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CHAPTER 6

The Fraternity of Horror, the Camaraderie of Guilt and

The Grace of God

News 352

DW TV June 6, 2005

We are getting better and better, said the ophthalmologist. What an appalling thought, for if this is 'better' with its educated cruelty, wanton immorality, peace-free tensions and hurried avoidances of the real issues, worse would seem to be something in the domain of hell. To be sure, virtue has not died, patience is not invisible and nobility is to be found, free of pride and measured plan for self-exaltation, in some places yet. It is not however manifest to any conspicuous extent in the behaviour of the nations, whether free or otherwise, while such contra-design maledictions as same sex 'marriages' are now accepted even in Switzerland (DW TV June 6, 2005), as if neutrality and nudity of reality were at last conjoined.

Meanwhile Europe is in a more retiring mood, while it considers the price of power. If it is to be large in the 400 million 'class' (perhaps like so many litres in your automobile engine), then more intense becomes the question of Turkey's possible admission, involving cheap labour and vast declivities as many see it, into unknown and alien culture, not to mention the demolition of frontiers for many practical purposes, and the overwhelming of the cultivated modes of much of old Europe with the swift and thrifty rush in of the new, and the sense of rising expenses (DW TV same session).

England is to muse and meditate, it appears, not absconding from the class of Europe 2005, but pondering the possibilities, à la Blair, and not him alone. What IS this vast congregation of the mighty and the midgets, of the old and the new, what is this economic non-miracle as consumers often see it, and this economic marvel as producers often find it ? What is this wonder child of ready comparison of prices and marvellous ease of movement over many lands ? What is if FOR ?

It is for better trade and better security, for easier international relations and a sense of united purpose, as far as may be, it is for a humanistic interflow, so that man will become more at ease with himself, but especially it is to prevent nations in Europe cutting their own throats in compulsive if not obsessive wars to show who is the fittest, when none is fit to be called very much in that direction, pride, lust for power, for deviousness, for illicit advantage, for take-overs of nations being very much the way they have been since the Fall.

What is the cost ? It is the loss of individual national cultures. What is culture ? It is nothing much really, just the way you have been carrying on, and what rises from your fields as you do so. Is it so valuable ? It depends of course on what it is. If it is the sort of thing noted above, there is nothing much to lose, except vanity and devastation. If however it is a morality from God, an honesty from His presence, a truth loving passion from His presence, an integrity of heart, mind and spirit which is not only moral, but psychic and spiritual, if it is a love of others and a sensitivity to personality, and a thrust to bring in that kingdom which matters, that kingdom of heaven where the Sermon on the Mount is better than law, and love is better than hatred: then there is much to lose.

But in what nation is this to be found ? In none, but in some more than others, even if all are noticeably thin on top, in this arena.

So Europe ponders loss of what matters more for the sake of what matters less, and considers to what extent it can trade in some things to gain others, in a secular world where same sex marriages are de rigueur, and humankind becomes loathsome in iniquity, sporting with design and carrying on in the face of what used to be, in theocratic Israel, a subject for death, now held up as a requirement for ... the new culture.

What then could be much worse than all of this dissident drabness and delinquent deviation from all that once made Europe a place of significance and a pasture for sheep, at least at some times and in some places ? What is better, to replace the law of liberty and self-control with the fetter of passion for power and for every other thing that man  may grasp for, laughing at God, despising the Biblical testimony, ignoring the Gospel, and eating up iniquity in a listless, unspiritual, unspirited wonderment bordering on bewilderment, while Europe considers what life is all about, having already divested its ideas of the spiritual in the lead up to, and the writing of its postulated new Constitution, now deservedly in tatters.

What then could he have meant, this doctor, when he made this statement about ... better ?

He presumably meant that since they now had more sophisticated ways of measuring and defining certain aspects of the eye's behaviour, and could test what it was doing in a more enlightened fashion, one more revealing of what man needed know (fact), and that this was an example of man growing in knowledge and power.

So it is.

