Be children in malice, yes, for
this is fitting,
be wholly undeveloped in this field, underdeveloped, amateurish,
but in understanding, be mature!
(I Corinthians 14:20).
W W W W World Wide Web Witness Inc. Home Page Contents Page for this Volume What is New
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE FAITH OF A CHILD
AND THE CORRECTION
BY THE RESURRECTION
BOOKS, LIFE and LEARNING ABOUT LEARNING
"Blessed be the Lord
God, the God of Israel,
Who only does wondrous things,
and Blessed be His glorious name forever!
And let the whole earth be filled with His glory"
Psalm 72
With reference to Mark 10:14-15, 12:23-27 ...
NOTE that an extended and revised version of this Chapter is
available at this address.
YOU'RE BOOKED
If you happened to see a book writing itself ... but you say, this does not happen. But it does, one replies, if you have a book which INCORPORATES a coded command centre which is intelligently organised to co-exist with the book and create more books, diverse but similar, or whatever is imported conceptually and in code and command, to the matrix of the book.
Yes, but you say, this is MORE THAN a book! That is unarguably true. The book is the repository of what has been conceived and imagined, wrought and can be taught. But in what we have in mind, there is undoubtedly more. The protocols and procedures, the programs and commands, the wit and wisdom in these extra but included elements, they are not the book but an ancillary device which happens to be made co-existent with it, and being close to it, improperly could be called 'the book'.
This is so. You might be stunned even by seeing, without apparent additive, a book writing itself, as though the mindless minded and the conception-naked conceived, as if the directed could direct and the told could tell.
Yet if you considered the situation in view of DNA news, that associated with the human nucleated cell (with the equivalent of hundreds of Encyclopedia Britannica volumes of information and commands packed into its microscopic being); if you pondered it in its programmatic existence, fashioned so that it can function and perform, each in its tissue or setting, each tissue in its site or situation, organic or otherwise, each organ in its correlation of organs, all in their common blood supply and linked variously by their specialised nervous systems: if you did this, then there is ALSO in view program for its divulging its information in a nascent nexus to forge, form and formulate new cells, all by symbols and juxtaposition with the raw materials for the actual construction as needed, when needed, and with these themselves manufactured for each phase, then what ? Then you might become somewhat blasé about it all; you might reconsider.
Perhaps after all, you might conceive, it is NOT so amazing that a book could write itself.
If so, you would have wandered to the opposite error. It is indeed MORE THAN a book which 'writes' itself' in human birth for example, with all the preliminary procedures of specialised kind in cells; but it is not LESS THAN that, amazing nonetheless that it does so. If a man could run 100 metres in 1 second, and do it always, then you might not feel amazed by it and all the techniques used to do it. You might correctly consider that it was only with outside help that he did this, with various powers and potencies made available to him by technical means, so that he was 'intelligently assisted man' and not simply man. You might rightly insist that it is not really a man doing it at all, but that it is being done THROUGH a man. He as such is not running at this speed.
If then accustomed to this new phenomenon of human performance, you began to snooze intellectually, and allow custom to forge by habituation its soporific charms, you might even dare to begin to imagine that it was not even so startling. Was it not just a matter of technicalities, not man, the former simply being used in conjunction with man to have man do such things. Certainly these technical affairs would be wonderful in their way; but after all, the result is just a part of ... 'nature', not so surprising after all. That is likely to be the case, when you revert to the point in view, the cells and their power to be and to reproduce!
What however has 'nature' to do with it! In the case mentioned, the man by intelligence is being able to devise by conceptual and practical means, with the all but incredible conceptual and matter-mind-insight synthesis that is powered in man, and the result is not 'nature' but a human invention, cognitive, intellectual and with astute practical application. By this the man runs faster than naturally he is able.
In this hypothetical case, it is still utterly amazing to find intelligence OF man able to co-ordinate with PROGRAMS IN man, in order firstly to understand those, and then to amplify them or apply them in terms of other powers invested in elements of this universe, and so achieve remarkable results. The two types of conceptual organisation and command structure with the one type of conceptual formulation and linguistic capacity merging in a time of co-operation have produced this imaginary fast runner. This is the type of man as is plus the mind of man, and the universe as is, with their synthetic cohesion, producing assistance for the natural potentials of man. It is all involved in that 'simple' action.
This is a double helix if you will, of understanding, dynamised by the (now active) spirit of man, in terms of the active*1 Spirit of God, formerly engaged in the grand work of creation of the universe. Two wills have here worked on conceptualization, the one to create, the other to find out, or to utilise; and the unity of the fit for both in the common interpretation and joint provision is the norm for a common origin: for man constrained by laws as fixed beyond human origination, as those of physics, in his mind, and working in the midst of physical laws for the matériel.
The matter however is wrought, being conceptual, in the arena of conceptual realism, where with created operators, mistakes can occur and disjunctions need to be overcome; not however by imaginary capacity for co-ordination of the systems, but by a real and pre-existent one invested with subsidiary power, namely that of man. Personal works requires personal function, imagination and thought, cogitative prowess, symbolic unification and correlation, intensive intellection, and construction through these realms, explicative denotation and systematic control jointly.
To construct the ancillary speed-incremental powers, man requires this if he computerises; and to construct what man USES outside himself in the first place, along with man's internal functional powers, requires a creative facility absolutely beyond the type man possesses, with capacity to create capacious co-operating minds with hands to help, for whom what is becomes no barrier, but an exemplar, which however limiting because it is beyond man in brilliance, is co-ordinate, in that it is intimate for him, in conceptual cohesion. It is a mind-friendly environment. Moreover he can create terms for it, to classify, categorise and achieve some limited control, including those of the logic which is inherent both in it and in him, and of its rules to which all succumb; since thought about thought that invalidates it ends its regime by internal collapse.
All this must be assumed to be operative when man makes devices to deploy amidst the Creator's devices, so that each working in unison, all are mutually coherent - the more obvious when man's devices are computerised, but still present when they are conceptualised in an environment subject to such, and co-operative with it - and it is present when that environment, and man himself is created in the first place. The failure to realise this is rather like that of a child who, always about his father's laboratory, situated in his home, always assumes that laboratories are de rigueur, a necessity like lungs or breathing, which need no origin, no thought, no construction, no intellection, no understanding of what is to be achieved and IN WHAT it is, as a multi-systematic whole, to be wrought, and have whatever is needed for any given experimentation, operation or creation of any kind, by a law and masterfulness which circulates freely and does the job.
Otherwise it would not work.
It is intellection oblivion, conceptual malaise, aetiological infancy and dreamy subsistence without consistency of thought in order to render anything valid, or checking of facts, to give empirical support. It is quite literally, childish. In understanding, however, says Paul, be men.
|
|
Be children in malice, yes, for
this is fitting, |
There is no need, nor any scope, to surrender reason, to abolish causality (cf. Causes) in order to be act in the field of the secular, the sacred or the sublime. Irrationalism is its own end, hoists itself with its own petard, and ends its qualifications for argument before it begins. Since it ends itself it needs no attention, any more than the ramblings of the drunk, the cacophonies of the confused or the glottal noises of those recovering from anaesthesia.
Moving from man and his environment to what is required for their origination allows no folly without a price unacceptable both to reason and its ramifications - such action is a slight to the reason with which we are endowed, and to the destiny to which we have potential to attain, in the presence of reality, of which more anon. However, for the present, the source has to possess all that we call personal, and while not only dimensions ahead in the totality of making spirits which can soar and err being creative themselves, as derivative and not original, have capacity to create at that level; and then possess what glories surpass the creation of glory, in that to make a glory is more glorious than to be endowed as simple recipient with it.
Man and the universe are not that child's laboratory which always hangs around. They require origination.
