted a divorce, so the pope couldn't exactly pretend that there were grounds for an annulment. Back then the Christian faith had no concept of divorce. "What God has joined together let no man put asunder." But you could petition the pope and have the marriage annulled if you and your spouse signed various papers attesting that you had never consummated the marriage. But here was this fully grown woman child, so that wasn't within the realm of annulment. It was, as they say, a mess.
Henry wanted to write his own rules so he did. The pope made it clear that it wasn't okay. So Henry got rid of the head of the church being in Rome, made that person the archbishop of Canterbury in, well, Canterbury, and subject to appointment by Henry. In effect, without exactly saying so, Henry made the monarch on the throne of England the functional head of the church of England. This idea didn't set well with anyone.
One of the upshots of this new idea was that the Anglican church would collect tithes from the people in the parishes in England and use that money to support the church. And, oh, maybe lend some of it to Henry and his courtiers. And, oh, maybe never expect repayment. And other corruption. Really, it goes on and on with the corruption in England, and everywhere else that "the aristocrats" do their dirty deeds.
Okay, so the Puritans in wanting to purify the doctrines didn't like the idea of paying tithes to the Anglican church. And so they rebelled against this idea. But they also didn't exactly disagree with Martin Luther. I gather they were more of the John Calvin mode of thinking, but all that is doctrine and it's not my task to clarify the doctrines of persons who are doctrinaire.
Other than rejecting false doctrines, I don't agree that doctrine rhetoric is useful to the faithful. The words of Jesus are in the Bible, and our job is to hear the words, read the out loud if you wish, and do them. That's why any issues of the Holy Bible are printed with the words of Jesus in red ink. So there should be no confusion.
Well, Martin Luther was a catholic, and he nailed the 96 theses to the door of the church because he could find no scriptural basis for things like indulgences. An indulgence was where a person bought a letter from a priest, and for sufficiently big matters, from the pope, granting an indulgence for certain behaviours. Luther called this practice "simony" referring to the passage in the book of Acts when Simon Magus comes to Peter and John and asks to pay them money for the power of the Holy Spirit. Peter says, "May your money perish with you," and emphasises that the power of the Holy Spirit is not for sale.
So Puritans didn't like the Anglicans or the Catholics. But George Fox didn't like the Anglicans, the Catholics, nor the Puritans. He had a completely different intention, which I believe was heartfelt, sincere, and good. George wanted to do the words of Jesus, and kept going to the churches of these other outfits and finding in them people not doing the words. Wearing fancy dress and demanding the best seats, or even paying for those seats up front. Making a big deal of how they had contributed to this or that church activity or building. Being honoured not for their purity of heart but for their worldly goods. And many other such like errors.
George was about to give up when he went up Pendle hill to contemplate the madness. And he went over it in his mind, all the different things wrong with these other places of worship, and how he felt no presence of God in any of them. And as he lay there he heard a voice from behind hiim saying, "There is one, even Jesus Christ, who can speak to thy condition."
In those days, English had a familiar set of pronouns used amongst friends and denoting equality of speaker and listener. "You" is formal and refers to someone better than you. "Thou" is informal, equivalent to French "tu" or "tu" in other Latin derived languages. Well, it has gone away because the aristocrats don't like it when you do that to them. They want to be treated formally, by you, peasants, who they regard as their inferiors.
George would get in trouble for a lot of these things. He not only would not take off his hat when approached on the street by an aristocrat, he wouldn't step into the gutter, he wouldn't salute that person, he wouldn't use "you" when he meant "thou" and he wouldn't pay tithes to the churches set up by these various groups. He also wouldn't join the army of Oliver Cromwell, saying in response to the request that he raise a company of men that you cannot slay the devil with a pistol or a sword. George and his friends called themselves the Religious Society of the Friends of Jesus, or the Society of Friends, and we have that name to this day.
But after the "restoration" of the monarchy, or the return to usurpation as I like to view it, under upChuck the second, it was officially a violation of law, an act of blasphemy, to refuse to tithe to the Anglican church. Which made little sense to many people since it was widely believed that upChuck and his brother James were actually practising the Catholic faith in private and only posing as Anglicans.
