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CHAPTER TWO

DREAMS AND REALITY

In the early days of exploration, in  an evocative picture, the longing boy looks at the vast ocean and its untold potential, and dreams in native England, awaiting some opportunity to set forth into that marvel.

But his longing is not a ship.

The poor child looks for peace and order amidst maddened murderers, and sees him/herself amidst it; but the dream is not the reality.

The disorderly-minded child may see a world of gangsterism and riches, but the devious desire is not the opportunity.

Some things lead to others by the opportunities, depending in the case, but never is the dream or affirmation or longing or desire THE SAME as the thing longed for, however sharp the imagination and keen the longing.

If you are a writer, then the means may be found in some kind of improvement,  vision or articulative advance. If you long to be a  thief, the means  may lie in a dark night and keen observation.  But NEVER is the inward thought the same as the outward desire. Means are needed.

You have things approaching this error in the case of ISIS and kindred murder cults, where the inculcation of the approach can be forced at once into the military zone, and civic matters forced according to parallel desire. Even  so, the military aspect has to come first. People do not stretch forth their necks for devilish hacking, by desire. They have to be  manipulated by force first.

Dreams of a vast and beautiful kingdom as occurred in Cromwell's day again, may in time have by this means and that, various degrees of fulfilment compared with what had  gone before^*1; but the apparent fulfilment was long, hard, bitterly contested and has been eventually ruined by laxity and  self-indulgence, smitten by immigration without such thought, and polluted by very different motives on the part of many. Such has been the way in no small measure, in England.

In Australia, people appear to be toying with the thought, some taking it seriously, of affirming this or that about themselves, right down to  matters involving genes and  construction, physical differentia and place in the office of continuation of the race, and here acting or speaking as  if you dream, feel, long, affirm, decide  sufficiently, then the thing desired is there. But it is not so.

There may or may not be means of moving towards it which are viable at all, but the movement has to be made. This is not some new feature;  longing and  imagining and affirming have been a part of human history for millenia; but  however radical those involved, and  however keen their imagination, however vast their endeavours,  UNTIL suitable means for those ends, be they good or evil,  are found AND  APPLIED, the thing is a testimony to human imagination and desire, resolve perhaps and determination, but not in itself change. Not is a part the whole, just as desire is not attainment. Many are the pitfalls, often is the thing wrong in the first place, and harsh the  payment required when imagination has outwitted wisdom.

Likewise Australians COULD  CHOOSE to imagine themselves a strong, cohesive, growing, exemplary society,  with plans a plenty and forecasters by the dozen, even scientists of this and that kind vocal, but depending on the underlying realities, it may not happen. Self-indulgence, for example, in the field of education,  so that student satisfaction becomes equated with  teaching excellence, is not likely  to compete successfully without radical zeal and  application  to study;  nor alas, does it appear so, in that recent tests have indicated missing things in terms of averages and  targets.

Indeed, a gap of  nearly two years between the educational attainments in certain vital fields, between Australia and the case of some countries by comparison is made apparent. Nor is the difference in our favour. The wrong selection of phases in education has alas been given. Personally, as one having taught (only in religious studies) in Primary, Secondary (in much and as Principal and Headmaster at times), post-Secondary (in Communications) and tertiary level,

	I have  found incredible seeming defects, and that these related  to schools of thought.
	I was even recipient of many spelling books thrown out and discarded by one High School;
	as of congratulations by one School Inspector on my attention to  spelling and grammar, which he said, had been greatly neglected by many;
	have mourned at the  fashionable failure to be systematic about the wonders which knowledge of the nature of language and its disciplines  provides, the artistry to which it points (as an  architect might be in his own field);
	have trialled teaching for one term with joint  emphasis on originality and knowledge of the language in one High School, with fascinating results (they were quite able); and then have considered the recent figures noted.

Just as all was not well in the Shakespearian Denmark, so it is not so in Australia. Even in the USA, in the time of my involvement,  there seemed much more  sophistication and a higher level in these fields, including history of literature at school level.  Changes of course come and go; and these are phases, but their point here is clear. EFFORT and APPROPRIATENESS of its direction is needed  for the best use of facilities; magic is not sufficient, even if set in essay or book or  pamphlet form, or longing or determination or perspective; or in the stone of government regulation, which may be and is at times found  to have been, utterly misled. Fashions are  not limited  to women, macho assertion to men, nor follies  to philosophers! The same can  happen in defence, as in the case of the Maginot Line in France, a massive folly, so that a mere bypassing of the same rendered it virtually useless.

It does not matter how hard you hit those with whom you disagree, how unjust the allowance of liberty to one side rather than the other, in the free use of language before change, how loaded the dice, how vicious the abuse of truth in the interests of a current desire, how much is betrayed in a Constitution, how unthankful a people may be  to the grace of the God whom they mention in the prelude to their Constitution or Preamble: facts are not made by dreams, nor structures by  longing, nor what is appropriate by the  strength of affirmation.

NOTE

*1

On the Kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, the one which He directly rules, there is necessarily a uniqueness. We note from Daniel its spectacular difference from all other kingdoms in this, that it is 

	1) THE ONE WHICH WILL NOT BE DESTROYED (Daniel 7:14); and again, there is another luminous difference: it is
	2) already paid for as far as effort and work is concerned.

Those who enter it are redeemed by a prior sacrifice of Christ Jesus the Lord of glory at Calvary, with all the righteousness with which He offered Himself in the place of all who receive Him (Matthew 20:28, Romans 3:23ff.), and all the authenticity which His prior wonders and later resurrection of the bodily ruin and coverage of history attested. Indeed, the offer was even to all, though received only by some. But these who entered the Kingdom of heaven as indicated in John 3:3 (cf. News 23) are not only already paid for. They ALSO have opportunity in an adverse world to show by personal difference and kingdom characteristics, parallel sometimes to physical ones in some race or other, and show it in contrast.

In Philippians 3:10-11, you see some of the background and basis to these things:

"that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection^*2,
and the fellowship of His sufferings,
being conformed to His death, if,
by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead."

 

On *2 above, see To Know God...