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DEITY AND DESIGN,
DESIGNATION AND DESTINY
Published by
World Wide Web Witness Inc.
August-October 2007
©
ISBN 978-0-9804100-1-3
INTRODUCTION
This work is partly composite and partly composition, being a work in which many earlier foci are brought together, listed in sections, with the total theme given sometimes large, sometimes smaller introduction. Earlier areas are developed further, or collated in organised segments, new and sometimes large presentations head sections and the glory of God in His works is displayed on all sides.
Design is shown to be endemic in man and the universe, with the pock-marks of curse for sin, by no means incidental, but fundamental in significance, as with any misused design. Here however, in the case of the life of man, there is an inter-personal episode and outcome, which affects not merely the man himself, and the race, but the environment where his life is lived, and his death continues its condign affront to those who do not know God.
Confrontation always meets this affront, which starting with man, ricochets back to him, in terms of his very design, with conscience and consciousness, guilt and guile, grandeur and splendour, love and hatred, lust and charity, genius and obtuseness, thrust and dynamic, invasion and perversion, all having a place so tangled where truth is avoided, that the self-contradictory concept of a chaotic universe is employed, or deployed by some, only in its sheer irrationality, to be the very base from which the precise opposite may be demonstrated.
Pre-occupation with particles, in this context, is as useful as pre-occupation with one's seat-belt, when driving through a herd of cattle. It is ultimately the personal which is peremptory for man, since person he is, equipped with spirit which fires and misfires, seeks God and seeks autonomy, and flies about like a witless vulture, wondering what to assault, or a twittering canary, potentially beautiful, but ineffective in the hot gases of a wounded earth. It needs its place, near to the heart of God.
The demonstration of the sole validity, certain verification and vital and vitalising force of the Gospel of the grace of God and the final account from Him of man's fall, fault and features, his foci of mind, spirit and body, as appearing in the Bible as the written word of God, that of all writings, the one solely authorised by the Lord for mankind: this remains in every field and feature throughout the approximate 2.7 million word work.
The designations from the Lord to man -
relating
to the design of mankind on the one hand, and
to the spirit of man on the other:
that volatility
which sweeps its sight from high to low,
and shames or stuns with its hopes, blindnesses and awakenings -
whether He makes these
in the authoritative, operative principles of the Bible, or in the applied
events of history,
whether in the sufferings of the martyrs or the aggressions of the persecutors,
seen in the setting
of the constant, passionate divine appeal with the Gospel,
in His knowledge, acumen and assiduity
in the eternal context of His revealed scriptural word and His saving works:
these shape destiny.
So do we find in this work.
True to His revelation, assigned as His word has required, His is a peace past all understanding; but His principles are readily understood. These are and remain as He has guaranteed and granted them in the Bible. He is not of two minds; His word stands and is fulfilled, more certainly than any merely physical law. Those, they relate to the stage: but this to the Director.
His word stands, as the word of God alone can, and alone does. Addition to it, as we see, annuls its simplicity and magnificent resolving power, but also moves as disastrously towards ruin as does subtraction: and in this, science is merely an illustration. Meddling with the facts of His creation or of His word is like taking water from atomic power plants: there is a melt-down, but the word of God is not changed, only those who seek to change it (cf. Revelation 22), just as the laws of His creation do not move, only the minds of those who with a sophisticated blindness, ignore them.
As to the destiny for each of mankind, already known to the Lord, it is found out by man; and repulsion from the divine remedy is as effective a way of mutilating design as may be found anywhere.
In that mutilation, there is philosophy of speech, antinomy of thought and specious results, as of one who insists on having influenza, and cannot see because he will not move to the remedy. Such in major fields without variation of reality, do we find.
See in
parallel, Questions and Answers
2,
and in series, Christ, the Wisdom and the Power of God
Ch. 7
with Calibrating Myths, Machining Dreams and Keeping Faith
Epilogue and
It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls Ch. 9.
The wit of misled man is wiry in its twisting, weary in its procrastinations, with metal fatigue its criterion, boasting its pomp with disaster its inheritance. This is not because it lacks a certain splendour, but because it is both too much aware of it and has too little understanding of it. Such is the trend for man, similar was his ruinous beginning, and such his startling demise from the desiderata of dwelling with deity, which leads currently, as it has led, to his pompous predilection. Is this all men ? Of course not, for some love the Lord, who gives them their being; but it is the dynamic that tends more and more to run the nations, appeal to the cognoscenti and arrest the popular mind.
This wit of man ? What of it ? It is not the spawn of nothing. Nothing did not make it, in stages or absolutely, because as to nothing, by definition, it is not there. To envisage such a commencement is the same as saying this: I don't know anything about it, or anything else. In that case, there is no point in saying it, except as some form of communication of pathology.
It is not, in particular, the spawn of a magically enterprising something from nowhere, called matter, with its order and laws, precision engineering and rational ways accommodating to the rational intellection of man. Magic is fun, for children.
Dimensions do not grow, like trees from seed in the ground. The dimensions of life, in mind,
and will, where is their seed ? They require support, basis and ground. So does argument for that matter. Ignore it and be silent. Groundless grounds are nothing.
Man's sightless wit, profitless autonomy and propensity for programming seeks to make the validity of his wit the result of nothing, or one of its derivatives which cannot exist. Such specifications ? they do not swarm or spawn from nothing, or what lacks the requisites of the case. Such implicit assumptions, acknowledged or other, are rationally degraded and operationally founded on nothing and while aetiologically vapid, imply what they deny. What then of this spectre of man's making, this self-made world ?
It is therefore of no validity.
Design is the pre-condition of man's meaning, method and validity. Ignore it, and you have the impossible yawing in its course and jawing in its follies, ingloriously ignorant of its baselessness, and baseness. Only when absolute truth is there and available can any model have validity in declaring it. Relative truth is merely reactionary and responsive, empirically of interest, ultimately without explanation or reason, perspective or basis. It is subjective by definition: it CANNOT get beyond itself. In terms of our definitions in TMR Ch. 5, it is subjectively subjective..
