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CHAPTER 6

PITY

Isaiah 63:9 In all their affliction He was afflicted,
and the angel of his presence saved them:
in His love and in His pity He redeemed them;
and He bore them, and carried them all the days of old.

Psalm 69:20 Reproach hath broken My heart; and I am full of heaviness:
and I looked for some to take pity,
but there was none; and for comforters,
but I found none.

Jeremiah 15:5 For who shall have pity upon you, O Jerusalem?
or who shall bemoan you
or who shall go aside to ask how you fare ?
You have forsaken Me, says the LORD.

Isaiah 63:9	In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bore them, and carried them all the days of old.

Psalm 69:20	Reproach hath broken My heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none.

Jeremiah 15:5	For who shall have pity upon you, O Jerusalem? or who shall bemoan you or who shall go aside to ask how you fare ? You have forsaken Me, says the LORD.

SWELLING PITY SUBSTITUTES

Pity here is seen in three separate dimensions. First, there is the longsuffering pity with love, in which He redeemed people, and contained them in His competence.

Secondly there is the crux, the very criterion and centre of His pity, that in showing it in the ultimate and irrefrangible redemption, He Himself received none. He was alone in His travail by which freedom was freely given its desire, its need and its necessity, that man might again be not only free, but in, with and delighted in God.

Thirdly, there is the desolation where pity is pitilessly dumped by those who want it not, but their own particular, individual preference in its place. instead, In forsaking their Creator, they are failing before their Redeemer, like one dying in battle, scorning the ambulance, being ostensibly too fit to fit on any bed for anyone.

Socialism tries to be sociable, but pitilessly generalises about what it does not understand, provides for what it seeks to control,
hands out to what it mis-estimates, not being God and lacking the dimensions both of His grace and of His wisdom.Its domain is merely what man does with and for man, as man, like a tiger trying to tie bandages on a deep wound, using antiseptic,
deprived of wisdom and mishandling what it abuses despite good intentions.

Communism^*1 goes further, insisting on appearing sociable, in the same error, while seeking to deride the mind of its Maker and the Maker of its possible validity to speak truth, while as relativistic, denying any possibility of knowing it.

Democracy get as good as its people, who rule it, whether these be ruffians, religious militants who would behead or kill or make servile those who do not share their unverified beliefs, secular militants who would tax, fine or imprison those who do not sell their mouths in order to conform to illicit, subversive, unhuman and presumptuous principles, drawn from nowhere by simple preference. A godly democracy can grant freedom, and much of this has in some measure happened in times past, in some nations; but when lust becomes god, that is the unimpeded desires of the flesh, the personality, the preference, so that there is none besides it, and a minority by vociferousness and cunning can control the entire nation, then humanity is hijacked, and like an aircraft running into a building, is brutally taken where imagination runs riot or hatred, harrumph, envy, greed or insane or inane ambition leads those who have taken over. Massive in their ignorance for such a purpose, they mask their incompetence and use rigour to replace rigour.

There can readily come a time when a nation becomes callow, grasping, indulged, fostered in the follies of irrational philosophies (as has happened in no small measure, especially over the last 40 years in our own nation), and so it can be led by the nose, by cunning, outrageous or unprincipled politicians, so long as their lust, be it mental, material, physiological, financial or social, is sated. Irresponsible debt can creep in like a mist, hiding reality, as appears to have largely happened in the USA. A mood in some nations can take over, making it appear that to deny any wish, so long perhaps as it does not do violence physically, becomes an act of virtual irreverence to Humanity. The irony is this, that if that road be followed for long, the violence used AGAINST some of the citizens just now indulged - as against many not, makes a mockery of their inordinate desire.

Now many of THEM suffer as dictatorial ''social" laws are implemented, indulging some, striking others. Thus there comes physical violence, such as prison; or financial violence, such as fines; or psychological violence, such as a sense of shame imbued from the lips of the 'judges', themselves virtual idols of culture, set up to control speech and ultimately even thought, since this can also insult those whose lusts MUST be satisfied, even if against all reason. Thus violence rules even where pretence masks it*^1A. Indulgence of some becomes tyranny against many, all in the interests of a cryptic religion, as well grounded as a house on sand. Hypocrisy has a heyday and wantonry reaches its inverted summit.