Thus George is in the Tower of London, Gervase is torturing him, and at one point has an interview. So there is a clerk, because you had someone write down what was happening in those technologically undeveloped eras before electronic recordings could be made and altered fraudulently to purport that someone had said something awful.
Gervase asks George why he won't just pay the tithes and address his superiors as "you" and get out of prison. George picks up the bible on the table where it was placed, because blasphemers and heretics were supposed to be brought to heel and the bible was a tool for that purpose, and he lifts it up and says, "You should tremble before the word of God."
For indeed, Jesus is not a fan of the tribute payment but makes it happen because it was incorrectly promised. And Jesus is not a fan of the taxes because they are paid in the wicked debased and idolatrous currency of the Romans.
Jesus picks up a coin and asks who is the face on it. Of course, a graven image of a person violates the ten commandments. And what is the wording? Well it names Caesar. He might also have rubbed it a bit to reveal that Augustus had thoroughly debased it and it was not a silver coin but a bit of cheap metal with some silver painted on. "Render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar and unto God what belongs to God." Everything in the heavens and in the earthly realm belongs to God. And so sending back this debased coin to the person whose name is on it makes a certain sense. But at no time does Jesus say that taxation is just or good. In fact, taxation is theft.
We get tithes from the book of Genesis when Abraham meets the priest Melchizedek and pays him a tenth of the booty from recent battle. Jesus is known as a priest of the order of Melchizedek, by the way. So we have this tradition of supporting priests and ministers and church activities with a tenth, or tithe. Tithe is just an English word meaning tenth.
But in England in 1661 it was a mandate, it was coerced. You were hunted down if you had not tithed and the tithe would be taken from you if you were around town with money. None of that is according to the teachings of Jesus, which George knew, and which Gervase very well knew, too.
So the aristocrat says, "Oh, tremble, do you?" You can hear the sarcasm dripping from his words. "Quake. That's what you do. You are a quaker." And the name stuck. After a few decades even George Fox would refer to us as "the people known as Quakers."
I guess that kind of answers your question. It also brings up a lot of other topics. It is, frankly, a complex matter.
Which is not how it was intended to be. Jesus said the things Jesus said, and says them still. It is for Christians to hear the words and do them. If we would, we could build great places, a wonderful world, a kingdom of heaven. It is near unto thee whenever anyone hears the words of Jesus and does them.
I was just going to ask the same thing…regarding tithing and taxes. I too so enjoy your writing. I also own crypto but do not know how to “use it” to get away from the dollar and tax plunder?
History is impossible to prove with 100% accuracy due to corruptible recordkeeping always advocating for the ‘winners’ or ‘better killers’.
Fear is the driver. Violence is never the answer. Only a temporary deterrent at best.
- killing is a form of bigotry (discrimination-based violence)
- religion is a form of bigotry (‘forced spirituality’)
- nationalism is a form of bigotry (‘forced marketplace’)
- sexism & racism are forms of bigotry (forced socialization)
Why rapid commercialization of Bitcoin is vital: align incentive through incorruptible and therefore trustworthy records.
Until then, we all have blood on our hands including myself.
Public protocols such as Bitcoin and THORChain (RUNE) are forms of voluntary marketplaces anchored by incorruptible recordkeeping thereby eliminating fear-based prisoner’s dilemma game theory of ‘kill or be killed’ as the driving force of commerce.
In today’s forced hierarchical marketplaces (ie, ‘supranational, international, national, state, county, municipal’), ‘have nots’ (ie, poverty, lack of education, disenfranchisement) must always exist to support ‘haves’.
Fear is always the driver in forced marketplaces because records are always corruptible and therefore must be assumed corrupted. Collusion in groups becomes the driving force of commerce and arises cults of personality (‘bigotry’).
I don't believe in collective guilt. I don't have blood on my hands.
History is studied by people who examine different descriptions of events. We can be certain from multiple witnesses that an event happened. It is often difficult to know from the "primary sources" who were there what they actually saw, because they have a post-event agenda. Some are guilty of war crimes. Some do have blood on their hands. Some want to tell you what they think will serve their interests. Which makes memoirs especially difficult as historical "source" material because after thorough reflection, all you have left is the agenda of those who are writing what they think will have their memoir sell, or what they want people to believe about them, or what they think their legacy should be. But it is useful anyway, because part of the study of history is the study of historiography, the writing of history, and the epistemology thereof, how we know what we know about history.
