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CHAPTER SEVEN
LIFE PERSPECTIVE
Facts are Delightful Things
for they overpower dreaming
The definition and
overview of life in its more physical aspects has been wrought at
LIFE WHAT IS IT, with consideration of
motivation and quality, at TMR What
is Life for ?
Today, the focus is different. Leaving the mulling over magnificence and the culling of truth in favour of myth and magic, so common in the naturalistic follies of our day*1, often most blatantly pushed, like other idolatry worship and its educational correlatives, with an irrational credo going back to the Greeks and eventually to Eden (cf. Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13), let us simply look*1A at life. Let us do so with the eyes of understanding, seeing what is there, not what is not, that illusory preoccupation of so much scientistic stupefaction, which seems to afflict so many of the mighty, and to have led to so many millions of slaughterhouse victims, of the mordant illusion.
Seeking grandeur, they find minimisation of life, aspiring to philosophy, they find ashes, and deliberating on the impossible, they make death an incumbent of life, like some al Qaeda component, querulously seeking to sling abominable unholiness onto more and more life, deluded into the idea that acting as sovereign over life and minister of death is given as by some spiritual patent, a highway to heaven rather than the charge: Murderer!
It is just part of one unholy alliance, where presumption without evidence, dares to use the name of God to delete souls, as far as lies within them, for a deity not comparable with truth (cf. More Marvels ... Ch. 4, SMR pp. 1080ff.), just as the naturalists have had their squadrons of spiritually deluded nature-worshippers, doing it for their own reasons. Not all of either group do it ? Of course not! this is an empirical fact; but many do, and that is another: and their motivation is from their creeds, naturalistic with tooth and claw, blind to the magnificence of life because of the curse added (cf. Beyond the Curse), or spiritualistic, with scimitar and victory, an avenue to eternity in their minds (cf. Divine Agenda Ch. 6).
Let us then turning from these things, and all comparable, look at the facts. As to truth in its own domain, this has been considered in SMR Chs. 1, 3, 5,10 in particular, as in in Barbs ... 6 -7 as in It Bubbles, It Shrieks, He Calls Ch. 9, Little Things Ch. 5, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch. 7, in its empirical impact, in TMR Ch. 1, its divine correlatives in TMR Ch. 7, Section D, and in its diverse physical attestations in TMR Ch. 7, Section E. Here, we merely open the eyes at what is about us, within us and above us, and needing no more to visit such themes as those above, move along without the quasi-omniscient glasses of delusion, tied above our eyes.
Delving into Delight and Disaster
What do we see ? The more we look at what is about us in the manner of contrivances, purposive operators, whether dogs or man, whether sea-gulls or galahs for food, fun and flight, or activated seekers, such as plants for light, action kits, like protein motors to fold the things into being, aspects of the cells of life, parts used in different settings for various results (cf. 'deliberative design', SMR pp. 252H-J), the flitting of swallows, as if with modern dreams in the eye, it was they who imitated the Mosquito Bombers of World War II, rather than the other way around, swooping delicately, rushing artistically, embarking on flits and manoeuvres of astonishing kinetic facility and agility, more amazing than a ballet, more at liberty than the wind, pursuing their purposes, flinging their artistry about, like ingenious artists darting off pictures in kinesis, at a glance and a brush, every second: the more, I say you look about you, the more you see to ponder.
There is the beauty of the feathery compositions of colour and form, feature and facility, appearance and functionality in birds. In this artistry (for if anyone made such, it could be called nothing less, blindness not being a form of description), indeed what often affirms itself as an esprit d'art, a living pulsation and promotion of smartness and enterprise, magnificence of assemblage of shades and impacts, motion and impression given, as with many of the parrots, in this aesthetic pre-occupation, as one would have to say if anyone else were the creator, in the bird realm, some of the presentations requiring much thought and appreciation even to begin to plumb their aesthetic depths, in these dynamic diversities of flight, there is one phase of wonder. On the other, the matter is not limited.
Thus you have exhibits, messengers in the format of caricature, like the sea lions, as if mimicking some of the gross exhibits among men of hedonistic dream, salacious realities and boring decline into a world of basic belligerence and growth that entices like a swimming pool of tar. Among man, we have creators of the same sort of thing, in political cartoonists, for example, such as the amazingly fertile Low, whose sketches bring an imprint of criticism, satire, playful abandon, not of himself, but in the exposure of his subjects, or mordant judgment (as in his Europe Since Versailles). Some tower in triumph, as speakers in form, of thought. So is it in the field of biological life, with the sloth, the ant, the hapless hippopotamus, the charging rhinoceros, a more serious Don Quixote.