However, if one once moves from the simple fact that, given time, you gain knowledge

if you have

	a) a certain intelligence,
	b) a mind adapted to the topic, theme or stratum of creation which interests you,
	c) in view of inter-relationships, a creation which is uniformly susceptible to human intelligence, however great,
	d) a memory, comprehension of the collection of data and a perspective which enables estimates to become indices.
	e) a spirit capable of initiative, imagination and enterprise, correlative to the fashioning of what it investigates,

and then move to another theme, without noticing:

then you become merely confused.

What is that other theme ? It is the idea that in gaining more knowledge, you are in yourself improving, as a source, it is illusion.

Is John Smith better because he is in year 12, now, and not year 10 ? It is exceedingly doubtful, and quite certain that he is not if the new areas of fact available, are to be the criterion. In fact, often by this time, the love of money, the desire for personal fulfilment by any available means that seem FIT, the exploitation of opportunity for selfish interests and so on may have grown more conspicuous, or even arrived on the scene, new fledged. Is his father better, because now he is no longer a salesman, but sales manager, and that his computing knowledge leaves for dead what he realised 5 years ago ? By no means, for the thought that the one follows in some logical sense from the other is pure invention.

In fact, power often corrupts, leading to infidelities in spirit, body and mind. It does not have to ? no, but by no means does this erosion show itself uncommon. There is NO logical connection between greater knowledge and being better.

Better in what ? this is the question. Better with type-writer keys ? Perhaps, but this is a technical facility, not a qualitative event. Better in financial suavity ? probably, but this is a means to an end, not the end itself, and is neutral as far as quality is concerned.

Given time, an oil-well pumps more; but it is not better. Given time, a student writes more, but is not better. Given time, a mother has more children, but is not better (might be worse). Given time, a man may learn more patience, but may become more irritable. Given time orange trees will have more oranges, if not sick or dead, but are not better. They may grow to the maximum stature of their kind, but for all the ensuing production, are not better, just perhaps bigger, older and with less life remaining.

Time plus ability plus scope for its application, retention of results and their understanding in a realm enabling their correct application must allow more results; but not in the least degree does it signify any improvement in the quality of the mind, the power of the spirit or the depth of the intelligence of the man who uses it.

In short, capacity plus field for its operation may provide in time, more; but this does not per se increase the capacity.

Man in hundreds of years of increasingly frantic research has more to show of understanding of the interstices of the platform on which he sits ('nature'), but not of the spirit by which he works, some even failing now, in uproarious comedy, to realise that what they use to deny spirit, is spirit by definition.

He does not grow into superman despite all the childish and churlish ideas and methods of Nietzsche, and their application by Hitler, with reference to the incredibly unscientific notions of Darwin, who would turn variation within a kind to construction of a kind, with all the facility of a child who, on noticing that the air-condition can be turned on, or the ABS braking system, concludes that the car is self-making.

The brain power of man is not noticeably greater, and his language and thought alike appear to be softening and losing calibre at a considerable rate as he rushes in pulsating vanity into the realm of how it works, forgetting that he works, and passing by what he is (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Little Things Ch. 5, Ancient Words ... Ch. 12, Repent or Perish Ch. 7).

The concussion which seems to arise in the place of conclusion, as if by a spelling error, whereby man imagines himself to illustrate that imaginary development process by which the incredibly brilliant designs and codes 'arise' in the utmost depravity of the discipline of scientific method and logical analysis, indeed even linguistic clarity, because given time, he can learn things, is one of the most appalling fantasies of our Age.

It is part of the entire conundrum of man's delusion of insight, his thought wandering aimless like a weeping child

- as well this one MIGHT weep at

 its voraciously murderous and inhuman treatment

by Germany

of those denizens of Namidia, the Herero people, in the late 19th century^*1A,

removed as inferior,

thrust out with extravagant cruelty,

by the illusions of grandeur, a spin-off from the idle dreams of Darwin,
 

and then no less, at the Nazi treatment,

like a judgment on earlier affronts on others,

on selections of those within Germany,

which led to that on all of the nation,

 

and at that

of many nations of slaves,

not least Spain in the Americas,

ruining elevated societies with lust and perverted religious zeal!

 

These are but examples, but the shame is not small in this world of opportunism and relish for gain, on the part of many people, individuals and nations, at almost any cost ... to others!