Design is that of which man is a fascinating example. However he is far more than this. He is designed and designated not to move furniture, or earth or moons, though he may be able, in some cases, to do this sort of thing. He is designed to understand design, and to do this he needs to understand deity and to accept Deity's designation of himself as a site for spirit, and a location for enterprise, a partition not of a particle, but operative as a person, each man functional in principle for understanding and an aspirant for wisdom. This is impossible without reference to his source, which being unique, requires a unique entry.
This is not available to flesh, as babies, or youths or mature persons do not enter into this, as is very possible to observe, by any sort of tertiary growth pattern. It is not programmed as are many of man's growth methods and results, gloriously apportioned in their continuity of maturation, geometrically, muscularly, skeletally, physiologically, mentally. It is something extra. It is part of the glory of man (not a glorious glory, aspirant for vainglory, but in the sense of his main attractive feature) that he is able to be a dolt, or discourse with deity. He is not programmed for this, but it is a perquisite for which he is prepared. It is a personal provision. That is why in Proverbs 1, you see deity in the form of wisdom speaking, appealing to man to do what he decidedly does not HAVE to do, and in Proverbs 8 telling man that "all that hate me love death."
It is true. If you ignore the absolute which made your relativities, you are caught in the meaningless, by abstraction of an artificial kind from your ostensible meaning's master, defiled in the defunct misconceptions of pride, callow ignorance or both, and become an absolute inheritor of a heritage of exclusion. You aspire to the tip.
What else is the destiny of designs that do not work the way they are meant to do ? If you are a fan, then your efforts to dig graves will do nothing to validate your existence or as fan, make you worth while. This is not your task, your milieu, or your wit. It is mere obtrusive obstructionism, laced with folly and perhaps authored in pride. It does not work or fit. If you were a fan by design, it is better to whirr than to work in the ground: to be back as you were.
Some may say, But I would rather CHOOSE what I am for than be what someone else, anyone else may deem it fitting for me to be or do. This is the rage of outrage being outrageous. In fact, if you are made to be something, rebellion against it may be fitting when it is the folly of some al Qaeda, Communist or Nazi predator*1, for it is a mere theft of your liberty: though wisdom would prefer reason before mere rage, and then act, with spiritual understanding of the nature of the trap.
However if it against your Designer that you rage, how are you a captive, that you should aspire to escape ? Did he take a freedom from you which you had before you existed ? and if so, how could you be deprived before you were in existence in order to suffer it ? Think.
If you were to say, I do not happen to like being made into a responsive and responsible being, and wish to register my protest, is this mere metaphysics ? Do you wish to state that you had ontological authority NOT to be made into anything ? But how could you HAVE this or anything else before you had ANYTHING, owing to the circumstance that before being created you were not there at all in order to have it!
Again, someone may say, However I have NOW been created, and do not like what I see.
Does this then mean that no one else may feel the same about you ? In other words, what makes you autonomous to be as god, declaring what you MIGHT have been and are WILLING to be, when you are already are and had nothing to do with it!
If however you were to say, Well I have been apportioned with my creation, a sense of justice, and judgment, and I judge it unfair to be made only to serve my Creator. I have other aspirations of a more subjective kind.
But who made your psyche to have the power to aspire ?
If you say, He did, but I aspire to
something other than He; then the answer is this.
By all means, you are indeed
as you evidently realise, free to kick at the goads, to ignore what you are and
to envisage yourself as something other, some kind of god with power to declare
and even create something else for what you are, in order that you might be it. However, there is a down side
to this imaginative splendour which you operate with such facility, as was given
it in the liberties with which you were brilliantly endowed at creation. How is this so ? It is like this.
In that case, since you ARE what you are, and do not start with the advantage of being what you choose to become, you have to consider the price of this estimable alteration. SINCE you are a creature of God, there are limits, designed limits, designated powers and destined results. If you were a car, an endeavour to act as a forklift would have results. If you had will, you could try, but what you could not do is BECOME what you are not.
If you have the power to alter, it would be limited by the nature and nurture, the construction and conditions of your being as given.
If you try to alter being able to imagine, construe, consider, aspire, and decline to seek your Creator where He may be found, operative on the assumption that you have access to truth as becomes plausible only as a creation of the Absolute God who has it, so that you may urge your case, what then ? If, in fact, you therefore decide NOT to use these logical powers and spiritual resources, or to abuse them into making them seem to do what they are not made able to do, then of course you are dealing with your destiny. Life forms like grubs may turn into something else as programmed. That is the power of the Designer; but if, given the capacity, a grub tries to turn into a stick, it may succeed only too well, and die. If a man acts as a god to re-create himself, despising the conditions of his being and the liberties of his spirit by defiling their source, destiny is indeed in his negative hand; but it achieves mere ruin. His power so to act is the resultant of liberty, itself a necessity for love; but this use of it does not liberate, merely making deformation amid an implicit defamation of deity.
Designs delusively ditched do not escape the ditch. Abstractions of thought enabled by deity, as a gift, do not create the power effectively to follow them. You have the power to throw yourself at them, but not to make yourself capable of dealing with the results. You are a limited being. To be able to dictate creation, you need to have that ultimate, unhindered power of composition which allows for this, so that you succeed in such efforts. Lacking this, you become what is called biblically a fool. This is either because you say there is no God (Psalm 53), despite the abundant facts and logic to the contrary (cf. Romans 1:17ff.), or say, What if there is! I will overcome His creative efforts, and visit Him with my wrath/power, inventive recastings/rebellion.
Yes, it is part of your amazing liberties that you may try to do this; but it is another part of them that you cannot succeed, except in the tiff, the tilt, the disagreeable spiritual effort, the rancour and the spite, the airy-fairy self-delusion and the ditching that follows. It can take a time. Aircraft stunts that outrun the design, these may take less time, for a parallel result for the pilot.
