INTRODUCTION
and Chapter I
(incorporating Christmas Message 1, 2008)
There is much to be said for the longer analytical presentations which face all the major issues, ramify as required for ideationally competent coverage and proceed ruthlessly to the end of the matter in hand.
Much of this kind has been written on this site already.
However, the Age of the Brief (which is a popular antidote to the Asininities of Vague Idealism and Anti-Idealism which populate the globe, as if rabbits were breeding instead of man): this has its point also. It is nice to be able in a few moments to come to the heart of a matter. These two sorts of approaches, the short and the long, are not competitors, when truth is the objective; but rather they are ancillaries, each to the other. IF you do not do the first, WHERE are your adequate if not exhaustive researches ? IF you do not do the second, where is your skill or even will for summary, insight, oversight, review, counting up and getting to the heart of the matter ? To be sure, you may sum up at the end of some of the longer analyses and expositions, but this does not of itself have the incisive thrust from impactive perspective which what is designed as brief may achieve.
While it might be argued that there is no point in presenting the heart of a lettuce is the diseased exhibit in hand does not have one, and further that man in general is a diseased exhibit, yet argument by analogy in this case is neither perceptive nor productive, though these are things which, given due grace, it may contribute in measure on occasion. Thus man is in fact not ONLY a diseased specimen, making himself a taunt for animals for his devilries, if they were able to present it, in comparison with their own abilities and agilities; he is also a species formed and forged, worked and contrived in the image of God.
Since God Is a spirit , this presentation of man as in the image of God has nothing whatsoever to do with geometry or visual art. It is a form of interpreting expression which makes a distinction between the programmatic, the necessitated, the partly endued, which can either not think at all, or think only in clouded partiality, on the one hand, and what on the other, has no limits in the perception of truth (provided that is made available), and can operate at that level, when acting according to Charter. Yes there is a Human Right and Wrong Charter already, not a “Human Rights Charter”, that ludicrous intrusion of philosophy and desire into the political realm, in preparation for the final disparagement of God and elevation of humanity to the point if something near to insanity.
But in what way then is this so ? one may ask. It is in this: any such humanly invented Rights charter is certainly not going to be founded on the Bible; and it is equally certainly going to tell what is made in God’s image, without God’s word, what it is and is not to do. M<an will hear a new voice, not that of his Maker, making its sallies and thrusts, coercions and thrusts, amusingly under the heading of ‘rights’! as it baffles truth and intrudes on privacy, directs individuals like leaves in a verbal storm, and apportions to man the will of … someone, some group, some vague idealism, vicious or not, and this clearly so or more disguised.
This is the simple substitution of man for God, so that his imperial instincts and pathetic paranoid tendencies, often not far from his separation pathology, in wilful separation from God, can be indulged.
In fact, man has a right and wrong charter, leaving out the ‘s’. What God says is right, and what ignores or disobeys it is wrong. This has the advantage that someone who knows what HE is talking about is talking to what can hear Him, as a product, in personal format, in His image, is CITING the case.
What then IS wrong ? THIS is wrong :NOT to love your neighbour as yourself, NOT to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and THIS is right : to make peace with God on His terms, by reconciliation based on Christ’s atonement on the Cross, and not to stand aloof or arrogantly self-possessed, nationally or individually, but rather to walk in the Spirit, in close co-ordination with the Redeemer and His completed work and word, namely, the resurrected Jesus Christ, pending His return. These are basic considerations, concerns yes, and commandments.
It might be said that this cannot be legislated. Yes it can; but this is not the time to do it since when Christ returns, it WILL BE in force and until then, this world lies in its leader, as Christ declared (John 14:30), whose verbal antics cannot disguise his actions or his heart. Until then, Christ’s return as King and Ruler, mankind is in a test and probation period in which this race is under review, nationally, personally and socially, yes and academically and philosophically, religiously and morally.
We do not need either a bill of rights, to allow judges to ‘interpret’ vaguely formulated ideas and ideals (this, because logically not rightly founded, in order to stand valid) at their whim or by their wits and preferences, or for that matter a charter of rights. That would allow them to coerce Parliament into making laws that appeal to their sense of this and that, phrased suitably for incoherent thought, based on nothing. That is the very nature of morals without absolute right, found only in God (cf. News 19). That is what is sure to come (cf. Revelation 13).