Without godliness, there is nothing but violence, vileness and degrees of viciousness, as rule imposes itself in various degrees, with various subterfuges for reason, or even entirely without reason, so that as so often, repeatedly ? yes repetitiously, man like ancient Israel, becomes subject; but in this case, it is subject to enemies who, often enough, are of his own choosing. They are called idols, and idols they are.

Here is the enemy within, the controlled captive of social culture its victim; and the independent, now instead of invigorating the nation (as once especially in the USA, but also in this country), come to be regarded as its bane, to be canned, imprisoned, fined, scorned in total disregard of those so precious feelings which just now, had been sacrosanct, so that they MUST not be hurt, even by truth. As in communism, however, there are those whose amoral and unprincipled desires MUST be fulfilled, and those who MUST be their victims. The principle is just the same, morals hung in mid-air, draped with clouds, the effectual wilfulness of those seizing power and pretending good, although without God there is no good, only will on the one side, and the workings of the substructure on the other. That is, in theory; for God is never excluded, even when His only begotten Son is put on a cross, as Jerusalem found out, first three days later, by the grace of the God on whom all life depends; and then some 40 years later, courtesy of the Roman Empire, expert in disaster, specialist on Jerusalem.

In this, now the whole world is becoming like Jerusalem, and in much, for the same reason as in that ancient day: to be destroyed, when judgment has sat. That was temporary: for it was rebuilt; this is eternal, for great is the day of its dismissal, and final then, after that same Jesus Christ has returned, are the spiritual assizes.

WHEN THE TRAP IS SPRUNG

But what of the preparations, as now ? what of the socialist empire being constructed amid rising debt, ignored in the self-congratulations of government, whether in the USA or here, as if it were not a potential noose. What of the aggregation of power by these new religionists, who confess to nothing of the kind, and impose everything of the kind ?

When the trap is sprung, those who are non-conformist to this virtual religion, to this pseudo-moral list of requirements not from reason but by preference, become targets of suppression, immersion in the mentality of pathology, to be pruned to the butt, prevented from having impact, effectually as far as possible, deleted. In that case, the dictatorship of the rulers (often ludicrously misnamed the dictatorship of the proletariat) becomes much as in Communism, for even there, myths were maintained, as in the USSR, about the freedom of religion when its persecution had in fact been impassioned. Deceit ruled; disaster followed.

When will mankind cease to be gulled by those who promising freedom, implement only subjection, subjugation, illicit and pretentious cant, canned and then sent out without food value, philosophical failings masked as if nurture! No sooner has he had three world wars within one hundred years, with the violence associated with pride, with racism and with philosophy in its hunting mode, than here he is in Australia, and by no means here alone, even preparing for provocative calamity from God, so that many are seeking to marry off men with men, women with women, surreptitious religion not even acknowledged, despite the contrary conviction of many faiths, so that few dare lift up the tongue (without danger of prison or financial abuse), lest someone who hides in the new religion, one not acknowledged but barbarically hurtful, should say, 'I feel hurt!'^*2.

If THEY say, I feel hurt, then, the commandment is in danger of going as already exemplified more than enough into reverse, so that YOU WILL be hurt and those so concerned about hurt, will relish your possible subjection. So is truth let to die in the streets as in Isaiah 59, and equity abandoned.

If then, in what surges into sight now, someone, someone on the Web, some newspaper, some source, refuses either to be hypocritical or dumb, as if already assassinated, then someone decided to feel hurt or threatened by the cheek of his not agreeing with their inward preferences, in effect because someone does not agree with the new religion, that of feelings, and unfounded fundamentals, then someone else MUST be hurt, despite HIS or HER feelings, so that the religion can rule. There is no question of PITY. It is pure philosophical racism, the use of those of one value race, race defined in terms of preferred inner values, persecuting those of another.

In history, the recipients of such tyrannical and unreasoned persecution are often Christians, who by biblical confinement, do not believe in violence to protect themselves as a church. On these, now Islamic assault^*3A, now Romanist assault as in the Inquisition^*3A - have wrought their violence. Yes, and with that duo, more broadly, the European special, pogroms preceding the pinnacle of Nazi assault confirming in this anti-Jewish summit, one whole millenium of growing persecution of Christian and Jew alike: all these with later Communist assault, have burdened man in history, in vast tracts of time. With ghastly episodes in some regions, for centuries have these multi-pronged assaults been made. There have been, by directly violent means alone, in the aggregate millions affected, long term specialties, whether now going or growing; nor have these been alone. Now socialism is trying to take over democracies with all the foul flair noted above, as if it were not enough to have longstanding afflictions, from known massifs, but one must now invent ones of one's own, import them from culture, and capture those who had escaped.

