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Chapter 8
The Machining of Truth
Becomes Manacles of
Culture
News
239
The Australian,
The OUTRAGE
There
is an end. Beginnings can loom for long, at first preparatory, then mere
intimations, next expositions, moving to uninhibited compositions, then
oppressions, impulsions, compulsions, next law.
Appalling
realities are often long in the brewing stage. Take the horrendous case
reported in the above paper.
It
appears that an aboriginal family or person accepted payment at the time a
daughter was very young indeed, for her marriage in due course. When she became
15 years of age, the 50 year or so man to whom
she had been ‘sold’ as wife, claimed her, and
despite her objection, insisted on the consummation of what, not being begun in the
heart of the girl, it appears, seems violation rather than consummation. For
how could you consummate what is not begun, or complete what is not there ?
Such
appears the character of the report. You are shocked ? You contemplate with one letter writer in the
same edition of the newspaper, that this matter of outrageous, a denial of
elementary principles, if not an hypocrisy in this, that where other nations
allow abuse of the young, this nation affects concern; but when this invasion
of human liberty in an extraordinarily insensitive manner occurs, it is
nothing. It is just the way we are. Is it this that is the case ? Is the cult
concept of ‘other races, other ways’ to become a sort of mandate extraordinary,
to dismiss and dispense with the most elementary of concerns for one’s
neighbour!
It
is to be hoped that this amazing court finding, to the effect that the girl
should have known, and even this, that in the normal way the case should not
even have come to court, will be overturned. Sexual violation against the will
of the party concerned and outside marriage, is not readily distinguished from
rape. It becomes worse for those under-age.
Perhaps this provocation to personality will
be not stand; but if it does, sad indeed is the day for Australia. Is then the
land to acknowledge the subjugation of life to dictation even for a minor, even
where the case is most personal and when the thing called ‘love’ is of vast
significance, both for the strength and wonder of the relationship between man
and wife, and for the atmospheric incubator into which any children should be
born. If it is not deemed alien to our laws, then to what are becoming more
akin ! The very question is a grievous one; but it needs to be faced, should
this proceed without recall or rebuttal.
The
reader may recall in this land, the phenomenon of the One Australia theme of
Pauline Hanson, who at one stage
had quite a following. Various accretions and developments in her
political party alienated many; but not a few considered the concept at its source, ONE AUSTRALIA, in the sense of one law
impactive on all, to be attractive if not elementary for the welfare of the
country and its people.
Here
any such principle is violated to the uttermost, for the pronouncement of the
JUDGE when the matter went to court is in Iine with much teaching and preaching
of many, for a long time in this land. The aboriginal people, the theme
proceeds, are of their own kind, not to be dictated to by ‘white’ law, and
their tribal thrusts are to be honoured and respected. Has not enough damage
been done to
them ? the question is asked. Thus let them alone to deal as they see fit with
one another. So goes the cultural concept seeking to roost in the rafters of
Australian edifice.
It
is indeed true that much evil was done to many aborigines, though not at all in
the all the ways that it has become fashionable to allege. Thus many were
murdered in some sort of ‘war’, or slain if you prefer, in Tasmania, presumably
for safety first reasons. But safety for
whom ? That was an apparent
atrocity.
On
the other side, many were taken from aboriginal lands and brought up and
educated in a ‘white tradition’, to use the jargon, and these, with magnificent
freedom from the requirements of logic, have been termed ‘the stolen generation’.
One court case was brought to bear on this issue, and the Judge on that
occasion ruled that the case for the child concerned been regarded as ‘stolen’
did not stand.
What
is such ‘theft’ ? Presumably if it is in a generalized way deemed or conceived
that the Australian culture, or land, or law, or traditions, must prevail
against aboriginal conceptions, to the point that there must be an extradition
if you like, from the one race to the other(s) in this land, then this is
considered such an intrusion and such an evacuation of the child concerned,
that it is ‘theft’. Perhaps, if this were the whole case, there would be such
imputation possible to consider. If however there were investigations, and
there were found to be abuses, such as the one noted above from The Australian, or murder, or threats of
murder, or failure to give to the child through mere will, the opportunity of
an education, or the spearing of those deemed guilty of this or that, so that
death could ensue, and from this or any such situation children were delivered:
if this were the case, then to call this
‘theft’ ignores one most pointed issue. Many ‘white’ children are taken from
such situations in fairness to their hopes for the future, and in some cases,
for their continuing to stay alive! At those levels, it is not specifically a
matter of any particular race, but of the human race.
WHO
is being stolen ? Is the child
being ‘stolen’ by its parents or
race or tribe, in the way other races such as Germany’s were stolen, when
Jewish children were ‘taken’, by Hitler, for his particular
purposes ? or is it being ‘stolen’ when those who act are seeking to give it
opportunity to learn and in due course opt for whatever is desired, like other
Australians, not leaving it till too late
to acquire opportunity ?