You have formatted messages in this way, of caricature, lecturing, warning, putting into charade that is more than play, the follies of man; or at times, express means of judgment in the very realm where so many so ineptly specialise in their own lives or empires or kingdoms or domains. You can have grave caricatures, such as Flaubert invented in Madame Bovary; on the other hand and extreme, you have fundamentals of grace, of sacrifice as in so many creatures, for their young, of agility, dash, daring, or move into the realms of awkwardness, living illustrations of what needs to be noted and avoided or better at times, imitated!
There lies strength in squalor, as in our sea-lions, unimpressive massifs of grabbing, martiality in its hubris, as in the lion, where possibilities of some beauty can be added, to be contrasted with its mode, you have expressions of peaceableness as in the dove, of fussiness as in some birds, of inertia as in the sloth, of almost dizzy action as if to represent hyper-diligence and hyperactivity, as if nothing else mattered but DOING IT.
Itemsisation of abstract ideas, moral issues, wayward patterns and staggering excellence al appear, some so striking in art in an extravagant stylisation as almost to take the breath away, just to glimpse it, qualities in grouping, as in the white ants, termites, with some developing wings and some making platforms for gyrations in the sky on the part of a few, and others sacrificing their lives to guard the nest, being shut out so that the others might safely be shut in, bees with their information-providing dancing, spies and scouts included, with the entire domain of workers and drones, queens and nestling hopefuls, honey-making and hexagonal marvels, exhibits of entrepreneur, lavish in art, marvellous in organisation, specialised to the uttermost in format, what does not work and is not right, useless, what does, in an amalgam of action, a summary of wit which delights the brow and brings music to the ear of the soul.
Here are the implements to perform, at times, necessary tasks, as if in some war, say in Britain, the need for metal and thought, and aeronautical knowledge and workers, and entrepreneurial facilities were all mixed, so that things not necessary in peace, should suddenly be brought into multi-layered existence, each part under direction, all under protection, the whole under inspection, in one vast implementation of intelligent vision. Domains without which whole necessary areas of life would fail, such as those of the bee, are equipped and supplied, so that as one whole all might provide what it is for; and art summits beyond any but the aesthete, to be beheld by man, and experienced in his innermost recesses for its wonder. On the other hand, things neither necessary to create nor to maintain, areas of the exquisite, from sufficient ground, do arise, as in any creation; for who could say that Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream had to be for man to be; it is unnecessary, but it becomes a part of the splendour that exhibits an inventive race.
For that matter nothing could have got along quite well by itself; but it was not to be. What is has done what is in accord with its powers, and to us it is all dowered, making form an a prodigy for perception, till in the folly of the very grandness of his conception by his Inventor, spoiling for sovereignty, mad with desire, he spoils his powers by their abuse, ruins his enjoyments by their travesties, enables cartoons of his follies to rampage, sobering cartoons, like plagues. There is artistry even in these, for the voracity of the locust, seen in Exodus as expressly for rebuke, the teeming ravages of floods, the soldier ants on the march in Africa, these things do not lack specificity, as weapons they are not daft, but apt.
Man is not the only one who can make weapons, and the ingenuity of the method, as in the mosquito, surely the most cunningly constructed fro the avoidance by ingenious means, of easy impact from the aroused hand of man, this is not to eb forgotten because the thing stings. That is what is made for, in a world pretending the power to make heaven, and bordering in much, instead on hell. Communism is a major recent example, as Solzhenitsyn well exposed, of such a ludicrous dream and horrendous result; but this, it is merely one example in history.
Vitality and originality, what is not 'necessary' but provided so that AFTERWARDS it can almost feel necessary, this is one of the aspects of creativity, with which we are endowed, and which we use, and which has been engendered by the One who is permanent, providing a measure of it for the ones who, unless they repent, are impermanent, thought the desire for permanence very naturally comes to their hearts, or they may lose even this, as they become caricatures of the lost, though well founded in finance, or emblems of disorder, though the delirium of enterprise mismatched with fact, in rebellion against their own source, using for the purpose, the inventiveness with which they were invented, in its capsule within themselves.
