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CHAPTER THREE
FUNEREAL DRESSINGS
CLOTHED AND NOT SO
There is for any funeral, the question of how you dress. There is also the other question, how is the dead body to be dressed ? With glamour, with chaste pleasantness or indifferently ?
According to the desire, the reflection, the attitude, so the dress.
So it is with often dead philosophical theories. They have lived by tolerance or pre-occupation, being overlooked in the main, or by reputation, or even by their sheer folly, like cute kittens doing strange things. But they have been repudiated so often and so thoroughly that dead is the only term precisely relevant. Their leer journey, or joy-ride by fascination or propaganda is past. They have mocked man, who is often subservient to what denudes him of dignity, purpose and plan, in an all but schizophrenic plan, like someone jilted and keen to show it, and man has tried to sleep with them. Result ? Just look about you, and summon a few realities of the madness of man, performed with vigour, done with discipline, achieved with folly, wrought with that profound disregard for cost which is so typical of know-alls, as also at times of those better informed and seeing the point: and having looked consider the curriculum vitae of mankind for the last 150 years as a start.
What ebola of the body can match this matchless folly, the infections pouring in not by necessity, but by what in old terms might have been called 'cussedness', which is only short for cursedness, though with strong overtones of obstinacy. He WILL not learn of Christ; he WILL not perform as requested; man REFUSES the clearly demarcated paths of truth and demonstrable perspective (cf. SMR, TMR), and carries on like an hysterical child. When ? all time ? Not all the time, but it is not always easy to find any time in that one and one half centuries when in some site or situation this mordancy and folly is not at work. If it is not to gain something, then it is certainly to lose something, and overall, in the end, with these new understanding of natural powers enshrined in matter, that something is coming to be this world. THAT, it is something God spoke of long ago, as in Isaiah 51:6, as in Matthew 23:35, as in II Peter 3.
It did look extreme to the unbeliever when it was uttered; it is NOT in fact extreme by any means that there be collapse. But that is not the point. It is PREPARED for collapse, when the time comes, BY DIRECTION. And that, it is the same divine direction with which creation of matter, mind, spirit and man occurred, which being ignored, jilted, quilted, scorned, distorted, hated or rejected simply, leaves by violation, vulnerabilities innumerable. It becomes as if Japan, having suffered its fearful nuclear power plant disaster, said: it does not matter, it is all one, we will build exactly as we please. Far from it was it in this clear-cut case. Investigations, considerations, codes and approaches were zealously examined, to find cause and cure, as far as might be, to take steps and to take care.
That was one episode. It is one example of approach that is NOT indifferent, or casually dispersed. It not unusual in simple, sample cases to find this. When however it comes to this world, it is becoming increasingly unusual to find due consideration, care, investigation of options and needs for radical change. Passion numbers intellect, dims understanding, arrest results, distorts research, and blind furies tear man apart, because he refuses the find and APPLY what has attested itself uniquely for millenia. As in Israel in the day of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, despite numerous warnings, and as in Amos 4, GRADED warnings, modern man may go in search of a soul (the name of one of Dr Carl Jung's books), but seems afraid of finding one.
Take for example Marxism, which despite its current revisions (as for example in the use of capitalism as a means of making it useful, so changing its nature). What sort of a funeral dress is there for this intellectual and social corpse ? The theory is cited as a means of control, and frequently and especially in China, it is not applied except with dynamics of a loathed kind becoming integral to it. It is like growing up hating dairy products, but using milk with a drug in it anyway.
Marxism leaves out the source for anything, for laws, for progress, for meaning and duly fails. If NOTHING is the only source for ANYTHING, then nothing is all you have, and that is nothing to talk about, and there is nothing to use for the talking or for the formulation of the talk, or for the observation about which it is made. It is just there ? Whatever you choose ? That is begging the question. It is omitting the very causality to which you appeal in ANY attempt to explain ANYTHING. It is hence irrational.
