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CHAPTER FIVE
GOD HAS BEEN THERE ALL THE TIME,
BEFORE TIME,
AND WHEN HE CALLS TIME! HE IS STILL THERE
but where are you ?
THE INTRODUCTION
I did not expect to see John at that time in the morning, but he was there.
Have you ever considered, I challenged him, the reality of God!
Of course, he responded, it is far more obvious than the reality of anything else.
How so ?
Without a Maker, nothing is made, and the significance of everything is insignificance, which some people love to have. But when there is a murder trial, it suddenly ceases to be insignificant, and the least trace is important in finding the cause of the extinction of life. If it is so important when it goes, despite all the winsome talk about nothing really mattering, then how much more so is it concerning this little point: when, where and how it comes. It is obviously not at all insignificant.
It is rather like, then, a huge Twin Towers project. It does not occur to anyone to say how insignificant it is when it GOES; but in this case, people are more consistent in causation, finding it not at ALL insignificant how, when and why it came. That in this closely involved matter, COST. Does not matter! Are you out of your head! It cost the nation immense thought, planning, placement preliminaries, imagination, concentration, collaboration, inspiration, determination ... and money. OF COURSE it matters how, when and why it came, just as it does FOR JUST THAT REASON, why it went!
Enormous investigations of correlative causes and their background match the awareness of the causes and cost of its construction. It is obvious that hatred and and a devastative desire for ruin animated the perpetrators of the loss, just as a visionary exercise animated the makers of the towers at the first.
When it comes to the maker of what is beyond question, speaking in terms of fact,
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a vastly more impressive, thing, |
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namely of the presence of mankind, |
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from its seed and egg status as now observable, |
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to its growth methodology in the womb, as focussed in Psalm 139, |
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to the
times and ways and days all ordered ford developmental optimisation, |
HOW in the world could that be insignificant!
How is it
to be viewed for example as a messy circumstance of the meanders of matter,
which itself is thought to have meandered from nowhere to be there in the first
place, to perform such miracles in the second place. Such superior wonder in the
creation IN MAN, with the evidence of those prodigalities laughs at man's
blundering and COMPARATIVE ineptitude in his defined and derivative class of
creation!
What he is, leaves as dead, what he can do. The deep wonder is not his
creativity - though that is a great wonder - but his coming to be at all.
Nothing just happens, indeed. In man, there are systems within systems, things psychological, cultural, national, international, physiological when a leader's brain collapses because a bit of blood flows off in the wrong place. There are enterprises of treachery when a trusted friend obscures truth and joins slanderers, or turns an innocent man over to the police in some barbaric nation of no justice, to get rid of his competition. There are intimations and computation, dreams of folly and of virtue: everything matters. Law suits shout it all the time, often wrongly for wrong reasons; but the principle is there.
Yes, it matters that matter came like exam paper booklets in a public exam, for you to write on. WHAT is then written is the point; though it is true that the presence and provision of the booklets themselves speak of order and method and conformity and concept and purpose and not magic. They did not simply happen. Nothing does. There are always reasons for a thing to be and to act, and to react or not to do so when broken.
Does it not matter that the human genome is leaking its information magnificence, decreasing in exactitude for generational purposes, as each new generation arrives on the scene, and that even if there ever were in any sense any net informational advance in a given generation, which is not found, then still, the deterioration far outweighs, and the net result is going down, as in the lifts in large stores: Going down please! Is that how it came ? by going down.
I know, Stephen Jay Gould found it alarming that on his understanding of the Burgess shall deposits, general types of design had decreased markedly over time (as in Wake Up World! ... Chs. 4-6). How and why did it come so fast, and why designs go so much! He was appalled, though his thought seems in his Wonderful Life, to have been left in a kind of sophisticated oblivion.
In that, he was right, shown the more so by Professor Sanford of Cornell. It is hard to account for a crucial phase of construction when plans decrease over time, and their attestation in what remains. It is a problem that does not go away, like hair thinning as the cause of hair appearing in the first place!
What remains, I think, is this, that it is time to consider.
It always was, just as in other wars, when they rage and rave: you need to know what you are doing in the battle zone, and not just fight. Life is more important than blind smiting, with words or weapons.
You see an example of that in the prophet Joel. They had terrible devastation via locusts types coming in successive waves and utter destruction of the land threatened. God then told the cause and the remedy, in terms which showed that what He had done in creation, both of the earth and of Israel, and the reasons for it, were such that it did indeed MATTER. Wonderful overview was given and acute alarm, exhortation and clear indications not only of elements of the eventual judgment to come in this world, but of their horror, against the relative simplicity of repentance and spiritual restoration, so that instead of doing what comes naturally to sinners, you would have what comes supernaturally to those made by and for God, and willing to repent!