Such operational dynamics and their bases are not to be begged, as a question, but to work, as putting the things into the conceptual and physical and chemical and psychological realm: some direct, others by creative function vested in what is created. Thus there is the inordinate power of creation, the organised power of the thing made, and in the case of man, the subordinate power to contribute by what is given, to what is gained with synthetically apt symbol-creation and operative additives.
This excursion into an imaginary human enhancement by such means in running speed, is merely a stimulus to realism. Let us move in more detail now into the reality, and consider some of its elements, both as to system and as to detail. Thus the fact that the cell has BOTH the means, programmatic, physical, chemical, procedural, by command, by chronological devisings, by co-ordination capacity with the other cells by the variety of articulated and often reticulating methods, and organs with other organs, both directly or indirectly with cerebral reactions and responses, activities of the nervous systems and constraints against disease and the like, all working in combination, holistic in kind, individual in components, unitary in language of control as is normal for sophisticated systems of close logic and thought: this is highlighted.
Moreover the case in general is this: it is not only to EXIST but to do more, for the inscribed commands possess the activating capacity to make more cells, and in due course, organs, nervous systems and the like.
It is, to take another exemplification of the principles involved, like finding NOT ONLY a page length coded, symbolic set of inscriptions or radiations from space, and pondering that intelligence must be there, since this is its milieu, mode, methodology. Nor is it only an issue of finding what is merely a formed, forged and operative fragment. It is not only a series {on continuing extancy}, but the finding a book of such pages. Indeed, one is finding a whole volume, but this is too small, the equivalent of 1000 or some such number of books, as far as content is concerned, reticulated into one. Integrality is the keynote, conception is the modus operandi, with command the issuance and making the result, and what is made is likewise complex, unitary in nature and operation, a code marvel and a command complex.
Nor is this prodigy all. It is also a discovery of finding that these exemplifications possess further powers than these.
In fact, in their holistic schema, they are endowed with the capacity to replicate further books, the results varying about stringent norms by observation; and then finding that they create in terms of what is written in them, and then edit out their mistakes in lavish style, being operative for correctness, connectedness undaunted, undashed and unspoiled to a magnificent degree.
There are no hammers. No engineers survey the scene. It is the programmatic world of conferred command and concentrated symbolism, investigable with symbolically oriented minds to inspect its symbolically expressed thrust. SUCH dealings are in the functionality of symbol-synthesis-potential-action-conceptual integration. The power for any one of these, the concept, its interpretability, the receptors, the syntax, the operational semantics (being programmed merely omits the observation of the programming as in any device in this area, incorporating such proficiencies) is in the domain of creativity, mentality, intelligence, applied thought. But this is not all!
Imagine finding one of these on Mars, in some new and unheard of ways ? Would it be concluded that intelligence was abroad ? It would startle the mighty, amaze the wise, it would lead to teams of congratulation, amazed expectation of where all this came from. A fragment of conceptual connectivity and symbolic, analysable significance would probably do no less. This, it would lead to a look for the master of this mastery and the agent or agents of this summary magnificence, whose powers are apparent in their products. Do what you will, you cannot induce symbols to create reciprocal systems of input, output, and synthetic arrangements incorporating such commands with integral results. You cannot begin. It is a different world.
You cannot, that is, unless you use your own nous. Then it is second nature. It is the agent for the result, the facility for the function, the domain for the dynamic.
To be amazed that someone can write, is unlikely as an event. We see it all the time. It still is amazing, but we forge terms and formulate specifications, about what it is in the person which enables such operation, what are the terms, the dangers, the remedies for those dangers and so forth, and so deal with that domain in its intrinsic terms. Educators seek to make it work better and others to make people more aware of its just exercise to realise its potential.
In these terms, many let their amazement rest. It is always happening and therefore requires no thought, they think. They are dismissive; give me my wages, they say, and my pleasure.
This is however no answer to the matter. We have then been discussing what we are and have; and in what we are placed as to environment, and what our inward endowments do, and what is the minimal requirement for this, and been surveying the scene in terms of what it would be obvious to conceive, were this not so natural, normal, frequent, and find that mere custom does nothing to reduce causality; the aetiological is not eaten up by routine, any more than millions of cars remove the necessary question of what makes them, and what domains are revealed, as in their computers, by their inward workings and integral capacity to satisfy elemental and obvious purposes.
Man is booked for breaking his books. It is as with designs in general and this meets all their specifications, so that either the meaning has to be changed, or the term used as we have often shown (Deity and Design ...). The Author of our designs makes them susceptible to choice, to deciding to be rebellious, brash, violent, to exercise self-control, to bury the head in data to find what it means, or not, to have self-contradictory world-views as in materialism (Repent or Perish Ch. 7, History, Review and Overview Ch. 5 ), or not; and the results abound privately and publicly. Responsibility IS.
But we have not yet even begun to exhaust our subject matter. Let us return to the books themselves. It is the equivalent of hundreds integrated in their joint operations, in their capacity as manuals for operation.
WHAT MORE then is this ? Visible creation is what more.
They divide, they make, they make in groupings, groupings grow, commands are construed as to practice, things are forged, formed, formatted, integrated, they grow with or without obvious beginnings of things to come; they have their modes, prescient in survey installed, so that what is becomes what is to be in its own enlightened scurrying, harrying and ruliness (a good opposite for unruliness, but use orderly organisation if you prefer). What is seen ? It is to act under command, constraint, programmatic control, multiplied mutual devisings activating different elements in a time-specific dance of occasions and meetings, with a result. What result is this ? It is the result of more cells, creation-down-the-line by correlative powers to that of EXISTING, for ORIGINATION.
This is not the origination by which the system has been made, however, not a direct and absolute creation OF all the systems and their imparted constraints aetiologically derived. It is instead a subordinate, directed, super-addition of programmatic information which using the extant cells, makes others, which make others, which specialise (as if this were like a book falling - but it is an immense and intense work of co-ordinated differentiation, the nub of design), which relate to other groupings specialised, which are acting in one unit, which diversifies, which occasions carefully controlled synthetic, mutual operations, until born, it can move.
It can move an arm ON a body, or the body BY a leg, and transmit its OWN commands to its limbs, and receive matter for musing, for meditation, if trouble arises through improper use, impact or accident, or if discovery incites its conceptually active, imaginative mind so that it can form images of creation in the milieu of its own creativity, systems in connivance, creations in tandem, considerations conjunct, all so sublimely unified in consequence, the product of ONE maker with ALL the necessary capacities and without beginning: since other options merely delay the necessity of the eternal being whose creative action uses in type our kind of causation, so that the multiple means and facilitators can be, limited by time, dependent on space, all primed to their place and ordered, organised and legally bound to their dispositions.
Not only the type of information and multiple-layered controls, organic co-operations, commands with their conceptual symbol-action correlatives, but their 'arising' without breakdown of the provided billions of elements in their atomic, electronic, spatial, chronological, causative, consequential, exquisite logical arrays, is just what authors know, and the second law of thermodynamics indicates. What builds up has to be system-prone, concept-susceptible, co-ordination competent, error delivered in general kind, to withstand being undone. Order is not naturally FOUND to be UP, but DOWN, in terms of available energy; and things do not exercise powers they do not have, read retrospectively back into their naked bosoms. Observation does not show it; verified science does not know it; pleasurable imagination knows it, but does not find it; man loves it but does not find it. What is needed is not nescience making knowledge but the knowledgeable making man. But let us proceed to considering what the body may do.
It can then move, say, an arm or a leg; but what if it breaks a bone ? This too is provided for, so that the broken bone, set can reform, or the cerebral misuse of the billions of co-ordinated cells involved, in a head injury, may be remedied in some part on many occasions, by relocations of the sophisticated marvels of all but ultimate intricacy, so that they overcome the impact. This is not total; it is not as if it is entirely self-remedying, but it is substantial.
