This is just a conversation starter.
This record (post) is in development primarily via secure email exchanges from T.J. in absentia to this website until we get fully confirmed HIPAA standards, both fully applied and war-tested on this website.
Pray we do not move from in absentia to fully in dementia getting there, won’t you? Pray?
We have had this conversation, and prayer, and study together at least hundreds of times in our personal communions, and meetings together, in our work in the public too, and in our online exchanges, right back to ‘secure’ IRC channels.
Case example:
Ehud had hidden-implicit standards for operating (Judges 3:12–4:1) when Ehud killed Eglon, the king of Moab, with Ehud using the most false possible pretenses contradicting at least some of Ehud’s own explicit-express Jewish traditions and his Jewish standards for operation, like not bowing down to foreign gods, nor taking offerings to the gods of enemy kings.
Was this an early case of identity theft? Or is it a case of hacking Eglon’s “secure servers” (read the story)? Why leave his dagger in so deep that the shit ran out? Why is that detail important? And why leave his dagger stuck in Eglon at all? Was Ehud’s boldness only in sticking the king in the first place, or was his boldness more, say in leaving his dagger in the king’s twisted shit and in shit deep, as Ehud’s public business card, “come over to my address now! Visit my home page!”? How do you like me as a neighbor now?
With all the sewage flowing out of Eglon, are we really in the flow – the public flow – of this sewage soaked ministry now? What are you willing to get on your hands in your own service to God? Why are any of these details important in this book?
As a judge, I want to know motives – do you?
Are there different standards for when to be express-explicit and when to be hidden-covert that are related to motives? If so, then how did Ehud get validation and confirmation for these different motives? Or did he? Did he just act and get away with it? How much ministry is based on acting first and hoping that one gets away with it?