during and after it),
with the killer codicils from this 'will' perhaps duplicating this, added by Mao
W W W World Wide Web Witness Inc. Home Page Contents Page for Volume What is New
CHAPTER FIVE
GETTING PERSPECTIVE
The Australian, June 25-26
A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE :
SODOM, GOMORRAH AND SYDNEY
AND OTHER PARTS OF THIS INNOVATIVE LAND ?
THE OLD AND THE NEW
IN ONE VIEW
In Chapter 2 above, in watching through John 18-19, the scurrying, flurried Pilate as he sought to save Christ without losing himself, we found a time when he decided to make a direct exposure of the One of whom he said, "I find no fault in him," (John 19:4). He had Christ scourged, apparently to soothe the cultural sting of the aroused Jews, priest-empowered with hostility and seething with desire for blood; but whatever of blood the stripes might have achieved, for a show, or the buffeting, or the thorns, it was not enough.
The world is so, and before we proceed to an article in The Australian, June 25-26, on things Australian in a way readily relatable to that time, and our own, let us revise a little the developments as in John 18-19, as shown in Ch. 2 above, with substantial further development added within it.
The Direct Exposure - 19:4-5
"Behold the man!" said Pilate. Would the people find pity and so relieve the conscience of trapped Pilate (19:12), who did not want trouble with Rome or his own area, but was not keen to flay this Man ?
THE TIME FOR TRUTH'S DEMISSION,
SUPERSEDED COMPASSION,
WHICH JOINS IT IN ABSENTIA
The Deranged Response - 19:6-7
Were the people impressed ? Not at all, but swayed by the minds that ran their now twisted religion (cf. Isaiah 29:13, Matthew 23), they cried Crucify Him! So with God in society, the trend is now to get rid of what is accountable as Christ's, and since He is already crucified now, to have His disciples stripped even in democracies, of recognition and His word mocked, countermanded by culture or made into travesty of truth by twisted oversight, so that what passes for religious studies, becomes Christ-countermanding instruction.
BECAUSE He made Himself the Son of God, the Jews of that day cried, therefore He must die. Because this makes itself the truth, they cry now, let it be put into decline, and this which we now judge, and speak, it is the truth. How truly detestable, they chant or rant, to have unsophisticated and callow Christians talking about 'the truth' when it is all one, relative, a mish-mash! In all truth, it is a false concept: and THAT, it is the truth. In a form of logical insanity, they progress by definition, and defile in fact.
Quite apart from this impasse, there are of course oily truths, which are permissible because hard-headed business and fear form a cocktail which makes many drunk with desire. Islam is not so bad, they say. But that is by a special dispensation, though admittedly shivers run up the spine as we see the testimony of that heavily Islamic Middle East, and some may wonder why such scorching passions are so desirable, when their basis*1 is as insubstantial as sand. Such is the direction of flow of the loud lore.
But as to this Christ, the cry comes increasingly from intoxicated lips, drunk with desire. As one listens, it is not unlike this:
Enough! He harasses our morals, curbs our passions, brings in intolerable restraint, and prevents eminently desirable robberies, ruses, violent expressions and clever, crafty ways which can propel people to ... a lot of satisfaction, at least for a while.
So the situation changes, but not the clamour. The old and the new have much in common, as flesh always does, at its base and heart, when it raises its head with intemperance and intolerance against Christ: not the dilute distillation, but the One who acted and spoke and left a heritage unique, undespoiled, and immutable, attested by verifications innumerable, evidenced by a validity unmatchable*2. THAT One as in the Bible, it cannot be acceptable, say the cognoscenti, while they present something wholly other from the sands, without foundation or ground of any kind, but desire. In this, the chant from around AD 30 and AD 2011 becomes more and more like two verses in a hymn. One hymn, just some different forms of expression. Some of the music has a peculiar lilt (cf. Deliver Us from Educational Temptation esp. parts 2, 4 and 11).
As then, so in many a State now, whatever seals one Person as the answer, one God as the site, one declaration as His word, is denounced, degraded, given no serious attention, as media and sites of learning alike, either attack His word directly, or indirectly, assuming knowledge without any basis but preference, that for the darkness of which Christ spoke. He spoke of the prince or leader of this world, and that one, he does not change in heart and spirit, only in appearance (John 14:30). HE HAS NOTHING IN ME! said Christ.
But let us proceed with the trial of Christ, when it was explicit, as the first Christian millenium having commenced, began to get under way.