Disease meets an entirely additive system, integrating like the rest, with the operational or symbolic procedures, so that the whole, conceptually organised as one, with billions of parts, each one most intricate in terms of its cellular structure, may respond integrally to the local impact.
Thus our illustration of the BOOK writing itself, which turned out to be NOT simply a book writing itself, but a book conjoined to a programmatic way of using information in and concerning the book to derive more, which showed TWO systems, one of the symbolic expression of thought IN the book and the other the reproduction in some covered but slightly variant form, of information IN CONJUNCTION WITH but by no means by the book, is found here to be in LIFE. The two here are both co-existent.
One is, the other facet of the features of the systems, it is concerned with what is to be, modelled on and BY what is, through programmatic diversifications of the uttermost complexity, unity and sophistication *1A.
The information*1B, the systems, the language for the code, that is the symbols for command and control, their meanings, inherent semantics, the reactive interfaces which receive and respond aptly and appropriately and the matériel which comes in chronological, assembly-line fashion (including often enough the making of these basic ingredients for constructive usage, as an extra), those FOR the cell to operate: these are as to conception, correlation, integration, systematic operation, one. THAT is integrality.
Thus those HIGHLY diverse and utterly amazing operations by which the cell has minor variation with major KIND continuity, AND gets more cells of the right sub-kind MADE for the right positioning in the whole living organism, these are two conceptually active combinations, joined in a magnificent synthesis for their varied stages, the book written and the book writing itself; each in its phase and its place, is one. Moreover (cf. Waiting for Wonder Appendix), there is not only one system operative; there is another, which is like information about information and in this aspect, like a book of rules of procedure, which supervises and superintends, adjusts and acts in terms of a multi-layer conformity. In terms of direct personal action, rather than a programmatic derivative, it would be like using a dictionary or other mediative device, to limit or to expand the work you are doing.
Information UPON information, level UPON level, category BEYOND category, in ONE system resulting in ONE individuality in ONE type of being, this is the multi-device consistency and competence of mind, equipped with the creativity to use different levels of materiel, both conceptual and implemental, in ascending orders of control to capacitate the consequences, achieve the results. These are singular in every way; except in this, that the case is not of ONE ONLY such implementation, but of a host of billions of them, known cohesively as the human race.
Man mimics the conceptual procedure inherent. He will make a sound system, so small, so elegant, so compressed, with such miniature ingredients, with such mutual felicities of size, shape, sound waves, echoes or non-echoes, such resonances, such procedures that the mind marvels; but not over much. After all, we all have this creative capacity for integrality and system, contrivance and purpose-procedure symbolism, to program to some extent what is to be formed. Does this reduce its enormity of conceptual reality ? Not one whit. It only makes those who dream have a sadder task to face, when they wake up.
We return for perspective only, for a moment, to our imaginary case of an aid to a man's running speed by some addition contrived by man for the purpose. What does this resemble in kind ? This parallels the aid to the book for it to write itself (anew), in addition to BEING written so that it might do so. It helps focus our minds on the point that something is there so to act, so to enhance, so to create at call through creativity overall, operative on bases aptly, in cases adeptly, for more, more, more. In this, the assembly line is a parallel, since it has first with much effort (a car engine plant might cost billions, and the work is correlative) to be founded. It is only then that its symbolic brilliance and engineering applications can save time and enable relatively easy LOOKING mass production.
Thus when man creates, it may all be wrought in an enabled environment, and this by an enabled agent, both with correlative systems for interpretation, understanding and co-operation in the appropriate direction. When man produces something to help what he is, and standardises it so that it may be mass produced, the final results are no longer by an intervention by man's actual intelligence, but by the continuity of the types created in process as empowered (by the provision of electricity, gas, workers and so on). In our own bodies, man can act in terms of the initial structure, to vary it slightly. If he is very clever, he might be able to conceive and set in conceptual domain what will do this, without major change. He again may use agents, or achieve programmatic essentialising by conceptual brilliance and structural reflection of the same, and have it happen without intervention.
In the end, by the compound intrusion into the facilities already structured into existence, and co-operation with the laws, modes, manners and ways of the same with insight and self-discipline, man can turn his own potential into renewed actualities, not of the structure, but of the joint result.
In the case of man's own being, there is the structure and extrusion from a manifold intelligence with oversight of the initial writing, which brings his physical self down the millenia; there is likewise the provision for renewed, constrained, slightly variable writing, in terms of the nature of the matrix; and then for the setting up of the whole in a vitally extant form at the outset. Then man can operate on these operations, to direct them, inspect them, watch them work, avoid what harms them and seek what enables them to ... do what ? to fulfil his purposes or those of the Creative Construction Operator! That is the point. But let us return to the nature of the case visibly, even though it is manifestly what is invisible which directs man (thoughts of peace, unity, jealousy, ambition, name, resentment, grace and the like cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 9).
In fact, books do not write themselves, and cells are not books. Concepts do not declare themselves and write down their symbolic expression, nor do they formulate themselves into synthetic apparatus which contains commands for things to deploy their intellection into creation. This is not what is found. They merely have ONE aspect that is LIKE that of books: the written part. Yet this is NOT ONLY a repository, a receptacle of information, command and creative ingenuity. It is more. What is true of books, compilations of intensively correlative symbols imparting overall comprehensibility in a select topic, is true a fortiori of life.
What is found is the testimony of what enables creation, conceptualisation, synthetic thought, engineering ability, all matched, and for this can act with vast enterprise (as Gould indicates in that a far greater array of basic designs are found in the Cambrian, than now remains - cf. Wake Up World! Chs. 4-6). It is beyond man as man is beneath that through which he is composed, in power of invention. Man can perform in this creativity field, but not nearly as well as what is back of our own physical existence, which incorporates capacities beyond our own not in terms of orders, but KIND!
Nor do concepts arrange for editing of their own copying to ensure a minimisation of copying errors. Editing is not part of the machinery or machination of concepts. This is where conceivers deploy the FUNCTIONAL NECESSITIES for such collations of concept-command-functionality.
If then you not only saw a book writing itself, but found that it was a programmatic whole associated with what was more than, but not less than a book, and that it wrote in a way which provided slight differences of association and had provisions to enable groupings to associate in somewhat different ways and had subtle provisions of intense conceptual formulability (in being described), apt for conception and in that realm, domain and region of reality; and then saw that many books (plus) were being so manufactured with no noise or visible hand, operative intelligence exhibited in the process of this copying and continuation, but that all had been provided for, as if you had bought a running concern castle, but had not had to pay: then you might well marvel.
If you happened to notice that it was making a few errors (apart from provisions for limited variability in an ingenious allowance for wonders within wonders), and that it then set about utilising a system to correct these, and saw them being corrected (assuming you had the technical savvy to do so), then you might use empirical knowledge (of what life and system does) with rational thought (about what is caused by what and what is not, being rationally defective, an error of thought that is invalid) and do rather more than marvel.
Thus some years ago, as I was typing away, I happened to notice the WORD program happily (or at least usefully) correcting mistakes as I left them without having noticed them as I typed, and I DID marvel. How remarkable that it is CONSTRAINED by a causative agency equipped with a conceptual-symbolic-activistic synthesis such that it is not permitted to follow some of my urgings, in the event they are detectably WRONG! Immediately, one considered Microsoft. What an advance, to do that! In practice, of course, some of the 'corrections' were programmed for American use, some might not be au fait with the vocabulary I had in mind, so that the 'corrections' were not all correct.
