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SUMS, SUMMITS and IN SUM
Adding Things Up, and Getting Things Down
FINALE
Creativity is such an amazing thing, when it is not merely at the pragmatic level, how to stop or start some process or procedure which entices or threatens, but in the vast realms of thought, beauty, artistry, inspiration, execration, demonstration, spiritual nobility, composition in sound or sight, splendour of concept and comprehension of life, that its relationship to creation needs some further exposition. It is, after all, as shown so often, a testimony to the God who caused all things, including the morbidity of the spirit of man, as a result of abused freedom, and the marvels of his love and endurance, as a result of deliverance from the tainted spirit which has come to inhabit this race. It is this which has resulted from his loss of his lofty heights, by forging the lie that it is nothing at all to be created so high in the realms of spirit, that one is akin to God, and indeed one may as well stage a take-over, by annihilating Him from the mind or the world, according to taste. Lofty however has his creation been, to this extent, that one may even KNOW Him, but this, now only as a gift. Hammer the radio and it does not work, until it is fixed.
Man then tends to boast of his achievements of mind and spirit, while abusing the very nature of both.
Do you boast, however, of being able to breathe, or therefore any more, of being able to use what you are given, and being what you were made!
Alas for man, he will boast of almost anything, whether as a pitiful pipsqueak, admiring the view of himself, like a fascinating babe pointed at a mirror, or a disfigured nation, pointing at its image in this world, or even a dynamically deluded race, pointing at its greatness, while it makes for the prize of impiety, the depths of impurity and the reward for the greatest desolator. It will come if the hand continues to be held out. Jeremiah indites the matter in Chapter 17, David in its results, in Psalm 2.
After the devil and his crew, man in the strength of his godlessness, is the greatest deceiver this world has ever known. As a fallen race, he is disfigured and tries to figure it natural, normal and even good. Shall the dustbin then rejoice ? or what insists on retaining its garbage, be desired ?
Indeed, so great is his folly, that educating his children to worship naturalistic, secular and other deformed and disfiguring idols, he marvels at their conduct when they become men and women, so vile and violent in so many cases, with more and more power to place their own spiritually impecunious imprint on the desolation that increases. They deny God; they invent gods; they worship at shrines dedicated to force, to MAKE others do this or that by military, murderous or infective powers. They imitate devils, they desire their spawn. Such is the incremental increase in the worship of force, and its use instead of the employment of faith, truth and reality.
But let us see that of which we may boast, and with a good heart!
Consider now not OUR might and smiting power, or blighting capacity as in more and more armies with increasing powers to obliterate civilisation in their hands, but instead, our functions, what is given us, where grace abounds, and gifts mount to the skies.
Take then this creativity that man has. It is not merely a power to think out a practical problem, a technical challenge, or even an engineering resolution, how to avoid harm and to gain contentment. Rather it is both a dynamic of imagination and a discipline of mind, and a testimony of a spirit. By this, kindness is invented where depravity beckons, deliverance is conferred where disaster looms, wonder is exposed where banality blights, the thrust of loveliness is made plain, like a vein of gold in the rock. Viewing this, man often man marvels and delights himself in the majesty and the glory of God who enables such things; so he acts, when he does not glory in his own power, or dismiss as nothing, what is the very matrix of his being, while he obscures his own vision and lives in sightless darkness.
Let us look at human creativity, and the concept more generally.
Things flow from a source not controllable, though it may be directed in some things at some times. They have a spontaneity which yet has a connection to experience, with a dynamic which seizes rather than is seized; for they roll like a rush of shooting snow down a slope, and the slope is consciousness and the snow has its own beauty and precision, crispness and quietness at last. Such are some of the ways of human creativity.
In some things, then, man is an experimental exhibit of the thing called creativity, and in others, an experiential participant. By having these powers, he both SHOWS what they are to himself as to others, and KNOWS how they proceed.
He is therefore altogether without excuse in the realm of creation, since creation is precisely, day in and out, year by year, century by century and millenium by millenium, mills about him. It is the very product of his own creativity, daily experienced, constantly exhibited, intimately known, rehearsed millions and even billions of times not only before his very eyes, but in his own consciousness, nearer than hands and feet. He cannot escape it; in this, he actively participates, of this he is a constant student, and of the product, creation, he often becomes a vast admirer, when it comes to works of art, literature and architecture, scientific resolution and aesthetic excellence.
His spirit moves, it labours, it attests, it is inspired, it is caused to see, to behold. It wonders, it marvels, it is impelled, he writes it down, what is thrust before him, he raises it up, the architectural thrust which must be appointed, he paints it out, which must now appear, not in vision only, but by virtue of colour and form, tapestries to truth or intimations of mortality, whether mortally wounded at heart, or dynamic in deliverance.
