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Chapter 10

RATIONALE, RATIONALITY, RATIONALISM AND REALITY:

SUFFERING AND SALVATION HAVE A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

REASON AND REVELATION

Reason is a mode of investigation,  allowing the principles of logic and enquiry to be applied, and resolutely to exhibit what they may, in a world designed by the LOGOS, and hence filled with reason. It is, nevertheless, a world not designed as a mere transparency, but rather a challenge, and a testimony, so that the wiles of deception can readily seek to overcome the wisdom of just thought. Rationalism is one irrelevant peril, and empiricism, lacking the resolute pursuit of reason, though justly concerned with data, is the other. Neither reason nor observed data should be short-shrifted; for each has a just and verifable place in the final composition, which has been presented. It is not question of competition but complementarity.

Rationales are modes of reasonable accomplishment, relative to a purpose, understanding or perspective, which enable one to show the plan relative to purpose, the propositional substructure and the elements of the approach, especially in its conclusive or practical application.

Neither of these terms, REASON, or RATIONALE, is presumptuous per se, but rather methodological.

Rationalism is a more godlike intrusion into the human framework. With this, it is assumed that reason has its own domain, and there is either no other to supervene, supervise or oversee, method arising without production relative to the site or the procedure, with no cause, ground or reason. This is irrational, and in being so, invalidates all its own findings.

In fact, with rationalistic thinking, if one can call it that, since it tends to abort thought in its basis and foundation, in a quasi-magical manner,  there is merely a reductionist world to investigate, so that 'reason' becomes a war-horse for a prepared pit, and is sure to stumble. This is no fault of reason, but of the pit into which it is gratuitously placed.

On this basis, then, the trend is this: what one reasons is to become what is, quite simply; and if not, then all that there is for man. On such a procedure, absolute truth being missing, the proposition itself does not qualify; and as to all that there is being for man, this is a mere conception of racial egotism.

Man is part of all that there is, and with reason has amazing power to survey it; but it is not with reason alone that he does so, for there is the production of purpose, imagination, discernment and perception in many domains which is background material and additional prerogatives of man. So great indeed is the series of prerogatives given to man - and as shown in this site, it enables him, by divine institution both of things natural and of himself, to find out where truth really is, absolutely, and to verify it as such. This is because there is as rationally there has to be, a reason for man, as well as reason in him,  and reasonableness in the construction of the universe so that laws which are there,  may be with reasoning and empirical research be framed, applied and  verified in conceptual format.

Therefore rationalism is merely a series of presumptive assumptions, leaving out much and overplaying more. It takes for granted; in science however, nothing is to be taken for granted, and in whatever realm, as required by reason and evidence, one must move until one finds what interprets, explains and covers all ably and aptly. This is precisely what is the case when reason is used justly and without rationalism as is done in SMR, TMR and in other works such as those about to be listed below.

Obviously, both rationalism  and reductionism are forms or aspects of humanism, and since man neither begets his own mode of begetting nor constructs the universe, nor can even make ab initio, one of himself, nor freedom by contrivance, nor can he determine before birth what he wants it to be, nor when he will die except in the profanity of suicide: such humanistic concepts are ludicrous. Such procedures are based on assumptions which are

1) inadequate in coverage of the cosmoi in which man moves, and which exist operationally within him,  and

2) contrary to fact.

Sometimes, however, people tend to confuse rationality, the due use of reason as distinct from vapidity, inactivity, lassitude, ineptitude with data, validity of procedures, with rationalism. This is mere error of terminology and referents;  but it has an enormous and sometimes negative effect on the appetite for reality on the part of some. They may imagine that to reason is somehow profane, or ungodly, or lacking.

It often is, when based on presumption at the outset; but that is precisely because of the pits into which it is often placed, presuppositions based on the concept that man knows all, which is impossible.

However, when reason is used to find where it leads, and the leading moves one to God Almighty without escape, as is demonstrable, we move to new sites. When, we move on procedurally to the necessity that God Almighty has expressed Himself not only IN man, as a created being, as in the DNA, for example, but TO man, as is no less demonstrable, to man as a derivative being of power to commune,  consider and conceive at the very level of God Himself (not with the same or similar power, but in that domain without mere presumption): then we come to something very different. Here is reasonableness, not rationalism.

If then, these things being so, we find on investigation empirically,

	1) that the Bible is the only book allowing and requiring verification, by its own instance and insistence, providing systematically comprehensive coverage of the basic ingredients of life and history, the universe and man, without invalidity or empirical collisions; and
	2) that this proposition is profoundly positive in result, under logical test (for coherence, consistency and operations) and empirical investigation, for its forecasts and retrospective utterances in the name of the Almighty;
	3) that this is applicable over the millenia of its persistent, consistent insistence;
	and
	4) that indeed, nothing else has validity in this fields, so that at this level, and in these respects, competition does not exist in the field:

then reason has served like a hunting dog to find the author of itself, of man, and of the universe, the result, like the finding of certain rays in the laboratory, being objective, testable, verifiable and clear.