For all that, the PRINCIPLE of the thing remained the same. In fact, some time later I happened to be talking to someone in the Microsoft domain, and indicated some of my pleasure in such things. This, said he, is a once in a life time offer: you can bring data to Microsoft. What conditions ? I asked. Whatever you like came the reply, tell us what you want to tell us. I did not feel expert enough to accept; but it brought out the mutual delight in the acute use or appreciation of intelligence, and its domain.
That is where programmatics is, with its commands, commendable or otherwise with the criteria of concepts with their logic and elegance, efficiency and correlation, consistency of considerations and acuity of the universe of discourse with all its frills and furbelows within and its unitary result. In our case ? it is a thing known as the human body, another known as the human mind, and a third, the human spirit; and the trilogy is concerted and concentrated in one synthetic whole where however, the parts do not lose their integrity and modes of operations. This, once again, is integrality.
It is more than unity but not less; it is a situation where what is not (when you look at its creation in the case of a womb-embryo) is becoming what is, not necessarily by any geometric development, but with conceptual domain correlativities and provisions, the present in bondage to the future, as the months pass. Many diversities BECOME UNIFIED. It is not mere unity; it is a progression forging many diversities of many kinds simultaneously where needed, over time, into a configuration and functionality which BECOMES unitary in kind. At that, it PERMITS enormous variability in its usage, whether for tomfoolery or for tediousness, for truth or for fancy.
Faced with all this, if you happened to stumble upon it all, in some planet, in some different mode, a thing happening, this would lead to results for the conscientious and un-deluded mind. First the book! Even a dozen concerted sentences, unified in thrust would lead to the assurance that mind produced them with purpose as adumbrated.
That is a conceptual-symbolic deposition which is the work of at least mind, which has intrinsic capacities for this. If you saw it produce another such book, you would conclude that either there was more to the symbols that met the eye, or you would find symbols which were not extrinsic but intrinsic and systems which allowed for them to operate conjointly but distinctly from the deposition work in the first place; and so you would conclude that a massive organising power of logical, administrative, engineering, mathematical and programmatic power was in operation.
If it were a program, this merely sets back the need for the causative power to conceptualise and give format to the integralities concerned; so that in the end it is an imaginative, causatively efficient, symbolically expressive, command inventing, control compositing, intelligent and purposive being, for which the term ‘person’ used of man is not surprisingly a minimal presentation. Not surprising ? in this as in all, the Bible is shown correct, for it stated we were made in His image: that is with facilities expressible in His presence and relative to Him as Himself.
Of course, this is the least required; what IS must be found from His word, when He verifies it as spoken from Himself. This we have often considered and demonstrated*2. It is indeed yet another marvel, a wonder that just as the Creator has provided His signature of imaginative intelligence in the causal arena and conceptual domain in the measure of man, so He has given His validatory, verificatory signature to the Bible, in its message to man, with the same effortless ingenuity and exuberant, indeed prolific intensity of imagination and authority*2. No fault or folly of man implicates Him, who has told from the first the preachment of truth, the penalty of its breach and provisions to be made to cover the consequential guilt (cf. Joyful Jottings 22, Bright Light … Ch. 10 and Barbs … 17).
But let us search further in that other book, the body of man, and its continual creation based on creativity and leading to creative beings, and remember how it edits its copying so that the uniformity of KIND might be kept, while the diversity within it is allowed by brilliant means that research is now multiplying for our knowledge.
On the editing, in conjunction with all else, you would be impelled decide that to know the Author was mandatory (though you might prefer a world of day dreams, having quite enough troubles of your own, thank you very much, like a Columbus who did NOT find the path to America because he was preoccupied with a stomach ulcer). He was not, so rather found it instead. You might be one or the other. But the thing is there to find. The course here is to find it ... as we shall further see, Him, the Creator.
HAVE YOU LOOKED ?
Of course if you DO follow the mandatory requisites of reason, and so find the book of this Author, speaking to man as noted in the last two Chapters of this volume, and then the discovery of sin is made (not this time from conscience alone, or obvious thought alone as if being your own self-centred being were not obviously irrational, since this is NOT the nature of things, on observation: you are NOT the centre), there are results...
This sin idea, it may not appeal, It often does not; so you might then destroy your notes and ignore the book if you can. Romanist prelates often tried to do this in England with the translation of the Bible into English, and many sought to destroy EVEN those who read it! But this would not alter anything except, short of repentance, your destiny, which being foreknown, would only come en scène, as it were, in its time.
You might turn aside to religious ramblings instead of seeking the Author of the book which verifies itself; and this too is common. You might, again, seek to suppress all concepts of truth, and do so in the name of truth while sending it to oblivion; and this is narcissistic kind of antinomy is exceedingly common. It is the work of the dictator often in learning centres, who is so sure despite the ludicrous character of his self-contradictions that he DARE not and CAN not allow rational discussion, and of those who hire such misleaders, and who refuse to pass or take those who insist on reason and reality!
In short, you might deploy knavery, trickery and self-delusion; but the realities of conceptual creation allied to empirical fabrication, these would remain as would the mind of the Maker. But if on the other hand, you honestly pursue and zealously INSIST on meeting Him, then there are means.
He tells you that a thing called sin stopped you from knowing Him at the outset, and from seeing the obvious from the first.
The time loss for what you should have been doing, in association with the Lord, this is sin.
The loss of clarity is sin.
The pursuit of less important things is sin.
The use of reason while aborting it is sin, and nonsense.
There are vast accounts to settle, even before we come to the strictly moral issues, and those of spiritual stature and orientation according to truth. When you realise that you have been making up your own road rules (or using those that some other man or woman made up), and have yet been driving for years, you BEGIN to realise the depth of sin, and to appreciate the depths of suffering the Christ of the Bible suffered when He died in order that men might live, that the world might be saved (John 3:17).
The gap is God's! In what sense ? why this, that which is between the losses and costs to creation, to you and to God, of your waywardness (the worse if arrogant, self-satisfied waywardness, which adds bogus superiority to wanton rebellion) and righteousness, of due and true use according to specification and capacity. These are unpaid, and need cover in the righteous mind of the Creator God. He could destroy, prefers to cover, but insists on remedying not only the accounts, but the agent of them! Hence it is necessary to be born again, that is, having had physical birth, to be acceptable to God so that living in His presence, you become aware of His communications for their preciousness and of His guidance in life (James 1).
What then ? let us be positive.
You seek Him more. You find that He has His own methods of introduction (as does even a General or a King), and in becoming incarnate as Jesus Christ, He has served notice that this is the crux and criterion, the way and the testimony. It is here that you begin. Here is the opportunity provided. He has in love provided the Cross for the cancellation of indebtedness and the confirmation in the resurrection*3 following, of life both eternal as offered, and living as viable past death itself. He gives principles as in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), and demands surrender as in Luke 14, on the realistic ground that rebels, before being reorientated and reissued with a life-licence, need to surrender.
You receive ransom through His death vicariously wrought and then you FIND GOD. You do ? or else you do not. We are pursuing the positive here.
In this way, instead of pulping the Bible, and sending it back (as far as able, or in your private and inward case, merely pulping its message), you do differently. You apply it.
Instead of ramming - or attempting to do so - the book of the Lord back into His mouth, you listen. Listening, obeying, ransomed, repentant, you then find the life which the Book depicted, the LORD offered, what is natural and necessary to man, so that without it he is but husk.
Husks jar with each other and amount to ... nothing in the end.
STARTING TO SEE
THE ULTIMATE PICTURE IS CHRIST,
AND HE NOT OF CREATION
BUT OF THE ETERNAL GOD,
HIMSELF THE ONLY SAVIOUR
What then do you find when unconfounded, your vessel of life harbours at last ?
It is Christ the WORD and thus the EXPRESSION,
the
PERSON who IS the expression of God (Hebrews 1),
and thus both is and presents
what He has to say and to do, in you, through you and FOR you (Colossians
1:27-29, ).