When therefore man is confronted with
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the basis for this dynamic, |
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the cause of this capacity, |
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the ground of such marvels, the origination of the power to originate, |
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the nature by which and in which this is all nurtured, |
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the realm of creative imagination and spiritual understanding, |
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the source of this resource and |
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the spirit which so gives life to
his own multi-competent, lively spirit and mind, |
he may well demand for this ultra-function, the adequate origin.
Whenever ANY grand capacity involving vast arrays of subordinate powers, as in man, is found, you do not logically and thanklessly dismiss it, as if the greater it is, the more you are to be blind to it, as if children in blind man's buff, where your eyes are blindfolded as part of the game.
That is for children.
We do not need education on being blind, since it is practised almost constantly in our disintegrating race, where it is not only the Decline and Fall of the (vast) Roman Empire which is the topic, but the decline and fall of the human kind; and that not through any kindness of its own.
It has come, in vast aggregations of international and national power, to hate its Maker, despise the Creator and Source of Creativity, to lie about evidence, and form theories based on hope never realised, with propaganda constantly resounding, lest others open their eyes to their source, and their minds to their God, to the Supreme Being from whose artistry and dynamic, creativity and imagination, ultimate creative power and nature, comes the very existence of existability, that is ontological opportunity and actuality, so that anything might be.
Be ? yes this, let alone such things in a causally constituted universe, with a vulnerability to force and a needed place for victory over its molestations. It verifiably*1 comes not at all, without that very source as Saviour, without whom it merely continues, puzzling its philosophers, inciting its politicians, to madness on madness, infecting the minds of the leaders, with observable results.
If then we look for a basis to creativity, we see its kind in ourselves; for our very spirits are munificently equipped with it. If we seek to understand it, it occurs not merely to be seen, but to be intuited, experienced, observed with the eyes of fascination. Intriguing as it is, it is possessed of vast power in and over the human spirit, according to the way in which it is used and received.
We are therefore wholly without excuse in seeking the creativity of which our spirits and minds and bodies, that brilliant achievement of creation, are exhibits. We quickly acknowledge our own least productions, for shame or glory, but the creation in which we not merely consist but act, and with which we labour in pangs, as in child birth, this is suppressed as to its Performer. As a race, we often have rejoicings when misled by blinded scientists or philosophers (and the former is merely a special case of the latter*2, wandering from scientific method*3), though for many also, being rescued, when led by the God and source of Creation. These two responses, they are more than poles apart; more than galactic grandeurs away from each other. They are as opposite as darkness and light.
While many do indeed still worship, apt in this special case, more are deriding, ignoring, twisting, belching their self-defeating words as in denying the Creator, they use the gift of creativity to do so, abusing their source, belying their basis by the use of His gifts, and maligning, by contempt or neglect, the One to whom they owe their beings, and to whom they will assuredly answer.
If you who read are a member of this race (and not an angel for example), then consider what moves over the face of YOUR waters (as the Spirit of God moved in the first creation of the material basis for spiritual dynamic and creativity such as we have and enjoy), and conceive what animates your being, what gives options to your consciousness and life to your soul, animation to your own mind and mind what you do.
If you insist, you may indeed rejoice in your youth, that it has such powers (which do not come from nowhere), provides such insights (which are not manufactured by inadvertence through what is systematically inadequate to understand), and give such opportunities. This you may indeed do, by being selectively blind through closing of the eyes of the mind and spirit which is in you, to what you always in all other things are inclined to employ: the necessities of reason. Let fairies bring children and put them under cabbages, and fables bring man and put a world with him which can be understood, and let creativity in its staggering powers and successes 'arise', as if the greatest were not only the least, but nothing at all.
Do not blush at your own self-deception, if so inclined, but know that for all this, if it be your way, God will surely bring you into judgment. The famed verses of Ecclesiastes 11-12, indeed should be tasted and not spat out; for in this challenge lies a sign-post to life, not lies, but truth.
"Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth;
and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth,
and walk in the ways of your heart, and in the sight of your eyes:
but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.
Therefore remove sorrow from your heart, and put away evil from your flesh:
for childhood and youth are vanity."Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth,while the evil days do not come, nor the years draw nigh,
when you will say, I have no pleasure in them;
while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, are not darkened,
nor the clouds return after the rain:
in the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble,
and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows grow dim,
and the doors will be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low,
when one rises up at the voice of the bird,
and all the daughters of music are brought low:
also when they will be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way,
when the almond tree flourishes, and the grasshopper shall be a burden,
and desire shall fail:
because man goes to his long home,
and the mourners go about the streets:
Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken,
or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.Then will the dust return to the earth as it was:
and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."Later, it says this:
"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:
Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing,
whether it be good, or whether it be evil."