The Reluctant Subversion - 19:8-12
Pilate's nerve is failing, He must see Christ, but though what he hears cannot be condemned, yet he has fear of the culture, the mob and the priests, their words and his own health and for his own career (19:12).
The Manipulative Master and the Seduced Ruler - 19:12-19
He tried harder. Were they not a people with some pride in so great a man as this ? "Behold your King!" he cried, as if they must realise His majesty. We have no king but Caesar, had been their response, in grovelling preference of hatred of Christ to national liberty, so now they rant, Crucify Him! After all, they had been invaded by Rome and in the days of Pompey had suffered religious outrage, and so Pilate might have hoped for some amelioration of their anti-Jesus raging. Instead, as he presents their King, they but rant the more.
Such is the way of this world of which Christ said this, noting its ruler: "the Prince of this world is coming and he has nothing in Me!" He was coming and he came and has taken up a substantial occupancy! (I John 5:19).
This world is slithering to its ruin and the pity of it all! but it will neither hear nor heed! and like the priest-party of Christ's day, its authorities have increasingly one mind, not in justice and truth, but in godless machinations and hopes, sometimes put in pseudo-religious terms, as in the UN, at others as if they themselves were the default rendering, and all should hear what they say, a futile solution to the antipathy to God.
Thus the steps of Pilate have some parallel to those of this world with the disciples of Jesus Christ. As He in effect declared, as seen John 13:15 with 15:20, the servant is not greater than his master, and if they do these things to Me, they will do them to you! Steps parallel with those taken against Christ can be seen in character as this world assails the truth. His disciples are vexed, brutalised, unanswered, their cases manipulated, their judgment pre-arranged, the persecution programmed by impious partisans, their virulent aims in control of all their action, as their false ideas and ideals tend to run them like machines, machinating deformities often with massacring enormities.
In other words, those spiritually subverted opt for emptiness of thought and the cadences of error, which quickly turn into symphonies of mindless hate, while nowadays it is not so much priests as TV and news media, educational infiltrators, misusing student years to inculcate myths and educate in emptiness, in part attested by Professor Allan Bloom in his 1987 work, The Closing of the American Mind These groundless ideas and sand-settled ideals, wrought from nowhere, based on nothing, then tend to make their victims machine-like in their social-academic conformity. A certain ennui seems to come, for the glory is departed, Bloom attests as the vagrant claims of ambitious human 'sciences' become the shards of defeated desire.
There is no way in human exultation and exaltation of its race, to find the glory, for it is not based in man, merely the recipient of its light; and if he prefers darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matthew 6:23).
Thus poised, as the spirit of the new century gobbles up much of its past in haste, and surges relentless into its illusory future, literally not knowing where it is going, they machinate, their misformed concepts working into deformed conspectus, erratic outcomes, leading to division and strife and uncertainty and deception; for what is based on the devious is not straightforward in outcome, except when totalitarian, where its time comes to its own end, amidst distressing calamity.
Thus there are "machinating deformities" which often lead to "massacring enormities,"
whether
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in World War II,
in Russia (perhaps 20 million during the Communist phase before, during and after it), with the killer codicils from this 'will' perhaps duplicating this, added by Mao |
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in China, |
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in Germany, and
then |
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in Vietnam,
Cambodia, |
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Afghanistan, |
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Sudan, |
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Egypt, |
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Syria, |
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Iran, |
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Burma. |
This is far from exhausting, though the race be exhausting itself!
China has given stimulus to the ears of the world in its famed public scene at Tiananmen Square and and near to countless 'crack-downs' on Christian churches not wanting to be governed by the (officially) godless, but by Christ! Tibet was not immune to the same machinations for this or that nationalistic purpose of ANOTHER nation, the boss, China. Menace has been allotted to Taiwan, and by others, to Israel: and all this comes as if the script for the opera, The Killer Conqueror and his Handsome Hands. It is not presented as a farce, but in all seriousness as if Revelation 6:4-6 were the script. Many have been the nations which have been involved, and long has been the time of it.
The hideous Musical, loud and cacophonous, The Princes of This World, is being assiduously implemented by those who love this sort of thing, as written in perfect foreknowledge in the Bible (cf. Luke 21, Matthew 24, Revelation 6-9, John 14:30). This, these some authors of evil and authorities of destruction have been determined to carry out. If some have fought to be delivered form evil invasions, yet even these are now in danger of fostering invasion of heart and mind from sources bereft, consigned to crush righteousness, giving yearly vaccinations against truth as new crops of the young arrive.