What is the chief thing done for you ? He has fished
in the waters of life and found you,
to bring you from striving or surviving to
living (Matthew 16:24-27, I John 1:1-4).
Here is the serenity of the sublime, not the ferocity of the secular.
Yet it is not in inactive serenity,
not in abstracted serendipity
but with the glory of a sacrificial splendour (Matthew 20:28)
wrought - in intense labour
so that man could be bought (Hebrews 5:7),
that a man comes.It was achieved
with unyielding resolution and undeterrable determination,
(Luke 9:53-56, 12:50, 22:41-46),not of his own, but that of deity (Romans 3:23ff., 5:1-12) -
not in thought events onlybut physical ones (Isaiah 59:1-2, Luke 23:34, Psalm 22:1ff., Matthew 27:46),
not incidentally, but purposefully (Luke 9:56, John 3:16-17),
not in heaven only but in the plan of salvation applied
on earth also (Colossians 1:19ff.).
It has come in the parade of truth (John 14:6)
where the love of God is on display (I John 4:7-10)
not only in poetry but in performance (Philippians 2)
not only to teach but to reach (Matthew 28:18-20).
So is the peace of God poured out to the end through the salvation of souls
(John 14:27-29, John 10:9,27-28).
Following Christ on earth, then, we can watch His way of deleting dead discipleship, and exposing fraud, while instilling faith and completing the denotation of the power of God. Not just connotation, to think it, but denotation to demonstrate it, this is the way of God, like the Great Physician that He is. He acts where it helps most.
To this end, we shall examine passages in Mark 10 and 12, seeing the contraries and the Christ, the concepts and their clouding, the works of man's wilful ways and the path of God's design, to which He calls, the Deity Design for Life, directed not to computer controlled, spiritual midgets, but to man and woman, child, to all freely.
THE LIFE OF FAITH IN THE POWER
OF GOD
with its Profundity
Mark 10:14-15, 12:23-27
I THE FAITH OF A CHILD
Pharisees can ask
astonishing things. Their tingling uncertitudes sometimes match their ringing
self-righteousness. The former are often the result of non-faith, non-sight,
non-alignment, like that of wheels not only out of kilter, camber, but at right
angles to the desired direction of progress. Thus they came to Jesus Christ,
asking about the permissibility of divorcing a wife. When Christ made it clear
as in Matthew 19, that adultery alone was a just ground for this, they asked why
then Moses had made it possible to obtain a
'certificate of divorcement'.
Now that was for 'uncleanness' (Deut. 24:1-2). The divorce question as there presented, was in terms of her not returning to him after being taken by another. It was lack of favour, to be sure, but this had to have a basis, namely uncleanness. Christ proceeded to tell them about the reality of marriage, for it is not an art form in human relations, but a divine procedure, designed for a harmony and unity, a continuity and a reality such that "what God has joined together" it is not for man to ‘separate’!
To imagine that it was otherwise, Christ was showing, was contrary to the very
first divine intimation in Genesis of the divine design for man in this matter.
On the other hand, if there is sexual impurity, this was exceedingly explicit as
a ground for divorce. In fact, Deuteronomy 22:22 shows that not merely divorce
but death could be the consequence. This scarcely in context even required
mention, being known for centuries, and was about as obvious as driving on this
side or that of the road, since death could be invoked in THAT case! Why then
the question ?
The Pharisees were slow to see, perhaps quick to desire this liberty. In Islam, it is shown often to be far easier: you do not have to show adultery! Such is the degeneration from a biblical perspective which can readily enter into the matter. It is a question of disfavour, to be sure, but not of this alone. Men are not gods, and any religion which tends to make them so, is wounding reality. This is not to say that man is not biblically given a certain presidency in the marriage situation, but it is to be borne with understanding, since he MUST LOVE THE WIFE SELF-SACRIFICIALLY, as Christ loved the Church (Ephesians 5:25-27). This allows nil domineering, and is a horror except there be love. It is not, however, sacrifice of the Lord which is in view, for His words and commands it is the man's responsibility to have honoured and fulfilled, since after all, what he has in authority is born from the authority of Him whose word is to be DONE! Each is an appointee: God is sovereign.
It is amazing, given these facts, that some churches have forbidden divorce for
adultery as if Christ had never spoken as in Matthew 19 with THIS EXCLUSION
notice for it prohibition. To exclude this is to play God, which unfortunately
some churches do, yesterday forbidding ANY divorce, and today seeking licence
for adults of the same gender to imitate marriage! The Bible however moves
neither to the right nor to the left, and is not a matter of human desire, but
divine directive. As Paul pursues the point, in Galatians 1: Is man to reconcile
man to God by persuading God to change, or God to man by persuading man to
receive God as He is! If, says Paul, I were the servant of man, I COULD NOT BE
the servant of God. On that basis, not a few nominally Christian pastors are not
servants of God!
Design specifications are a GIVEN thing, not for fudging, fussing about. They
ARE, as much as the body is, and for that matter, the mind.
A man who finds his wife has committed adultery, of course, might elect NOT to
press the matter and to forgive (on the analogy of Hosea where God does just
this in the analogy, which Hosea had to practice!); but that is mercy to
overlook an evil, not licence to practise one! It is conceivable that if someone
left a wife, and she then married another, that this act, which did not have
grounds in adultery at the outset, might allow remarriage of the man, but this
is a deep matter, involving purity of motive.
Some indeed might elect not to marry, and it is a gift which has a lifetime specific, one which Paul for example found for himself. It certainly avoids the evils which are conceivable if a wife or husband becomes unfaithful. More, it teaches us the meaning of faithfulness, and of marriage, that it is a species of union so profound that to minimise it in terms of preference is to act as if for a different kind of creation than mankind, which is made in the image of God, where faithfulness is profound.
After these things, Christ in due course proceeded as we see in Mark, to bring
in a child. He did not want the little ones set aside, as they sought Him (a
rebuke to those who do not believe in child evangelism), but they were to come
to Him personally (a rebuke to humanly controlled child evangelism). Now He
showed that there was indeed a parallel between a child's desire for Him, and
entry into the kingdom of heaven, and the whole relationship which this
entailed. IF, He indicated, you do not enter the
kingdom of heaven as a little child, you cannot enter in at all!
How then does this relate to such topics as Christian apologetics ? which indeed
has sanction as in I Peter 3:15 ? It brings out the point that reason is no
enemy of faith, but its confirmation. It is a testimony which stands; but it is
not the same as faith. Faith is not opinion, nor is it a series of arguments,
however categorical in impact.
Trust, as in a little child, is inter-personal, founded in knowledge: you KNOW what you are trusting if it is not a mere emotion; and it is the knowledge of God which is in view, for it is in HIM that you are to trust and not in another (Jeremiah 17, Psalm 2).
Child-like trust commits itself,
induces action,
resolves fears,
finds and takes its place.
2 MALADY OF MISDIRECTION
Faith ? It does not argue with divine
perspective, but receives it, operates on it (Mark 12:24-27).
It believes it, as it believes that its arms in sum have two hands. Ultimately,
it is induced by God (Matthew 16:17), but not without reason (Mark
8:17-19). Thus Christ in correcting a lack of perception in
His disciples, as in this text, points them to HAPPENINGS of a miraculous
character, as ground for EYES and EARS to report and the spirit of man to
accept. It was not in a vacuum indeed that this occurred, but in a scriptural
environment of terms: HE WAS AS HE IS, THE CHRIST, shown in His place and in His
mission incontrovertibly, and it was long shown and known that it was in Him
that one should trust. He had given ground for the identification to those with
Him, and shamed them because they had not STUDIED this and RESPONDED in apt
FAITH!