It proceeds to leave out the originating dynamic for anything, for law, such as it inconsistently asserts here and there, for progress, for meaning, and even at that, it duly fails to be verified in its assertions (cf. SMR pp. 925ff.). Ignoring both the creativity of man and the testimony of God, the eternal source of temporal law and substance, of mind and spirit, of will and mental powers of machination, of creativity in conceptual terms, in artistic capacities, in theoretical overviews, which neither singly nor in the existing unity of totality available, present the scope of the case, it ignores a sufficient cause for entry, enforcing irrationality, which if chosen, precludes even argument, a logical S.I.W..
What then ? So nothing creates chance (system capable of designation, not aligning to a known purpose), chance creates law, the nubilous creates meaning, the unmethodical creates a base world of method, singularly exact and activated in layers of control, in our DNA and associated codes. Nothing is SO productive, and what is assumed is so chic!
Nothing in its continuity of prostitution as a concept, likewise creates formulation, which is implicit in laws covered when man discovers, cites and tests successfully their formulation, and finds it to be so. Even formulation is only potential information, for it has to be found, as is the case in scientific method searching for construction, constriction and control in natural things. Then it has to be set in semantic terms and universe of discourse, for man does discourse, in grammatical format, in logically investigable systems of thought, to become information. Thus the concepts into which the discovered laws are to be inserted, or with which continuous, all these things, formed, informed and featured, are moulded into some kind of perspective and intended mirror of the world and its relevant categories in causality, testability and exposure.
It is ALL an example of creation AND creativity, deposition for discovery and inclination to discovery, with the functions to do it, from nothing. It is when scientific method becomes a mere export of irrationality in ANY field, such as this, that its ABUSE becomes deceit, its estrangement distortion and its findings shunted off anywhere, lest they be found.
It all then becomes, at this level, not only an exercise in unverified imagination, but self-contradictory fevers, man trying to invent what will not come from what will not produce, hiding cause in casuistry, and logic in flightiness, avoiding disciplined thought. Such constraints seem to some even desirable, this insistence on for example, materialism as a base, as if this were not intrusion, dictation, preference masquerading as precept, philosophy without tears, pretension without power. You find such an approach cited of Lewontin of Harvard (The Way of Truth and the Way of Error Ch. 8). Yet, apart from this clear breach of scientific method in favour of preference, there is no way that matter can chatter out concepts, merely being a repository, so that the systematic inadequacy is at once apparent (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Christ Incomparable, Lord Indomitable Ch. 2). It is not a thing that it does. Even if it did, it still needs to be accounted for, if reason and test are still in vogue, rather than irrationality and assumption as lords.
Formulation ? by what ? And as noted, even formulation (as of innumerable stateable laws, and via the mind of man in thought, and of their creator in universe formation, for they are integral to it, and a cause-free universe is merely an irrational thought as in Cause, a break-down in accounting in the business of accounting, and of reason in the giving of reasons), is not yet information, which man is enabled to produce by due work on the formulation. In turn, even information is not found in empirical fact any more than in rational thought, from what lacks intelligence; but it IS found in the background data in the universe, sufficient to create children for example.
This language-inclusive reality, such as DNA, works to make us even able to work physically, but it is not now found in any of the actions or exhibits of nature without intelligence, while markedly found in what underlies it. It was poured out. It has ceased in this regard. Its imprint is there and proceeds; but it is not being put there. Creative agents like man can put it there, but the point is unintelligence from nothing originally, its hereditary, managing to do what it is never found to do! What put man there, at the ultimate, with the power so to create what the universe is replete with en bloc, and how did that information, formulation, formation beget itself from nothing, so that it might be and then do its stuff! It is rather like a fortune, in which the imagined heirs are discussing how to make best use of it; but they omit the gaining of it, the having of it in the first place, and so become mere dreamers; and what we are facing here is philosophic dreams, and ultimately religious dreams, however negative in formulation, just as Jeremiah told us would be the case to a vast extent, when the Age comes near its end (cf. Jeremiah 23:16-20).
To say that such thoughts are unscientific is laughable in its minimisation of the error. It is the very nadir and end of science, the opposite of collaborative method with existing information and law, the elixir of wilfulness. And why may not man be wilful ? He was made so that he could be ? He may be, and that is part of liberty, the prelude for anything called love; but if he does choose to use it that way, like love, it has its own parameters, type, scale, nature. Wilfulness and reason are not possible partners; will and reason are great, but the disjoining from reason in favour of desire is no partner for truth ascertainment. It is another option.
