This will surprise you . . .

You are suffering from

PTSD

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

If you're like millions of Americans, you experience crippling stress every day 
causing debilitating dislocations in one or more of 
four major areas of your life:
 

Family Finances Fitness Faith

• Lost love for spouse
• Abuse of children
• Inability to form lasting relationships

• Failure to keep a job
• High-interest debt
• Wavering productivity

• Sickness, loss of health
• Low-Energy
• Overweight

• Devitalizing Doubt
• No purpose in life
• "Is God pleased with me?"

... and many other goals to achieve and problems to solve

You will never solve these problems without dealing with the root cause.

The root cause is a disorienting stress.

This crippling stress is caused by a traumatic experience.

Deep down in your soul, you know this traumatic experience to be fundamentally evil or unfair. But your family, friends, church, or government all compel you to behave as if this traumatic experience is perfectly normal and acceptable. This causes 

Cognitive Dissonance

"Dissonance" is the opposite of "harmony." "Cognitive" refers not just to your intellect, but the very fiber of your being. Your "soul." Your "spirit." The stress is killing you.

You try to escape the dissonance with drugs, alcohol or porn. You lash out at members of your family or at the driver next to you because you're angry at a huge, traumatic injustice.

The evil that is traumatizing you by causing this "cognitive dissonance" is not a single event in your childhood or distant past. 

It is an on-going evil that you witness every day.

Deep down in the very core of your being you know it's evil. You may be forced to participate in it. You know it shouldn't be this way. You can't escape it. You feel helpless. You ask, "Is there a God?"

The Way It Should Be

Before identifying the trauma that you experience, we need to realize that as a nation, we have lost sight of the way things should be. The path to harmony. The path to wholeness. The path to admiration and deep fulfillment that comes when you serve others with powerful productivity.

Massive evil and injustice block your access to the path to peace and productivity.

When America knew the way things should be,
       America was the most prosperous and admired nation in human history.
When America turned her back on the original "American Dream,"
       the United States became bankrupt and despised even by our former admirers.

When Did This Happen?

Piece by piece, the Federal Government prohibited public schools from reminding us of the original "American Dream," and pursuing the path toward spiritual fulfillment.

The average colonial American 17-year old in 1776 knew more about what it takes to make America a prosperous and virtuous nation than the average American adult in 2017. The average colonial American teenager would be horrified at the things American adults tolerate in 2017: Tyranny, public immorality, idiocy. Unbelievable.

Public schools were very different in 1776 than they are today. Music, entertainment, and popular culture were very different in 1776 than they are today. The government was very different in 1776 than it is today.

What was the original American Dream? What is the path to wholeness and productivity? In a nutshell,

The phrase "Vine & Fig Tree" comes from the fourth chapter of the prophet Micah, and is set forth here. You may have heard Micah's words before -- we beat our "swords into plowshares" and everyone dwells safely under their own "Vine & Fig Tree.

America's Founding Fathers were very familiar with this vision: "Vine & Fig Tree" is the worldview that made America "the greatest nation on God's green earth." International peace and harmony with nature -- this is the way God created us to live.

Saint Augustine (A.D. 354-430) wrote a book that drew the contrast between "The City of God" and the city of man.

Before we look at the traumatic experience that is causing your anger, addictions, and feelings of worthlessness and lack of success (The City of Man), let's look at the City of God, or what Jesus spoke of as the City upon a Hill.

According to the Library of Congress Website, George Washington was motivated by the Vine & Fig Tree vision revealed in the Bible: 
 
No theme appears more frequently in the writings of Washington than his love for his land. The diaries are a monument to that concern. In his letters he referred often, as an expression of this devotion and its resulting contentment, to an Old Testament passage. After the Revolution, when he had returned to Mount Vernon, he wrote the Marquis de Lafayette on Feb. 1, 1784:

"At length my Dear Marquis I am become a private citizen on the banks of the Potomac, & under the shadow of my own Vine & my own Fig-tree."

This phrase occurs at least 11 times in Washington's letters.

"And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree" (2 Kings 18:31).

Peter Lillback, author of a 1,000-page study of Washington's life and thought, has found more than 40 references to the  “Vine and Fig Tree” vision in Washington's Papers.

"Under My Own Vine and Fig Tree, 1798" by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, Lora Robins Collection of Virginia Art, Virginia Historical Society
Under My Own Vine and Fig Tree, 1798
Jean Leon Gerome Ferris
Virginia Historical Society
Lora Robins Collection of Virginia Art

Many other American Founders wrote of this ideal. "Vine & Fig Tree" is the original "American Dream."