I agree with your thesis that bitcoin is a very useful tool and its widespread acceptance is a major change agent. Similarly the Internet has been a very useful set of tools and its now-widespread use changes materially how information is distributed and, therefore what can and cannot be kept secret. Open source cryptography is similar in making it possible for people to be confident of certain kinds of transactions, keeping their wallets safe, etc. Open source software has been similarly vital, and open source hardware is going to become vital.
I don't think any of these aspects of our situation are accidental. Jesus told his disciples that everything hidden would be revealed and that what was whispered in an ear would be shouted from the rooftops. Those prophecies are being fulfilled in our day, to the detriment of those who seek to enslave us and to our benefit.
God bless you and your family, Anthem. Thank you friend.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful perspective. My perspective is so long as we live in a world where markets, spirituality and socialization are necessitated by force, we all have blood on our hands to various degrees of severity. Thank you for your kind wishes and I'm sending lots of love and prayers your way ♥️☀️☮️🌈🏁
Excellent article! You put in to words how I think (I do not gave that gift). Thank you! You mentioned tithing and taxes in relation to religion. Can you expound on that?
Dear Nancy,
Thank you for your kind words and for reading my stuff.
It happens that tithing and taxes are a part of the traditions of my faith, so let's start there.
Who were the Quakers? We didn't call ourselves by that name an English aristocrat named Gervase Bennett came up with the name. He had been torturing George Fox in Anno Domini 1661. George was the founder of our faith and he had been telling the people who showed up to listen that it was wrong to pay tithes to the established church of England.
The Anglican church had been out of favour for a while because the Puritans didn't like them. The Puritans, as the name suggests, wanted to purify the faith, as they understood it. What they meant was they wanted their doctrines to be accepted by everyone. As it happens there were many prominent Puritans, such as Oliver Cromwell, in the parliament and amongst its forces. They are known by the cavaliers who wrote subsequent histories as "the roundheads." The cavaliers will tell you that it was the noble cavaliers, the aristocrats, who wanted to keep upChuck the first as "king" whereas the brutal roundheads wanted mayhem. As always, it wasn't really like that.
But, then, where did the Anglican church come from? Well, it came from Henry the eighth wanting to have a male heir, not understanding biology and blaming his wife, wanting to have sex with a lot of women to see if he could get a male offspring, and eventually divorcing his wife, Catharine of Aragon in favour of his mistress, Anne Boleyn. The Catholic church under pope Clement the 7th was against the idea of a divorce in 1534 or thereabouts. Why is that?
Well, Henry and Catherine had a daughter, Mary, born in 1516. She would have been about 18 when Henry wanted a divorce, so the pope couldn't exactly pretend that there were grounds for an annulment. Back then the Christian faith had no concept of divorce. "What God has joined together let no man put asunder." But you could petition the pope and have the marriage annulled if you and your spouse signed various papers attesting that you had never consummated the marriage. But here was this fully grown woman child, so that wasn't within the realm of annulment. It was, as they say, a mess.
Henry wanted to write his own rules so he did. The pope made it clear that it wasn't okay. So Henry got rid of the head of the church being in Rome, made that person the archbishop of Canterbury in, well, Canterbury, and subject to appointment by Henry. In effect, without exactly saying so, Henry made the monarch on the throne of England the functional head of the church of England. This idea didn't set well with anyone.
One of the upshots of this new idea was that the Anglican church would collect tithes from the people in the parishes in England and use that money to support the church. And, oh, maybe lend some of it to Henry and his courtiers. And, oh, maybe never expect repayment. And other corruption. Really, it goes on and on with the corruption in England, and everywhere else that "the aristocrats" do their dirty deeds.
Okay, so the Puritans in wanting to purify the doctrines didn't like the idea of paying tithes to the Anglican church. And so they rebelled against this idea. But they also didn't exactly disagree with Martin Luther. I gather they were more of the John Calvin mode of thinking, but all that is doctrine and it's not my task to clarify the doctrines of persons who are doctrinaire.