God is not impatient. He did not create liberty in order to abort it. Making man in His own image (that is able to have communicative and spiritual communion with Him and so to realise the splendour of the Maker of yourself as made, and the meaning of being a friend of God), God has thus enabled man NOT to love, NOT to seek Him and NOT to follow Him.
This is an option granted. Love always provides for such an option, since it is not the same as programmatic preference, the summary institution of the will of the maker into the will of the made, to create an illusion of begetting. Love is a reciprocity affair, from the heart, and not a duress, or a merely empowered thing, though its results are known to God and its meaning by His own mode in integrity and truth. God however has not distorted reality as if to make man into deity. NOT being God is one thing, and it has limits; being able to reject Him is another: yet BEING God is another again, and of this power, man has none.
When then we pass beyond the ontological effusions and profusions and misconstructions and feelings teeming in the place of actual thought, we come to the real question. WHY and WHY NOT serve God!
One may say, I do not choose to serve ANYTHING unless it is my unfettered choice, for this is a homage to my greatness: but then on what grounds ? Is it mere pride and ostentation of spirit, ignoring what you are because of unfounded dreams, and proud ingratitude ?
It is better to consider WHY one should or should not serve one's Maker. One's design allows for the use of one's mental powers to conceive amid one's spiritual powers to rove, imagine and look at what is not, as if it were, in order to see what one will do, whatever may be the result. There is no sin, per se, in pondering. It is not rebellion to consider. The spirit of man can use his endowed equipment to ponder and seek understanding.
It is with what kind and condition of spirit one considers, with what reason or rampaging, that matters.
Is one lacking in brain ? If not, why complain, for in the beginning, as one was being formed, nothing worked at all, until the day of decisive design made what was not, to become what is.
Is one lacking in courage or capacity ? If so, why not be encouraged. Why be weak ? Is this some kind of demonstration ? If so, of what then ?
Is there limit to one's strength ? This brings us to the pith of the matter. If you are limited and refuse to acknowledge it, either in mind or conduct, it makes no difference, for it is all one in the end, rebellion: then what is this but pride! You forbear to be what you are because you lust for some superior destiny, or rather what is imagined to be such.
What however are the options in all this ? Is one able to become God ? Of course not, for He made time with its limitations, along with the other limitations which you personally have, so being behind both the time-space medium and you as mediating within it. You began IN time. You can only lie about that. You cannot be God, make time or remove it, make the processive, or end it.
Would you like to share the reins with God, as was implied in the devil's suggestion to Eve ? You would like to become "one of us", and to be 'up there', in the actual management of the universe ?
How would you manage, since you know so little!
But let us take a possible case: You think you understand everything perhaps ?
But how could you,
since you abstract from the only source of this, even rebel!
What then is it that you seek competitively above all your brethren, to make yourself some kind of king ? Where such primary potencies are concerned, how many agents can you have!
If YOU elect for this, what if others do not, however ? You yourself, in such an imaginary case, are demanding what you do not give to others, even if you could. SO you say:
Very well, I will moderate my demands. I and my brethren, we all as one race will insist to God that we share the rule. We will not perhaps be too demanding, merely requiring this, that anything short ontologically of actually being God, since we are willing to be rational, we accept; but we MUST share the rule, be consulted in all things and have at least equal input with the One who made us.
The finite with the infinite, the time-limited, space-particularised will say to the Maker, Creator of wisdom and understanding, limits and laws, mind and its machinative powers, This will be yoked together! Bravo for daring, if for nothing else.
Beware for the results of such disparity. Will the tortoise co-direct the hare ? Worse, will the infant prodigy be parent with the wise ? Will the limited and delimited (but so very much in the imagination) aspire to a place it does not occupy ? It is not unusual in this world for all kinds of riff-raff (Nebuchadnezzar as in Daniel, had to learn his lesson here) to imagine that SOME power means ALL authority to do just what one pleases, as with the infamous and notorious Pol-Pot, Mao, Hitler, Stalin.
Various diseased and deceased theories*1 occupy their brains, addled with irrationality and in their pathological state, free of reason altogether, dreaming in decrepitude, unapprised of the fact, divorced from reality; and these, they kill millions, enslave with their saliva, as they spit out commands, and they lie in what ? in shame. Their end moves to what the Bible so tellingly depicts in Ezekiel 32:17ff.. It is not good to live in a dream (cf. Jeremiah 23:23-29, Jud3 8,11,14-15, Revelation 16:13ff,19:20, II Thessalonians 2:9-10).
They were mere mentors of the unreal, requiring what is not to be, until it was not, like themselves, now defunct in their disuse. They distorted reality, their fellow men, the truth, dreamed helpless dreams and twisted actuality as millions suffered from their virtually autistic, and certainly autonomous whims. Autonomous corpses ? the deception is as simple as that of autonomous babes. Man stands by falling down before God, not by flapping the wings of wonder as if to dazzle truth with their imposing flippancies.
What did they seek ? to reign without limit, in their little world of ideas. What did they become, except designees for a destiny where the truth of judgment hits like one of their own blows. Where, moreover, not force but deviousness is the method, the presumption is no less, certainly no less; it is only then, that the guile is more! So the deadly dynamisms of deceit and delusion, deviousness as required and the seductive glories of gifts misapplied, they continue while their victims attest the magnitude of their follies, and their ends the beginning of their judgment. Ezekiel 32:17ff. gives a solemnified depiction of such 'greats' in nation or king, in lugubrious ruin, inglorious because vainglorious, lying in non-state, departed but not desired, lives on show as a non-beatitude of death, ranks of fallen, corrupted doubly, yes trebly, in mind, body and spirit. In those halls of non-splendour, they are but symbols of the stricken, brought to their deathly life.
By such leaders, by such nations, many witless have been led.