It may come chiefly because of frustration with immoral pirates, intifada-ites, jihadists, including the Almighty in their desires, such an invasion of leeches that SOME power is felt needed and SOME guidance for it, so that man takes the reins and rules by his thoughts, ignoring God, and so becoming a quasi-divine and utterly ridiculous imposture. It could no less be activated, such a deposit of power by the human race, by irritation, ambition, duplicity, deception and charm, hollow talk of those seeking to seize power, baffled idealists who, unable to find logic to aid their impositions, use politics for the purpose. There are many grounds for it, all evil; but they can come readily, and the result will assured come.
It will have words. Those who fabricate will need a Bill or Charter or something that sounds if possible better, for the purpose; and though many will not at first realise it, even those who act, this is the result of arrogance against God.
Any such Charter or Bill or Throne Announcement, or Republic of the Earth Act may be clouded in some way useful for obscurantists and the blind, with even some reference to something that sounds rather like or savours just a little of God. This however would only increase the imposition and the arrogance of the concept, since this would mean a misuse of the revealed and right-wrong clarity of God’s word in the Bible, with some kind of saccharine or even tartaric substitute.
We are, you may recall, talking about such topics as diseased lettuces without heart, and a diseased race which is not so very like the lettuce case BECAUSE being made in the image of God spiritually, and not geometrically, is not really like a lettuce. Man, in the image of God, is the recipient of a spirit, from that Spirit who is over all, and Himself has no geometry because not limited to space and time. These ? they are a creation of God, with their own limits and imposed, imparted nature. Man, then, he is far deeper than any lettuce, but nonetheless, he has a heart of his own kind.
Deeper ? In what then ? It is in this, that EVEN THOUGH the heart is diseased (Ephesians 4:17-19, 2:1-12), it is not defunct. It may be called ‘dead’ (and in effect is so treated as in Ephesians), but so might a son be so called, who never writing from a distant war, by choice, is cleft from the paternal companionship by a gulf that might as well be that of a billion miles. Thus man still HAS a heart, whatever its condition, and into this conscience may tune in to what is far beyond his limited self: and this, despite massive static, and weird distortions in his own mind and will, his own concepts of right and wrong.
Can we find notable examples of this ? One ? there are many, for they proliferate like bacteria.
Such examples are found when ‘it’ directs
Hitler to kill to make the ‘perfect’ race;
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or the Pope to kill to make the ‘perfect’ church, as
multitudinously done in the Inquisition; |
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or bin Laden to kill, to make the
perfect Allah-reflector, |
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or Japan to seek a mission to destroy a fleet of a nation
not at war with it; |
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or various European nations to make the ‘perfect’ Empires
or extensions, |
Yes, conscience, however misled, harassed or deluded, is still there, and the image of God, however distorted or inverted, is still there, and the recipience for divine command is still possible, given suitable divine action; and the relevance of repentance still persists, while the opportunity of making peace with God by HIS prescription, this is not at all removed (Revelation 14:3).
Thus there IS a heart for man, and there IS a truth for man and there is thus a heart of the matter for questions that arise; and there is thus room for the other option, the brief one, in making a short coverage that brings out the pith or point of some issue, provided a sound, and hence biblical perspective is taken. The truth enables a heart of a matter, and the Creator has given man a heart that he might savour it.
One might say that a Preface is a funny place in which to talk of such things; but since this book unlike those preceding it in this theological and biblical SET of 154 books, this being the 155th., Lord willing, it is DESIGNED to be one of short treatments. It needs a Preface to show why this is thought suitable, and to alert people to its point AS a book!
With such an intention, this book will frequently work FROM the Bible as basis (its logical necessity as the only authorised, written word of God to man having been established so very often in earlier volumes), to the heart of a matter, thus exposing its elegance and depth, and providing its help and point; but this will not needfully always be so, and less specialised apologetic methods may be added from time to time.
Pleasant reading, and good feeding, and may the Lord’s name be praised. Why ? because it would be a disgrace to fail to offer praise to what is praiseworthy, or to hide it from what deserves it, as if a prominent athlete for 50 years left all competition completely incapable of meaningful contest, because of his excellence, and was never acknowledged.
GOD has left this creation both with its blessing and because of applicability, its correlative curse, with such a record of truth and mercy for several millennia, in the Bible and its early records and relevant inputs; and not satisfied with that, He has presented the Gospel of peace which incidentally can receive a fresh focus for many in this Christmas season, something suitable for any, sufficient for all, covering those who receive it.
THAT is just a first instalment of why He is worthy of praise; and so I praise Him. One hopes many readers will do so too. You can praise Bach and Handel with good reason; you can praise God with infinitely more.