Other than rejecting false doctrines, I don't agree that doctrine rhetoric is useful to the faithful. The words of Jesus are in the Bible, and our job is to hear the words, read the out loud if you wish, and do them. That's why any issues of the Holy Bible are printed with the words of Jesus in red ink. So there should be no confusion.
Well, Martin Luther was a catholic, and he nailed the 96 theses to the door of the church because he could find no scriptural basis for things like indulgences. An indulgence was where a person bought a letter from a priest, and for sufficiently big matters, from the pope, granting an indulgence for certain behaviours. Luther called this practice "simony" referring to the passage in the book of Acts when Simon Magus comes to Peter and John and asks to pay them money for the power of the Holy Spirit. Peter says, "May your money perish with you," and emphasises that the power of the Holy Spirit is not for sale.
So Puritans didn't like the Anglicans or the Catholics. But George Fox didn't like the Anglicans, the Catholics, nor the Puritans. He had a completely different intention, which I believe was heartfelt, sincere, and good. George wanted to do the words of Jesus, and kept going to the churches of these other outfits and finding in them people not doing the words. Wearing fancy dress and demanding the best seats, or even paying for those seats up front. Making a big deal of how they had contributed to this or that church activity or building. Being honoured not for their purity of heart but for their worldly goods. And many other such like errors.
George was about to give up when he went up Pendle hill to contemplate the madness. And he went over it in his mind, all the different things wrong with these other places of worship, and how he felt no presence of God in any of them. And as he lay there he heard a voice from behind hiim saying, "There is one, even Jesus Christ, who can speak to thy condition."
In those days, English had a familiar set of pronouns used amongst friends and denoting equality of speaker and listener. "You" is formal and refers to someone better than you. "Thou" is informal, equivalent to French "tu" or "tu" in other Latin derived languages. Well, it has gone away because the aristocrats don't like it when you do that to them. They want to be treated formally, by you, peasants, who they regard as their inferiors.
George would get in trouble for a lot of these things. He not only would not take off his hat when approached on the street by an aristocrat, he wouldn't step into the gutter, he wouldn't salute that person, he wouldn't use "you" when he meant "thou" and he wouldn't pay tithes to the churches set up by these various groups. He also wouldn't join the army of Oliver Cromwell, saying in response to the request that he raise a company of men that you cannot slay the devil with a pistol or a sword. George and his friends called themselves the Religious Society of the Friends of Jesus, or the Society of Friends, and we have that name to this day.
But after the "restoration" of the monarchy, or the return to usurpation as I like to view it, under upChuck the second, it was officially a violation of law, an act of blasphemy, to refuse to tithe to the Anglican church. Which made little sense to many people since it was widely believed that upChuck and his brother James were actually practising the Catholic faith in private and only posing as Anglicans.
Thus George is in the Tower of London, Gervase is torturing him, and at one point has an interview. So there is a clerk, because you had someone write down what was happening in those technologically undeveloped eras before electronic recordings could be made and altered fraudulently to purport that someone had said something awful.
Gervase asks George why he won't just pay the tithes and address his superiors as "you" and get out of prison. George picks up the bible on the table where it was placed, because blasphemers and heretics were supposed to be brought to heel and the bible was a tool for that purpose, and he lifts it up and says, "You should tremble before the word of God."
For indeed, Jesus is not a fan of the tribute payment but makes it happen because it was incorrectly promised. And Jesus is not a fan of the taxes because they are paid in the wicked debased and idolatrous currency of the Romans.
Jesus picks up a coin and asks who is the face on it. Of course, a graven image of a person violates the ten commandments. And what is the wording? Well it names Caesar. He might also have rubbed it a bit to reveal that Augustus had thoroughly debased it and it was not a silver coin but a bit of cheap metal with some silver painted on. "Render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar and unto God what belongs to God." Everything in the heavens and in the earthly realm belongs to God. And so sending back this debased coin to the person whose name is on it makes a certain sense. But at no time does Jesus say that taxation is just or good. In fact, taxation is theft.
We get tithes from the book of Genesis when Abraham meets the priest Melchizedek and pays him a tenth of the booty from recent battle. Jesus is known as a priest of the order of Melchizedek, by the way. So we have this tradition of supporting priests and ministers and church activities with a tenth, or tithe. Tithe is just an English word meaning tenth.