The fundamental thrust in these naked ideas, branded into being in defiance of causality (cf. Predestination and Freewill Section IV, SMR Ch. 5), is this; NEED (as evaluated by a formulating person) does NOT created what is needed (for a theory, a thirst, a hope). The mind may create the relevant thought, but the thought does not create the thing needed. You creep around necessities; they catch up with you (cf. News 98, 99). As in mathematics, you proceed in a proof from one end, and then start at the other end and work backwards, but what about the middle ? That is merely playing, and rightly marked down severely. Proof is not proof with omissions that make the bridge on which reason can walk.
Need does not create feed, desire does not create the desideratum, whether at the beginning or on the way, whether in the outset or the onset. Naturalism seems to love seeing needs and finding how they are met, as if some sophisticated, observant enterprise were being wrought to find out what to poke into a pocket. Neither poke nor pocket nor desire is relevant on that model, for it rejoices in its lack of basis, merely using various kinds of parts of the basis from time to time as if by smuggling in of arms, through secret tunnels, from the Gaza strip, into Palestine. Such things in a system of thought need to be acknowledged, and when they are, it is then that the model is breached by why does not belong to it. Such are not only hybrids, but hide-brids, hiding nothing when discovered, but abuse of terms.
The same stunned sort of subterfuge (not necessarily conscious, since this is the affair of spirit which can be strangely and strongly deceptive when liberties are taken with it! leading to self-deception) is illustrated in the Big Bang*1, where the ingredients are assumed, force, space, time, potential, system, potential and so on, with exactly the same irrationality, subversion of causality and old-style begging of the question. Assume a car factory and it is far easier to make cars than it is if you don't. Assume intelligent employes and you are further along the road of deception and putative progress.
Nor is this all. Imagine the concatenated, reactionary style totality of reductionist relativity as a world view, and there is no truth. Materialism has forgotten all about it. It has no address. You cannot logically, as with poor, misguided Hume or Kant, tell us about what prevents your knowing it as it is, by exempting your own self from your theory's implications (cf. SMR Ch. 3, Predestination and Freewill Section 4). Do it à la Darwin, Marx or Freud, it does not because it cannot work, being not merely illogical, but an alogism, a systematic breach, like cutting off an arm in the body. In logic, it becomes not merely antithesis but antinomy. The very principles underlying in the model come into collision with the attributions or workings in view. It not merely contradicts itself, but breaches itself. What brings other people to their limitations does not afflict the author of the theory, though a member of the race, a misused model.
Truth having no address, all being processive, there is nothing to appeal to, there is no entity to have it, there is extant actuality to possess it; it is an ultra-model entity covertly brought in. It presupposes the power NOT to exist in an interaction medley, beyond which there is nothing. It looks for oneself as beyond all that; and that is right, but not for the materialist model.
Without truth there is NOTHING TO ANNOUNCE, reductionist or other, with secondary failures or without. You cannot by the uttermost exercise obtain by investigation, what is not there. You cannot arrest what is outside the scope of the universe you propose. Godlessness is a ramble in brambles. Start without the eternal Starter, and you do not start. If ever nothing were all, all would be now and for ever, if time were there to which to refer indeed, nothing. Hence something always has to be there, adequate or not. If not, what is here by definition cannot come. But it has come. So the Eternal Entity who is sufficient is not an option, logically. It is a necessity.
Playing about with nothings may be fun, in the form of sweet nothings; but even they have an underlying meaning. Nothing may seem nothing much for a beginning, but judgment will certainly not be nothing.
Funeral dress may be nothing; but nakedness before judgment is mere presumption.
DIVINE BLESSINGS WHERE THEY MAY BE FOUND
What in all truth then, outside the obliterative models, and in all reason, is man to do ? Is he constituted a serf without instruction, to titillate the Eternal Creator ? But that presupposes a certain inadequacy in the same, so that a psychic sufficiency is not His, and He needs an additive for stability or satisfaction. And that assumes He has limits to which He seeks to face up or even overcome, which makes of Him a part of a system which is a contradiction in terms, since we have been logically speaking of the Eternal Sufficiency. Nothing can be caused by an inadequacy or need.