Such was the work of

SMR, confirmed in

TMR, extended vastly in many domains, in

Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny,  and exhibited in many specific features for survey, 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 Written Resolution
of Man's Intractable Problems
is Found Only in the Bible, the Word of God.

Further, the logical steps to divine revelation, the prize at the end of the labours,

 becomes specialist topic in...

Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer,
while a more detailed review of logical method and procedure is found in the references immediately below.

Reason does nothing to create that prize, but does attest it, just as it then attests itself. Such has been the procedure carried out in these different volumes, or sets of volumes.

It may prove helpful to be reminded of one presentation in this present field, from What is the Wheat to the Chaff ? Ch. 4 (which with Ch. 5, gives an overview of the method used in Biblical Christian Apologetics in this site). The excerpt below will give a taste of it, while the Chapters themselves provide its broader notation.

AT THE OUTSET

Thus we see that Reason for the Faith, as provided for in I Peter 3:15, with its earthly setting shown in Romans 1:17ff., as also the result, can be phrased and phased into a

Comprehensive Bible Christian Apologetic Method. 

This in turn is self-confirmatory on every side, as in science ideally various hypotheses are sought to be intertwining, each approbative and sometimes even illustrative of the other.

In general perspective, if you pre-suppose no God, because it suits you, then you find no rationality or validity^*1.  Presuppositionalism specialises in this fact.

If you pre-suppose God, antilogies disappear.

However it is not our path merely to do this, grievous as it is to all unbelief at the outset. This is merely one phase.

In our next step, instead of adding to the presuppositional, beyond the first aspect, we proceed to follow reason, which after all for anyone seeing man in the image of God has no problems, rationalism being merely a debasement of a facility into an idol.

If then you set out to follow reason in order to inspect results, while also affirming any model which destroys its own validity, then you find antinomy, its voidance and deletion of argument, meaning and even words. If reason were an oddity of correlation merely, then it would be in a self-contained system of thought which would breed nothing of truth, merely of happenstance.

Thus again if causality were denied, then even the meaning of words would become insupportable, since characteristics are necessary for definition, and these in turn have their innate grounds and nature, which instead of being erratic, in order to become describable, are affirmable so that a source of results is correlative to a possibility of definition. Remove the one and you remove the other, so leaving yourself speechless, and hence unfit for argumentation. See Causes.

Character must BE in order that DEFINITION might be! Character must have ground, and does, in order that it might become characterisable. The process is a causative one, in which what is  produces what appears, through sufficient ground. Science being built on this, finds its matrix in it, and hence its power. A realm of causality caused by some imaginary cause, does not thereby become void; for on the contrary, IN ORDER to imagine a cause for causality, you have to ASSUME IT OPERATIONAL FIRST, so that something or other may CAUSE IT. The concept of such a thing is thus merely illusory and self-contradictory.

The mere fact that you are imagining a cause for causation does not alter the fact that you are using it in order to derive it, which has the common name in logic, of begging the question. This is an entirely vain thing, suitable only for school-masters who seek to teach the elements of logic to fledgings in Year 11 High School.

If however you avoid the voidance of reason and of causality, then no longer are you barred and harried, harassed and impotent at the outset by compulsory, pervasive irrationalism (cf. SMR Ch. 5). If you FOUND yourself on irrationalism, you cannot escape its quality, merely immersing yourself in the magic of its cessation.

If then you follow reason as shown in SMR Ch. 1 for example, you are forced to find God. This it does, even moving to His only authorised word to mankind, the Bible, by irrevocable necessity (cf. The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy). This Bible in turn confronts you on inescapable terms with the Christ of God, the remedy of God, and the Gospel of grace, of which it is full (cf. SMR Ch. 7, and pp. 520ff.). This becomes then an entire solution to seeking, involving metaphysical, epistemological, aesthetic, moral, political and physical resolution of mutual and specific principles (cf. SMR Ch. 4, Question and Answer   7, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 7, Little Things Ch. 5, It Bubbles... Ch. 9, Repent or Perish Chs.   7,   2).

It resolves antinomies, excludes antilogies, and institutes not only individual meaning, but a nexus of meaning, coherent and integrated, while dependent and created.

This result is then subjectible methodologically (though it is already sure) to scientific method and is left alone with the criteria it requires, so validating reason, as is normal practice in other spheres. There being no competition in religious fields in this specific level, there are no issues; but the different heights and depths of verification when there, constitute an integral and personal answer; and since we are personal, this is necessary as one aspect.

Simplicity and integrity of all fields and powers of man, in resultant is its own additive to verification and integrity, and in fact, this could be looked on as aspect XIII in method, since it not only, as in VII above is a quantitative corollary to truth, but a systematic one in depth as well, a methodological surplus.

This then is the METHODOLOGICAL SURPLUS PHASE, which juts into view.