Our creative spirits do not loom on the highroad to doom to satisfy the vengeance of some crusty power, but to satisfy the encrustations of sin. Blame God if you will, and cut Him out of your will if you will; but know that you are in this only using your creativity to desecrate the Almighty, and your deceit or deviousness to inculpate the One who is innocent; for in yourself lies the whole cause of the evil that afflicts likewise the entire human race. It is like a class in uproar in a school where discipline is dismissed because the Headmaster is killed; but the Principal still wields the results of the adventure, and will bring back the judgments involved.
If this were all, we might all tremble justifiably and repent without qualification; but it is the bad bit at the beginning. We did not inherit in our spirits that distinctive love of mercy, to give and to get it, which is so large a part of the inheritance of many, from nowhere. The flow of a sense of human relief when badness and madness is healed, is not from chaos but from Christ the Creator who became one of us to rescue many. The image of God includes not only the love of and insistence on justice, which seems in principle, if not so often in practice, to be a foundation for much of the verbiage and of the claims of our race, the one against or for the other, but of the desire for rehabilitation, whether of dying animal or bird life, lakes or races, manners or gracious modes of living.
God spoke life into being, as our own derivative artists speak novels, having power and pen, space and time, spirit and mind, creativity and self-discipline. He however, being Spirit without the liabilities and limits which our design in flesh incorporates (for we are a race, every one of us, on trial, some being already found), spoke the conditions and the criteria into physical being as well, author of all, eternal in His own Spirit, the blessed necessity of reason, always to be so that anything might ever be, and be accountable.
His words are read in our DNA and in His Bible, the former that we might have physical basis to our beings, and the latter that we might have spiritual basis for our lives. In each case, the commands operate in a verbally or codally felicitous manner (though subject to damage), in the bodies, just as in history, they are seen in their due eventuations. Neither is within the creative capacities of man. He reads (metaphorically or literally) what is written and marvels. DNA is THERE, and the Bible is THERE, whatever we may care to do about it.
Here is what is beyond man in power, perception and knowledge*4. Small wonder is that, for his very being, in its created creativity is precisely that and for the created things is not only the provision of code but of call and command, for service and for salvation.
What of this book, the Bible, both necessary that it should contain such a message, and effectual, that it has it*5. It preaches mercy; man hears. It preaches sin, he listens a little, if at all; but at times his ear opens, as the skies do when drought at last is banished.
It testifies of salvation, its date from Daniel*6, giving intelligence of what the Messiah would do and when, and as in Isaiah, Zechariah and the Psalms, of why and with what result.
What was to be the result, is the result.
As specified, so the Gospel has battered the shores of the nations, which tend to make break-waters to reduce its force, and to complain of the action of the waves, generated in part by their efforts at oceanic control. Nor does God reduce the dynamic of the waves of this same gracious and godly Gospel concerning the redemption in the death of Jesus the Christ, God sent as man to do a job for man for which he himself is ill-equipped. It is as with a man stricken, to whom the ambulance is sent, who curses the vehicle, and often the officers in it, and seeks to die in the illusion that nothing has happened, and that the blood is merely red colouring matter, spilt by the other car.
Rejoice in its rejection if you will, but know that for this folly there is a place; for it puts its perpetrator where he or she belongs, in the very realm where the creation and creativity ignorers, despisers, as to its source and responsibilities, can inhabit their dreams, which being without reality, mean doom. Darkness chosen is darkness gained; but then, it IS dark.
NOTES
See
DEITY AND DESIGN, DESIGNATION AND DESTINY, especially Section 8;
and
LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST
WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES
AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS
Bible or Blight,
Christ or Confusion:
The Comprehensive Resolution of Man's Intractable Problems
is Found Only in the Bible, the Word of God,
with SMR.
See
Secular Myths and Sacred Truth;
SCIENTIFIC METHOD, SATANIC METHOD
AND THE MODEL OF
SALVATION
*3 As for *2, esp. the latter.
Consult His Word is Wonderful; SMR Chs. 8 - 9.
See SMR, TMR, What is the Chaff to the Wheat Chs. 3 and 4?
See: Christ the Citadel ... Ch. 2, SMR pp. 886ff., Highway of Holiness Ch. 4, Min i-Messages with Maxi-Point ... Ch. 10.