Where is the instruction ? what are the conditions ? what is to be made of, done with the most technically advanced, linguistically remarkable system of orders ever known on this earth or beyond it, at the material level ? How is this equipment to be employed, for whom deployed, on what account used ?
The Gospel of Jesus Christ, like this world, has a source, and has credentials which point to that source, in the ultimate. Thus Shakespeare's sonnets have a source, and you can waste time on the main issue by discussing the kind of pen or quill he used, the paper's chemical nature and the speed at which his hand moved over the paper. However, the chief question is WHO and WHAT and what powers had the author of these objects ? You consider this in terms of the nature of the product, its genre, its production analogues visible and known, their reasons and causes, special or unique features, their relationship to other specialised features, reasons for the differentiation of the features and so on, seeking to find an all-satisfying account of the matter before you.
That is reasonable; not treasonable to reason or, incidentally, to scientific method, which has some standing precisely for THIS reason.
The Gospel points out that something is wrong, and the mystery of man is not only wrongly envisaged by unreasonable assumptions, but that this is merely a symptom of the condition of man at large, and as a whole. It lists many of his ways and the futility and absurdity of many, along with the beauty and the wonder also to be found, and attributes the basic problem to the penalties of misuse of man's will, which has become racially a trend. It then provides the solution, as to a problem in mathematics, but this being personal may meet far more opposition as may any operation on mankind and its members, a point which it notes. God has therefore given in personal form and format the solution, not in a drug, not in a prescription to take for the body, since the main problem is in man's spirit, but in the form of a man.
This is the form God chose to take in order to show the way to live by example, show the way to die for need, out of love, within others, and provide the basis for justice, not through mere favouritism, to be met. at its source. This is seen in John 1-3 and Hebrews 1-2 for example, as in Romans 5, very clearly.
Far from the universe having no cause, its cause has reason to speak to a world in anguish and agonies constantly vociferously and violently pursued, often about just such things, but on varied topics of living. The speech is not limited to the physical orders in multi-tiered co-operative layers, but provides for man as a thinking, moralising, creative being. If he is willing, answer is there, together with information and the results in view, which involves what is called a "new creation", not really of any superman, so often in vain sought in one way or another, but of the product of the divine operation (John 3, II Corinthians 5). It is like restoring from crippling condition, and the term used applies to the renewal in mind, understanding, comprehension, attitude, enablement at the personal levels, and of course, the power to co-operate with God, once born.
Whether for victim or tyrant, the same is provided. It has a book. It has the Saviour, God become man from His trinitarian completeness; man's sin to be covered, man's mind to be freed from 'cussedness' to think clearly about any topic if it will. The systematic logical and psychological rort by his condition, is removed, like the wrong starting point on weighing scales. It is thorough, explicatory of all, and the book is confirmatory continually in many depths and dimensions proposed for test, by the Creator both of man and of the book, the sender of the Saviour. This is specified as one source of confirmation for mankind who was made, not in vain, but with a mind to grapple, and not for mere anguish and anger, but for a peace which has both basis and dynamic.
Thus man is invited to meet his God, not as will be in any case, as Judge (Amos 4), but with the protective coating of the merit of the Saviour (cf. Matthew 22:1-14), who having died for the sins of all who come to Him as Saviour and God, Lord and Counsellor, also provides the righteousness gift, His own, put to the account of the sinner, an inestimable treasure as in Romans 5:17ff.. Isaiah 52-55 gives expression in pithy form to the reason for, results of and power in the provisions of God. Daniel 9:23ff. gives the date*2 of the sacrificial events, in the summit of the redeeming love of God (cf. Isaiah 9, 11, 22, 32, 35, 49-55, 59, 66, Romans 1-8).
Often man refuses, but that is the prerogative of man in the image of God, susceptible to fellowship with Him, that he may choose to trash that option. Isaiah 55 speaks of this, as does Christ as shown in Matthew 23:37, Luke 19:41ff..