Faith is the natural response to truth by those made by God for God, and presented with due ground for identification of His will and word. Sin seeks to obviate this, but faith readily penetrates the obstruction, and avoiding it, as in a car one avoids a stone on the road, proceeds on its divinely appointed course. It is also a supernaturally provided understanding in which faith operates, as does a whale in water, as we see in the case of Peter and in Galatians 5, Ephesians 2. Saving faith is a gift of God, this salvation by grace through faith, we there learn. He would have all to receive it, but He knows who are His (John 3:17, Colossians 1:19ff., II Timothy 2:19).
Thus if anyone pauses at the door of faith, let that one enter; for there is invitation and none is excluded for lack of love, since GOD IS LOVE (I John 4:7) so that in nothing would He desire the death of man. But there is room for no pretence or pretension. As a child trusts (and so obeys) or does not, so is it with man. In the end, you do what you are, and this is either what God prescribes or it is not. Thus you use the means of grace or you do not, because you value them or you do not, and if you do not, it is because you are not believing. If you do, then you are changed (John 3), faith a fruit of new life in Christ. Faith acts, as James is quick to point out.
Faith does not even LOOK for a way OUT of what it believes in, in practice, like
the Pharisees; it moves with insight because its eyes are open and upon the Lord
to act within the kingdom of heaven.
3
CORRECTION BY
THE RESURRECTION
A little later in Mark, in fact at 12:23-27, we see this time the Sadducees (those who, unlike the Pharisees, were more interested in ignoring parts of the scriptures than circumventing them, more 'liberal' in today's terms, and their way was abhorrent to Christ as you see in Luke 11:46-54). Their knowledge which should have aided many to find the Lord, was treacherously used to betray the Lord, and to turn aside even those who were entering into the kingdom. As in any war, those who affect to be loyal citizens while betraying the cause, are entirely abhorrent, frequently given the death penalty. It is such who have run many a large church over the past 100 years, and increasingly whole churches are becoming slaves in servitude to such treachery.
In this case, Sadducees, notorious for ignoring resurrection, like those with an
Autumn-fixation who resolutely rejected the coming Spring, seeing only Winter at
hand, posed to Christ a certain case. It was that of a woman whose husband died,
only to be replaced by a brother. Then, in a repetitive series of untimely
funerals, she had replacement husbands, and thus several successively. Whose
wife would she be in heaven ? asked the smirking pseudo-scholars.
Christ declared them IGNORANT (the very thing which their learning would
supposedly have excluded, such is the shame of dissidence from deity) on two
counts. First they did not KNOW the scripture, and second they did not know the
POWER of GOD!
As to the first, He recalled that God is called the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in the episode of Moses at the burning bush. The language indicates continuity not termination. He is the God of the living, not of the dead, He declared, with an apparent overtone that those before Him would not understand this SINCE THEY for their part, were NOT among the living! They were not saved, mere scurrilous imposters. Those who attend churches which allow the slicing off of parts of the Bible, or the ignoring of it in any part, or addition, do not well to have the dead as pastors.
"Be separate," says Paul, "and do not touch the unclean thing!" - citing Isaiah 52:11. Nor is it only stark unbelief, as there, that is involved, as you see in I Timothy 6, Romans 16, Ephesians 5-6, but deviation from the words of Christ. This is achieved by addition or subtraction, by ignoring or roaring out your own ideas as if part of the word and will of God: both are a work of blindness.
The resurrection is part of the reality of having the God of the LIVING, as YOUR GOD. What it takes, to create, to resurrect, He does. He does not speak in myths, leaving that to the profusion of delusion in our own advanced part of the Age, as predicted (II Timothy 4).
It is also showed, this rejection of resurrection by specious argument on the
part of the Sadducees, that they did not believe in the power of God.
Creation gives an index at the outset to the entire, utter power of God. We are
brought into being at His word (now seen in DNA in amazing fashions, a causative
code enabling reproduction to occur, not magically, but by the will and the word
of God, as inscribed, and inscribed because uttered, and uttered because He
desired to CREATE MAN). We are sustained in being by the same word, which
inscribed in the Bible and in the heart of believers (as in Hebrews 8), is plain
with vast force (as in John 11:25-26, and the practical action seen and heard
with eyes and ears). Die ? then resurrection. Lose this life in the Lord ? then
receive eternal life, and having received it, receive resurrection.
There are thus three vast creative actions for the Christian. One is to be CREATED, as part of mankind in the image of God; the next is to have the Lord's light enter so that one becomes a NEW CREATION (II Corinthians 4:6, 5:17), which is put by Paul in direct parallel with the total creation as such, in the first place a in Genesis. The third is to be RESURRECTED, so that one is not junked as to reality, but merely changes mode, from a fallible body to an infallible because protected one, from a testable body, to an incontestable body, from a mortal body to an immortal one (II Corinthians).
Without believing this, man is not a Christian, but a heretic (I Corinthians 15-16); for it is basic to the faith. Believing it, and confessing (not just professing) Christ as Lord, this is the open door to being a Christian. Such are saved. When it is REAL it influences everything from attitude to practical faith in its applications. It does not make perfection, but it is protection from mere artificiality and formalism!
Let us return now to our thoughts on reason and faith. Thus while reason verifies, faith rejoices, does not prevaricate or presume, but acts with assurance on the premisses given by God.
Faith
|
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fears offending God with squirming, having a clean fear born of love (John
14:22-24), |
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braces itself for conflict (Ephesians 6), |
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admits no repression (Luke 9:26), |
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gives expression (Romans 10:9). |
Reason does what it is good at, it is reasonable and shows the truth.
Faith does what it is called to, it believes God.
Faith like that of a little child,
|
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is
unquestioning, but not illiterate, |
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is not
presumptuous, |
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expects great things of the Lord, but does not prescribe His counsel, |
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rejoices in Him
who calls, because He is sublime, spiritual and pure, |
Faith receives
Christ as Lord and Saviour, His redemption for sin,
His ransom in service to the soul,
His payment for
spiritual debts, His life as basis for life
and His prescription wrought by His own power, regeneration;
and it lives what it believes, working and walking in the power of God,
now available for godly purposes which in turn now -at last,
can be known and followed both in general and in particular.
So by the grace of God the secular may ascend, shedding its many skins of ocular exclusion, finding the sacred, and moving through it to the Lord, rejoice in the sublime,
the very Maker of Summits,
the God of salvation,
presented by His own Word,
Jesus Christ.
Then the one called to the Lord
proceeds in terms of God's own book, the Bible:
born for service, by the Spirit,
borne by the
everlasting arms, underneath and yet stretching upwards,
beckoning onward in eternal life
(Philippians 3:12-21)
Let us hear that word...
"Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected;
but I press on,
that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me."Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended;
but one thing I do,
forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward
to those things which are ahead,
I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
"Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind;
and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you.
"Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained,
let us walk by the same rule, let us be of the same mind."Brethren, join in following my example, and note those who so walk,
as you have us for a pattern.
For many walk, of whom I have told you often,
and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ:
whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame—
who set their mind on earthly things."For our citizenship is in heaven,
from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body,
according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself."
NOTES
God being a trinity, what He does has many aspects. Christ was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:4). The Spirit of God was hovering, brooding, at work in the creation as in Genesis 1; the Son, the Word, was directive and the Father held the overall embrace of the work. It is GOD AS ONE who has done it all (Isaiah 44-46) and there is no other one. Created ? a thing made ? it is the work of the word sent, Christ, for all things were created by Him (Colossians 1:15-16).
Name a thing made ? Christ made it (John 1:1-3). There was nothing made that was made, except by Him. The made category depends on His action. He, beyond it, calls it to be. He eternal, part of the Godhead, invents by His word. This concerns the creation. The desecration of the creation by man or any other, by sin, this is another matter.