It is a matter of total structure in architectural simplicity, and its wings not only meeting logical need, but surpassing it in just that way that the mind of the Author of man in His own image might be expected to do. It has the savour of regality and the originality of the unlimited, with the cohesion of coherent thought and the superb correlations of design at the metaphysical level, as in the more apparent meeting places of thought's envisagement that are correlative to power without limit and understanding that is majestic. To look and learn is privilege and wonder both!

Let us now amplify a little.

Since the Bible, verified and validated as from God, is both a revealing of His plans, personal nature and purposes, and of His actions towards man and his environment, it opens a new test, that is likewise an opportunity. Truth loves and rushes to its exhibition, for that is one of the most conspicuous aspects of light: it reveals by nature!

Thus, through these inscripturated words, the Bible, validated as authentic in every way and wise, the Creator provides a way for a stable platform of communication with God, in the plan of salvation. More, these same words provide personal access to  God as by children to a father, and even, in Christ authenticated therein as Saviour of mankind, it provides reasonable grounds for such access (cf. SMR pp. 582ff, 611ff., 620ff.). It provides personal supervision to ensure adequacy and fidelity of the communication, and grounds for this being not only possible, but actual in a coherence of concept brilliant in disposition, all-encompassing its provision, like a prodigy of mountain peaks, each an independent summit, all a glorious totality, beyond need, superb in configuration and elevation.

In this way, the necessity of absolute truth revealing itself willingly is met, and at the same time, a rationally affirmed procedure is in place. It is not as if reason creates, but that in its fossicking and ascertaining office, it LOCATES the word of God! Further, in making available such a thing as becoming children of this God  of creation, there is from this same word provided a change of nature to the dashed image of God in sinful man, so that freedom has meaning to its very depths, and one's nature is not one's ultimate at all, merely a phase for consideration! So does liberty become meaningful; and in love, which is willing to do such work on man, there is the basis of the change for it is costly to redeem, restore and re-make.

It always is! (cf. Question and Answer   2).

This means of access provides for the negation of the offer (cf. John 3:19, Matthew 23:37ff.), which makes it meaningful in terms of liberty. If indeed, sin precludes the healthy operation of will, yet God in love is able to know and find His own, having desired all, while willing to violate none (cf. Luke 19:42ff., John 1:12ff.). In the end, as for creation, so for re-creation or regeneration as it is called (cf. Colossians 3:10, Titus 3:5ff.), God is author of initiative; but having founded man in His image, He is also with authority, the exponent of a love which never defiles itself by becoming force. Hence the endless seeming parade of paternal laments in the scriptures. You see this for example in as in Isaiah 48:16, and Jeremiah 48:36 -

"Therefore My heart will sound for Moab like pipes, and My heart shall sound like pipes for the men of Kirheres:
because the riches that he has gained are perished."

It is the LORD who is speaking as announced in 48:35. Poignant likewise and expressive of love in its integrity is the Isaiah passage:

"Come near to Me, hear this:

I have not spoken in secret from the beginning;

From the time that it was, I was there.

And now the Lord God and His Spirit

Have sent Me."

 

"Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer,

The Holy One of Israel:

'I am the Lord your God,

Who teaches you to profit,

Who leads you by the way you should go.

 

'Oh, that you had heeded My commandments!

Then your peace would have been like a river,

And your righteousness like the waves of the sea.

Your descendants also would have been like the sand,

And the offspring of your body like the grains of sand;

His name would not have been cut off

                           Nor destroyed from before Me.' "

There incidentally, in 48:16 you see the sending of the Saviour from the Godhead as in the book of Isaiah, God the Father sending God the Son here prefigured with that majestic ease that relates to absolute truth speaking beyond time, and into it, so that we may listen! This example, while confirming our present purpose, also and in turn finds its place in XII as exhibiting the phenomenon of resonance. Facility without being facile, multiplicity of truth without strenuousness: here are some of the criteria of that majesty for whom truth is more than environment. It is His own nature!

Thus we are considering the divine provision in the Bible, the word of God validated and verified, so that this not only gives scope for liberty as noted above, in order to allow people to NEGATE (John 3:19), but provides personal VERIFICATION of the reality of what is freely supplied in practice to believers: and that in the special case of PERSONAL inter-relationship with this God, which as in knowing the artist and not merely surveying his works, is of the most intense and intrinsic gain.

It is an integral reality and a valid integrality, not in terms of parts as gods, an office they writhe to avoid despite the most invasive experiments over long years (cf. TMR Ch.  1), but as a created system inter-active indeed, but a derivative of design, each agent and aspect having place not by it own power, but by imaginative construction and deft correlation. One such part is man; all of whose personal aspects are explained in the ways we have begun to exhibit under XIII, and have often exhibited before

(cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 9,
Little Things Ch. 5,
Earth Spasm ...   6,   7,
SMR Ch. 4,
Calibrating Myths ...Ch. 3,
Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 16, Ch. 13,
Predestination and Freewill).