Yes it
matters.
EXPOSITION
I know the way in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, but though it is sound, I have a slightly different matter in mind, as an adjunct.
Like a photograph from another element, to make some features appear more starkly ?
You could say that. Anyway, I want to emphasise this aspect.
Say on.
Suppose we look at the elements and proceed as from a naked start, instead of a complete tableau, at the end.
All right. Then first for anything to be DONE, you need ENERGY.
Yes if you thought at all, you would need that.
But that is not by itself. It is the capacity to work, and capacity needs to be USED.
So you need what ?
Directed energy, in practice, and dirigible energy in kind.
Dirigible ?
Able to be directed.
Well let it be called directive energy, and leave in implicit form that to be that, it has to be certain type of energy in a certain type of format.
Precisely. Thus you have what can do things, being capable of it, and what can make it do things, being actual.
Good.
Do you need to have its origin ?
There are two sorts of possibility. One is that it is eternal, always being there, and the other at this level, is that it came from nothing, and that is why it is there.
Why is that so ?
In dealing with the source or basis or beginning for cause of all things that are to be seen, all that is to be found and assessed, then back of that is either nothing, or what is sufficient for its production. What is the cause then of that ? In this way, you get no answer, merely if you will, swerving around the corners of a magic city, but never even reaching the point of who or what built it. Since this avoids causation (a ludicrous imposture as in Causes and SMR Ch. 5 and other works), amounting to irrationalism which by its nature, logically amounts to nothing, you have to look for the original in the case, what did it; and then this is the basis in view. It has to be there always since nothing is the only other open door, and so ETERNAL DIRIGIBLE ENERGY is where we are.
But it has to be directed creatively, or nothing will be created, and this by definition.
Yes if it were directed destructively, there would be nothing to destroy. So it has to be creative to account for anything.
If it were directed to do nothing, the same would result, so there has to be a net creativity or nothing; and nothing we are not.
The energy is able to be directed, but it also IS directed. By what then IS it directed ?
It is directed, as we see, being THE beginning, by a net creativity.
But this has to be from within, since we have seen the irrelevance of always looking for something else.
Self-directive energy.
But how can you direct if you are not aware ?
By program ...
But who made the program ?This is an intense, immense, highly sophisticated concatenation of symbols, code and consequence: for symbols alone do nothing, unless what they symbolise is both ready for being directed, and able to respond. Even bloggers don't amount to much unless read.
Again, nothing made it, or it was eternal.
What was eternal ?
The power to make creative directions with energy.
So we have a creative, self-directive energy.
If you want to account for things made, which do not make themselves, but act as made, you need that.
But energy cannot direct anything, it is mere capacity for work.
Yes, so you need what it takes to direct energy to be available with the rest.
What directs energy to be creative ?
What is creative.
Where do you find that ?
In what can imagine and think and propose and propound and instal and create.
But it is too long to call this the Imaginative, Thinking, Proposing, Propounding, Installing Creator.
As a name yes, but it is not bad as a depiction in kind.
Well why not call it the Creator.
No reason except a sense of odium in those who happen not to like to have that Being around.
You could try to kill Him, then.
They did.
Yes, that it is so. It worked wonders too, for since He made it all, He can deal with it all in all its provisions and exigencies, whether these come for Himself or another, and so He broke death by coming back from it, just as He had brought others back from the dead, including one, Lazarus after days in the tomb, an event which made God-haters (some of these are very religious) stage a murder, only to have it explode in their faces into resurrection.
I can understand all that. The Creator thinking, can also amid His proposing, installing, multi-systematic concoctions and constructions, not only act but react.
He has made it and so can evaluate it.
How do you evaluate what you have made ? after all, if you made it, it is your own affair.
If you make a fortune, and spread it around, those receiving it become liable for assessment.
I see, man received a conscious-ideational-logical-inventive-responsive sort of life, and is accountable for its use.
Yes, for if he had been simply programmed, he could not think, just be a receptor like a telegraph machine of old, and chatter away to no effect. Yet he thinks what he will, how he will, and ignores his Maker and smiles or spits or giggles or brandishes his self-will; or he does not do so. It varies.
He is an ideational activist, whether rationality or irrationality be his milieu, by choice.
So he is a resultant-receptor.
Precisely. As with all love, you can choose, for otherwise it is mere control and a mockery, meaning nothing more than reaction-status in terms of feeling.
Some think it is only that.