Unnecessary ? How can you DEMAND Hamlet from the pen ? But when come, delightful and expressive massively of much that makes of man a more perceptive being; here is vitality, not only in the making of creation, but in the creation made! LIFE is not a force, ludicrous and inadequate sloppiness of thought, but an expression of vitality, ingenuity, brilliance and rebuke, blessing and calamity, each in measure and each according to the case; and what is living, without God, this has the same impact from what is disordered, as does the body of the boy who struts across the road on the assumption that he has as much 'right' to it as any car, and then is hit.
This is the nature of the thing when lived in exclusion of reality and realism alike, as shown in Psalm 1. Its abrupt and strange falls, like pieces of chaff, is not strange but designable from the nature of the oblivion.
In short, there is not a combination of style and design and not, but there are various designs for design, reasons for it, depending on the case, and marvellously proficient and efficient it all is. After all, if you make an atomic bomb, it is not disorder that it smashes things; that is the design. The things smashed are not an argument against design, but an exhibit of it.
Thus the curse aspect (Genesis 3, Romans 8:17ff.). This, it is no detriment to design, but has in it, many a mordant masterpiece. There flits the mosquito with its invasive evasiveness, here burrows that tiny tic, look again, we find the subtly invasive, the enduring fungus infection, multitude of little prongs growing fast. Again, we behold the snake, in its serpentine creepiness, or the bee a blessing but not to be tampered with, workers who can sting, its brilliance to buzz, as if sonorous when in fact, behold it works. There moves the spider with its weakness made powerful by intimacy of action. Plagues and wonders, behold not only the enablement of creation, but the rebuke, parallel to the blighting of creation by man, with a parallel and a rebuke within it, at times a sobering cartoon, masterful mime, a deadly and acute diversification (cf. Member Contribution 1).
It speaks, it arouses, and not a little resembles the case for bad students, something to awake and arouse, before loitering death confirms their folly.
Pondering Wonder
What is it that is seen ? In structure and kinesis, what is there ? Firstly, there is creativity. That is what you call the innovative ecstasy of originating something with dash, a sort of abandon that transcends the simplistic, brings to birth the real from the thought world, or better, the practical from the vision, the brilliance of method, the dexterity of plan undeterred by events, which are made subordinate to the imagination, and serve it.
This, it abounds, it astounds; and the more we find of the staggering complexity, enhanced mathematical displays to enable, the technical prodigality in neatness all but unthinkable in life's construction, and the more we see of methods almost immeasurable in wonder, arrays, region on region, of mutually operative and co-operative timings and servings, one series of events in line with another so that both make sense and construct in a broader milieu yet, what the unitary result is to BE and be able as such to DO, each part ministering with or for the other, as merely a part of physical life, while all blooms in one: the more we compare. Here is creativity, it is precisely what this is. It is found constitutively IN man, as part of his equipment, and productively as a function of his entirety AS man. He has it; he does it.
The more, in other
words, we see of what is his physical composition, an ideational and ideological
mode, the more we compare it with what he can DO. Far less, to be sure, is his
power to produce, than the productivity within him: it is nevertheless an
exuberance of creativity which he deploys.
ANYWHERE that we found such things, this would be among the first of our responses. Whose is it ? what firm, what management, what array of geniuses thought this thing up! We would be inclined to hunt down the prodigal producer, wonder how he or she or they had the means to do it, financial, mental, technical, and how on earth they could do it in such a grand style, as if majesty and orginality with imagination and utter brilliance of mind had been conjoined with an intense and intensive pre-occupation with practical modes of implementation; as if innovation summits, soaring from skills without limit were overtopped with readiness. Where is it, or what transcends enables it, and where to be found is this operation maestro, this originality maker, this creator of creativity, whose creations include the fashioning from resources beyond bounds, the abounding felicitous of imagination itself, a dower to man, and man a messenger of thought!
What could do it ? how would such operational powers and creative skills, how would such finesse on so many scales, as if all possible scales on a piano were run through simultaneously, yet without cacaphony: how would any or all of this so perform! How would such variety of brilliant methods come, one on the heel of the other, surging with unquenchable creativity, so that invention flies in as an spontaneous art, leaving mere necessity too drab to bother with: and amidst the flashes of creative fire arrived felicitous and fulsome, a cavalcade of creative mastery from the world of thought and creation.
Where, we would ask, is the base for this, who is he, where ?
Acclaim would move into the news, and hunted down, the actual producers in our imaginary situation, would either blink at being disturbed in their prodigious performances, or being humble, make little of it, or being truthful, admit that it took toil, while acknowledging that they had been so gifted, and so it was. They acted, perhaps like the swallows in their airy domain, in their own place. Just as the swallows sped and flitted, meaningful, vast in enterprise, amazing in airy felicity, graceful in mode, so they flitted and filtered, thrust and thronged about in the pangs of creation, in their turning of the invisible within them, into this visible massif of creation. So they might reply.