Increasingly, and not decreasingly, man is moving into this megalomania of being the fittest, the grabber, the greatest, all based on illusion from Darwin and his ilk, as if to be brutal made for man to become more distinctive in his own qualities and features. Nietzsche did quite a job in harassing people into thinking that meekness is weakness, that grace is asthenic, that pushing is progress and that seizure is success.

He has had his day, with Darwin, in the Great Dalliance of the 19th and 20th centuries, where man has come close to destroying himself and his environment, in the passion of this kind. Radioactivity and aids are but two of his priceless discoveries, as he has opened his life to brutalities of the spirit and follies of the mind all but indescribable.

As to mankind, when it comes to himself and 'nature', that he continually imagines what does not happen^*1 and that this is a sign or even signal of his greatness, that he so imagines, whereas it is but a symptom of his spiritual inanity. It is systematic, since the arrest of worship of God has systematic results, just as the arrest of eating and drinking does. It is common just as other drugs to the mind, are common, and their symptoms spectacular. It is providing mutation, just as sun can in cancer cells, but the admitted changes are not in the direction of uplift, just as it is not known that ANY change increases the information at the design level, of any living thing; and yet they BELIEVE that it can or should or could or must, and blink, and continue in their delusions, like smokers unable to stop, the drug being too strong for their wills.

Yet as with the smoker, it was the drug which in the first instance, was taken at will.

Such is the pathetic thrust of twenty first century man, in such a harassment of vitiated and unworkable theories (cf. Wake Up World! ... Chs. 4-6, Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 13, 16) that it is as good as ever Punch was, just to listen now and again to the assembled ravages of thought which are substituted for the original.

It is like an adolescent learning mathematics and the history of chemistry, deciding that he is getting better and better, and swelling with irrelevant pride. It is not so. He may be growing worse and worse, more and more drugged by convention, invaded by culture, incapacitated at looking at the logic of things, wearing the overbearing cap of collusion with confusion which is so well made, that it fits.

More knowledge does not mean 'better', but simply MORE. It does NOT determine the question of any increase in the stature, intelligence, ability, stature or existential height of the one who gets it. That is a simple fact.

When moreover you watch and see how the more is being used, sometimes indeed to help, but often to destroy a few millions bodies called human, by others bearing the same name and source; and the torture inflicted, the braggadocio infesting the air and then uncover the plots and plans designed to exploit over centuries, and still as current as the USSR or Japan of the last century, and the al Qaeda of this one, and their ilks and parallels in profusion: then there seems little reason to consider that insight or understanding, stature or wisdom, meaning or grasp of reality has increased at all.

There is just more to act with, the motives remaining much as they were, but the results more horrific, while the souls that act in such ways, become more inured so that it is reported that Saddam Hussein used to inure his preferred ones to horrific tortures (on others) in order to make them adequately malleable and usable.

As with Hitler's Jew eradication program, there were plenty to co-operate in the most morally retarded enterprises, just as the world with its UN, so adequately co-operates with some of the most elegant tortures and genocides, by looking on without action.

The answer is an impelling as ever, yet man grovels before power, abuses those who lack it and adapts himself to moral anaesthetics with as much address as the drug sellers employ in determining markets, or outraged nations may employ at times, in condemning the innocent, or those not in the least shown to be guilty, so deterring, they may imagine, the others.

Yet does it do so ? Does World War I or II or III (the 'cold one'), or IV (the terrorist one) really make man better ? Do more medicines improves his perception of reality, or his capacity to relate to His Maker, who is neither nothing nor time, but what has the intelligence and design facility required ?

The divine script, proven to be the word of God (e.g. SMR Ch. 1) often enough on this site, does not provide any ground for thinking that there is any decrease in the exceeding sinfulness of man  in his ornate hiding from God and abuse of his fellows (which is partly wrought by such hiding, since it helps by example to encourage others to be in hiding, and to employ the darkness for undeft deeds). Nor does observation provide any.