REVIEW
The universe, then, formulated, informed in logical law and logical language, in man equipped with a parallel but subordinate, non-universe creating power, has its causal source. Not only is 'cause' unable to be accounted for without using it, so that all attempts to subjectivise it necessarily fail, but it must be an element of eternal power, since nothing, if this were all that existed at any time, necessarily cannot create it, and even assignment of characteristics to objects, requires it - this is what they are, and so what they do.
Just as the universe requires a power eternally equipped with causal, operative power, so man requires information concerning the purpose of this logical development from such a source. Just as rational investigation of the universe required the Eternal Cause Source, with minimal assignable power relative to the products, so the state of man in particular, able to proceed himself to search within limits, requires a source code, meaning, not only as now demonstrated in DNA, for each generation in body, but as equally clear, in mind and in spirit. Just as account of the universe has a logical requirement, and man in particular, with the logical product in one phase or department, and the reciprocal power in the other, all testable: so a comprehensible code or word block, is needed to interpret and to be tested as to its logical adequacy to be taken as such a word.
Testing is not only for the material, but for the immaterial, not to find the means for the one, but for the other, not only the directions for the one, but the conditions for the use of the other, in whatever form, correlative to its condition.
Because of the vast intellectual and rational, creative and technical power and the spiritual requirement for power to create this also, of the Eternal Source for man and the universe, it is nothing too hard to examine the contestants for such a word for the mind and spirit of man, for these capacities are unique and vastly beyond those of man. The source and schema for the body, and that for the mind alike is logically required. What is the chosen nature of the latter ? Where and how may it be found ? In man's present state, there can only be calamity in such powers available and tantrums, hatreds, harassments, diabolical deeds and ludicrous imaginations.
Where is the provision to correlate with that for the body and complete a common assignment for the spirit of man, which can leave mere brutish animality as an almost blessed contrast with its own evils! If God Himself were so callow and foolish, man could not begin to have the wisdom to know it, being created; and if God were such, then His inadequacy would indicate a harrying system or inadequate base, as if He were not Creator but creature, and so it would be a false, self-contradictory model. It is not with such a Being that by logical need, we are dealing. Where then is the information to be found ?
And what is its nature ?
The Bible alone meets these criteria, explaining ll aspects of the case systematically concerning man. It even accepts that such testing of it is as both just and apt as in Isaiah 41, 43, 48 for example, and challenges any would-be competitors, deemed mere imaginations, to context with it on valid grounds.
The contest is easily won, and then history follows the Bible, the word ensemble from God to man, for his instruction and salvation from the defined wilful disorder state, called sin, in which with desire he may participate more and more, this with its many ramifications. History follows this course both prospectively in fulfilments and retrospectively in confirmations, as in DNA type bases for the reproduction of man, in perfect match. In the latter category, we have the categorical cessation of new productions of the type, vast information displays*3 of consistent intricacy and profundity, leaving us as with a flood of information in its mutual reciprocities and successive layers of depositions.
That flood, like the other, has stopped. It is no more to be watched. Unintelligence no more lavishes it, nor does it yield even a dribble. It is in this, as in all, precisely as that incomparably characterisable word of God, the Bible has declared in its attestation: in this case, that God created man by word AND set spirit in the result.
The case is complicated but no clouded by the continuance in most, of whole imposts of wilful sin with its many applications and aggravations. extensions, provisions and subtleties (cf. Chs. 12, 13 and Epilogue of Volume 7 of Department of Bible .... just as there are increasing attestations of deteriorations in the slowly decaying genome. Nothing comes from nothing and what SPOILS something is not without results, be it man or other.
In fact, one may pursue the issue, this phase of sustained rebellious attitude relative to his Maker, Creator and Saviour, on the part of most of mankind, and in test, from the written word of God, the Bible with its information, and prescription for man, is itself coded in concept, and systematised in type with major outcome sites such as the Messiah, His birth place and His death date*2 alongside the turbulent and increasingly intractable nature of this world accorded to man, pending His return who acted on His behalf, and was given marching orders after being slowly tortured so as not to be able to walk.
This return is deliberately and statedly undated, for the servants are not all undeceptive, and some will statedly be exposed on that return. Yet it is heavily and in detail described as to its accompaniments in type and specifics as it draws near, rather like the sound of cannons outside a city, when invasion is planned. It may not SHOW that it comes in so many days, but it is an index, and in company with many features*4, indicative uniquely that it is "near", as Christ declared for the signal of the return of the Jews to their city of Jerusalem, a once in 1900 year event!