The joy of elaboration, as they joined the apparently diverse into conjunctions miraculous to the understanding, staggering to the wits, stirring an admiration so intense that one would have to be careful not to worship them: this was in them as they worked. That is the reasonable mode. Such might be the report of those at last found, the producers, when they replied to questions in our imaginary quest on earth.
But some do not will to search ? What then ? You may act, but otherwise, you do not look for the author, origin and developer. You cannot be bothered. Like idle and corrupted adolescents, feed on wealth, you can simply 'accept it' and use it at will, that took more than mere will to make. In indolent superficiality, you can then squander it, till ... to revert suddenly to the real world, you find yourself in financial troubles, and wonder where it all went. It is not wise to be blind by volition.
On the other hand, there is the hand of the diligent, who perceiving the source of the splendour, uses it with humility and thankfulness.
As it is, folly moves to disclaim such normal, natural and wholesome response; but there is no need to heed it. Wisdom can supervene.
In this case, moreover, it is not necessary to avoid the impulse to worship, keeping a watchful eye on one's soul as if one were in danger of making admiration an intoxicant. All in good time.
The Search Progresses
As the search progresses, however, the worker is not to be seen; the functional producer is nowhere to be noticed among the works that flow from the mind and power at work. Indeed, we find in the comparatively new science Information, that now information of the kind inherent in what we have just been discussing, observing, that in man, is not produced except by intelligence. It is not happening now; what is made is not making what it is, except by reproduction on a stereotype in format. Misused, this arena can become a battle zone with provision for death, so that misadventure may buzz around the matrix, like flies around a corpse. But this, it is no corpse; and its production has scope for nothing less than a babe.
Information without intelligence ? its genesis ? That is, as far as scientific facts are concerned, as Professor Werner Gitt is at such pains to declare, challenging anyone to the contrary, a nonentity: for this is never found*1B. Since that is the proper domain of science, to see what is found and to move with reason to what it implies, then testing this, to verify it or find error in thought, and so forth, then this has the same status as any other science. THIS is what is found. It does not vary. You do not get it from here. Nor is it currently seen to be at work, from there. There is in kind, stasis, and as Harvard Professor, Stephen Jay Gould was so keen to point out, in major design features, the best is past, we decline (cf. Wake Up World ... Chs. 4-6).
Leaving aside the logical necessities of the case, since this is not our present quest, and has been done so often before on this site*2, we consider the matter practically. The work behind all this is not being done in its own domain at this time. WE can do something far less, but cognate, by the use of intelligence. NOTHING however is doing it apart from such as we, to discernment, now. We have non-intelligence, non-imagination, non-cognisance at this level, and cognisance. What has it, does it, makes things with new information (cf. Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 4, Keys to the Comfort of the Kingdom Ch. 5).
.
What lacks it does not do it; it does not have what it takes: the use of form, formulation, code and attribution, conceptual discipline, expressed with mind for mind, cognate mind to cognate mind. How would the mindless use what is the characteristic of mind ? It could be that something was far better; but not at all worse. The ingredients have a minimal necessary causation and causation is not to be quibbled with; if you want to show how THAT is caused, then you beg the question, assuming it operational in order to find its quasi-genesis! So does mankind waddle without wisdom so readily, that it is small wonder that folly threatens now to consume him.
We conclude, for want of other evidence and in view of the massive and continual evidence before us, that it was done at some other time, or with the invention of time, since all is one mesh, in terms of space and time and timing and codes and codicils by which they allow variation about a kind*3.
At what manner of time then was it done ? While debate continues, often bafflement proceeding because of the same obfuscation of the obvious, about dates*4, the reality is, when these are squarely faced, that some thousands of years have elapsed in terms of what is assured in time, since this was done. What then do you think of, when you find this sort of thing: to take a non-biological case, it is like seeing paintings far better than those of Rembrandt, stored in a loft, and trying to work out when they were put there ?
You look back and back, to try to find evidence of when and by whom it was put there. You do not imagine it was done by a mouse or a spider, or an ape, but imagine that at least a man would be necessary, since the criteria which are evident in the various disciplines needed, for paint, pigment, graduation of the same, delicacy of anointing, type of canvas, mode of preservation for continuation as extant paintings, penetration of meaning in life implicit in the paintings, understanding discernible in the penetration, as common modes are surpassed in the expression of things felt and seen and imagined, now deployed in such a way as both to grip and to inform and instruct the imagination, and communicate a message of some kind to the viewer: all these things speak.