The phrase occurs a number of times in Scripture. These references are visual reminders of the Hebrew word for salvation, which means
• peace,
• wholeness,
• health,
• progress, abundance, well-being, and
• private property free from pirates and princes.
When today's Americans hear the  word "salvation," they usually think about going to heaven when they die, after living a life of trauma and dislocation. When the writers of the Bible used the word "salvation," they wanted you to be thinking about dwelling safely under your own Vine & Fig Tree during this life -- much more often than they wanted you to be thinking about what you'll be doing in the afterlife.

Every American alive in 1776 could tell you something about the Vine & Fig Tree vision. The vast majority of Americans today have never heard of it. There are many explanations for this (and they might be called "conspiracy theories"), but the fact is that our schools and media are controlled by a government which America's Founders would call a "tyranny."

Today "the American Dream" means "owning your own home." But the word "own" means something very different than it did in 1776. Today, "owning" means "qualifying for a low-interest, fixed rate mortgage." It means the bank owns your home. Even if you pay your mortgage off, if you don't pay your property taxes the government will take your home. Even if you pay your taxes, the government can take your home and give it to speculators and land developers who promise the government that they will be able to build a mall and pay more taxes than you do to the government. This is called "eminent domain." The U.S. Supreme Court has said this is "constitutional." A man's home is no longer his castle.

The "Boston Tea Party" (1772) involved a tax on tea of three pence per pound of tea. Today we pay ten times (10x) more than that on every gallon of gas. The tyrannical government over you expropriates over 2/3 of everything you earn. America's Founders were outraged by "taxation without representation."  Twenty times more taxes, and only a fraction of the "representation." We are passively traumatized by it.

Americans were appalled by "The Boston Massacre" in 1770, in which five Americans were killed by British soldiers. Today, U.S. military bases are found in over 100 nations around the world, and since 1960, tens of millions of innocent non-combatant civilians have been killed, crippled, or made homeless by U.S. bombs and soldiers. Imagine a drone fires a missile at your children's wedding. Every day, U.S.-made weapons are killing innocent people. We all know about this, but each new generation suppresses the thoughts. This is trauma.

We eat junk food, and then get cancer. We know this is not way it's supposed to be. But we're too busy suppressing the trauma with sports and "adult toys," so we don't have time to grow our own healthy food.

We are all traumatized by global violence which brings profits to corporations, and empitness to human beings. We don't want to think about it. We spend billions of dollars a year for entertainment and amusement, psychotherapy, prescription drugs, or illegal drugs, because the bank owns our home, and the government owns our paycheck. We're not living the original "American Dream" under our own Vine & Fig Tree, and the trauma is killing us.

"Your" government -- The United States Federal Government -- is the most evil and dangerous entity on the planet. Other "governments" might be more evil (e.g., North Korea), but they are not more dangerous. No other government drops as many bombs on other countries as the U.S. The U.S. government threatens nuclear annihilation of entire continents if the interests of its corporate sponsors are interfered with. ¿Do you see your home in this image:


We live under the constant threat of alienation or annihilation. We see evil and depravity on our TVs every day. This is traumatizing us. It cripples us. It weakens our resolve to fight evil. We re-elect the same politicians every election. Or we don't vote at all.

We are created in the Image of God, hard-wired to transform a wilderness into a garden, and move us all closer to the City of God. When the government, the media, our neighbors, friends and even family all tell us to compromise our inborn standards and aspirations and pursue things which are transitory, plastic, unethical, and superficial, we are traumatized by this. We look for mentors and co-workers, but feel alone. We suffer dehumanizing trauma.
 

Treatment for American PTSD

Then they will hammer their
swords into plowshares
And their spears into pruning hooks;
Nation will not lift up sword against nation
And never again will they train for war.

And each of them will sit under his
Vine and under his Fig Tree,
With no one to make them afraid.
For the L
ORD of hosts has spoken.

Pursuing the Vine & Fig Tree vision is what it means to be human.

In just one year, our online home study program duplicates the colonial education that Americans received in the public schools of 1776. We don't teach "the 3 R's" (reading, writing and arithmetic); we teach the original American dream. We teach the worldview that made America "the greatest nation on God's green earth."  Twelve years of a colonial American one-room school house can be compacted into one year (365 days) of virtual online coaching. (Assuming you already know how to read.) 

Our program is simple, but not easy.  There are three parts to this program:

  1. Cut out 1 hour per day of the mainstream media for 365 days;
  2. Substitute 40 minutes of the Vine & Fig Tree Coaching program; 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the evening;
  3. Become a mentor to two other people at home, work, school or church, by helping them fulfill steps 1 and 2 (and eventually 3). When you become a mentor to one other person, two people are transformed. And "where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matthew 18:20).

We Guarantee you will be transformed from ordinary to extraordinary, and as a Certified Coach for the Vine & Fig Tree Coaching program, you'll make a little money in the process, by coaching your friends and neighbors, encouraging them to overcome the traumatizing effects of a society that rejects God, and helping them become lifelong Vine & Fig Tree learners.

