W
W W W
World
Wide Web Witness
Inc. Home Page
Contents Page for this Volume
What is New
CHAPTER NINE
CHRIST OR CULTURE:
THIS WORLD OR ITS MAKER
CONQUEST BY CULTURE OR WORSHIP OF
GOD
A Natural Culture
There is, in this increasingly
whiz-bang world, a chaotic assemblage of ideas, some moving this way, others
that, that might be called, 'culture'.
Some seem to worship it. What then
IS worship ? It is the direction of the uttermost of human regard to something
which is not man at least as such*1,
in order to achieve understanding, remit authority where it belongs and accept
wondering acknowledgement. More strictly, of course, in the realm of biblical
truth, it is the adoration, love, acknowledgement, delight in and fear of God,
flanked by faith, filled with desire for His will and settled in the salvation
of Jesus Christ, the eternal Word of God.
However, in this world, the norm is
to ignore God and worship something else. In a way, it is rather like naughty
children who love sweets and muck, and indulge in it despite the fattening of
flesh, so common in Australia, and the associated problems to the body which
then increasingly threaten. Thus in a figure, fatness, obesity, this is the
spiritual problem which brings on spiritual heart disease and increasing
liability to a whole range of diseases of the soul, of the life, of that heart
which beats not by pumping, but by perception and power, that of life.
Where, then, that is the object
worshipped, instead of the Ultimate Subject; and when some of a variety of
created things have obeisance, then you have a vast influx into human culture.
It begins to be worshipped at times,
in its own right, and such is the present time in increasing measure. Thus, if
the Australian aborigines once did this and that in this land where they
occupied a part at one stage, with little opposition, then that becomes their
culture and becomes SACRED!
They must, according to this concept
of worship, have various lands, more and more, given to them as a right,
because their worship is conceived to entitle them to it. Some ground is sacred.
It matters not at all if they do not productively use it, but rather sell this
and that mineral or other privilege thus gained; and while it is by some deemed
unfortunate that often such funds may be used to sustain a wholly artificial
culture, in which what they say and do becomes harder and harder to regard as
worshipful, for example vast realms of immoral misuse of children in sex, as
multiplying testimony attests: then still, it is their culture.
As such, by a wave of the verbal
wand, It must be respected. It matters not at all if some of the leaders are
found to be involved in such immoral activities as stagger the nation (and not
of course from this source alone is that the case), for the sacred is special,
and they must be led and taught, if by any means they may happen to find
something a little different culturally acceptable. In fact of course,
aborigines like many races, have a testimony to creation and the tragedy is
this, that misled paternalism acts as if to make children of them, whose minds
when free from drugs and drink, need education and labour, application and
expectation, not glorification of culture, which after all, is now this and now
that.
Concerning
this fact, however, of creation accounts in the aboriginal field in Australia,
the following excerpt from TMR Ch. 8 is informative, as it concerns direct
aboriginal testimony, supplemented by a news report from NSW in the earlier days
of its settlement, on this topic.
Two Premiers have been
challenged, the current one by several Church leaders, including the aboriginal
President of an Australia-wide denomination. Like the writer, that Pastor had no
desire for Western dream-time injections into young aboriginal people, in the
form of the metaphysical abstraction of organic evolution.
Interestingly, he provided
a fascinating document from the history of New South Wales, in which appeared a published
account of extensive observations on the beliefs of aborigines at that time
(last century) as recorded by eyewitnesses. Much of it involved a clear belief
in creation in the rather early days
*1
of N.S.W.
settlement.
*1
- The article is reproduced from The Sydney
Morning Herald, Saturday, November 4, 1882. It reported on the monthly
meeting of the Royal Society of New South Wales. A paper was read
entitled, "NOTES ON THE ABORIGINES OF NEW HOLLAND". It dealt with the
period from 1844 of which the speaker reported this:
-
"I had the
privilege of taking some interesting notes from the blacks of this colony
on the subject of their religious belief. These notes were necessarily and
mainly taken from the most intelligent of those natives... No missionaries
ever come to the southern district at any time, and it was not until many
years later that the missionaries landed in Sydney on their way to
Moreston Bay..."
-
Later in his paper, Mr
Manning, the speaker, refers to a note in an aboriginal grammar, sent back
to England by Archdeacon Gunther. It recorded the missionary's certainty that
the aborigines could not have derived the beliefs he noted during his
work, from white men, as they had had no communication with them. The
beliefs in question included the concept of creation in that they referred
to a Being who "made all things", in
whom was the outcome of life. He made at the first and would judge at the
last.