The human race, suitably hypnotised, or thrilled with fear, or admiration, or a combination, is in large measure foretold in the Bible, to do very much an 'Eve', desiring to be 'up there', and in the process seeing no way but to displace God, to be set on that program. You see it via a representative in this manner, near the end of the Age, in II Thessalonians 2. This is given a dramatic setting in the Bible-based book, The Moon Soon! In its sequel issues are weighed.
What then ? You do not have to SAY so, if choosing the devious, you only DO so in the actuality, as you seek to implement your dream socialist, communistic, imperialistic, Islamic, Romanist*2 rule, hegemony, power over or propulsion of man, whether in specious spiritual gropings, lordly self-adulation or New Age hypnoses: whatever part of whole of such things holds you. You simply do so as you act or aid those who do. (Cf. SMR Chs. 1,10.)
Since however you lack, you do not succeed.
If only for a time, the disciple of the devil, that ultimate author of such ideas of infamy, because irrationally proud, may savour the results of
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killing what does not agree, |
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maiming what resists, |
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eliminating (as far as can be seen with the physical eye) what opposes and |
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ruling with the rashness of surrealism, |
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seducing minds with survival objectives which ignore the point of surviving (cf. What is Life for ?), |
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so becoming vapid in face and futile in force: |
till the drug of power wearing off, and the narcotic of pride facing cold winds, he moves like a Macbeth to his just end.
Is it worth it ? Anything for a thrill ? But then, in the area and indeed arena of thrills, the high point of subjectivistic glory - and man who ignores God tends to seek his own glory, or that of his group, party, ideology or aspiration - is mere illusion. It is not real. It cannot win. Devoid of truth both in process and in principle, it merely bears witness to the ways of what Paul calls "the lie" (II Thessalonians 2:11). That is the alternative to finding, minding and becoming an invited accessory, witness to and citizen of truth, where it may be found, by that unique way to the unique God who has given man his derivative power to resist, to love and to lord it over his fellows, if he will and can; for a time. It is no laudable, such lordship of blatancy.
Yet you perhaps will say, with Milton's Satan: Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
Why ?
It is because, someone may say, that I have a proud spirit and submit to none except I will it.
What about submitting at all ?
One may say, I WILL RULE! which being irrational in view of our design, is mere intoxication which, like all others, has a sad following morning.
Another may say, I will rule unless I find a better.
What about the factual ruler, who made you able to estimate such questions at all, your power and validity resting exclusively on Him ? *3
If you say, I just WILL not serve Him BECAUSE he made me unable to be actual, true to design, unless I do, and I consider this impudence, impertinence, imposition (your choice, one or all): then this is mere pride. Being unwilling to serve WHOEVER for WHATEVER simply means that though created one thing, you refuse to be it. Being NOT GOD, you want to be God.
Not so, you may rejoin: I simply refuse to ACKNOWLEDGE Him as God, unless I feel like it.
In that case, however, BEING created by God, whether you feel like it or not, to fail to acknowledge the source and only validity of your being is like refusing as a car, to acknowledge your manufacturer. In this case, however, He also manufactured your reason. You cannot be right in defiance of that.
Is it reasonable, you may rejoin, for me to be given only two options, either to serve Him or be a rebel against rationality and actuality ?
Yes, one would reply, certainly it is. If you are made a pen, is it unreasonable to write ? You were not in that case made a god, but a pen. The other option is to be a useless encumbrance, hit on its point to make it flow, and then tossed understandably into the bin.
To serve God certainly requires an attitude of spirit: it is one which faces reality and considers what the GOOD of itself may be. If you are good for nothing else, why then to serve is only rational, unless there is some better way, and you are wiser than God.
It is pure exploitation, you may continue: I did not agree to being created.
But how COULD you ? since before you are there, there is nothing with which to choose. You can only choose AFTER you are created. There is no other option.
Very well, you may reply, then I am NOW responding. I want to RULE, not serve.
But with what superior wisdom to that of the One who gave you wisdom, with what better insight than that of the One who gave you insight, will you rule, so displacing for yourself and many others caught in the various consequences of your act, the God of truth ? It is not that you REALLY displace Him, but in your own soul you turn out the light, and in that sense, do so, making a psychic displacement. He remains as does His rule.
If you say, It does not matter, I will it! : then you are irrational, like some madman, and the results accrue.
Serve, you say, SERVE! I WILL not serve.
Then you serve for nothing and this is unserviceable for anything, so what is your due result then ?
If I DO serve, I want to serve what is better than I.
This then brings you at once to God. Case solved.
I want to do it freely.
No one is forcing you to God: His predestination is scripturally (Romans 8) based on foreknowledge, and though this is not (Romans 9:11-16, Ephesians 2) based on your works, it does incorporate what God has made you for, so that He would like you to be reconciled to Him, though He is most frequently lamenting those who refuse (Colossians 1, Luke 19:42ff.). The Christ who lamented those who CLOSED their eyes did not take a stick and force them open.
Then I want, you may continue, to do it after due reflection.
Why not ? You are designed to be able to reflect.
Why then SHOULD I serve someone who just happens to be what I am not, namely GOD, the GOD of creation. Go on, tell me, why!
It is because first of all, that is part of your design, You can abort it, but not thwart it. If you refuse, you are designed to be able to do so, but not to escape making yourself a futile piece of proud if not arrogant uselessness.
That design, did He not make it ?
Surely He did, and you have the option not aptly to use it in order to be ungrateful for being made, thankless for the option power to reject Him, and many other things as well, to choose expansively in many things and to become what in some measure results from such choices.
I do not see why, you may pursue your idea, why I should CHOOSE what I may not want.
Why not, then, consider what you want. What is it ?
I want to be treated fairly.
Good, then go to hell.
What do you mean by that ?
Since you are NOT now serving God, and are considering merely various means of escaping the fact of your design, and so aborting it, you are due for the judgment those who design give to what is a failure in design, to be treated as trash. Hell is the trash outfit.