GETTING PREPARED
What then of Australia ? It too is being prepared for the slaughter, whether it has to be bloody or is content to be mental, social, academic and ecclesiastical, till for a very short time, the witnesses dead in the streets as in Revelation 11. Yet they arise. The scenario is there (cf. Acme... Ch. 5).
Certain Trade Unions have advised the PM, it is reported, that they want same-sex marriage. It is not enough to have permission and provision for them: they want status. Certain political entities, sometimes referred to as Greens, though they appear readily browned off with biblical morals or divine utterance even as a concept, as a trend not unnoticeable, appear to have a similar view. It is all loudly expressed inside the nation. There is a certain ferment. The cultural priests cry out, through such bases, assisted by many atheists and agnostics, who perhaps tend to like anything that is contra-biblical, in view of the nature of the pathology which, gripping many in the nation, zeros in on Christ, to make Him zero, or reducible, or unpalatable, or foolish or whatever other distortion appeals, whether this be a conscious ploy or an unconscious captivity of their own minds, an induced mind-set.
MARRY THEM! Let there be weddings; for although ordinary weddings - as too confining for the affairs of the moment and the cascades of variable character in many a modern heart - are outré more and more, many who favour biblically defined sexual perversion, want it married to some species of morals, for some kind of reason. Is it to give it a certain standing ? After all, they can see as can a child, that there are methods for propagation of the race, intensively engineered, marvellously reciprocal, ingeniously devised (using the concept that what meets definitions of attainment is not denied the terms involved). These new ones, they are not to be cornered by fact, fashioning or causation. They are their own, owned by none, deposits of nothing from nowhere, in the language or thrust of many, doing their own thing virtually as a religious rite.
Alas for this view, this leaven, this thrust. It is as in Isaiah 5:20-21:
"Woe to those who call evil, good, and good, evil, who put darkness for light,
and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!"
As for reproduction, they may be bolstered up by engineering devices to enable this or that, or social means in terms of adopting children who can thus lose either mother or father; but it is quite clear, whether in the increased susceptibility at the physical level, to disease, or the decreased susceptibility to continuation of the race, that it is not a fulsome thing. So a social contrivance may readily be desired. Yes marriage: we MUST have this, they cry.
It is based on man without morals which is based on man without God which is based on nothing as noted earlier (cf. Lord of Longsuffering ... Ch. 1, Nothing Doing from Nothing, SMR Ch. 1-3, 10). Moralising on a basis exclusive of morals is always an interesting feat. IF you say there are no morals and we are just inventing them for convenience, this does not hold. If they are not there, nothing will invent them. Fabrications of what you disdain and dismiss with words are mere glints in the desert, moral mirages. ALL - on such a model - that you can, without self-contradiction, invent is what ? It is cults, demands, with oversight to ensure some kind of conformity. It would be like flying around to every mass to give it weight, in the absence of gravity - a useless flurry. If gravity is out, why pretend and make adjustments ad infinitum to cover your lapse!
You invent, if so inclined, mere social conformism, mental casts of thought, by indoctrination, inculcation. It has nothing whatever, on any such basis, by its own definition, with morals. THEY do not exist. That is the concept. Other things exist. They are not those.
Morals ? They are to be explained away as REALLY coming, JUST coming from something else quite different, like pleasure or power, and having no independent status, even though they in fact do in the mind, history, behaviour and logic behind man*3: and so man acts.
He may have his morals to the effect that it is immoral to have morals; but he still has them. He may dismiss them as this and that, to show that the right thing is something completely different, and so people SHOULD conform to it; but he still has them. They still cause him to argue and insist and assert, and divide between right and wrong. If he says it is a simple matter of seeing how things go: that is irrelevant; for it is to remove morals by definition, which is just a verbal twiddle. WHY the way things may be imagined to go should become why anything else SHOULD go that way is an empty void. It is a mythical invention; for it comes from another sphere, another model*3A, where SHOULD has meaning. You cannot so by logical malfeasance, make description become prescription. Let us become realistic instead.
So now these issues get legs and speak through people and parties. It is WRONG, say the new, forward-looking people (destiny for such 'forward' motion is unknown, as is the meaning of 'forward' instead of 'backward' for it hence meaningless in its own terms), who somehow inherently just KNOW the way things are going, which is the same for them as the way they ought to be going. As to what opposes us, makes negatives noises about our moral progressivism, it just wrong! WHAT, we may enquire at this moral outburst, what is wrong ?