One is to create; the other is to act as created. Even man can create by his word, which may activate secretaries, banks and airplanes. With God, however, not systems of power only, but ALL power is operative.
All other power is derivative, whether it uses liberty to become malign, receives curse because it is, or seeks to gain dominion because it loves to rebel; or indeed, is derived in blessed friendship with God Himself, as one serves Him in friendship and joy.
Those negating excursions will have an end. The harmonious ones, with Him, are endless. Then is blessed rest (cf. Revelation 14:13), and a final end (Revelation 20) to the present universe, a testing ground and exhibition pavilion indeed!
From Hapless Hitches and Holy Healing ... Ch. 4, we have some reference to recent findings with unalterable logic, since self-invalidation removes all argument. For more detail, see *2 below.
It is as follows.
There is always some subversive, distributive, necessity of philosophic necromancy, dealing with the dead in ostensibly living terms. It is like a dummy in the mouth of reduced, deluded man (cf. *5).
There is of course the élan vital, that life force so beautiful and dutiful in the eyes of Bergson, that driving, that dynamic, that delightfully evanescent and gloriously resurgent ... force, and so on.
It is the intoxicated spirit of man which like the awe at Niagara Falls, sees this seething scenario at work, and allows the colossal reality to be transformed by imagination into various words and thoughts.
It is nothing more (or less) than a testimony to the vital dynamic in life. Having said that, you may ask, What is it ? You are no wiser so far, except that a datum is paraded in verbal dress: the power and wonder of it all.
Then there is the libido, often nowadays in accord with the reductionist fantasies of modern man, seen as a sex drive; but this is merely an application. It is the drive of vital force, the energy of thrust in life. It CAN take the form of obsession pathologically, but it bespeaks an impression on something which is then concerned with its expression. Jung speaks moreover of archetypes, which refer to imaginary colossae of controls or originals, which pop up and express themselves from time to time as man moves along ... but where ? and why ? and in what way are they to be conceived, since man is stunningly the same, in race, in linguistic facilities in inventions of grammar (and glorious diversity in applying the logical need) ?
Don't worry about it. It is another word.
Then there is of course that romancing in New Age dress, where there is a psychic, a communal consciousness, a world coincidence or conclave of thought which is to lead upwards, but it is not at all clear which way is up in this case, though powers are thought to be present, even if once more, it is not entirely clear what the powers are actually to do.
This is unlike the DNA pre-occupation, for it must be said in support of this comparison, that it is exceedingly precise, complex and matches its precision with unification of extravagantly intricate collated processes. The intricacy and correlation patterns now reach astronomical proportions, but at the miniaturized level, like a celestial system translated into cellular terms.
Indeed, as Williams has it in his stimulating article in Journal of Creation Vol 21 (3), 2007, there is such a concentration in the once ludicrously misnamed 'junk DNA', such drafts of information, meta-information, information about information, operational information, directions or orders on how to use the information in the much smaller encoding part of the DNA; there is such a multiplication of copies, copying methods, overlays and inlays, twistings up and unravellings to a point for minute, code-controlled selective transcription for various purposes, that once more the response is awe. Thus there is a marvellous magnification of diversity in the case of one specimen, say man, relative to another, say ape. Multiplied millions of differences diverge into whole highways of specific diversities, where controls on controls and information to direct usage make much of little. It is the same of course in electric motors which can use machinery in varied ways, depending on the design of the motor, the layout of the object involved and its total relationship to the whole.
But the DNA ? is it a god ? Of course not! for it is a varied marvel of multiplied instructions with magnification through programmed availability of minutely directed subsidiaries which move to meet the programmatic whole in an integrated design of thrusting parts which interweave and unravel on command, which edit, which delete, which proceed at this or that rate, and in the industry of the infinitesimal make and construct here this, there that, this simultaneously with that, this in order to be ready for that, in such a myriad-formed complexity that the simplicity of the result is a relief. You have man's body with God's mind having contrived the methods of having it self-replicating as one whole, by dual means, man and woman, as if to underline the liberty of the Lord in securing two such magnitudes of system, which can with freedom of will, then interact by desire to produce another design.
God's mind ? But of course. Mind and mind alone has the sense of symbolism, integration of specifics by order, magnification of mentality by creative contrivance, unification of the result by over-arching vision which leads to orders which lead to entities through command, which lead to operating creations which lead to operations in man's case called thought, which is not controlled because it is capable of wilfulness, error, purposive error, intentional obfuscation for security reasons, from itself, from others, from God, or from all.
Here are the individual variabilities of the personal, and nothing else. It has its own cosmos, and were it determined, it would be an exclusion of truth to know it, for the determination would be the decisive factor, and the nature of this would be not only, in such a case, unknown but unknowable since it controls in that case, the thought itself.
Nor is it chance, since the purposive is as integral and ordered, at will, as the body, and is as vulnerable to disease as is the body; but is as effective, when directed according to design, as the body. Validity of the thought of man does not depend on actuality of physical equipment, since this is ordered, and orders are not comprehension but a matter for apprehension. A valid mind with valid exposure to actual truth is possible only when truth absolute exists, and is willing to divulge itself, and having done so, is available as such. Without that, the mind is merely a receptor-deployer of thought and will, with no knowledge of actuality, only of events. When this becomes a philosophy that events are the nature of mind, then of course this is self-contradictory, since if they were, it could neither be known nor true if it were, since on this model, truth itself is assumed not to exist.
However, mind has its deployment functions, and logic being one of these, always testable, its application to the evidence produces results that are in turn testable at the ultimate level, by another design of God: His word for reading (DNA being His word for ordained doing). His word for reading does not have to be done but SHOULD be. That is the difference. Default terms in the design when it is not done are numerous, multi-faceted, and occur slowly, speedily or are arrested by the One who made the programs, at His will.
It is not and cannot be events that manufacture truth, but these may express it. What happens is not why, or what. It simply does it.
What it is that is its manufacture and meaning, point and pith, this has to be found.
When a non-self-contradictory approach is in view, so that you proceed on the logical requirements of what is, to the necessary conclusion and conclude with this, that the ONLY way you COULD be right comes when you take logic as valid, its deployment as truth-relevant because truth is available and extant, and trying this which is what is done normally anyway, find that it points to the Bible. This in turn exposes by its own verifiable word, testable truth from the Knower of Truth, who is Himself absolute, having made all things dependent that they, as derivatives might, should ascertain from Him what it is. The Bible having by this method and at this point been confirmed as valid, verified and in essence necessary, this points to Jesus Christ as Truth Incarnate, God in flesh.
It is here that resolution comes of all logical problems, empirical ones and psychic ones. All is explained in this way, without residue. This is not to say that now man knows all, but this he knows, that in Biblical terms, resolution is total, and when is found, it uniformly continues to verify. Then you have an open mind and a closed result.
It is not a force - which imparts acceleration to matter - which is the basis of things, but that is merely an aspect. It is not matter which is the basis of things, but a physical aspect capable of being moved (SMR Ch. 1, Repent or Perish Ch. 7). It is not libido which is the essence, but this is a term enshrining the concept of vitality and exuberance, thrust and desire, as distinct from inertia and occlusion in the dimness of non-wit. The term is not a basis but a description of an aspect.
It is not élan vital, a verbal evocation of the imagination shown in the interstices of life and its multiplicity of thrusting, soaring designs and designations. This once more describes an aspect but is no case for its basis, meaning, source or overall reality.