- The point for us is simply this: that this very
early report merely confirms other testimony printed more recently to the
same effect. There has repeatedly been attested at least a notable belief
among many aborigines, in the Creator.
- It is therefore not without reason that distaste
at the racial or cultural level may enter into the minds of some
aborigines, when they are abused with the Circular's prejudices, imposed
so cavalierly, a Western dream-time. (See
Index, SMR.)
- This counter-culture
contemporary secular
missionary effort is not at all voluntary in this: that the
alternative in education is far from readily obtained. It costs to diverge
from the State philosophy; and doubtless it is worth it. Nevertheless,
being the victim of others' dreams can be more of an imposition than
imposing. It can strike differentially.
Whose dream!
It is not
often that people seem to realise that the dream-time, or the dreaming as some
now appear to want to call it, in official WA land, is here of Western making,
or at least provision. It is the dream that matter has no aetiological basis,
arose from nowhere, is a given, that its laws and dimensions, depths and marvels
are of course included, that it yawned (it does not SAY this, but this is the
scenario in essence) and decided to make minds and these aspired and decided to
make spirits so that mind and spirit could be adverse to each other at will, and
deceit strive with truth and so on. In other words, it has cosmoi, worlds of
thought and symbolism, contrivance and co-ordination, whole intellectual
universes constructed by nothing and imposed by no-one.
Leave out
the yawn then, and the decide in the above ... but it is merely to
interpolate the personal necessities back of inter-systematic, codal conquest of
difficult domains in the arena of symbolic thought (cf.
Secular Myths and Sacred Truth).
The point here
is this: white man's dreamtime is now being taught to aboriginal people, who
have a better and more logical background in their own culture, than this. Thus
there is on the one hand a deep 'reverence' for some of their cultural past, at
the same time as a lock-step and militant style invasion of their present, by
such curricular constraints, in schools in South Australia.
Thus the cultural imposition of
paternalism, a sort of spiritual snobbery, though there is nothing spiritual
about these Western theories, together sometimes with allowance on allowance of
various kinds, which tend at extremes, merely to makes ruin
out of the concept of effort and hard work, countering diligence and application as to trend, has
is flourishing far more than the people to whom it is all directed.
Such actions have come to be a multiple political, and certainly politically correct error.
It is not the meeting of need, but the trend towards exemption status with
negative expectation merging with provisions to the point that a new life style
is invented, helpful to none. Moreover this sense of being different, separate
and special, rather than with all having the specialness which is the
prerogative of no race, tends to encourage the immorality of those who afflict
the young, since it is all their heritage, their desire, and not readily to be
dealt with by anyone!
The implicit slander on the work of white missionaries by the new PM, in his unqualified
apology for the removal of aborigines from their homes in ALL cases, has tended
to increase the mythology, by reprimanding many actions of genuine concern,
compassion and deliverance for children abused then as now.
Trendy Trends
It is all, consciously or
unconsciously, and certainly culturally, intentionally or otherwise, part of a
denigration of the Gospel which as one has seen in a mission settlement in WA,
can become a guide and girding to new life for aborigines as well as those of
other races. To see the bright faces, application and interest, to find the
teachability of young persons, to hear the
singing in that mission was a joy indeed.
It is now not the culturally correct
mode, and the good done in many such cases is all but frowned upon, or at least shoved into some
dark corner lest the light of day should strike upon it. It is for all that the
only hope for the deliverance of ANY people, whether from striving self-will or
indolent carelessness, since it brings them back to the truth, to what they ALL
are, and for what they should all seek, none vaunting race, all seeking the face
of God.
But what of the secular handouts,
the economic solution, the appeals ?
Many are found to turn from
sustained value from these labours because of encouraged resentment, and some because of observed
opportunities to exploit the system. Yet no people needs to be confined to
'culture', that of this or that era.
The author personally knows of those
in this aboriginal race with a reasonable mind and alert spirit, who are simply
corrupted by an environment of drinks and drugs, premature child-bearing and
habitual expectation that care is available, work is optional and indulgence is
part of living. Some have been reached who are not yet so corrupted, and
this has been a joy. As to any people, to be encouraged to reside in yourself,
and some image of your ways, past or present, can be as much harassment as more
direct invasion! It is not what is present or past which matters so much as what
is true and honourable, just and approved by the testimony not only of reason,
but of time.