Have you not heard! in effect, they exclaim. It is wrong to condemn anyone for following preference, for choice is God. Why ? we ask, is choice God ? Did it invent the power to choose and things to choose from ? Show evidence. No, well, they say, it is like this: choice is the highest of the human powers, the most distinctive and beautiful, and to be sure, we have come to dote on it. We will not be fussy about words. But we think, we really do, you know, that if people can only CHOOSE what and whom they want, for whatever they want, it has a certain cuteness, it makes an individual almost feel as if he (or she) has significance, means something, and that is good for the soul.
MEAN something ? You mean that if, in this instance, you dismiss the constructions in the human bodies (his and her, one for each, very different indeed at the relevant level) as meaningless, though they have far more inherent meaning in view of their amazing and objective reciprocities of function, then you get meaning ? Thus one is to leave out what is there in the interests of pure imagination, not use it as shown and clear by its nature, and thus acquire meaning ? How is that!
It means, they may say, that we are masters of our own destiny, lords of our own souls, and it is high time society woke up to that fact.
But death is so inconvenient, one replies, and birth gives without allowing choice, so why is this god of choice invented, when it is at a vast discount at the start and end ?
We get what we can, crumbs if need be.
Crumbs ? that sounds rather crumby for people of inherent destiny (for no known reason), who need meaning (either to delude or for reason, and with no show on the latter in this model). Is it then illusion that you seek!
It is of course, precisely so and society is being engaged, like a maid, to clean up the confusion and call it names.
More, it is to call people who differ from such manhandling of material things, of morals, with such evocative but unfounded deformities of what is there, by inclement names. What then is said about those who differ from the reconstructionists of society ? They are backward, they are unprogressive, they are stuck in the mud, they are befuddled religionists and many other things. They are, in a word, WRONG! If then it is wrong to call people wrong in these domains, how can those who are wrong because they make use of 'wrong' themselves by called 'wrong'. If it is out for all, how is it in for some ? If some because of unchanged millenia of biblical morals declare certain standards, and this is as such wrong, why is it not wrong to declare them wrong, by a view based on nothing ever!
But that is the whole point. If this is mere cant, why use it ? If it is wrong to attack the devastation of biblical morals, why is it wrong to show the error ? If accusatory morals are void, how can those who are using them, be termed wrong ? Worse, if it is wrong to judge moral issues, how is it possible to be a judge of those who do this, as a moral issue, showing them up for their immorality!
Thus IF you do not agree, and IF especially, you appeal to a reason-constrained faith*2 for morals and in such terms, as well as those of physical fact, and dare to speak against such soon-to-be officially recognised innovations: then you need to be told where you get off. Your station is found to be that of a non-forward-looking, antique, a blustering, unimpressive rearguard for what is past... and so on. Indeed, it tends to go on, it would probably*4 be good to put you in prison or exclude you from professional places, as is done, it seems almost routinely now with many, in the realm of the evolutionary myth. Believe it or shuffle off, go!
What then ? You are wrong to call anyone wrong at this level, for this is not applicable. That is the new credo in part. But if it be not applicable, then how can it be applied ? If you do that to which you object, is this not hypocrisy ? just as excluding it while you include it for your own use, is mere confusion!
THE ARTICLE
This is at least the direction and Australia has already played with making it illegal to diverge on certain points of religion and the like, lest someone be offended*4.
The article in The Australian has a few words on this aspect. It is entitled:
Where Gay Matrimony Meets Elite Sanctimony.
Let us hear. It is dealing with the position where it is not ONLY a demand for new morals, a new liberty, a new feature, a new official attitude to allow personal choice. It even goes further than this. The comment ?
What we have here is the casual affirmation of a double standard: tolerance to supporters of gay marriage and intolerance directed to its opponents.
The declaration that certain that certain values and attitudes are incompatible with modern society tends to serve as a prelude to stigmatizing and attempting to silence it. That is why the so-called enlightened opponents of "old-time religion" ,more than match the intolerance of those they denounce as homophobic bigots.
If condemnation on moral grounds is offensive, then 'modern society' and its descriptive basis as a new moral command, by illicit reasoning, is offensive.