TO THE ONSET

SUFFERING AS SUCH IS INADEQUATE

LOVE ACTS WHERE IT MATTERS

Having clarified these general aspects, features, topics and sub-topics, we are in a position to examine an important matter concerning the crucifixion of Christ.

In one of the famous L.M. Montgomery's books, Rilla of Ingleside, there is a rather wonderful treatment of World War I from a Canadian perspective. We see the young men, from their farming, romance, near to defined romance, hopeful romance, their ambitions or their proclivities, taken, as now one, with courage, now another with a moral compulsion, one with enthusiastic patriotism, indeed many with this with or without context of heart, move to the war. They arrive, they are wounded, they endure, one dies, and the war is not ended in months, as hoped, but proceeds like an indefatigable cancer, not prone to treatment, all too visible, deadly and persistent.

This and that hopeful gain, the dashing possibility of the loss of Paris, quashed when it seemed almost certain, the near hopeless seeming case with the Hindenburg offensive, the standing of Canadians in this or that role, their exposure, the hope against hope mentality and cordiality of heart in the homeland, as it seems surely now more of the young must surely die, each day an endurance test for hope, each soldier precious here or there at home, and many with many: these things accrue.

The pain and pang of heart becomes intense; fear stalks; emotions rise; hopelessness begins to seek a hearing, courage insists.

So it proceeds. The sufferings and the delays, the woundings and the woes increase. The pangs, pains and anguish rise as if an ocean wave of intensity, growing in immensity.

At this point, the authoress gains the impression that it is as if the whole world WERE BEING CRUCIFIED!

Now this is an interesting view, but it requires investigation.

When Christ was crucified, it was a singular, individual act of one who was as He is,  intimate to infinity in the trinity; but it was one. It was not diversified in many; it was divine in one. The people did not fail to observe this (John 10:30ff.), nor He to state it (John 8:58, 10:1ff.).

What HE endured, this did not signify suffering, project it, represent it as its central feature: He BORE it, and in particular, in its aspect of judicious impact, bore it vicariously as an atonement. It was INSTEAD of the whole world being what is tantamount to being crucified. It was not an extension of it, or an index. It was the way for its removal of guilt NOW for the believer, and of an unpayable eternity of suffering (in whatever form 'time' would then occur, since time itself is an invention with this earth and universe from the God, who like the author of a book, is beyond our time, but quite able to act at any time in any way within it, if He so desires): it was that which would otherwise have been man's due in each case.

It does not matter if you are the world's brightest and best Boy Scout or Girl Guide (one refuses to dabble in Girl Scouts since the distinctiveness of male and female is a crucial reality, like the distinctiveness of rational thought from instinct, or that of man from animal, or flight from horseback transport, and nothing is gained by shutting the eyes and pretending to be a god who does precisely what he - or she - pleases): it does not matter if you are, then, so very moral and remarkable. You might be the most humanitarian sinner on this earth that the world can find, and yet  still ready and both apt and liable for deadly assault by  guilt before GOD.

God, you see, has certain differences from man. For example, He is infinite, not finite, pure and not sinful, just and not unjust, does not seek His own selfishness but gives, having already all. He is the reference point ? no, the reference Creator. When therefore HE who made us is not even personally KNOWN, this is like not knowing who your employer is! or precisely what he wants (for instance, sending you to Vietnam or Paris, or wanting you in London for 6 months to attend to an urgent matter to which you are singularly suited). Not to know God is a state unthinkable for man, except as disruption.

When THEREFORE you simply try to carry out whatever your own motives, and morals (if you have any formed or formulated or active or always or sometimes forged into action), then there is this little problem. It is like sitting an exam and writing the paper for yourself, the one that you then sit. You might, indeed, should do rather well, don't you think! It is ludicrous, and so guilt is ominous for our race. You have to find and know your Creator as Paul made so apparent in the Areopagus Address in Athens (Acts 17). You may grope for Him, but the criterion is Christ, the way is in Him and His work, the result is to know God and to have and live in a life which is eternal, passing beyond the rupture and corruption of the race, by the same power by which God is able to subdue even everything to Himself, which Paul notes in Philippians 3:20ff.

This is like turning on a tap, or not. It is in or out, like a tennis ball relative to the lines. It is not a graded or gradual thing; in Christ, one is receiving or not, the grace and place and gift which He has earned to give. Revisit that tap: it may be on, and water flows; but If not, no water is to be found. On the other hand, as Revelation 22:17 puts it, 5 verses from the end of the Bible, He who is athirst, let him drink of the water of life freely. It is free and lively water, but it is no question of becoming slightly moist: you drink it or you don't, take it or reject it, look at it as you may (cf. Hebrews 6:4ff.). It is not a matter for dilly-dallying. We are not infinite beings; you can scar flesh, and also hearts (cf. Isaiah 57:15ff.).

You drink then ? But if not, then the fact that Christ became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (II Corinthians 5:17ff.), becomes useless for that person so drinkless, one practising life brinkmanship with God, or dispelling Him from the mind, and keeping the heart for its own pride in self-will, operating on man-made morals and liberty of life FROM, but not in the God who made it, and this, with or without sticking out the tongue.