Moral apathy linked to indolent
empathy accomplishes little, and by some it is cynically utilised to their
advantage. In one memorable case, an aborigine disclosed how he manipulated a
judge to his pleasure, and understood the situation well enough, discussing the
case even with what seemed an ironic smile, as if not he and his, but those such
as this judge were to be patronised for their callow imagination, as if it was
they who were undeveloped, and mere grist for the subtle mill.
Yet the empty solution continues,
like a child caught in a rapid stream, and evils abound being too deeply
emplaced in the overall culture, to be treated as they would be in the
case of other races in the land, or even in any approximation to that.
This increasingly obvious failure to
impose law against atrocities, as if some people were not really fully people,
is the greater atrocity. Every day in which such things are allowed to continue
while political initiatives once taken are deleted, and to the extent once
installed, now removed very largely, is a black day for Australia. Time is time
for crime, moral outrage, child degradation. Protective law must be applied to
one as to all, not merely mouthed to some as if to reason with a man with a gun
while he hunts and kills others.
But Nature and culture are SO very
important! In this respect, that Australia is not only in danger of
forgetting itself, but the God in whose name its current civilisation was
founded.
Such is the worship of 'nature' by
many, of whatever colour, that crocodiles may wander well into civilisation
in Queensland, at times seeming more protected than the citizens. 'Nature'
must have its fling. Intelligence must be in abeyance to this
worshipful thing: all that animal life, the sub-human can show
must be used as if a guide. Thus study of the love life of snails, or some such
topic, can become of inordinate importance. What man is becomes subordinated to
what man is not.
The Trip to the Tip
Dumping the power of the Creator in
secular myths, man feels alone, or at least a sense of pathos as this or that
species departs, in the grand decline which Stephen J. Gould made so emphatic
over time. He tends to feel more stranded by life, and so clings almost
pathetically to what is gone, what is going, what declines. The living God has
acted; culture has vomited Him, in many of its phases, but He is still there, a
resource to those who know Him, who knowing the artist, have no fixation on the
departure of any particular painting. Alas, many have no embrace for morals
either, feeling less the vacancy in that area!
If morals can be junked for culture,
even at the most fundamental level, then man may be junked for animals. Freed
from God, man is bound by moral incompetence, and nostalgic for the Creator's
power, he clings to its outcomes more than to the Creator Himself. As Romans 1
puts it,
"although they knew
God, they did not glorify Him as God,
nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts,
and their foolish hearts were darkened.
"Professing to be
wise, they became fools
and changed the glory of the incorruptible God
into an image made like corruptible man..."
To such thinking, even the term
'sub-human' as addressed to the animal realm, may be upsetting. Why ? It is because they
worship 'nature' and deem themselves so integral a part of it that their own
worship of themselves follows; but as to that, it is one which is held in
the context of whatever else is around, with varying degrees of assimilation of
this to that. Thus thinking, some reverse things, and regarding man in the
context of all else, and not of his Maker, seek to practice violence in a form
unknown even in 'nature', as if to surpass the fallen (Romans 8:18ff.):
exploitative, vicious, filled with hatred, misconception, abuse and ignorance,
as if not animals but devils, they become.
To survive becomes part of the
meaning of life: thus morals become first and foremost, an incitation to keep
going and let nothing stop you, whether you are a commercial company or in
pursuit of hedonistic pleasure; and further, it is deemed good by many to
continue in your own chosen way, your culture, the things you do and say, for
this too, it is often deemed to have a measure of the sacred. Thus the concept
of the sacred self*2
becomes, if not a creed, then
a pre-condition to one. Whatever one thinks,
deems true, including and especially the concept that it is true that there is
no truth, in all its unutterably foolish self-contradiction, this has a mystic,
perhaps even a symbolic significance.
It is virtually unthinkable that
anyone should intrude into this, for it is a 'sacred' right. So readily does a
cultural 'find' or practice become sacred, that it is apparent that the thrust
to acknowledge what IS sacred by virtue of deity, becoming divorced from its
proper and rational centre, moves like a river overflowing its banks, spreading
vastly over the plains of the ordinary. Almost anything then becomes sacred,
especially if it is immoral, thus making a convenience out of pathology, and
pleasure out of corruption.