What they define as intolerable, a fracture of liberty, this and precisely this, they then do. The difference is this, that those biblically based acknowledge that it is a moral issue, and cite ground in God, with reason (cf. SMR); while those who decline to have moral domination, want to rule nevertheless by precisely the same, a moral domination. Shorn of its name, but not of its obligatory character, it is based on a preference and NOTHING ELSE. But you cannot turn a preference into morals. It is escaping from the definition of terms. A preference is based on want, desire, and morals are based on what is deemed above preference, often contrary to it, and as having a basis that is defensible as objective. Like them or not, the terms have meaning, and their use enables discussion to be fashioned not in fancy, but in clear presentation, available for inspection.
Does culture dictate ? Modern culture is simply what people are doing and feeling, experiencing, saying. It is a descriptive term. If you want people to follow whatever-it-is-that-you-are-doing-and-thinking, BECAUSE you are doing and thinking it, you are worshipping yourself, as moral basis, arbiter and criterion.
That is not really very nice. It is moral narcissism, to be plain. It is confusion, to be even plainer. It is a classical case of what Paul ironically called "measuring themselves by themselves." How tall are you ? Use yourself, not a metre stick, to find out. It is one you in length, ýou' being the new unit. This tells nothing. As Paul says, in so doing, they are not wise.
Those whom they condemn, however, do not condemn the clarity of rationality, or self-contradict. The difference is this, that
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those biblically based
acknowledge that it is a moral issue, and cite ground in God, |
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those who decline to have
moral domination, |
What do we find then ? It is this: turning a preference into the obligation of morals is an illusory escaping from the definition of terms; and it is one which now bids fair to become a national escapade. Just as a mere preference is based on want, desire, what pleases, and morals are based on what is deemed above preference, often contrary to it, and as having a basis that is defensible as objective: SO being pleased and being moral are often total contradictories. Confusing the terms helps, like all confusion, precisely nothing.
THE OUTCOME
Not only, however, is it a misuse of the term 'moral' to try to use its force, if not at times its name, where it refers only to a social and statistic preference in society. When of two parties, each has a demand on what one OUGHT to do, and the one is based on the merely observable, and the other on what is basic to all observation and its condition (cf. SMR Ch. 3), for the one to attack the other on the ground of intrusive condemnation, when its own response is precisely that, is a folly almost unspeakable.
It not only manhandles the term and those who use it in a kind of wartime pincer movement, but makes an irrelevant effort which is a mere parody of the moral, to take-over the high ground of ethical realism from the swamp of desire, manufacturing morals without ground, and often without mentioning them, making their message to be detached from its own ground because it is a bog of confusion, illicit, unable to command rationally. Describing changing desires, they imagine they are giving ground where mere will-o'-the-wisp feelings flare this way and that, the objective facts of the case being rendered invisible by rhetoric.
It is as if the more errors are made, the better it is. Just as that is the testimony of confusion, so well-deserving are those who become confused by this game. It is not one to be playing; for while games can stir, they do not achieve what life is about.
Moreover, it actually becomes an endeavour in passing,
to displace any concept at the national level, of being based in the dependence on Almighty God, as underlying authority, as in the Preamble to the Constitution of Australia, and
to replace it with that of being based on whatever you all want.
Democracy thus becomes absolute, free both from reason and its original ground, which both gave it meaning and limits. Such joys as the restraint, pity, compassion, personal concern and peaceable joys so often seen, or at least imagined, in the Middle East can thus have a free reign, and such wonders as the atheism that made the USSR one of the most horrible concentration camps, in no small measure, outside the Nazi set-up, can then lay claim. Australia can indeed have its educational revolution, not only with halls, but with hells to be disclosed in them, as its foundations are waived, and its new birth comes as a vote of ingratitude to God for His very care.
Be very sure, nothing never serves. Ignore the realities and the necessities of the case, and they do NOT ignore you. History is a wonderful teacher of that. Wallow in desire, erect your pretensions, make your forcible manipulations, as democratically elected Hitler did, and then find out in experiment, in experience, in historical circumstances that truth is not a football to be kicked around, and that the basis of reason is not its absence*2.
What then do we have ?
It is not only a feeble attempt to make morals that are not morals, but a pleasure or will based thing, as a definition of them, one which fails to distinguish different modes of action and approach. It is also action to destroy a national approach to the topic, and replace it with one no less definite, but utterly baseless. There is then NO authority, NO ground and NO God to be taken into account in ANY way, and this is taken for granted. Still, they want you to shrivel at the sheer WRONG of resisting their revolutionary enterprise!