Is it fair then ?
Yes, because if God had made you to exploit you as cheap labour, for example, you might appeal to HIS biblical principles of fairness and equity, and ask Him to keep them. Yet where is your evidence that the Maker of all things, who lacks nothing, is going to use you to get what He already has!
What if He wants the pleasure of seeing me squirm beside His sovereign power ?
Impossible. If God were in need of psychological help from His creation, then He would be part of a system which did not allocate to Him the satiety and sufficiency of psyche to do without and He would be a participant in someone else's creation. You must never make up a model contrary to God in order to criticise Him. We are looking for reasons, so then keep to them.
Well, what if I prefer a more emotional relationship - if I am made for that ?
Then it is yours as a servant of God.
How ?
Are you perhaps unaware that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son ...
I know, I know, I am satisfied from SMR that this biblical statement is so, but what if HE has this sort of feeling, why do I have to have something to respond ? Granted for God to give is natural, since He needs nothing psychological, logical, material or spiritual, and confers: that is for Him. But what is for me!
You were talking of HAVING such feeling, and the question was how could it come into play, rather, I take it, than some cold as charity, pseudo-professional post and position.
That is so. For the first time, I am beginning to see your point.
If you respond to it, only then does it touch you, and do you move in such a realm in your own psyche, which after all has had a major place in our discussion: its rights, needs, preferred feeds and so on.
True.
If you do not, perhaps you REALLY DO prefer the cold professionalism which makes of you a charade in your feeling, a thing to be moved about ?
No, it is not that.
If you respond to the love of God, then your errors are cancelled.
How come ?
We did not finish John 3:16 - SO loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
That is good certainly, but what sort of everlasting life. I admit I like the everlasting part, but what of the thing that lasts ? What is it precisely ?
It is an harmonious relationship with your Creator, who NOT ONLY designed you, but DESIGNATED your psyche to engage in just such thoughts as those you now use, as an OPTION, so that should you prefer the darkness of the divine exit from your mind and heart (as far as this may be achieved), you merely gain a destiny which recognises this reality.
I can't say I think much of that destiny.
Who would ? It is based in irrationality, run by will, dynamised by delusion and propped up by pride.
What if I do not love Him, however ? For me, love is a subjective thing. I either have it or I do not.
Did you love your mother ?
Yes, but she did not dominate me.
Is it to dominate you to let you free to stay out of God's mercies and love ?
No ... No.
Why did you love your mother, was it purely a psychic splash from the unknown ?
Not entirely, no I suppose not. I loved her ... because she was wise, full of counsel, overlooked my madnesses, helped me to wisdom, pondered my future, led me gently, and sometimes rebuked me for being stupid ...
God is not less but more than this. He also KNOWS exactly with what He is dealing, and has the advantage of infinite wisdom.
You mean His desire is to do good to all, and to save those without dictation but with His own infinite knowledge, who do not prefer darkness, as He sees them before all time as in Ephesians 1:4...
Such knowledge all at once.
I do not argue in a vacuum.
Good for you.
I capitulate to Christ.
He capitulated for you, when He allowed Himself to be incarnated (His love drove Him as you see in Psalm 40), to be attacked, assaulted, insulted, driven, goaded, falsely accused, clouted, scarred and scarified, demeaned, and then bearing sin, to be forsaken in His psyche, as He felt the impact of sin's separating power from God, even for His OWN SON, His eternal word (as foretold in Psalm 22 and seen in 27:46 of Matthew's gospel).
Yes, it is rather ridiculous to talk of being conscripted, isn't it!
On the other hand, for my part, I am delighted that God took the reins, knowing all, and received me by His own power.
Yes, without that, I do not think my fallen will would ever have ceased being deluded.
It is unobtrusive repatriation of delusion to rationality, of rebellion to realism, and of divorced love without any place to put its frustrated tendrils, reaching for what it cannot find, like a grape vine with no posts, finding its proper embrace.
I'll buy that. But why do you talk of what is designated as well as designed ?
Design tends to suggest what is intrinsic and unalterable, or finished; designation allows for ANYTHING more amply.
Thus a spirit free to reject God is a designated power, and the word design, though possible, might tend to suggest otherwise. It is in the designated spiritual conditions that man looks towards destiny, though God has known it before time was (Ephesians 1:4), and secured it past all psychic sores and flurries.
What then ? Give glory to God, for He IS GOOD. That is what I ALWAYS find. As a Father He may strike hard when one is foolish, but for me, better hit by reminder than by disaster. It is good to love and serve God, for His heights know NO limit, His love no fluctuation and His standards are always perfection. Frankly, one reason why I cherish heaven is this: how heavenly to be conformed to Christ, having learned much about travail and polish, to BE equipped beyond the test confines, in the glory of His presence who, having given all to bring me back, continues like an eternal spring, to bring His pleasantness even in the consummation which continues.
Knowing God makes all other knowledge seem almost cheap; but then, when you DO know Him then you see all other knowledge in perspective, and the light for it, it is His.
RELEVANT DEFINITIONS
Basic Connotations
These of course are not comprehensive but brief outlines to enable consideration of their harmony and relationship. This is summary, analytical derivation being found elsewhere (see Indexes and esp. SMR Ch. 7).
SALVATION
This is the divine answer to the human need for harmony with deity in truth, wrought by the Creator's identification with man to the extent of becoming one of them, appearing as first-born among them. His inheritance in mankind is accorded not by mere dictate, but through that combination of mercy, wisdom and power and love, which scorning human accomplishment, grants His own on the Cross as basis, a reception, one granted to anyone, but operative only where He is received, the self-defining God, Creator and Redeemer. Here grace only is the avenue of entry to God for man, while human will is the cited barrier of exclusion in the foreknowledge of the predestining God (Ephesians 2:1-12, John 3:17-19).