This language is not too vigorous. The Bible predicts just such events (as in Revelation 16:12-16), with such spirits^*4 as those of Marxism, Freudianism and Darwinism in particular, seeking to find a kind of sovereignty over the human realms of economics, mind and body, over the food, the thought and the form, for their various purposes, all fictitious, fallacious and inflammable with self-contradiction^*5, all removing the way to find truth by their concept of encompassing forces, and yet caring and daring to proclaim it anyway! Thus these truncated versions of humanity have had their own species of rule, and have led to wars if not innumerable, then at least hard enough to count, when you include those associated with them as well as those specific to them, in part or in whole. Millions lie slain as the "victors" pursue conceits of their own, in the old-fashioned but apt sense, of imaginations which grip them and to which they are beholden.

It is rather like someone paying rent or other dues, for a house in which to dwell, provided free except for the bondage of ever-increasing payments due. They even readily become fanatical, in order to be faithful to their self-contradictions, and often will suffer no one (still living) to contradict them, or even insist when challenged, that fighting must occur till all agree or bow to some god or other, which they proclaim in haste.

There is no pity.

IT IS MAN, NOT DIVINE PITY, WHICH IS LOST

The pity of God however, despite His being the absolute and final authority, is available. It is not the subject of becoming a servant of man, as ultimately with the others, but a servant of God. Since He is the Creator, He knows with infinite clarity with what He has to do, when acting for our race. His validity is perfect, verification of His word is indefeasible^*5, His coverage of the case of man has been clear from the first, rationally unchangeable to the last, and filled with lovingkindness, pity, despite human prevarication, polluted purposes and irrational urges and surges, often resulting in war and pain to the uttermost, agony without limit, dismissal without pity.

God does not destroy the image in which He created man. Man does this adequately. God DOES provide the way out of the broken image which, like a cracked record, can be particularly hard to take, since it includes whispers of beauty with blarings of blatancy. In pity, it is He who has suffered with man (Isaiah 63), but more importantly, with lovingkindness He has acted for man, yes on behalf of every one of this race (I John 2:1-2). His work has been sufficient for all, efficient for any, adapted to all, and especially important here, provided with a depth of mercy and kindness so great that He even became a man in format, so subject to agony and anguish, to demonstrate the reality He offers and to remonstrate with those who wander,while providing justice with ample scope for its impact on Himself. So did He act to activate a pardon procedure in which He assigns from the wealth of pardon He has procured by substitutionary atonement, one dying for another, total forgiveness to those who receive His gift of eternal life.

They do not have to receive it. Pardon is not pre-emptive; you can refuse it (as in Proverbs 1, Jeremiah 38:14ff.). In many cases, those who refuse it and trust their own power, become rich, powerful and even vicious, parading and in pomposity of spirit, seeking to prevail over and direct the ways of men, in bulk, or portions. The choice is real. There are prizes on all sides, as well as results.

Indeed, those who imagine that the Bible has a god who is less rich in mercy and in love and desire for man, than it actually states of the true, self-revealing and living God, are confusing results with causes. Actually, as a RESULT of the entire program of pity and placement of grace, before our history even began, on the basis of His desire for all (Colossians 1:19ff.), God has made very SURE that none who are His, is lost. He knows who are His (II Timothy 2:19), just as He knows all else. He STATES, as between the human race and Himself, in John 3:15-19,36, what is the criterion for judgment, that is, concerning those to find and not find Him, to have and not have Him, to be pardoned or excluded from His kingdom, which neither varies nor ends (Daniel 7:25-27). The have-nots, in the end, when all His ministrations are finished, are those who prefer their own darkness to His light. That is what it says over and over again, during His demonstrations, remonstrations, exhortations and statements of longing, even of pity!

You CAN have real pity when you are not imagining that your little ideas of right and wrong MUST be those of all others, though they be founded on sand, even without anything to support them, and when you KNOW what you are doing, and not simply compressing all into one mould of your own imagination, or that of your mentors, teachers or directors. When you know the truth (John 8:32ff), you have no need to subdue by force, those who disagree, behead what you find insulting to your beliefs. Truth is not forwarded by mere force, not righteousness by murder.

Without the truth, power quickly becomes tyranny as in Isaiah 59.