They are not distant and undiscernible, but obvious and commonly found. It is just, that in this imaginary barn loft case, we are trying to find when someone of this stature, of these abilities and facilities and of this imagination and penetration could possibly have both done and stored the stuff.
You look at history, examine newspapers of old, to see if they contain some clue to things of the past, from people near to it than we are, you look at national characteristics, ponder the canvas and seek findings on its date; you look for any culture from which such things might even be imagined to come; you busy yourself with complete and utter assurance, never finding magic the answer, and so not pressing it now.
You are satisfied when you find an antique culture, artifacts at least suggestive of the skill involved; but of course, in this case, you do not, nor is there anything at all correlative to this.
Normally, you
would conclude, in logical certainty, that there must have been at work
some
power ? but no, not power, that is mere capacity to give acceleration to mass,
if taken in physical meaning; then some powered capacity.
Certainly, but
what kind ? The kind to produce the kind of thing in view.
What kind is that ? It is a matter of capacity to think conceptually,
to code linguistically, to program advisedly for integrality of many
sub-purposes
to institute a larger one, to imagine, in order to see what to do, to envisage,
in order to have in mind the purpose of the programs and the point of the
integrations and the resultant capacities.
Towards such a kind of thing, you therefore are forced in any ordinary, in any non-magic manner of thought. But what is to be done ? This world eminently and evidently does not contain it. Therefore we conclude that either it once contained it, despite total lack of evidence to this effect, in any domain, microscopic, electronic, material or other, and any grounds based on any evidence whatever, the thing being contrary to every known process and law; or else you conclude that this world was not the source of this world, a reasonable assumption if ever there was one.
What then was the source of this world ? What has produced the glory of innovation, the wonder of capacities, the integrality of multi-system totalities, acting as one item, with coherent and massively instructive overall thrust, bursting with integrated information on a vast and all but incomprehensibly vast scale, yet one inundated with ingenuity ... The thought refuses to die, on pain of irrationality, mere sludge for performance.
You ponder the imaginative mish-mash, the magnificent artistry of bird-coats, some of which require attention to the uttermost point of aesthetics and design, for the discernment of their revealed criteria; the sheer exuberance*5 of multi-type ways of handling environmental and processive constraints, as if the mere imitation of past things, though valuable, was not NEARLY enough, and every type of thing has to be given, not in terms of a harsh necessity and survival, but of a splendid renaissance of energy (if you want to think of human history, as comparison), but with this difference, that re-naissance is not here the point, but 'naissance', birth!
There is institution as well as computation, creation as well as contrivance, the underlying as well as the overlying, the basics of time and space, ordered constraints, as well as the compulsions of programmatic codes, insistent languages, commands and correlations enabling them to be precisely executed with the UTMOST finesse ?
Such things need not be tied to man or to our own ways. It is no question of analogy: WE are the analogy, in that the power and contrivance concentrates that we are, endued with spirit, equipped with mind, are an exhibit to display; but the realities to act, these are no analogy, but the essential source for any; for without these IN PRINCIPLE, there is no principle, nor any power, nor any illustration. Here lies the epitaph to humanism, and the beginning of the end of confused imagination, that would have what is delimited, do it itself, have what is founded and grounded, 'arise' without ground or cause, an ultimatum to reason, a bid for autonomy, a deification of nothingness, from where something-ness is imported by degrees, smuggling is from the power of God, with the hidden origin in nothing.
Such is as groundless as if by contrast to the ground of the dust of man, the stuff did a dance and then decided, like the maestro frog in the brilliant cartoon, it really could not be bothered doing any more. Dust doesn't have what it takes; and while imaginary delights in the ridiculous, and why not, it is not wise to confuse its fun with what is done.
What of man, the presumptive heir, pseudo-slaughterer of deity, dashing to destiny in preferred ignorance to his Maker ? or if assigning a Maker, then such in preferred or distant ignorance of His credentials and testimony. What is it like ? It rather resembles someone putting down 'married' in a questionnaire, but airily assuming some woman or other is she, and perhaps this one is not she, but in any case, deeming it best to say so. It is not enough, however, just to say 'married'. You had better have good ground for assigning that post to the one in question, beyond all imagination or mere preference!