DESIGN
This is correlative continuity of concept, implicit or explicit, with its detailed and integral outworking, entailing co-operative criteria of the cosmoi of thought, imagination, expression and impression.
DESIGNATION
This indicates the presence of command, constraint or engaging compulsion, whether directly or else by a correlation of arrested or impressed circumstances, with the object of the action. To design, designation relates as command/constraint to concept. Design capacitates; designation impels.
SPIRIT
This is the ultra-design capacity to use or abuse design, contemplate control of it and to seek to organise destiny at will, rather than find meaning, mastery and mercy in the will of God, in His validated, verified Book, the Bible, inscribing Christ Jesus as Way, Truth and Life for man. Spirit may elect to use design to oppose the purpose of design, but in that case, lacking power before God, it merely wrecks its designed establishment, and so inherits not beauty, but ashes (John 3:19, Isaiah 61:1-4).
DESTINY
This is the result of divine designation applied at last to the spiritually vitalised design (SVD) at the human or higher levels: that is, where spirit at the level of image of God is involved (Proverbs 1). Other created things can have it, but not in the specialised sense applicable to the field in view. Negatively, destiny at this level is the removal of the designation apt for the given SVD, the divine cause of this being its recalcitrance in the eyes and mind of God, to realise what it is, who has made it and what is required: for what in effect, it is created, failing despite love and appeal (Luke 19:41ff., Isaiah 48:16ff.). This negative destiny involves two layers of guilt, the first the ignorance of God, the second which may follow, the implicit or explicit refusal of His salvation.
DEITY
This is the rationally necessary, freely operative, eternal spiritual original of all Creation, designating design, curse, cure and blessing for man, beginning and end to the surrounding universe and delivering salvation freely as He did creation, the latter at His will, the former for it.
GRACE
Grace is the wholly undeserved action and atmosphere, involving gift or kindness or sweetness of nature, which may be shown to any person. What is pure grace has no relationship to attainment, accomplishment or merit on the part of the recipient. It is antithetical to work, whether of charm, product or charisma (Romans 5, 9, 10, Ephesians 2, John 1:1-14). It is not a reward for being good but a basis for receiving what is good, by redemption, and so being issued not only with the birth into God's family (I John 3:9, John 3), but the birth certificate (Ephesians 1:13), and not only this, but the testimony of truth to this effect (Romans 8:16).
ASSURANCE
This is the result of grace and the word of God and its promises, as in grace (Romans 8:16, I Timothy 1:9-10, I Thessalonians 5:9-10, John 10:9,27-28, Romans 8:29-30), in and through Jesus Christ the Lord and Saviour for man. It includes the divinely donated and dynamically imparted knowledge, such that you are aware of who your Father is, how utterly He loves and that He will keep you, till His heavenly kingdom (II Timothy 4:17-18, 1:9-12). Such knowledge has the double dimension of realisation of fact and impartation of friendship, so that the fact is an assignment of data, but the friendship is the basis in which it inheres.
FAITH
Faith in the realm of deity and man, is that entire persuasion, response to reality and conviction of it, by which a man may act in receiving the living God, by the means provided and the promises accruing (Hebrews 11:1). This involves not only doctrine, the underlying trust in the Creator-Redeemer, Bishop and Pastor of our Souls, Jesus Christ, but action, the outthrusting result not only of such an attitude, but of the link which it supplies by the Spirit of God, to God Himself, who having all power, is blocked by nothing.
REMEDY
Human will operative in man's spirit has soiled man himself and spoiled creation, so that firstly there is required for each person, immediate repentance leading to the gift of eternal life by grace, and secondly, there results that without this, there is eternal ruin. Remedy is conferred in salvation, foreknown apart from performance and predestined where it belongs. Like other seasons, it has its time limits. The beauty, like Spring, of the divine remedy is this, that if at any time any person by faith receives the gift of God by grace, in the ransom of Jesus Christ, and places his/her life in the redemption receptacle of His hands, who is Lord, whose word rules, who alike bore sin and broke it in bodily resurrection, then this simply fulfils what is both foreknown and predestined, since God WOULD HAVE all to be reconciled to Himself (Col. 1:19ff.). Then is there remedy applied; and realisation is granted of being children of God (Romans 8:16).
NOTES
See, in order of mention:
Divine Agenda Ch. 6, Highway to Hell (Koran citations in both, with ideational parallels in perspective, in the former; and in the latter, futile depravities in endless ideologies such as Sudan has shown so significantly, Islam ablaze without glory),
Lord ... Ch. 9 (popes, mullahs and commissars),Red Alert Ch. 13 (and the appalling prayer breakfast
in the USA),More Marvels ... Ch. 4
Tender Times for Timely Truth
Ch.
8;
The Grating Grandeur ... Ch.
2; SMR pp.
925ff.;
Beauty for Ashes
Ch.
6 (and Hong Kong, and the movement of nations in the last century a
concern),
with News
98, News
37.
Ancient Words, Modern Events Ch. 14;
Beyond he Crypt ... Ch. 1,
The True God has Go, has Growth and Gives Glory Ch. 4
See ...
Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 5 ,
Acme ... Ch. 9 , Great Execrations ... Ch. 3,
SMR pp. 1O88D - three major religions in some ways in concert, astray,
pp.
1032-1088D,
912ff..
The Frantic Millenium... Ch. 6
(News 101)
See for example:
Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny Section 3, *3, Section 8,
Licence for Liberty Ch. 2,
What is the Chaff to the Wheat Ch. 3, TMR Ch. 5,
It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls Ch. 9, esp. *1A,
The Bright Light and the Uncomprehending Darkness Ch. 7,
SECTIONS IN VIEW IN GENERAL
FOR THIS PURPOSE
Notice first that a given chapter may be relevant to more than one group below, and this being one of the ready advantages of electronic publication, we simply hyperlink this to the new group, giving virtually immediate access to it, as if it were in the new group direct. Thus what has relevance to more than one category is simply linked to each.