It is a QUESTION in reality whether this nation wishes
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1) to wheel out the
statement about God Almighty |
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2) to accept that
morals are mere preferences and that man has been deluded for millenia. |
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3) to make them
return, anyway, a new morals, except explicitly being just desire, |
You cannot logically get rid of morals any more than you can of truth. If there is no truth, you CANNOT know this, since it is not there for acquisition and hence declaration to ANY effect, including yours. If you want to declaim on the truth then, you are already against your own model, out of order, a victim of antilogy.
Similarly, if there are no morals, then you CANNOT say that it is wrong to say that there are, for there IS no wrong. Saying that there are no morals, in that case, is just as right as saying there are such things. Nothing can be frowned on as wrong. If you say, I meant only that it is incorrect ? then without truth, you are still contrary to your own model. What force does correctness have for human conduct, in any case, for who or what MAKES it correct ? If you mean what is statistically better backed, this is irrelevant. DESCRIPTION of things that ARE, is always mere confusion when it is turned or churned into what OUGHT to be. They are different categories, and in this model, there is no possible connection.
To say society prefers it is no ground for its being right, and this is only the more so when ' right' is divorced from any moral force. Thus society plus statistics becomes God and source of morals. If you object to the term 'God' used here, then do you wish to redefine this also in the interests of confusion ? He is to be believed in or not, as are morals; but to outlaw the terms is merely to become an exceptionally irrational dictator, on a par, in this arena at least, with Ahmadinejad. Do it or force will be used! How enlightening, and what rational grip this has, like that of a boa constrictor, which tends not to evacuate error, but life.
By force ? How does that affect its status ? Use language in this way or you will be immoral ? But that is a double confusion. To use language so that it is evacuated of its meaning merely removes the ideational units for discussion; AND it is a dictatorial act; AND in a society to have NO MORALS, it is disgustingly moral in tone, tenor and approach.
If GOD means what is the ultimate and basic beyond all human machinations and constructions, and you do not believe in Him, how does this affect the use of the term, unless you are an absolute dictator, as on the Islamic model in Iran, or the Chinese, where in Christian Churches, 'God' is under State control. Since that is not possible, confusion is under State control, though some churches remain outside confusion and the prescriptive law of the commanding State, alike, and some find the meaning of man as criterion, people merely born as babes, becoming the basis for belief!
One here recalls Acts 3 and 4, where Peter and John made it clear that it is better to obey God than man.
If absolute rule is to be given, beyond question, to ANYTHING, and it is all-encompassing in its field, incorrigible, then it has the thematic status of God, believe in Him or not. Whether people believe in me, for example, makes no difference to me. I still am; and opinion in itself does not alter me. How much more so is it with what in itself is deemed above and beyond, basic to all. Believing in Him or not, will alter you, but not Him. What is given abilities or powers or position like His, in effect, may indeed be said by delusion to be taking His place, or acting as God.
What then ?
Let us review it.
A non-moral declaration of what is right is not only contradictory (as distinct from what some people want to have, redefining morals so that it gets an illicit lustre for this model); it is dictatorial, a case of duress. How ? It is being USED with authority and power and insistence with a derivative sense of shame, as if it were God, and were right by definition as our source and component maker. To insist on speaking in this way without that basis, and having things seen that way, or acted out that way, thus HAS to be based on what is merely natural and a matter of occurrence. That is all there then is; and this CANNOT become what ought to be. Only an imperial mind can attempt to make it so, be it that of one or of many.
Such is the case before us. Society is to become the new source of morals, so that it can declare it WRONG for those who with reason believe, for example, the Bible, to act on this approach, even if without force and without making requirements of others in a democracy, were an offence. Indeed, many of these are rather indeed concerned for their liberty, that they might come to Christ not on illusory compulsion, but by faith. Insisting ? such are insisting simply on freedom of religion and of speech. Many SAY this; it is important however to avoid hypocrisy and DO IT.
What however is the trend now, as enshrined in some laws of the land*4 ? It is to make it, if not a crime (at first, though it has already come close to it, not only on this point, but on other ones as well) to have a view to the contrary of this gay-marriage desire, then a breach of what is to be desired (not just what is desired); and that of course is merely a use surreptitiously, of morals without saying so.
It is better far to keep morals as meaning that species of approach and feeling and attitude which requires things to be done for a reason not based in oneself alone, or one's fellows or co-dominionists, based on psychic oddities or propensities, but having a certain authority which can be shown a proper source of authority, so that its portents are right, not merely an expanded subjectivism of imperial proportions.