A similar disfigurement of reason is found when one would act as if the death of Christ in compassion were to be measured in terms of the death of WHO He is, as God were not trinity, and so in Himself qua Spirit, beyond the obliterative power of all format, time and other delimiting, defining, constrained and constraining particularities; as if the incarnation of Christ in man's format, the second person of the trinity, were to be God up for grabs, rather than the format apt for ruin, and Himself for resurrection. Indeed, such dissimulation and divorce from reality resembles the cry that God had done nothing, rather than acting to the uttermost, and the accusation that cruelty should to be attributed to Him, when in fact, His warning and repeal of death, through His own bearing of it as man (cf. Hosea 13:14, II Cor. 5:17ff., John 1:1-14, 11ff.) is the most eminent fact in the history of the universe. You cannot have it both ways. If you disbelieve, you do not remove. Belief does not accord reality, but responds to it.
God cannot be killed by clients of time. His format in Christ was killed, but His Spirit went to His Father and His body to the resurrection thrust, that broke the power to destiny of the real culprit, that three-letter word, sin, with its guilt, shame and deletion capacity for life. He remains over the time He created, and for the time of His creation finding His assessment.
All illusions, mixtures of reason in thought with its demise with irrationality, are mere norms in the confused world of misattribution, misconception and misalliance with inconsistency, presumption and erratic question begging. They do not remove judgment, or delete creation.
Arriving in Time to Meet the Timeless Maker of Time
What then of the basics needed ? It is not in man
that adequacy for man lies. In what then ?
The generalities are these as a MINIMUM: intelligence far beyond that of man, wisdom in excess of human variabilities, sufficient to create human standards for it, creative capacity to the point of creating liberty for derivative creators, such as men or lyre-birds (and sometimes magpies for that matter). This means life-creating power, mental creativity in terms of making mentalities, and spiritual origination prowess in order that man might will, and as seen in the last Chapter (as in many others*6), become what he was made to be, or not.
In short, the need is to identify a creative being, immeasurably more so than is man, capable not only of every TYPE of operation to be found at the utmost in man's capacity-profile, but of making each of these items, so that it MIGHT operate. In other words, you need powers such as the created functions have, and powers to make these creative functions exist so that they might, within the creation, so operate. Operational felicity and functionality is the minor part, though it is glorious in concept; foundational felicity and functionality is as high above that as is the artist in relevant function, above the curator of the museum, or the administrator of the library.
This is a quantum leap; and it is far more. Thus it is not only a GREATER power, precision, perception, conceptualisation, intelligence, constructive and imaginative spirit than that of man, with a greater mind that is needed; it is what is capable of creating the very capacity to think, to imagine, to ratiocinate, to will and to sin by breaching the realities of the point of the whole thing, by desire, as one of its products! This requires spirit-engendering power, as well as creativity-constructing capacity.
Such a being (for to have all this requires one, but if more, then the one to integrate, facilitate, enable all to move as one, with information transmissions systems and so on, and so one), being one, requires to be beyond time, in order to enact its limitations; for if it had such limitations in itself, then we would simply have to find who or what set these, so we get straight to the necessary point, that the One cannot have any limits set at all (cf. SMR Chs. 1, 3, 5).
This free being, moreover, must be there from eternity, for if without creating, it were there for any moment or particle of sequence, or series, or being, less than this, then nothing would be the basis for everything, which of necessary would produce nothing for ever; which is not the case: so this therefore did not happen.
It is a free, and an eternal being; and since there is only one, it is only fitting and just to say this, it is One. Moreover, what sort of a one ? It is an intelligent, magnificently comprehensive being, in whom there is imagination to a marvel, there is understanding past all measure (for with what would you measure what has no limits imposed), while here lies for brilliance, its summit, and the maker of summits, who superimposes past all summits, and yet is beyond all that is seen, Himself beyond all products, Maker beyond made. Here is the source and centre of co-ordinative capacity, the ultimate in engineers, and more than this, since the ultimate pre-supposes a limit, which not being there, makes this Being the ultra-ultimate in engineering as, for that matter, in intelligence, imagination and that power, which has no limits imposed.
It is normal and simple to call Him, God.
God does not we have found (for example, in Repent or Perish Ch. 2, Sparkling Life Ch. 4, Barbs ... 6 -7) have any desire for what He is not, since there are no limits to what He is; hence it is to give, not grind, like some artful and oppressive noble in power, that is His desire. He may indeed desire to induce what produces, but has no need. He may desire what has self-discipline, but for productivity for His usage. He may and does desire what is in His image, and so is not merely gross, glorying in gifts with thankless appetite. Such is no analogy to Him, for whom what is ultra-gifted is but His nature.