Many are those of any race in this
land, who are treated to such a measure of sacred respect for their ways, even
if bombs are among them, or mutilation of organs, that eyes appear shut to
reality. This can move until the time comes, when the asperity of the conceit
grows, when the 'self', be it national or personal, commercial or industrial,
becomes so ludicrous that it loses its totem-poll significance. Then, no more
hallowed, it glides into relative obscurity, to be treated to an indulgent, and
later not so indulgent smile. The 'idea' is there, but the practice ... is
missing. Hence the smile.
Their 'culture' becomes in many
cases, for some races, the sacred to the uttermost. What does it mean ? Just
this: it means what they have been doing, saying and thinking, especially if
this can be in some way distilled into a concentrate, becomes cultural relic or
reality, and so sacred. Only extremes like the Twin Towers in the USA, can then
be expected in any simple way, to disturb it.
With some, it is BECAUSE they lived,
and are SEEN as part of 'nature' and SINCE 'nature' is worshipped: that THEN
their ways and sayings are sacrosanct. They must be preserved and allowed to
continue. Morality is murdered; ethics is on leave; mayhem may result, child
abuse may arise, sexual promiscuity is almost certainly going to be bred into
the theme, for this may be deemed, when dogs are in view, something natural.
The criterion is whatever you want
to make it, drawn from natural examples or your own analysis of them. The
stature of man is first murdered, and then his thoughts are immersed in what is
neither man nor his Maker, so that the real insult is to the human race: it is
made subservient. To what is it made subservient ? It is to what is below it, or
soils or spoils it, in a submission by minds benumbed by misplaced worship and
its correlatives, by spirits bleary with its theories, transfixed by 'nature',
by what has neither the mind nor the capacity for morals, nor the understanding
nor the means to obtain it in this measure.
Then you have, to use C.S. Lewis'
phrase in a title to one of his little works, "The Abolition of Man".
He is so humble to 'nature' his god, and so arrogant to God, his Maker, that he
submerges like a spiritual submarine, below the surface, and becomes obscured by
a form of spiritual self-mutilation, and exalts in it, as worshippers tend to
do, in the object of their worship.
An Unnatural,
National Nurture in Naturalism
In one of the most common Western
variants of culture, then, children being part of human culture, must be taught
the cultural concepts. Hence, without reason and contrary to it
*3, they are taught the holy command, Thou Shalt Survive;
and to it is added this, Thou shalt find thine own culture and make this
survive with thee. Be yourself, be not intimidated except by the State
of course, since it represents more than you and includes you; and learn what we
tell you.
Added very often are such concepts
as these: Thou shalt not believe in any God who can really do anything, be
tested, show Himself in verifications or meet logical criteria, for 'faith' has
an inner logic of its own, which does not really bother about truth: and it is
true that this is so.
So in its idle inanity*4,
it proceeds, head held high, humanity abased, 'nature' worshipped. Based on the
impossibility of truth, it nevertheless reveals it!
You must observe the culture of the
educational system: hence Ministers of religion MUST observe as the first and
foremost commandment, submission to the school's culture (or Curricular Concepts
- read 'bounds of worship'), and hence not conflict with that culture.
They can come to schools perhaps, but as captives only, so that the educational
worship does not become diluted or polluted in what does not have this worship.
As to that: God is possible as a concept and a being of significance, but only
on the basis that when it comes to what operates in the world of testable fact
and actual power of physical process, He does not matter.
When any nation stoops to this level
of devastation of its young, woeful worship of itself and its current concepts
called culture, then it is misusing children as much as any who force on them
sexual abuse, perverse or otherwise. It is abusing their souls, intimidating
their minds and misfeeding their intellectual liberty with drugs. It is
authoritarian, relativistic in orientation and absolutist in presidency. Any
nation stooping to this is already on a spiritual skid-row, filled with empty
phrases and idle praises for what is derelict in kind, inhuman in mind and
abased in orientation.
It must therefore be clear that this
kind of Hitler Youth Camp in more modern mode, and with less nationalistic and
racial specifics, is as with the case of that 'father', breeding children in the
basement of life, and polluting what is indeed sacred for God, with inept
contradictory ideas, which not only are not true, but COULD NOT BE SO.
If truth were unavailable in a
relativistic world, you could not know it and hence could not say it, and hence
this is mere imposition on children. Moreover, the ideas involved neither
practically nor logically, experimentally nor in terms of validity, so much as
work. By contrast, as noted in
Light Dwells with the Lord's
Christ. all concepts, trials, tests
and penetrations, whether by concepts of validity or verification, work to
perfection both individually and jointly, in the realm of the revealed Creator,
in His biblical writing and blessed incarnation*5
.