But this for no reason, for love of liberty or truth or peace or war or money or diligence are all options, some exercised easily, some with enormous self-discipline; and guilt is the generic result of partial or total failure, however distorted by contorted mental bruises and follies of thought, or however hidden, as in overweening pride and oblivion. In type, it registers, as freedom. It appears in operation as one determines issues and the principles on which one likewise chooses to use them, evaluate them, and on which discard or endorse them. Love has ways of its own, which both fascinate man and betray him, when he chooses to ignore it.
When an ideational activist like man meets the Creator, in thought, feeling, consciousness or combat, confrontation or appeal, there is a result. At first it was simple choice, exercised in unbelief and double-mindedness at least, with results which betrayal of basics always brings. It when they ARE basic that results at THAT level occur.
So mankind and God are at war ?
In principle yes (Ephesians 4:17-19, 2:1-10), since this world seeks to control itself as it will, and has long done so, without a characterisable work to be in harmonious sympathy with God. They even invent other gods and flamboyantly worship these, while the world falls into vengeance, hatred and happening-itis, a sort of fit of passing the buck.
How is there peace then ? God made the world, and makes peace.
But how ? It is not like matter, just a basic ingredient like paper to write on.
No, to be sure, paper does not write creatively; it is merely receptive.
Ah, but then man is NOT merely receptive, since he is not matter.
He may chatter rather senselessly at times, but he is not matter. What is the matter with that idea is that matter has no mind; but man is there equipped, and you never see matter minding mind, let alone creating it.
Then man does not face facts when he is not receptive ?
It is so when he is not receptive of God, certainly.
Where is God available for reception ?
DEPOSITION
That question embodies another: IS God receptive to fallen man ?
We know that, He not only has the emergency program for restoration of man, one at a time, but has been at pains to instal that, as in the first place, to instal the multi-systematics of man's creation, with its internal commands all synthesised and synchronised.
The installation of the cross you mean, when God loved man enough to provide repayment of his spiritual debts, cover for his guilt and sin and a mode of regeneration to alter the problem at the very heart.
Certainly. That is why starry-eyed revolutionaries are falling throughout history like Autumn leaves. The heart is not changed, and the change is rather like changing clothes. The behaviour in the end is not too dissimilar. Egypt is a good recent example.
Then man is guilty if he does not receive the Creator ?
Especially is he guilty if he rejects the Remedy, called the Redeemer.
Yes, I guess that if you are debtor, and your heart in this case, is in prison, then to refuse liberation by the lawgiver is pretty extreme.
To ignore or defect, to be lukewarm or indifferent, it is all one. You take the injection or you do not. You receive the account or you do not. You endorse the offer or you do not. Accordingly you place yourself.
But I thought God said in His written word, the One testable and victorious in all testing, HE is the One back of selection, of election, of the choice of those who will come to Him; that it is His doing in the first place.
He is the source of everything except sin. But in what WAY ? A child may receive a cheque from the grandfather's estate; or not. It may resolve in itself what to do. The cheque was still available and could as well have been actually made out in his name.
You mean God loves to have all come to Him...
Yes, as in Colossians 1:19ff., I Timothy 2, Ezekiel 33:11...
And hates to lose sinners who refuse His redemption in Jesus Christ ?
Yes, as likewise in Matthew 23:37,Luke 19:41ff., Jeremiah 48...
So that
when one is lost, there is somewhere a matter of mourning, just as in the end of
it all,
there has to be likewise a matter of judgment: for as we are made, and act, so
it is, however much
God loves, in His non-tyrannical way, which is the very epitome of love.
There is a
sadness of love aborted, company contorted, life thwarted, which is a zenith
when the good was lost,
and the evil gained instead.
There are also results.
So God is Creator, Redeemer, Judge.
All that and much more ...
Saviour, Certifier and Sentence bearer ...
In Jesus Christ, eternal word, timely sin-bearer and glorious guilt receiver for those who are healed by Him, as in Isaiah 53:1-6.
I guess if He is willing to receive guilt freely, AND set up new life, then especially shameful is its rejection.
Especially
is this so when it is done defiantly, indifferently or in any other way that
makes the weight of a mountain,
in sins, as if a feather, and the love of God as if a spider's web, and the
judgment due to sin a cause for mirth or convivial self-exaltation with
social hubris.
But it is happy in the end, is it not ?\
In what way ?
If you have debts that you can never repay, you have a dilemma; but when at hand is the One to pay them with grounds to make this good and appealing, realistic and sound, that is a very happy thing.
Yes, its presence now makes a greater joy than the sorrow of those who wallow in woes through its rejection. So you find it in Isaiah 51:11, in that statement of appealing insight, applicable in kind to one as to all:
"So the ransomed of the Lord will return,
and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads.
They shall obtain joy and gladness;
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."
Again, says Paul, this time of the Church (Phil. 4:4):
"Rejoice in the Lord always.
Again I will say: rejoice!"