But in England in 1661 it was a mandate, it was coerced. You were hunted down if you had not tithed and the tithe would be taken from you if you were around town with money. None of that is according to the teachings of Jesus, which George knew, and which Gervase very well knew, too.
So the aristocrat says, "Oh, tremble, do you?" You can hear the sarcasm dripping from his words. "Quake. That's what you do. You are a quaker." And the name stuck. After a few decades even George Fox would refer to us as "the people known as Quakers."
I guess that kind of answers your question. It also brings up a lot of other topics. It is, frankly, a complex matter.
Which is not how it was intended to be. Jesus said the things Jesus said, and says them still. It is for Christians to hear the words and do them. If we would, we could build great places, a wonderful world, a kingdom of heaven. It is near unto thee whenever anyone hears the words of Jesus and does them.
Your friend,
Jim
Thank you so much for taking the time to answer me! I have learned a lot from this.
I was just going to ask the same thing…regarding tithing and taxes. I too so enjoy your writing. I also own crypto but do not know how to “use it” to get away from the dollar and tax plunder?
History is impossible to prove with 100% accuracy due to corruptible recordkeeping always advocating for the ‘winners’ or ‘better killers’.
Fear is the driver. Violence is never the answer. Only a temporary deterrent at best.
- killing is a form of bigotry (discrimination-based violence)
- religion is a form of bigotry (‘forced spirituality’)
- nationalism is a form of bigotry (‘forced marketplace’)
- sexism & racism are forms of bigotry (forced socialization)
Why rapid commercialization of Bitcoin is vital: align incentive through incorruptible and therefore trustworthy records.
Until then, we all have blood on our hands including myself.
Public protocols such as Bitcoin and THORChain (RUNE) are forms of voluntary marketplaces anchored by incorruptible recordkeeping thereby eliminating fear-based prisoner’s dilemma game theory of ‘kill or be killed’ as the driving force of commerce.
In today’s forced hierarchical marketplaces (ie, ‘supranational, international, national, state, county, municipal’), ‘have nots’ (ie, poverty, lack of education, disenfranchisement) must always exist to support ‘haves’.
Fear is always the driver in forced marketplaces because records are always corruptible and therefore must be assumed corrupted. Collusion in groups becomes the driving force of commerce and arises cults of personality (‘bigotry’).
only through communication is love actualized.
Sending lots of love
♥️☀️☮️🌈🏁🥳🏆🐛🦋
I don't believe in collective guilt. I don't have blood on my hands.
History is studied by people who examine different descriptions of events. We can be certain from multiple witnesses that an event happened. It is often difficult to know from the "primary sources" who were there what they actually saw, because they have a post-event agenda. Some are guilty of war crimes. Some do have blood on their hands. Some want to tell you what they think will serve their interests. Which makes memoirs especially difficult as historical "source" material because after thorough reflection, all you have left is the agenda of those who are writing what they think will have their memoir sell, or what they want people to believe about them, or what they think their legacy should be. But it is useful anyway, because part of the study of history is the study of historiography, the writing of history, and the epistemology thereof, how we know what we know about history.
I agree with your thesis that bitcoin is a very useful tool and its widespread acceptance is a major change agent. Similarly the Internet has been a very useful set of tools and its now-widespread use changes materially how information is distributed and, therefore what can and cannot be kept secret. Open source cryptography is similar in making it possible for people to be confident of certain kinds of transactions, keeping their wallets safe, etc. Open source software has been similarly vital, and open source hardware is going to become vital.
I don't think any of these aspects of our situation are accidental. Jesus told his disciples that everything hidden would be revealed and that what was whispered in an ear would be shouted from the rooftops. Those prophecies are being fulfilled in our day, to the detriment of those who seek to enslave us and to our benefit.
God bless you and your family, Anthem. Thank you friend.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful perspective. My perspective is so long as we live in a world where markets, spirituality and socialization are necessitated by force, we all have blood on our hands to various degrees of severity. Thank you for your kind wishes and I'm sending lots of love and prayers your way ♥️☀️☮️🌈🏁
Great essay, my friend! (I admire your tackling Cuneiform. Sumer and the origin of writing are fascinating but most of it is over my head.)