SECTION I
The Quaint Plaint Group
courtesy of
naturalism, unnaturalism
and anything other than revelatory supernaturalism
We have:
DIZZY DELINQUENCY FROM DUTIFUL DEALINGS WITH REALITY UNDIMINISHED
Dizzy Dashes, Heady Clashes and the Brilliant Harmony of
Inevitable Truth
6
(listing of critical failures in reductionist methodology and result, and
includes rank and file failure of naturalism, at every chief philosophic turn,
a mere outcast that casts out data to live it vagabond death),
Glory, Vainglory and Goodness
Ch. 1 - tracing elements of creation that are benchmarks in unison, and
in this being parallel to
TMR Ch.
1
;
History, Review and Overview Ch. 4, Ch. 5
Beauty of Holiness Ch. 4,
Dancers, Prancers, Lancers and Answers ... Ch. 5
Evidence and Reality, the Prince and the Proof ...
Ch. 5
Dig Deeper I (the result when you disestablish nothing),
The Folly of Making Nothing Functional Barbs, Arrows and Balms ... 29
Stepping Out for Christ 8, 9, 10
Defining Drama 10
Manifesto of Deity Ch. 9
Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch. 3, Appendix
SECTION 2
THE CRITERIA AND CONCEPTS OF CREATION GROUP
Modes, Models, Methods,
Machinations, Intimations and Concatenations;
Incarnation of the Creator in His creation, and image of God in His design
for man, in his physical, mental and spiritual conferments,
thus providing freely
the panoply of the plan of salvation
for the cover of those among mankind who receive Him
Requirements and Findings, Empty Bins for
Drastic Designs
Creative Criteria and Omitted Payloads
Dizzy Dashes, Heady Clashes and the Brilliant Harmony of
Inevitable Truth
6
(listing of critical failures in reductionist methodology and
result, and
includes rank and file failure of naturalism, at every chief philosophic turn,
a mere outcast that casts out data to live it vagabond death)
Dig Deeper 2 (unity of creation, history, past, present and future before God, and survey of design as scientifically required, with reference to the definition of design, on which also see Ch. 8 below)
Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch 1
(tracing elements of creation that are benchmarks in
unison)
Note that this GVG chapter
has been increased with new material
for our present purpose, so that it forms
an integral part of the section.
The list proceeds.
Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch. 3 Appendix (the exuberant vitality and discipline of creativity displayed in creation's masterpiece of precision, division and display)
Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 4,
The Glow of Predestinative Power Ch. 7
Wake Up World! ... Chs. 4-6
Modes of Learning and Deploying, Institution and Constitution Compared
Repent or Perish Ch. 7 (criteria and concepts of creation),
Defining Drama 2 (modes of learning and contribution to knowledge)
History, Review and Overview Ch. 4, Ch. 5
Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 4
Dancers, Prancers ...
3,
5
(includes
the devastating spread of coverage, required for any workable theory -
criteria of creativity),
The Wit and Wisdom of the Word of God 2,
Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 6
The Desire of the Nations 2,
Epilogue
Secular Myths and
Sacred Truth Ch.
8
(broad conceptual
coverage)
Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13
Swift Witness Ch. 6
Particularities,
Peculiarities of Non-Design Models and Empirical Odes to Impartiality in Perspective:
Creation is Incomparably Indicated
Resolutely Relatively Recent and Neither Distanced nor Divorced by Desire
The Divine Drama Ch. 3, Christ, the Cumulative and the Culmination Ch. 9,
Cascade of Truth, Torrent of Mercy Ch. 6,
Divine Agenda Ch. 1,
Christ, the Cumulative and the Culmination Ch 9,
Calibrating Myths, Machining Dreams and Keeping Faith. Ch. 1,
with TMR Ch. 7 E,
The Defining Drama Ch. 3,
Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 6.
TMR Chs. 1, 6, 7, and
SMR pp. 140ff..
Creative Design in History: Designs of Destiny
Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch. 3
News 1, Joyful Jottings 22-25
Answers to Questions Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 8
Red Heart, Dead Heart, and Pure Heart Ch. 6
Barbs, Arrows and Barbs 30
The Lord is the Light of My Life Ch. 3, Ch. 8, incl. *1
Cascade ... Ch. 12, pp.
155ff., The
Impregnable Tower Ch. 1 (cf. Chs.
6 and 9 below)
Cascade of Truth ... Ch.
4;
Dastardly Dynamics ... Ch.
10
News 87, Biblical Blessings Ch. 2, Regal Rays of Revelation Ch. 12.
SECTION 3
the Word of God and the Words, Will and Ways of Man
Imitating Irrelevant Systems, Using Words when Work is Needed
Downfall from Defamation
2
(the sad fad of the motherless child),
Gratitude for His Glorious Grace
4,
(includes 'mother nature'),
Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13
Man in Retrospect, in Prospect and in Bold Relief Ch. 2 and Ch. 3
Evidence and Reality ... Ch. 6 cf. Chs. 2-3, and 5,
The
Grating Grandeur and Aggrandisement of
man
and the Meekness of
the Majestic Messiah Ch. 3.
The Face of God, Illimitable, Unfunded, Definitive, Decisive Chs. 5, 10,
Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed:
Barrister of Bliss ... Ch. 4
(it is
all written, man himself is written, but not so chained that he cannot
compose, repose or rebel; and what God has written may be rather contradicted
than altered, defiled than made defunct, nor does it fail to answer all
questions and terminate all rational discussion in triumph at His own threshold, door to
His own home, while many in ineradicable irrationalities without Him, sputter, mutter and flutter ineffectually on),
The Wisdom and the Wit ... Ch. 2 (a survey including multiple annotations and presentations, definitions of design and its significance),
Jesus Christ for the People but Not for This World Ch. 6,
Dig Deeper, Higher Soar, Divine Glory Delights the More Ch. 2, (from myth to divine testimony in logical steps, from the divine to design, from design to designation and information with more on designating a definition for design),
The Majestic Might of the Merciful Messiah: Jesus Ch. 6. (The 'religion' of organic evolution, is not science. It is not even a mish-mash of religion and science. It is religion in contravention of science; whereas creation is religion as attested by logic, and verified IN science, by scientific method WITHOUT exception. As to design, it IS that integrated, correlated, purposively designable, functionally proficient combination of imagination, information, actualisation and continuation which bears an imprint of effort where the means for its autonomous arrival do not appear. We both exhibit and create it.)
Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Chs. 9, 13 (making chance king instead of the name of a non-intrusible* system).
(*This word, intrusible, needs creating, meaning: able to be intruded upon, the negative naturally signifying the state of not suffering intrusion.)
-ologies, olatries and oglings that are
so many
Self-Imposed Manacles for Man
SMR Ch. 4
(The combined equivocations
in sociolotry of its various species, paternalistic psychiatry in its ruses
and transcendental physics in its idle presumptions and ludicrous notions are
a rollicking farce that seeks to occupy the mansions of rationality with
strong minds and weak woes that deny their own assertions and deluge their
efforts with distractions that can never hide the truth, give seizure to the
Lord or evacuate Him from His place as Governor and God, Creator and President
of this universe.
Having seized Him once, only to abet His salvation plan, man in his rebellion
continues both the butt and purveyor of nebulous notions that play like
scrambling kids, among the facts, and falling rise again, to play more and
rougher games, the worse to be bruised and confused till judgment comes).
TMR Ch. 7 including this site (multiple sclerosis of the ideational tissues of logic, coherence and consistency in the arena of physics cf. Ch. 2 above as marked),
Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 9, incl. End-note 1 (esp. programmatic psychology and its ilk),
Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will Ch. 7, including *1 (the nature and integrity of love divorced from sensationalism and reductionism alike);
News 80 (evacuating morals is like sending
British kids to Rhodesia in WW II and then letting them fend for themselves)
cf. News19;
44
(morality and
politics, these two undisciplined but not indisciplinable disciplines, and the
lust for living that does not live),
Repent or Perish Ch. 7 Extension 1 (returning from vacation from rationality to find reality) ;
The True God has Go, Gives Growth and
Glory
Ch.
2
(avoiding the
fantasies of confusion and considering procreation and relationship without
the woes of pre-occupation).
See also SMR Index under Freud and
Jung;
News 51, 52 (practicalities or morality, love and duty in youth, missions and commerce),
News
52
(bogus,
blighting and well-based moralities in the powers-that-be
cf. Preliminary Canter *1),
in the powers that be),
News 166 (cloning, clowning and operative principles),
Lord of Life Ch. 5 (removing confusion: genes and Jesus),
SMR pp. 582ff. (seeing how the Lord works when He is taken at His word, in contrast to dysfunctional fallacies cf. SMR pp. 570ff., 611ff.),
Beauty of Holiness Ch. 2 (human psychiatrists fade but the love of beauty and the beauty of love are fade-free because founded in truth).
SECTION 4
The CONSCIENCE-CONSCIOUSNESS-FREEDOM GROUP
Glory, Vainglory and Goodness
1
(consciousness, phrases for phases of creation's aspects!);
Christ's
Ineffable Peace
1 (conscience).
With this, we have SMR pp. 349Bff., 582ff.,
Repent or Perish Ch. 7
(man as he is, not denuded by philosophic dope);
The Majestic Might of the Merciful
Messiah: Jesus Ch. 5,
It Bubbles, It Howls, Christ Calls
Ch. 9,
Little Things Ch. 5 , Beauty of Holiness
Ch. 1 (all providing heightened awareness within
the fields involved) and
Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch. 7 with its emphasis on freedom.
Next come:
Licence for Liberty, the volume: Here we are seeing man in his conscious competence in the realm of divine allotments, allocations and limitations as created and applied, with the juncture of jubilant opportunity and divine charter as the pre-condition of human life.
Christ
Incomparable Ch.
2 ( in this, there are strictures on structure in
man, and consideration is given to the realms and spheres of action in their
integrity, rather than as illicit appendages to lordly designs on the part of
ideational Hitlers, who want to crush meaninglessly, all into one
'nation' of reference),
Downfall from Defamation 1, 2 (this provides a background for relevant ruminations in this field).
What is the Chaff to the Wheat Chs. 3, 4 .
These two chapters apply to the issues of practical apologetics, and in particular therefore to the fields of the meaning and nature of beauty, freedom, morals, responsibility, guilt, law and love, folly and arbitrariness, good and evil, meaning and 'Nature', and many others that arise on this site and in the mind of man, and have done so for millenia. They also provide further references apposite.
SECTION 5
Mandates, Meaning and Methods,
Millenium and Glory
Defining Drama 2 (this last including the modes of learning and gaining knowledge, detailing modes of gaining knowledge, scientific method being one, when rightly applied: it should be read as a primary part of this sector);
What is the Wheat to the Chaff ? Ch. 5 (where learning is finished, with nowhere to begin, and the world lusts for its own ownership, the method of oblivion, which deserves it, but gets worse),
Dig Deeper 2
Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 1 - tracing elements of creation that are benchmarks in unison, and in this being parallel to TMR Ch. 1 ;
Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed: Barrister of Bliss Ch. 4;
Little Things Ch. 3
Overflight ... Ch. 3
Christ Incomparable, Lord Indomitable Ch. 2
The Wit and Wisdom of the Word of God Ch. 2
See Ch. 7, below
Dizzy Dashes, Heady Clashes and the Brilliant Harmony of
Inevitable Truth
6
Repent or Perish Ch. 7,
The Desire of the Nations 2, Epilogue
Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 10
Scientific Method, Satanic Method and the Model of Salvation
Sparkling Life ... Ch. 10
SECTION 6