Pity, on the other hand, deals with reality, and does not impose 'bargains' in requiring conformity to enormity (as is often the case), in exchange for hand-outs, or for not being murdered. A commercial equivalent in much, then becomes merely this: protection money! Truth is not forwarded by threats, nor is faith invented by seething dictatorship.

Pity placed Christ on the cross, pardon without cost on the divine agenda, resurrection power in sight, thus producing scope for man, even destiny in the category of consummation (Hosea 14, Revelation 5,20-22), rather than mere culmination, which can be evil as well as good. When atonement is received, the work of divine pity, then at that very time, regeneration is already surging in the power of God who having created, knows how to re-create a new heart (Jeremiah 31:31ff., John 3), and then a new body to match the glory of eternity (II Corinthians 5, I Corinthians 15). This is for those for whom this is the light and by grace and gift to faith, the right, as foreknown to God before the world was. It is rather like an author who knows how it all ends, and why; but with God, there is a pity which in profundity makes depths seem shallow by comparison, in power, makes atomic warheads seem trivial; for those are for a moment, this is for eternity, and moreover, those explosives are to force, but this grace is to love: and love never forces.

Force ? in the area of faith, of love ? That is for lust, that seeks satisfaction by means of another, without cherishing what the other is. That is mere confusion, for pain does not create faith, nor does vileness give birth to love.

But think instead of the glory of God, whose glory is no mere imperial throne with trappings, but inward, shown outwardly and attested continually (cf. SMR, TMR).

How far does pity go ? to 2 dollar coins in collection on Sunday ? or to the Party, 100 dollars ?

God who MADE the world, so LOVED this self-same world that He gave something better for it, than that. He did not want to condemn it. He says so (John 3:17). Instead, He gave the eternal Word, the very Expression of God, into human format to take up the post of Saviour^*6, the clinic free, the X-ray reliable, for diagnosis, the dispensing of the medicine of immortality funded, for cover and for curse, so that none even pays to be remade. Blood was shed: His own (Acts 20:28). It covers the case. Judgment is sated. Justice is wrought. He pays. He has paid, and it is finished (Colossians 1:19ff.). Now it is application (Hebrews 7-10). There is nothing further that needs doing. Declare it void, and be voided to inevitable judgment, standing then, groundless, on nothing and without any salvation (John 3:36, 8:24).

God took this vast and singular action. It has been done in an appropriate way (Hebrews 2): not by mere munificence or power, but in subjecting even Himself who is a trinity^*7, to mortality so that in immortality (Acts 2:24), He might demonstrate for those not blinded to historical reality^*7A, the destruction even of the power of death. Love had this blessed schema; power made it history. Man's departure in masses from it has made history what it is... No self-flaggelation will substitute for the whipping of the Saviour, nor any self-built plea atone for sin. As to those healed of sin, "on Him was placed the iniquity of us all," Isaiah 53:4-6. There is no duplicate (Acts 4:11-12),nor any other who can do it (Isaiah 43:10-11).

He overcame this obstacle, in order to secure that same glory for man, as He achieved in His own resurrection, for as many as believed and hence received it and indeed, Himself, the God of creation and redemption. Why ? Pity, lovingkindness, compassion. Thus at any cost to be paid, as God, has God acted: in man as agency has He fulfilled His long prediction at the appointed date^*7B, for man as recipient. How grand that He did it in pity, not mere proclamation. It was not just voted in, but wrought, prepared, performed and taught, ready to be received by those made in His image, freely; or dismissed freely.

Not in duress, or mere magnetism, not in excited moments of machination, manipulation of crowds or the uninformed, not in specious subtleties which offer this and that, but do not even name or perhaps think of the price: but in reality and with pity, has God offered to man, what in fact he needs. And this ? It is his Maker, for whom man was made, and without whom, finally there is no pity. From pity is the provision for man to be at peace with his Creator, in purpose bent with his Creator, in the peace of pardon from his Creator, and that freely (Isaiah 55, Romans 3:23-27).

PITY: NOT INDULGENCE BUT EFFULGENCE

As to aweful alternative, that is, mere subordination of man to man, with various messages, crypto-religions (as now threatening Australia and other countries as well) and the like, these may be FELT, or imposed, but in the end, it is mere noise, vacuity, effulgent with darkness, glowing with receding embers, as its inadequacy becomes power and power becomes oppression. For man, there are things to be found and taken, and others to be lost and forsaken. Having a mind, he does well to mind what he does, and finding the answer, he does better to find where he fits, on rock not sand, on foundations reasonable, reliable and demonstrable, not on the fractious follies of ever new and changing ideas.