However that same script DOES provide ground for believing that this devastation of the human spirit which becomes increasingly a pandemic, is not the end of the matter. When man returns to origin, and looks for God, He is not far from any one of us. He is indeed the Author also of a campaign to bring to man the relief from

	the spots of this plague,
	the supinity to sin,
	the decline to degradation,
	the pulse for power,
	the driven desires,
	the urbanity towards suffering,
	the arrogance of imagining that the greatest productions rely on 'nothing' or trivality, in reckless heedlessness of logical realities, observable events ... and non-events,
	the fitfulness towards what is good, and
	the pretence that it is not clear, because rebels misteach it in diverse and divergent ways.

The Lord has delivered this remedy and relief with a bomb of a constructive kind, and one of infinitely more power than that arriving from the Mexican desert.

The bomb which implodes to reveal vitality incalculable, love inconceivable except for its actual exhibition, it is the Gospel of grace; and its victory is the Cross of Christ, purity for impurity, discipline for depravity, that vicarious sacrifice for sin which is adequate, magnificent in conception and perfect in execution.

THIS, it is this execution which is better than all the surgeons who ever were, for it delivers the spirit of proud man from those inconsequential meanders which substitute for living, those wanderings and fits and starts of thought which substitute for wisdom and are called philosophy, those inert quasi-scientific varieties of philosophy which substitute for scientific method^*2, which are the explosions of impenitent spirit into the atmosphere of a ruined world.

From that life which is as much given as was the image God formed for man at the first, and more so, since this involves not merely the opportunity but the actuality itself for living with God, and that of course, since God is eternal, for ever:  there comes eternal life.

It is that which is the BEST which is more than better, and so far from the vagaries of mere manipulation of means, that it is

	the consummation of purpose for man,
	the divine purpose as far above man as the mountains of beauty above the ditches of obscurity, and more so, since God is Himself infinite in power and magnificent in personal being. Here is
	the summit for personality for those blessed to be in the first instance made in the image of God, able to have fellowship; and it is here that lies
	the reality of power with wisdom and of peace with practicality.

It is this which, the world forgetting, and instead placing itself now rather fastidiously, now with thrust,  into the garbage, leaves man himself  increasingly like garbage in this world of his, self-created garbage for all his pretensions, because he lacks the life he has removed, as if he cut out his own heart. Here is irony, that the great, the prodigious, the fantastic and fantasising man, too good for God, becomes not god himself, but garbage, being rejected, self-rejected from mercy and in manic desire falling where there is no foundation.

This being so, it is notable that he looks like it. Such is his culture, not at all captivating, but captured.

On the other hand, when this Life Eternal is received, which is not man's due or heritage, but his need and fulfilment at the hand of God, on the selective basis of no force, but an open door, then it is that the way to the knowledge of God Himself opens, and at the end of that is the opening to see His face, when this world moves from its moorings, and yes, before, as the season of judgment sets in, and the resurrection past, the splendour of reality shows its wonder to the once erring children of men ... as many as believed.

That, it is far better, but it is like the creation, the gift of God. Like all gifts, it needs to be received (John 1:12-14).

NOTES

*1A See Creation,  June-August 2005 regarding the data.

*1

See for example,

SMR pp. 140ff., 103ff., 158ff., 234ff.,

News 57, 59 (and principles), News 84 (broad setting), as in Spiritual Refreshings Ch.  13,

Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamics Ch.   3 (shrieking for their idols, but in vain),
   7  ,   4 (and Darwin dead);  Ch. 2  (drifting doesn't do it);

The Bright Light and the Uncomprehending Darkness Ch.    5, (myths and 'nature', and religion),

Earth Spasm ... Chs.    7;    1;   3 ; 

Of the Earth, Earthy ... Ch.     4 esp. *1 and *2; 
Beauty for Ashes Ch.   3,  SMST    7,  SMR 172ff., 419ff.
(Myths and Smugglers) ;
Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch.    3 (and post-naturalism);  Ch.    8,
Sparkling Life ... Ch.    8,

Ancient Words and Modern Deeds Ch.   9,
Worn-Out World and Coming King Ch.   3 ).

 

TMR 7, pp. 176I-K;  KH 10, Part 2;

WAKE 2, 4, 5, 6, 7; ASP Ch.1;  CALM   1;  STEP  10.

 

More generally, see The gods of naturalism have no go! trilogy.
 

 

*2

See Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 7, Secular Myths ... Ch. 7, SMR pp. 149ff..