Accordingly, it is Christ's affair to have something, eternal life, to give. Therefore, His being crucified, as symbol and display of man's sin, but with the substance of truth and justice, freely to bear it for him,  is unique, untransferable, a key to all interpretation and understanding. Because  the guilt of man cannot truly be ignored, and must be met - as in principle it has been; and because the answer for life-astray is an unpayable one, it is not a strange thing or mystery, this breadth and depth and scope of suffering. It is due desert for the race. If it is discountenanced, the cure, then there is a double due desert for each one in the race who treats this in that manner.

If then the world were 'being crucified' as Montgomery picturesquely put it, as World War I reached its shuddering climax, its state one of no small force of feeling, of anguish, of a cry of the heart, yet it is not a mystic oddity for which there is no explanation, nor a marvellous prelude to a sure enlightenment! It is the course of this world, that it sins and suffers; and as liberty is granted, the gross can ensnare the godly in the assault on a land, and all suffer. This, however, it is not to PURGE the sin, rather to express it; it is no part of the answer for it.

It is not to PURIFY man, even if it moves to torture him. It may be USED, but in principle it is no more reconstruction than is someone bashing in your face.

The idea that a golden age might follow so vast a grief as World War I, was floated in Montgomery's book; but while suffering may indeed enhance realisation, awareness of reality, dash pride and help relationships by making at least some of them far more sensitive, it does not remove guilt, and may well brutalise feeling, rupture the psychic tissue of the heart - that is, put a stranglehold on the ideals and hopes of the life, and lead to insensitivity more profound than ever. It may equally induce  loss of hope and carelessness about the quality of life, so that in this way or that, one may have in principle, what in practice occurred in this case of the roaring twenties, following that war.

Reasoning about suffering, then, may become an infection, in certain cases. It is not that it is bad to reason, but you need to know the premises and the procedure, and if not starting with God as Creator and man as a somewhat independent operator, you may end in any sort of irrelevant mysticism. The world is by no means suffering to cover its sins. Suffering is a symptom in the long run, of sin, but it does not pay for it in this world. Many suffer little, harm much; and many more, suffer delicately, and inflict gross suffering. There is no sort of mathematical equating.

That is to come, and it is more than mathematical; but it IS just.

Thus the world did by no means in its suffering, engage in any sort of purgative purification making it really almost worth while to have had the suffering. God is not doing some spiritual calisthenics with the world, making it pass through vales as it grows and learns and becomes better, through some species of pseudo-athletic summons, as if pain on a colossal scale, as in World War I, were really a progressive thing.

One can readily understand the feeling. How COULD England and Germany have such an engagement, when not seldom there would be mutual pity in the hearts of combatants, on either side, or occasional expressions of something akin to fellowship! Would they, then,  now learn ? Not at all. The sacrifices to end sacrifices, in this worldly sort of conception, of course did not do so. The world which must LEARN and will, so that it will be IMPOSSIBLE for this to happen again, as leaders put on the frock-coats and surplices of sanctity and idealism, did not learn.

In fact, it took only around 20  years for it to seek to expand the whole process in agony, of which the atomic bomb is a sort of essentialisation, in case dreamy-eyed optimism should continue. It is not bad to be optimistic; but you must choose the place for it. If you are trying to run a car on two wheels, on opposite sides, one in front, the other in the back, optimism is merely misplaced. If you are hoping for a world to run with varied follies of philosophy, such as this, that change is all that matters, or else instead, that solidity is all that really is there, or again, that pain is necessary for living, don't worry, endure it and get on ... but where ?  then optimism is simply misplaced.

As to that, it CANNOT work since it is misfounded in model, in principle, in perception. It is then only a question of how much such UNREALISM will suffer, when and how. The current world history since say 1970 has been more and more obviously transmitting this message. The thing is rotten; it has no strength of MORALITY, and ideals vary according to catastrophe, till the so idealistic leaders are found to have morals in some cases like those of tom cats, robbers or deceivers, or to become braggarts of their own accomplishments or those of their nation (since the world is still somewhat sensitive about racial bragging... some other then, is invented, such as making the entire race, MANKIND itself, the boast, though this is a mere extension of racism into human racism).

MAN will do it. Trust me! they say, or follow me, and we will see (won't we ?) that it will cover the case, and we will do what has to be done.

Do what ? What man in multitudes and in many dreamy governments, often turning into nightmarish ones,  is doing is near to directionless; and the ideals which the UN broaches and preaches, when seen in practice, can be so appalling in slant, so incompetent in application, and so baseless logically in kind,  that it is pathetic to watch as man pompously asks for more of the suffering of unrealism, insincerity, double-mindedness and optimism for what is, still unmoved,  in basis wrong, inadequate, inept, unreasonable, wilful and not even able to meet the requirements and constraints of reason, far less the One who provided it in man, and its counterpart in nature, which man investigates.