It is God who is the source of design, thrust, imagination, thought, consciousness, understanding, morality, aesthetics, power, judgment and joy *1. What sings in nature, in the throat of bird or in the heart of man is not merely some gloss on the processes, but an expression of an emotional meaning in the interstices of living design. What has reason to keep singing is the spirit of man when he has found God, for all that is most monumental about man is His product; and all that is worst in man is his own self-defilement of mind, body and spirit by autonomous, pseudo-autonomous or innominate oddities, for this is the crash zone.
On the recently much highlighted topic of information science and its laws, and application to the necessity of intelligence for information, and related topics, see the following.
The Desire of the Nations Epilogue to Ch. 2
Little Things Ch. 3 (esp. *3),
Beauty of Holiness Ch. 4,
Dancers, Prancers, Lancers and Answers Chs. 3, 5,
Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed: Barrister of Bliss Ch. 4, and see GittThy Word is Wonderful Ch. 5
Information is not what happens, it is not lore, it is not abstract data. It is such things CONVEYED understandably, effectively, so that they are conferred on the communicatee.
It consists of what is PROCESSED in a form and format which can be READ with understanding or the effect in view, so that the symbols it uses are interpretable, either by programmatic or personal means (the former an adjunct fitted to personal interpretation in the relevant field). Otherwise it is a happening, not information. Information must be able to INFORM.
This presupposes someone or device able to BE informed. These imply an interface for the transference of what is able to inform to what is able to be informed in such a style that all the considerations in the composition of the information match those in the receptor, automatically, or by the conjunction of the capacity so to construe with what has been sent in its symbols, verbal or otherwise.
To construct this, you need to KNOW what you are doing, or have it all automated by what makes all of these things for you. Natural means without intelligence or program insertion (things doing what they are good at in their own style) do not include this type of creation of information. That is why it is not found except where intelligence is to be found. Often the format and function is implicit in the creation, be it of bird or man. In the latter case, there is room to rewrite it, distort it or compose it in further symbolic information, as a page in a book.
These facilities and the information situation, that non-intelligence is not found to create it, are correlatives. You have to have what produces this symbolic provision to interpret and present: to have what it takes, whether this be created as we watch (you watch in vain when intelligence is not involved), or subjected to these constraints while we did not watch, because we were not there. When the issue is our being instituted with such capacities, then obviously we could not use them to watch.
Whenever however we take a testable situation, information does not so act. Nor is it rational to suppose it construes, constructs, systematises for meaningful reception, possesses the receptor in tune and in conceptual correlation with its own intimacies; for these are activities of mind, understanding, mutual correlation, conceptual harmonisation, things which though present, as in an expert programmer, are more easily lost than found, even when sophistication is sensational in the human creator! You have to go against the grain to construct creatively, endue systemsatically, enable correlatively, symbolise and make symbol-receptors co-ordinate, contained in one system created itself, to enable creation within it. There are multiple levels of creation, just as there are multiplied agencies for its sustenance, sequences, control and conditioning. It is a network of necessities, co-ordinate in operation, integral in outcome, unified in production, sensational in sublimity: for what can make what can find, esteem and evaluate what is sublime, when it is absent in itself!
We ourselves are not only the receptors of programs, but of life so that, after our institution, we might either make them or receive them. That is to say, what it takes does not do it except programmatically, in which case what it takes has been conferred upon it, by what has what it takes. You get nothing from nothing, in full or in steps.
Information creation is one aspect OF creation, just as man incorporates MANY such aspects, be they mental, spiritual or physical; in fact, he is not only in parts created, but in whole as the integrality which is perhaps the hardest part of all; for in this case, you need intelligence not only to understand the parts, a vast undertaking, but to see so far beyond their complexities and with such mastery that you can compose them into a unity which works as SUCH. One says 'you', only in the sense of whoever does it. Neither you nor I, dear reader are in such a happy situation, and this is well, since the intelligence to do it needs the wisdom to go beyond it and place it where its functions are designed with the Creator's wit.
Talking about various irrelevancies, like self-making concepts and self-communicating non-communicators does not really change anything except the workability of the ideas. Chance is one of these irrelevancies: it ASSUMES what has the situation ripe for chance to enter; and this is a system. Without systematic characteristics, it is undescribable; even constant change being a constant!
All that is then meant when 'chance' is brought in like someone off the street, is this: that the system of whatever characterisable and relevant kind, is not being interfered with in any way. It is being left to itself. Whatever is within its powers, format and functions can now occur freely. If the result is a knock on your head, then that is said to be chance, in that there was no special need for it to do so, other than the system's perquisites and you intersected in your loci, or for you to be there, other than your decision, which had no relationship to what the system might be doing, this being outside your knowledge, in this regard.
Information comes from informers. Matter is not self-informative.
See:
LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST,
REASON, REVELATION and the REDEEMER.
The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy.
The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy
which provide detailed demonstration.
Consider for a moment a simple, relevant point. In the reception of information from the Creator, man, a creation of His, has an interface in his spirit, a receptor in his mind, and apparatus for storage and operational facility in his cerebral billions of organised cells, arranged for suitable action. Man has in myriads come into direct confrontation with the One who speaks, in misuse of His property; but not in this only. It has also been in terms of misinformation concerning God’s constructions and of the blight from man’s opinions, which often deride, dismiss, derogate or distort both reality in creation and in the Creator; and lead to millions of deaths, of those old and young, wonderful and woeful alike.
Thus the very concept of deity becomes a plaything of idle philosophy and irrational chant and cant. This could lead to man’s removal, which has come near enough from time to time; or to man’s remedy, which was foretold for millennia (while a preliminary strategy was in force, incorporating such principles) and has now been performed in its active and necessary power, two millennia ago.
As shown in detail in the above references, the Bible is the solitary verifable, validatable written expression of God to mankind, and qualifies as the word of God not only by default, but by prophetic and principial dynamic, remaining inveterate in victory over all attempts to defile or defy it. The more man rebels, the more the predictions come true, and the devalued principles assert themselves. History is a tainted tapestry of slow learning, and woeful will, at this level, and despite the many good things done with the desire to do the will of God, that path appears as narrow in world history as also in the word of God (Matthew 7:15ff.).
In patience, the Creator has shown mercy, sent the Messiah and undertaken personal payment for the gap (q.v.). Meanwhile, the Bible not merely meets the requisites concerning the power and nature of God, given logic, but provides that remedyand introduces those who receive Him, to the Redeemer Himself, so that life is completed in principle, while the end of the Age awaits.
Nothing else in written, testable, alleged divine communication over the millien has ever appeared, which meets these criteria. This is not merely rationally demonstrable in its divine origin, but vitally exhibited in its force and grace, when it is followed first TO Him and then WITH Him.
See on the resurrection from its various aspects:
The Magnificence of the Messiah, Endnote 1,
Barbs ... Appendix 3,
Great Execrations, Great Enervations, Greater Faith Ch. 7;
Biblical Blessings Ch. 15, Extended Endnote 2,BIBLE TRANSLATIONS 33
Acme ... Ch. 11, With Heart and Soul, Mind and Strength Ch. 3, Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 5
Dastardly Dynamics ... Ch. 11 ,
The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 9, Section 14,Joyful Jottings Ch. 25,
A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 15, 16,
Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 5,Things Old and New Ch. 2, Excursion 2A;
Light of Dawn Ch. 3,
Beyond the Crypt, the Divine Script and the Face of God Ch. 2;Dizzy Dashes, Heady Clashes and the Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth Ch. 2,
and New Zealand, Ch. 6,;
Spiritual Refreshings Chs. 5, 6,
Ancient Words Ch. 8 (on resurrection and Lazarus, yes and both with Jerusalem); contrasting Greek bodily terms - Let God be God Ch. 2 ;
The Frantic Millenium Ch. 4;
Bewilderment, Bedazzlement, Bedevilment and the Beauty of Christ's Holiness Ch. 1.