He has no need. This applies whether it be imagined to be a psychological kind of a desire, a lust to grab, to assuage inner hunger or lack, or any other kind: He has no need, and any imagined nature, to be attributed to Him, which exhibits such lacks, by which it would merely exploit what it made, is self-contradictory, for this implies limits which merely beg the question and avoid the issue, which is set for the basis.
From the first of the two references just noted above, it seems apt to present an excerpt at this point, slightly revised for this purpose.
- One further element, which follows from the others, is this. If it were felt that God, the Almighty, the Creator had in fact not spoken, it would not merely be contrary to the justice which is from Him, who made all things in their relationships as they ought to be, according to His desire.
- It would not merely similarly conflict with His truth, by which all reality has an owner and a word, called into being by His direction which constitutes it as it is, so that for Him to lie is self-affront, and self-affront is conflict and conflict is warring between what is desired, and what is: which is only for beings who have some endowment from outside. It would mean the topic was NOT GOD.
- It would actually further mean that He for whom lie is self-affront, is willing to be affronted through lie, by those who are not even part of Himself, while the evil is outrageously contrary to His own being and excluded by it. Truth is what is CONSTITUTED by His nature, what is. Lie therefore is what attacks His nature.
- To invent what contradicts what you are, at your pleasure, and this without remedy, or need, which is excluded, is to be of two minds, living simultaneously two lives, contrary to one another; and this entails that such a being as this portends, would be of two-fold construction, and hence of a planned and apportioned nature, a thing of creation.
- To suffer such things as lies without remedy, this would represent a funereal lust, an arbitrary invasion of His Being, denial of it, and departure from it. Remedy is destruction or revelation: removal or cure. It is necessary, it is found. His word is. His expression has been presented over the millenia, is found in book format, and in eternal majesty, in Christ, the living word of God.
- But what if it were not found, what if He had not spoken, were not expressed, had provided no remedy for this world, while it yet continued ? The result ? It would be this. Contrary to His life, and hence contrary to the One who knowing all exhaustively, and leasing life out in creation at His exclusive will, is always what He would be, cannot die or change, and by being what He is, and doing and speaking it, constitutes truth: such an imagination has drifted into dealing with some demi-urge, which is not the subject. It is of God whom we speak.
- Therefore, to distil such a thought about God is libel on divinity, folly in conception and rebellion in unreason. As to God, it is certain that His speech adorns the earth, and it follows rigorously from His very existence.
- Far from surprising therefore is His statement that He has not left Himself without a witness! (Acts 14:17, Psalm 50:19ff., Amos 4:13, Isaiah 45:18-19). It would be thinkable that He would, just as the square root of minus one, is thinkable; but it is inconceivable that it should be so, for it is a mere contradiction in expression, of what logic faithfully requires; for even reason will not suffer it, which God has given to us (cf. Romans 1:19-12).
- But let us look further once again, at lies. Indeed, to be in internal conflict is not to be God, whose nature is eternal and without intrusion from without, who is as He would be, whom nothing can hinder and who gains nothing from what is His exhaustive construction, the creation; who lacks nothing, and for whom nothing is required. In Him, no conflict energises distortion, for conflict bespeaks inner contraries unresolved and hence delimitation and hence being a creature; and in Him, no desire disturbs what He is and does, for His desire is what is, as in the case of His creation, which He mercifully enables to meet His desire and His truth, or to be banished.
- Further, what is in Him, IS His desire, and hence it is that He is it. Accordingly, as to lie, nothing allows it, for it would represent a disclaimer of what is His desire, and hence a verbal assault on Himself, or equally, on what He has done, which being the unqualified outcome of His wishes, similarly is representative of Himself: so that a clash between word and deed or intention, even if freely desired, would amount to war between parts, past and present or future, one or all. As to this, even if it were strategically planned, it entails the concept of clash, disruption or dispersion in part or whole, of one thing by something else, or striving to this end; and hence the reality of dissidence within, contraries in operation.
- Contraries however to what ? To each other. If God harboured that, He would be a constituted entity, dealing with what He would as He could within, to secure what was not yet the case. He would have failed entirely to have become what He would, since internal and contradictory agitation would signify irresolution, which is non-achievement of the end, and hence the heritage of a creation, not of God. That, once again, as a mere creation, is entirely irrelevant to our concern: the speech of the one rightly called GOD.