Now it may be conceded that when Jews were, reportedly, crucified outside Jerusalem, when Rome invaded in A.D. 70, there was a certain parallel to the crucifixion of Christ, a certain tit-for-tat feeling about it. However, this was very far from equivalence. When the infinitely pure God in love suffers to take the guilt of those who receive His sacrifice for sin, then that is an infinite action of infinite and unique import. Suffering for what, before God, you deserve anyway scarcely, indeed not at all atones for that. What is divinely able and wrought to cover the case,  the atonement of Christ, is not a move on the suffering chess-board, so that with this as an example, and our own sufferings as follow-up, we might all be a better people. When God expends personally to cover the case, let no one imagine that this is correlative to man's action, any more than in writing a play, one is equivalent to creating a universe. There are significant differences of adequacy, scope and enterprise, of fitness and of purpose.

LOVE NOT THE WORLD, says I John. The love of this world is hatred of God, says James. I do not pray for the world! says Jesus Christ. It is for those to be rescued, redeemed and by the power of the Creator, in spirit and heart regenerated altogether (Titus 3:3-7) that Christ prays (John 17:9ff.). His love reaches to all, but in practice, it is not reaching but regenerating that is the necessity. The reaching is very wonderful; we all know the gratitude, or most of us anyway, one can feel when someone with no obligation is very kind, thoughtful, helpful. But this is not the same as changing the situation in its entirety. The gesture is lovely; the action, however,  to redeem the situation, must be adequate, must reach and alter the basics as required, in life.

The suffering of Jerusalem may indeed have been partly punitive; but better it is to conceive of it as Christ did when He wept for it, before making His own voluntary and predicted death an offering better than that of kindness, and died for it, so that those receiving this atonement from His own bearing in justice, of the guilt for others, might be at peace. Peace ? This is not in some insipid, unspiritual and superficial or even delusive atmosphere: rather is it a grounded and well-founded peace in the presence of God Himself (Philippians 4, Isaiah 26). DESPITE the privilege of direct opportunity WHILE God in Christ, incarnate,  was in the land and the city, to come by faith to God, to Him such that to see Him is to see the Father (John 14), they instead killed Him. That was not receptive, the redemption thus was not taken, and the suffering was not in guilt and truth of justice, met for sin.

In fact, the non-reception in this case was no mere lassitude: it  meant killing Christ, a murder in effect of the very means of mercy, or figuratively therefore, it was killing their own mercy. That, it MEANT that in reality they were, in image, short-circuiting their deliverance, ensuring their ruin. It came therefore, as Christ in these very terms foretold (as in Luke 19:42ff., Matthew 23:37ff.), with lamentations of pity, sorrow for those who did not receive His gift, yet with a realism which faced the result, which now had to come. Come it did, for in a mere 40 years, Jerusalem was ravaged by Rome, destroyed, belittled, its ground salted!

It was enough: a generation came to pass, to live and consider, before the judgment came. It was not too much: it was close enough to be recognisable, distant enough to betoken opportunity. Repentance is always an opportunity (Acts 3:36ff.).

As with Ezekiel in his pitiful protestations in the name of the Lord (cf. Aspects of the Glory of God ... Ch. 9), so here, and much more so, Israel turned from God, even from His very face in place in Christ Jesus (cf. II Corinthians 4:6) in His day, and the results came as when one does not wash, when covered with tar.

What was the case for that city is the same for this world; but it is on a larger scale. This world has had 2000 years to consider its follies, and while this or that nation comes nearer to Christ for a time - and how many HAVE done this (in parallel to Acts 20:26 beforehand)! yet the world as a whole is now moving so far and so fast from the living God of the Bible, as to make a remarkably accurate picture in Gentile terms, a parallel to the mockery of Christ by the authorities of Israel, of its powers, before they consummated their detestation of God by crucifying the One sent on divine and personal mission,  to deliver them (John 3:16, Ezekiel 34, Hosea 13:14).

Thus there was ruin. The same principle applied to the earlier King Ahaz, when Isaiah offered him almost literally, the world! but in odes of unctuous sanctimony, that King did not take what was offered, with delusive folly pretending that he did not want to tempt God! What! tempt God by receiving what He chose to offer! How great is the delusion of man when he refuses to ofeprate by faith, in reality, and hides away like a hermit in his own heart, immovable in pretence, odious in pretension.

What then followed, when Christ Himself, God directly came ?

The deliverance still came; but it did so differently. Thus Jewish people, thousands, not only DID receive Him whom the authorities killed, but they were moved as directed to form the Christian Church, which when in simple solemnity following Him (as parts of the visible Church still do, though these are decreasing in many countries, like savourless salt), presents placards the divine mercy  saliently, like a military thrust into non-man's land, to to rescue some of the fallen.