Become a Lifelong Learner

We all need to become "lifelong learners." Most people don't want to do their homework. America has become an "adolescent" nation. The concept of "adolescence" is relatively new. Children in the past were expected to grow up and become mature, productive adults at an earlier age than today. Obamacare treats people as old as 26 as children covered by their parents' insurance. "Adolescence" means assuming no adult responsibilities, and being free to gratify selfish child fantasies, subsidized by the previous generation.

It's Never Too Late to Go Back to Kindergarten

If you look at the details of our program, you may be overwhelmed. You are a victim of educational malpractice. But you are capable of learning as much and being as spiritually and morally whole as Americans were in 1776. Moral and spiritual wholeness, combined with a Christian education, creates a Biblical worldview which strengthens you and immunizes you against the trauma of atheistic tyranny. It helps you see the real problems and visualize effective solutions, and empowers and encourages you to take steps to be a part of the solution instead of being a part of the problem.

The Jews have a tradition called the "Bar Mitzvah," literally translated "son of command." It means you know how to obey God's Commandments. It means you have developed the internal fortitude to stand against evil and do the right thing. Its observance began centuries ago, when a 12 year-old was deemed to be an adult: not because he was gratifying his sexual urges before marriage ("adult movies"), but because he was mature in the faith, and was able to relate to authority, both good and bad, in a healthy way. He was ready to begin exercising dominion over the earth" (Genesis 1:26-28).

If you're an American adult, you are capable of much more than you think. You are using only a tiny fraction of the human potential with which you were endowed by your Creator.

Dr. J. H. Van den Berg of Utrecht, in the Netherlands, has written some very stimulating things in the history of psychology. In his book, The Changing Nature of Man (NY: Dell, 1961), he gives examples of mature "children." He cites the life of Theodore Agrippa d’Aubigne, Huguenot, friend of Henry IV, born in 1550:

Of d’Aubigne it is told that he read Greek, Latin and Hebrew when he was six years old and that he translated Plato into French when he was not yet eight. Plato. Montaigne recommended the reading and explaining of philosophical discourses to children. Well, if an eight year-old child can translate Plato, what objection can there be to reading a translated version to him when he is four? When d’Aubigne was still eight years old, he went through the town of Amboise, accompanied by his father just after a group of Huguenots had been executed. He saw the decapitated bodies; and at the request of his father, he swore an oath to avenge them. Two years later, he was captured by Inquisiteurs; the ten year-old boy’s reaction to the threat of death at the stake was a dance of joy before the fire. The horror of the Mass took away his fear of a fire, was his own later comment, as if a ten year-old boy could know what he meant by that. And yet, a child who has translated Plato and has been used to reading the classics for four years, could not such a child know what he wants and know what he is doing? But he can hardly be called a child. A person who observes the effects of an execution intelligently, who swears an oath to which he remains true through life, who realizes for himself the interpretation of the Holy Communion and who fathoms the horror of death at the stake -- he is not a child. He is a man.

Secular Americans who have lost touch with their Vine & Fig Tree roots are traumatized by ISIS beheadings.  Faith protects us from trauma. The majority of traumatic evil in this world is perpetrated by those who claim "authority." In the case of d’Aubigne, a union of "church" and "state." America's Founders were willing to risk their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, because they were pursuing the Vine & Fig Tree vision.

Now one might say these were "child prodigies," and yet the interesting thing is how many of the great musicians of that period were child prodigies and how many of the ordinary people matured at the same age. The intellectual level back then was quite high, even among the common people. The level of preaching is ample evidence of this. The ability of church members to listen to lengthy sermons of sometimes two hours, to reproduce all thirty or forty points faithfully later in the week, and to debate them or discuss them, is well documented. There was a high order of discipline, and this discipline furthered the uses of intelligence.*

Consider the Constitutional Convention in this country. Go through and list the ages of those men at the time of the Constitutional Convention and they were a surprisingly youthful group. Franklin was the old man of the group, and Washington was far older than most of them. The average person there was a generation or so younger than Washington. They were young men. Not only were they young men in their 30’s but most of them had been military officers, judges, governors, for a number of years. They reached maturity in their teens because there was a different concept of discipline. Today's law students complain when they are assigned The Federalist Papers, but the "Papers" were originally newspaper columns for ordinary American farmers.

If a colonial American teenager could travel through time from 1776 to our day today, he would tell you Five Things you need to know about the trauma you have experienced, and he would recommend you read Five Books that were banned from the public school you attended. These Five Books are the most important books in the history of Western Civilization. Despite our "smart phones," we are now an uncivilized people. We are powerless and passive in the face of traumatic evil.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* The above is from R.J. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, chapter 6, "The Principle of Authority," from the section on the Fifth Commandment, "Honor thy Father and Mother," which was understood for centuries to include tutors and educators.