It is true that you cannot in fact do this without God, for everything short of this in a world on the naturalistic model CAN have nothing of this kind, all definitions being merely this or that group of people or societies, what they happen to want, or else what they happen to do, or both. To have objective ground for command, and for morality, they HAVE to move from the descriptive to the prescriptive, not as a whim, caprice or feeling, far less an incorrect generalisation.
Yet as to the naturalistic model, on this basis, there is no ground for doing so. Irrationality might be claimed, of course, and worshipped; but the reasons for this MUST be irrelevant, and contrary to the model, for this very thing elides its ground for being accepted! In other words: NO grounds COULD then be admissible.
It has therefore to be done by a sleight, not this time of hand, but of mind. You simply slight the opposition, and say: morals have never been more than this, so let us progress to an unknown destination for an unknown reason, while refusing to give reason!
Such perplexities and antinomies for the nation are scarcely that for which people fought: a free land such as they had lived in, with bases in truth, not truculence, with justice not for fun or desire, limited by other whims, but based on fact based in turn on the blessing of Almighty God, who alone knows above all reaction, what is what. If they fought for another land, this was not it. This is the one that was there. Change even for this reason has to be considered for its worth, and not for its worrisomeness as it clenches the moral fist and declaims its preferences, perhaps even in law. Then indeed you have a lawless land.
Any such movement, however, is not only to remove the constitutional character of the land, but it is to remove the very definitional distinctness of what is desired on the one hand, and what is moral on the other. Is it moral ? Indeed, in effect, it is to remove the word from the vocabulary of discourse, by a fiat considerably less divine than that which made our world and its subjection to logic and reason as an inherent feature, by which our knowledge grows, the creation being subject to the same reason, so that this in us and that in it, the one can investigate the other on this basis. It does so, often with spectacular results. That is the way things are made, including our own minds. Even our very DNA has directions concerning the very way things are to be wrought, dictating the paths of reason and action, through a profound symbolism, with equally profound effect. One of these, when the spirit of man is conjunct, is the capacity to reason, and to find with reason the reason why things work, at the operational level. There is always a reason.
Psychic, social, national preference as God, does not measure up to the grounds of adequate reason for all things. Making yourself the basis is mere illusion. You are a product. As such, unless reason is in your basis, your reasoning is mere adventitious substitution. Since it is, the LOGOS, therefore the Christian can talk consistently in its terms, without breach of his own model, but rather in pursuit of its requirements. Other terms of procedure are markedly less effective. If it not RIGHT and obligatory to do this, why do it ? If on the other hand, it IS right and obligatory to do it, and that is why it is being urged, then this is a moral issue, and a self-contradiction.
Shorn of the power to say,
This is right and good and moving in the correct and proper way, instead of ,
This is what we would like: can we have it please ?
what is this desire concerning gay-marriage ? It is a desire for morals without logical basis, exhibiting the wish of a small operative section of the nation; and it comes readily to the point of wishing to make it immoral to condemn it morally. This is a take-over motion, and it is only one of several of its type, some naturalistic as in the classroom, where currently in this land, it has a considerable companion in curriculum dictation at the religious and ultimate level, and others social, so that the place can be changed without admitting it.
It can scarcely be too stressed that this is manipulation. It is a movement for change as if this were right and moral, when there are no obligations of that character in the model concerned, and to resist it were wrong, when once again, there is no room for condemnations of that character, in a double confusion hard to take seriously.
It is when they wish to take the place over, as noted, that it has to be taken seriously.
To be sure, God will take it seriously, if He is dismissed from our Constitution in form, as from our social ways in this little matter of the mode of the reproduction of the human race, and indeed from the honour to be conferred on His production, in keeping to what He has created and the manner of it. Sodom and Gomorrah may come, had they continued, to have much to learn from Australia; but for Australia's sake, and that of all those who have sought to preserve liberty in it, we must hope not. True, this is precisely the predicted direction for this world (as in Romans 1, II Timothy 3-4 and Revelation 6, 8-9), but that does not excuse it. If it is known that you will have a hacking cough and distressing pain if you continue (in a given case) to smoke, that does not make the cough any better. Foreknowledge, when it occurs, merely underlines, just as it underlies responsibility.
Indeed in our next Chapter, Lord willing, this will be a major part of the emphasis.