This contemporary falling away on the part of many (cf. Matthew 24:24, II Thessalonians 2, II Timothy 3-4, II Peter 2) is what God had in mind, and predicted. Accordingly,  many 'churches' in these last times  fall into mere shells of what was formerly a living church here or there;  yet Christ's body continues (Romans 12, Ephesians 2, 4), not so much in impressive social furniture nowadays, as in houses and in hearts throughout the world; and indeed, it is becoming a question whether there may be more Christians in underground churches in China than in some formerly 'Christian' countries. In many a once thriving spiritual setting, with the passage of time as the return of Christ draws near, many slumber or become 'drunk' as Christ foretold in Matthew 24.

In such quite numerous case, form fades and as in Ezekiel  8-10, the Lord has departed from the idolatries for which many have sought to find a bed in the precincts of what in name is still called 'Christian' (for some reason or other).

All these declivities of man, whether primary in sin or secondary in rejection of remedy, are not in themselves the suffering which sin requires: it merely exhibits its virulence and aptitude for judgment.

As to the suffering which is beneficial in KIND, in purpose, and distinctively, that is one suffering, once made in one Person in one historical life, fulfilled as predicted, and wrought as pre-proclaimed (cf. Isaiah 49-55). In this case, the work is to DISPLAY the sentence on Christ for those who repent of sin; and suffering in us is by no means either atonement or substitute for a path back to God. Getting blisters on your hands is not the same as having a railroad. It needs to be constructed in design, in power and in purpose for its due result.

The railroad is Christ, His the self-instituted way presented to man, since the Creator, when redeeming, as He has redeemed, IS the way (John 14:6), and being wise, does all that is needed to make this practical and applicable; and this has been done (cf. Hebrews 7-20).

It is not in man at all to satisfy God, since the sentence on life misused, and on sin which has this function, is death (Romans 6:23); and when death is your due, to find something with which to use your life, so as to meet payment for its depravities inanities, pride and vacuities, its self-will and autonomy, is hopeless. You have nothing left with which to pay when you are bankrupt, when yoru very LIFE is due for judgment, even that of death.

Thus to pay for judgment's avoidance (morally, spiritually, physically at the last) is hopeless. When all assets are under constraint, then with what could man pay, whether in one whole, or in various parts, in what way whatsoever ? The answer to this is clear. There is no such payment; and the payment of Christ is the only such payment, and as to Him, He made it by becoming man, thus not being born a sinner, and paying in purity of the infinite God, the follies of sinning man, so that to His own infinite level of purity and truth, all might be taken where no man has power to go.

But freely! (cf. Isaiah 55), and not by autocratic demand, as in the case of making the physical body (with DNA), freely is the gift given, and freely does man come. At the same time, to THIS place and to no other does man so freely come. There are no options or varieties from which to choose.

There is, as Peter declared (Acts 4:11-12), NO OTHER NAME given among men under heaven by which we MUST be saved (there are no exceptions for the race, Peter being part of the case). It is indeed, not an option any more than is breathing. Stop it and die. It is if you like, an option if death and damnation is taken for granted; but then Christ came into this world to save sinners, and it may not be taken for granted, though it is granted unless the grant of Christ is so taken for granted, that it is not taken at all (I Timothy 1:15ff.).

There is a reason for life, and for death. The first is the Creator and the second is sin; and the ground of sin is liberty, and the cause of liberty is love; for which of us would rather be an alarm clock, a robot, a thought-out actor with all lines prepared by the unmitigated insistence of another, than a member of the human race!

There is liberty of a man, a woman, a child, a family, a city, a country, a race, a culture, a religion, a history, an historical series, of hatreds and prides, of nobilities and greatnesses ... and there is the use of liberty and its misuse; there is its selfish or jealous misappropriation to cause havoc as far as may be, and there is the delivering power of God, as in the case of Paris in World War I, and British troops at Dunkirk in World War II, for which multitudes were not ashamed to pray in churches a plenty!

There is consequence of liberty, often negative, as when one is proud of doing good (or even indulges in inflated imagination, as being conceived as in one's very own self, 'good' cf. Romans 7:13-18 in its various aspects), or callow in doing evil: and there is nothing inconsequential.

There are results in justice and in coming judgment, as the free play performs itself; but God knows its ways, and knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10), which is precisely the reason why He not only CAN but DOES predict, and not only occasionally, but enormously, the course of events in the nations, in individual modes, in the Church and in this world, even announcing millenia before our present (definably^*1) last times, many definitive things. Thus covered in His word are these: what would be their criteria, what would be happening in spirit, in morals, amid the nations, in men, in the Church, in Israel, with its enemies, in human psyches and in devilish antics, at that time before His return.