- Indeed, such contrarieties bespeak inadequate power to obtain, to envisage or to perform, an internal collision of categories: impossible for God, being a flat contradiction of God. Such things are attributable only to what is created, which hence may be so limited, delimited and enmeshed!
- This then is the nature of lie, wherever and in whomever.
- For man to lie or be unjust is thus also assault on the Almighty's ways and on His constructions, which move and live and act and interact, some of which love and desire Him, some seeking to disrupt the same!
It is assault on Him, whether on the part of those who so lie to one another and to Him - or indeed ABOUT HIM. Ignorant of nothing, alert to the alive, sustaining all things, it is to Him the invasion of His property, His principles and His power mounts its thrust. A contrary spirit as well as a contrary quest proceeds. Not merely is it contrary; it is antagonistic, militant and machinates. Of this, He knows the end, before it begins, and He? He has no place for the learning by misfortune who invented events.
- And yet the world has abundance of it: of injustice, suffering as a result, of disruption of justice, disturbance of truth, seizing by violence of what is due, of lies and fraud, religious pretension, often for gain; and being His, is it then left senseless and dead with no correction?
- If this did not disturb Him, those principles are not His; and if not His, then he is not God, but rather is it He whose principles they are, and whose concern is not divorced from reality.
- What then? To accept and disregard in silence, all this, it is not God, who in such a case would be One who voluntarily invents His assailant, creates His caricaturist and the violator of His principles, and then "ignores" it all, as if He were dead, though it attacks His system, abuses His provisions and usurps His prerogatives. Not dead, but a miasmic myth is such a profound minister of His own overthrow, defilement of His own purpose-built property and mutilation of His own operational name, invasion of His own realm. Since He is, then His silence is impossible.
- He has no need to "learn", since He invented our learning-growth devices, whose is all;
has no potential to develop, since there is none to endow Him with it, nor growth membrane to confer, nor is there deception to assist who needs no assistance, nor abuse to misuse, who has all, and for whom what is arises from He who is, so that it is in itself, His desire. Moreover, if He were deficient, and needed the sight of suffering for His comfort, deficiency is the lack of what is needed for a purpose, and such a lack at once entails an endowment of what does not match in one thing, what is present in another.
That however is the nature of creation which comes to be, and is not its own self-sufficiency.
Again, had He ignorance of developments, so that He needed to find out, and hence suffered things to 'go awry', this is merely one of the endless seeming contradictory propositions which might be made, all irrelevant, for they all start by assuming what the necessities of the case have been shown to require: HE HAS NO NEED. HE IS FREE ENTIRELY. Knowledge moreover takes derivation from Him, and strictly, without Him, is not possible, merely instead leaving the vacancy to reaction-response involvement. Exhaustively, utterly and always, He knows all that is, having invented all that is, with no other place from which anything at all could be drawn.
- Let us consider further. No constraints could have required anything of Him, no system could have contained Him whose is the beginning the cause of it all (SMR Chs.1,3), and no character or desire within is capable of frustrating Him, either in itself or in any combination or synthesis with other desires; for nothing is, with precision, what He cannot deal with, and nothing, again with precision, is His inheritance from before, for there is no 'before' for the ground and cause of what is.
- He is stopped and curtailed... by NOTHING! HE IS, curbed by NOTHING, constrained and controlled by NOTHING, has need of NOTHING, inventing as He will and dealing with His inventions in entire accord with what is His desire. What He is, is His desire; and what He does, is representative of His nature. What contradicts it is representative of war on Him, attack on what He is, and hence a contest of strength proceeds: CAN GOD dissipate or remove what is so contrary ? or distil from it what He wishes as through redemption, which both exhibits the wisdom and removes the blot ? Assuredly He can. If He did not, He would by an indirection, in creation's nature, unredeemed, be at war with Himself, the very ultimate in contrariety, non-resolution, inability.
- If it is hard for warped souls to construe purity, this is not to the point, except for the advancement of those who have learning difficulties. The matter remains the same. Such beings as those, are not God. Since at this point our interest however our interest is with the Almighty, they need not concern us.
- Some, then, may wish a schizophrenic 'god', but the demonstrated logical need is for an operative one, whom
Ø a) nothing can embarrass,
Ø b) nothing resist in the end, in the fulfilment of His plans for His purposes, and
Ø c) none may disregard,
o to the abortion of His ways,
o to the submersion of His principles,
o the harassment of His nature,
o the compromise of His operations,
o the invasion of His purity, or
o to the abuse of His desires, designs and deliverances.