Before this, you may care to look at an earlier Chapter about " the absolute" and a social-State approach which was becoming popular, way back in 1977, the date of my thesis at Melbourne University, for Dip. Ed.. As to that thesis, it is found here in approach, and here in reproach. The name of that work of some 50,000 words is this: LEAD US NOT INTO EDUCATIONAL TEMPTATION.
NOTES
*1
See *1, Ch. 2
above.
See SMR pp. 313-316.
REASON REJOICES WITH REVELATION
A RELIEF FROM THE EMPTY ABODE OF RATIONALISM
AND THE REDUCTIONIST FACADE OR EMPIRICISM
If you have elected a certain model, sphere of thought, mode of operations, method of apprehension, way of looking at things, then certain things follow. Of these, points 1-5 are general and the rest are also particular to the biblical model (BCA as below).
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1) It is merely illogical
to argue against some other model, on the preliminary basis |
Dishonesty does not promote truth. If you do not desire truth, why tell us about your psychological or even psychiatric (depending on the case in view) thoughts, desires or dreams. If you CALL them that, fine; but then do not expect anyone to listen to them who is neither qualified psychologist, psychiatrist, or at least interesting in discussing your psyche.
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2) Again, if you redefine
terms in order to sweep past the data of another model, |
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3) Logically, it is
necessary to apprehend the components, at least relative to any claim |
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4) In addition, you need
to show that your own model is not defective in the same regard, |
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5) When this is done,
there is an outcome. It may not merely be assumed. |
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6) As a matter of
empirical fact, in the field of truth and evidence, |
DEITY AND DESIGN, DESIGNATION AND DESTINY
and in overall verification in many fields, in
LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST
WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES
AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS
Bible or Blight, Christ or Confusion:
The Comprehensive Resolution
of Man's Intractable Problems
is Found Only in the Bible, the Word of God.Indeed, in internal investigation involving Bible study, refutation of unrealism in assault, of inconsistency, empirical inadequacy, logical invalidity and irrelevance, to name a few of the topics, the entire site is relevant.
It is there seen that rationalism is merely an isolation of an element, albeit a highly prized one, for it must be tested; and empiricism is a morbid fascination with events. Reason in fact remorselessly leads to revelation and in particular and only, to the Bible, which equally inexorably leads to Jesus Christ, who having come from God, leads back to Him. It is entirely the fault of man that his misuses of the clearest of data, provisions and principles lead to follies all but unimaginable, desolations of horror, and putridities of decaying philosophies, always looking for, but never finding a resurrection.
See What is the What is the Chaff to the Wheat! Ch. 3 - 4, and in SMR esp. pp. 316Aff., Ch. 3, Ch. 5, Ch. 10, It Bubbles... Ch. 9, *1A.
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7) In what is a desirable,
but not necessary further outcome, |
There is nothing like the independence of culture, the passion for justice with concern, the sovereign selectness and the empathy with suffering, the remedy for the latter and the means for its performance, the personal involvement and the entire adequacy of the Personal Being who is absolute because ALL depends on Him, and the steps He has taken to perform His will, or for that matter the nature of His will in all its delicacy for those seeking Him and ineluctability for those mere seeking to deceive (as when Christ was before Herod). The empirical, rational, personal, comprehensive character of the Biblical presentation in the name of the Almighty has no match for testing, validity and verification. Nor for the quality of its diction has it that combination of tenderness and judgment, of verification and testability, indeed desire that it be tested for the sake of those who read, to help them understand, anywhere on this earth.
When it comes to morality, it does not reduce the evidence of the field in order to redefine the experience and motivation of man, as if to say that food is really water. It gives ground for empirical differentiation with a delicacy and a robustness which surpasses any effort merely to re-define without consideration of the components of what is being rejected. Instead, it gives ground for it, in alliance with grounds for truth, so that those who have models of thought which ignore the absolute God, must keep to themselves the fatal flaw of having no truth for utterance, in order to proclaim their desires. Without truth, you cannot get it. Not getting it, you cannot proclaim it. Declaring it, you are left with something irrelevant to what is on this model, not there; with Pilate with the dismissive 'What is truth?', flouting all your efforts to proclaim it!
At least, he admitted his position.
Freedom, the Nation, the Internet and the Next Generation, for example, and with it:
NEWS 156 (esp. Victoria), 145 (and reasonable adults),
Cascade ... Ch. 10 (freedom, force and faith),
FREEDOM document re Victorian pastors and deliverance;
Divine Face ... Ch. 6,Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 6 (Victoria and Britain),
and this link to material on the Internet