As to that, Israel has returned as foretold (cf. Luke 21:24), just how many times since Christ died and rose ? Consider now how cyclical it is: it has returned just ONCE in that time, and this is one of the criteria of His return (as in Acts 1, Matthew 24, I Thessalonians 4, I Corinthians 15), being near. This  with the other criteria is like part of a unique tartan, striking and obvious when seen (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

As sin puts shackles on man - his much vaunted greatness arising from being able to think and will and plan and purpose and build dreams, foolish or good, and to seek and begin even to gain an understanding of God: so his ways become increasingly disastrous, like MIS-guided missiles, and his judgments increasingly pithy, pointed and perilous, challenging now his very continuance on this sphere. That is precisely one of the things, the developments which Christ foretold of this period of history, this foothill before the mountain of His return (cf. Matthew 24:22, and of the mountain, Daniel 2:25ff., 44ff., Matthew 21:44).

Suffering of man in sin does not atone.

Suffering of God in Christ does so; but not for all, though it is offered with fervent sincerity to all, from the very heart of God to such obvious extent that Christ WEPT for those who DESPITE His (then) coming sacrifice for them, would reject it and so their own deliverance. The love of God is elemental, or better, quinessential, ultimate (cf. Aspects of the Glory of God Ch. 6, Great Execrations ... Greater Grace Chs. 7 and 9

Redemption, then, regeneration, the entire replacement of the radicalism of the heart of fallen man, it does not come through civil, psychological, social, international means, or swollen words (Daniel 7:11, II Peter 2). It comes through the action of the Creator who, having created the universe and man, created in availability, the salvation freely given by the greatest of all His actions in history, coming as man for man that any amid mankind might become not orphans, or rebels, or renegades, or listless self-willed entities like fleeting stars off course, but children of God.

That, it is based through HIS suffering;  yet it is not blind suffering, through human pangs in multiplied mankind, but that of ONE MAN ONLY. It was as in Colossians 1:19-22, “in the body of His flesh through death,” He thus gained “eternal redemption”: it was indeed by one offering (Hebrews 9:12-10:14). As to Him, He was not born as man in sin (I Peter 2:22ff.), but by the power of God overshadowing the chosen vehicle (as in Luke 1:35), so that the result is the only begotten Son of God. As to salvation, He is it (Isaiah 43:10-11), He only; and HE did it (Isaiah 53:4-11). Nothing else did, could or will.

This thesis is presented diversely,  by courtesy of history to the deaf who cannot or will not read it, understand it, receive it; and it is being shouted and cried with clamour (as foretold in Isaiah 52-53), even amid the Gentiles and not only to the Jew, without stammer or glamour, amid a turgidity in the turmoiled world.

That, it is like a maniac, at times well dressed, at times in rags, gifted with speech, and with a sheer devilry which mocks morality, and at times uses it. The morality of God, however, it is not for sale, and it starts in the heart (cf. Matthew 22:37ff.). That, it needs a replacement operation,  not physiological, but spiritual; and that by the deft hand of the Maker of man, who knows generation, as when a babe arrives, and re-generation, as when a true Christian arrives, begotten not this time in flesh, but in spirit, by the grace of God.

That, and not suffering in wars, is what is required for the redemption, recovery, deliverance and blessedness of any and every man, woman and child, or advance of any nation towards a spiritual life that is blessed. There is found, indeed, the only enduring exaltation for any nation, and there is the way in which the world, like Jerusalem of old in Christ's day, COULD be delivered, but not being willing, will not be. However, those who DO believe in Him, out of every race and inside every opportunity, DO receive, not consigning Him to the flames of rubbish, the scrap-heap of the rejected, these being rescued become precious, members of the kingdom of heaven.

They are received by birth as citizens of it (Philippians 3:20ff.), their visas uncancellable (I Peter 1), their salvation unfading, their place in heaven reserved, for they have obtained an inheritance (Ephesians 1:11) through gracious favour of God, who would have all, but violates none.

It is in this life that man lives as designed, but better even than that, as designated, as enabled within the family of God, an enterprise where your 'parent' is presented in advance, your spiritual race promised before you are part of it, your service is not merely aspirational but situational, as you are seated with Christ already in spirit, in heavenly places (Ephesians 2). How good it is not to grovel, but to worship in grace, for what is pardoned is restored, and what is regenerated is part of the new family, that of God. To serve Him brings to live its vitality's scope, its channel for its streams, its streams for its channel, its configuration as of the stars, each part being put in place, and the place being beside the Lord.

As seeing Him who is invisible, the whole scope of spiritual service gains a meaning, depth, purpose and dimension far better than moving into the roaring surf from the land, or into the whirling winds in aircraft, free of the clutter often found on this much inhabited earth. There is a personal liberty (II Corinthians 3:17) which now is not arrogance, nor yet extravagance, but that which resembles the freedom of a horse, out of its paddock now on road and lush grass, at will. There is a song of belonging and a road amid roaming, a name for each place and a place for each wonder, like mountains arising in splendour, no more lost in the mist nor jutting in intransigent mutiny to spiritual progress and living.

NOTE

*1

On the singularity and recognisability of the times near to the scene of the return of Jesus Christ, first for His own and then, all association complete following this, the resurrection, with them, see:

1) Answers to Questions Ch. 5

2) SMR Ch. 8

3) SMR pp. 502ff..