To be sure, Christ did not pray for
this world (John 17:9), which is so smitten and stricken with its own forms of
self-worship, nature-worship and prostration before its own futile ideas (cf.
Psalm 94:11, I Cor. 3:20), that its come-uppance can only be the degradation of
its downfall. It is worlds away from the truth, from its Maker, the worship of
whom is no strained fantasy of psychological idealism, however debased the ideas
in such concepts, but the natural expression of man as created, towards
his Maker.
A Natural, Human
Worship
Not of What is
Made-Up
But of the Divine
Maker
The real reason why man engages in
such ludicrous worships, making of a thing made, its maker, of a wife a paragon
or rock, or of a husband a lion and wonder, or of a friend, a father confessor,
or of a rugby team, an object for hymn singing in a new mode at the grand
occasions of the contest, or of an animal a god or goddess, when reason alone
can tell this is mere manifestation of confusion, is not that he is insane. It
is a perversion of spirit.
Man MUST by his very nature, tend to
worship. God made him and he is led to disbelieve this by specious pretences,
from time to time; and at the present time, he is busy vying between those who
make up gods to worship, and do not admit it, and those who make them up and
seek to give them some sort of divine honour. Fond folly though all such
approaches constitute, as Romans 1 so strenuously and reasonably exhibits, they
yet have one value. They show by their very extremity and often clear absurdity,
the profound extent to which man as made by deity, CANNOT act as if he were not,
even his pathologies providing testimony of the surge of his misdirected spirit.
This occupies centre stage so that
more and more distant is the idea of worshipping the Maker of Man, the Redeemer
for man. This is not merely because He made man, but because His is the
foundation power of the universe, the controlling presidency over all things and
He is good, good enough to grant freedom to be faithless to Him, on the part of
those to whom this has appeal, and to receive back those who realise that this
needs repentance, and so come back to their Father through the One He sent to
bring them, Jesus Christ.
He does not steam in like gun-boats,
battle on like Communist effrontery to the human race*6,
breathe down the necks of the 'submitted' detainees of Islamic militancy with
fines and devaluation*7, as also was the wont
of the Inquisition by another body which misused divine power and even His name**8
. Instead, He presents truth and remedy alike, so that
"whosoever will, may drink of the water of life freely"*9
(Revelation 22:17).
NOTES
*1
This is a fascinating subject. DOES
man worship himself ? Not normally in any direct sense, not as such. He may
worship someone else of his race, but as embodying this or that feature, focus
or desideratum which itself is valued, not merely as an operational entity in
itself. He may essentialise mankind, and worship that, but this is not man as
such, but an essence.
Goethe's Faust has a
very arresting presentation on this topic, when a character called "The Poet"
is found in his internalisations and psychic investigations, looking for
something great.
He mouths this phrasing: "the soul
of man sublimed, his soaring spirit."
This occurs in a context worth
repeating to gain its flavour:
"Whose voice is fame ? who
gives us to inherit
Olympus and the loved Elysian
field ?
The soul of MAN sublimed - man's
soaring spirit
Seen in the POET gloriously
revealed."
It is this essentialising, with
mystic overtones, God repressed from thought, some of His glory snatched
intemperately, with insane ambition and diffused pathological self-augmentation,
that is one of the peculiar lusts of man, whether in all too human Greek
gods and goddesses or some Superman, or other accretion of thought or desire,
tied to man like an albatross shot down, around his aspiring neck.
*2
See for example A Spiritual
Potpourri Ch. 9, The
Pitter-Patter ... Ch. 3.
*3
The
gods of naturalism have no go,
Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny esp.
Section 8
*4
See
Lead Us Not into Educational Temptation!, TMR
Ch. 8 and
Beauty for Ashes
Ch. 3, for examples of this sort of thing.
*5
See *1 above and
Scientific Method, Satanic Method and the Model of
Salvation, and by way of contrast, for what is biblical,
Light Dwells with the Lord's
Christ.
*6
See
*1 in Ch. 8 above.
*7
See
*2 in Ch. 8 above.
*8
See SMR pp.
912ff.,
1032-1088H, Ancient Words
... Ch. 14.
*9
Consult:
Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer
The Meaning of
Liberty and the Message of Remedy,
and see
Sinners Only, and
The Mastery of the Mystery of Men.