This is part of the marvel of pilgrimage, that the pilgrim, even though afflicted by man and his empty philosophies, specious in their pretension^*8, even if tortured or burnt, has the flame of his own desire burning. It is the power of his God to determine what and when and in what manner it will all be, on the part of those freely in His team (just as James was allowed to be killed, but Peter miraculously delivered, that suffering and shield should dually attest the truth). His principles however are secure, His majesty undimmable, His love irrefrangible, His zeal irreducible. On these, He shows pity. Though in courage they keep the faith, in the beauty of holiness, they endure; for integrity and truth know no comparison with mere survival, the scattery option, a thing even rats are apparently good at! It is survival or spirituality; God or beguilement, Christ or shame (Daniel 12, John 3:16,36).

The pity of God, It is not that of mere indulgence, but of effulgence, when the meaning of your 'war' (Ephesians 6) is that it is wrought with spiritual weapons for spiritual purposes, even in pity following Him who knows, without whom there is neither reason nor reality, but foggy fiction and nubilous dreams. Is it not also pity for those who are His, to exhibit where this liberation from secondary causes may be found, this liberation from force may be sighted, and where reality is sited; for the news does not alter , nor the divine intention from the time of the first sin (as in Genesis 3, and long before^*9).

The basis of these logical facts has been made clear very often on this site; today it is the outcome in pity which here we consider. It is the need not to confuse results with causes. Thus God, who is undoubtedly sovereign, does not use this as a cause of unknown direction, but a method; for the actual, final and remote, as initial and instituting cause is His love, for which His sovereignty acts. It is because He so loved THE WORLD that He gave, and the means betokens this in no small or insignificant way^*10 (cf. Psalm 22); but the results of this underlying and divine cause follow in this, that what He has sought, He has wrought, and what love seeks is not a spectacular of force, but a reality of heart (Isaiah 66:1-2, I Samuel 16:7, Proverbs 4:23, Proverbs 3:1-5), known beforehand to the God of all wisdom (Ephesians 1:4).

God be praised for pity, for wisdom with it, for love all around it, for reality made available, for salvation made certain (II Timothy 1:8ff., I Thessalonians 5:9-10), for a gift which requires no maintenance for its integrity, and yet requires much endurance for its operation.

Nor is even this all. Knowing that all things are in the domain of His love, that the reprobate are there not by sovereign distaste but ultimately by confrontational exclusion of the pity of the Lord, which grieves Him, then the seeking soul may rest sweetly in His acceptance (Ephesians 1:6), knowing that neither the payment or ransom for sin's account, which is provided (Matthew 20:28), nor the victory which is given (I Cor. 15:57, II Timothy 1:8ff.), is problematic: for it is His gracious gift, to be received by faith. Even the bruised reed, He does not snap, nor does He quench the smoking flax (Isaiah 44:3). Though we may suffer many a trial for the purging of spiritual silt and the purification of faith (I Peter 4:12-19), and the making of deeper channels for His mercies and power, yet His rest is not the cause but the consequence of His redemption (Matthew 22:27ff., Hebrews 4, Romans 8:29ff.), and this too, it is given.

Christianity does not involve unmanned man, but remanned man, and the essence of manhood is to be in place by grace, where the very power of God is available, nothing is too hard for the Lord, worry is extraneous and many a battle is to be faced by that faith which is truly operational, and not a notion. Praise God and be thankful for the pity which provides rest.

NOTES

See for example:

Aviary of Idolatry, Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 5,

News 37. 44, 69, 97 (the exploiters, the fanciful,
the Communists, the de-godders and the realities), 98,
News 150 - Taiwan,

The Grating Grandeur and Aggrandisement of Man,
and the Meekness of the Majestic Messiah Ch. 2

Beauty for Ashes Ch. 6
(and Hong Kong, and the movement of nations in the last century a concern),

Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 8;
SMR pp. 925ff., 971-972;

Beauty of Holiness Ch. 3
(war and force, rising downwards, Tiananmen and truth),
Ch. 4 (liberty, Tiananmen, worship and its direction in time,
its terms and code of truth);
History, Review and Overview Ch. 1,
Impossible to Men, Open to God Ch. 5