These near to terminal events, the end of the Age company, are not easy for the Christians, tested to the uttermost by plan (cf. Revelation 12:10-12, Matthew 24, II Thessalonians 2), but while this is an extravaganza of persecution, many have been those throughout the ages who have tasted the lash, robbery and fraud of assailants with nothing better to do than seize, rape, assault and destroy Christian prosperity, power and service.
The Lord, having come to save, returns as so often stated in prophecy in both Testaments, the Old and the New, to rule and to judge, vindicating wisdom and righteousness in the very face of the utmost furore which fails at His coming, and according to His many plans*4 (cf. Psalm 72, Isaiah 59, Matthew 24, Revelation 20-21). In His return (as in Revelation 1:6 and Isaiah 66:18, with Matthew 24:14,30) He will first take His own people to their resurrection and installation of His kingdom as in Revelation 19:8 and I Corinthians 15, and then, this vast deliverance achieved, continue to the end of the cosmos, somewhat later, after the period of His gracious rule.
In this coming for His saints (all Christians are saints*5, but fewer and fewer who bear the name are Christians as the brew develops), what is it like ? Just as the ark saved those who freely and in faith with conviction entered, but not those of another cast of mind and kind of spirit, so the Lord saves His own who already know Him, whose ways are clear (cf. John 10:27-28). Just as the ark saved some from a watery grave without ceremony, so Christ crucified, personal exemplar of the resurrection, saves many more in the area of final crisis.
All is covered according to specifiable needs for man, just as individuals may be personally covered by the blood of the Messiah. The meaning of this phrase is this: to cover by His own vicarious sacrifice the sins of as many of mankind as received Him as such, and as Lord of life, origin of it, the Logos and living word eternal of the Eternal God, so that His word (in DNA to the body received automatically at normal birth), is also received willingly in the spiritual grant, taken, by the mind and heart of such persons, free to become friends of God and authorised to be called the children of God (John 1:12). What a Father is that, and you need not bemoan (if so be) an earthly father undesired, for this one is available on application in the form of faith in His word!
What then ? Hatred for this holiness of God and His written word for the mind of man, and incarnate word, the Saviour and His ways of peace without works for salvation itself (Ephesians 2, Romans 3, Titus 3), for those knowing Him as Lord, increases in manifestation as foretold for the end of the Age crises (cf. Daniel 12:1-4), before His return for and with His people.
That, we are seeing in the most dramatic of forms, internationally and openly, as well as subtly and slyly in some of the democracies. This is a heavy test of all, not too much for eternity; and it is more blessed to come through it. As Paul says, he an example and apostle of the faith, showing the adequacy of the way of God, "I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him against that day!", II Timothy 1:12. That is a delightful part of His salvation, that the greater the test, the greater the power, and that He is committed to keeping His people, each one. His truth never fails, nor does His word.
NOTES
See for example, Dig Deeper ... Ch. 1, The Word and Wisdom of God ... Ch. 1, Lively Lessons in Spiritual Service Ch. 5, Cascade ... Ch. 6. Why Not Believe the Lord's Christ, Ch. 12, Department of Bible, Ch. 11.
Christ the Citadel... Ch. 2,
The Christian Prescription Ch. 2 and
Highway of Holiness Ch. 4.
See for example Waiting for Wonder Appendix. In fact, in parallel to the aroused expression of bewilderment of Professor Stephen Gould as in Wonderful Life (cf. Wake Up World, Your Creator is Coming! Ch. 6, to be read with Chs. 4 and 5), Professor Sanford of Cornell University notes after research the fascinating fact that the genome of man is deteriorating with long use. That in turn, in tune with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, brings us back from the bally-hou of wonders imagined without evidence (cf. SMR pp. 140ff.,), to the evidence of the current state. Not ONLY is it one of non-progress in basic terms, in kinds, but it is one of retrogression in accord with universal law.
See for example SMR Ch. 8 and Answers to Questions Ch. 5.
On saints, see The Christian Prescription Ch. 6.