If
the case resembled that of Hitler, and the intention was death, despoiling (as
in rape, official or not), then to deliver would be stealing from destruction
in crucial ways! Is that then theft ? If on the other hand, these were not the
sorts of considerations involved, in particular cases, by due care and with
accurate investigation, and if no deprivation were in view, but merely some
sort of racial judgment, unfounded in fact, ungrounded in understanding, then
the case might indeed be considered for ‘stealing’.
Where
however the abuse of the child has been in view, on the basis of merely social
intervention to extort or distort its gifts for the sating of desire, then it
is entirely contrary. Then, not theft
but deliverance becomes a key issue, and a forced marriage could conceivably be
considered in this very light! Indeed, this recent occurrence in Northern
Australia gives a new stimulus to realism, in considering what may well have
been the case with many of the children in the last century, where young
aborigines were being given an education, and finding it where they could.
Whether
it be the one or the other, or some blend in certain cases, the principles are
the same: protection has its place, and so does sensibility. It is not a
generic, this or that; but it depends on what in fact happened. From the above
case, we are reminded from even the present with its laws and rules, oversight
and concerns, of the fact that problems in the past were far from illusory, for
they have not commenced with this century! and due cause for action may well
have been not uncommon, however many other cases may have arisen, from
insensitive or even overbearing actions.
Custom,
theirs or ours, or their sub-divisions or our own, are not moral per se; and
the human race being of one mould, though varying in some things, the question
is not whether to obey any custom, however contrived, artificial, overweening,
arrogant or pretentious, but the criterion of custom and the ground of morals.
The CULTURAL MACHINING AND THE
MACHINATIONS OF LAW
Where then is ‘morality’ and
how are these things to be determined ?
As has been shown previously,
morality is not a specialised form of custom, masquerading as righteousness,
nor is ‘goodness’ in fact mere preference. If it were, it would be impossible
to convince non-maniacs that it held a category at all; for preference, whether
for forced sex on a minor, or forced follies in universities, where philosophical preferences are forced on
the immature, with marks available for conformity (albeit pleasing conformity),
does not constitute something else. If a person should repeatedly assault the
body or mind or spirit of a minor, with mere intimidatory tactics, or what has
these as an eminent component, does this confer on the victim the concept that
it is not only socially obligatory (if the heart lacks courage), but what is
actually good and proper, right and
fitting ? Does he/she say this: It is customary and hence good, and I applaud
it ?
Does might indeed create right ? Is it right as
well as convenient if a French aristocrat, as in Dickens’
A
Tale
of Two Cities, forces a ‘peasant’ girl into the privileged position of
having sexual intercourse with him as if her body were nothing but a
protoplasmic offering for lust ? If he chose to ‘marry’ her, in some rather
less horrendous case, would this remove the vile violence ?
Did the French Revolution,
evil as it was, indicate that a sense of righteousness was the mere appendage of
custom, or was there not rather a passion against injustice, against hollow
words and Romanist religious oppression joined with State oppression, which
lifted the roof off the stadium of the land, and allowed the roars of the
spectators of all these things to attest that for them at least, custom was not righteousness,
practice did not perfect, and that there were morals of another kind, which
they sought indeed to articulate, society or no society, custom or no custom (equality, fraternity, liberty were the catch phrases of the day, in
or out of the Revolution, rather than the observable realities in the land).
Any concept that custom makes
a thing to achieve rightness, is at variance with history in the case of
mankind. What is deemed right is emphatically NOT custom, and this is the case
even when the ‘custom’ has sought to
intimidate at the religious level as well! Uprisings are all but endless on
another basis, with a concept of right and wrong which is not culturally
convenient, but derived from another ideal.
Ø is what is to be expected in beings who
can think, consider, compare, and have
that roving, evaluative capacity which
seeks and finds principles, now from here, now from there, which it then proceeds, having resolved on what is right,
to implement. To be sure, there are many who, having immersed themselves
cynically in a fallen world, decide to fall freely with it, and grab what they
can as they go. There are similarly those who, having tasted whatever
attraction they find in alcoholic stuffs, commit their longsuffering bodies and
minds to that drug. Such cases do nothing to remove the principle, for
avoidance is not function, and evasion does nothing to disturb the issue
itself.
Such does not mitigate the
distaste which others find in such practices, with their shoutings and tempers,
their killings and maimings, their car paralysis cases via ‘accidents’ and so
on. Nor does it remove the considerations of dangerous aggression, and the
basis for these things. Though man is not and naturally not, since he is
rational, satisfied that custom is right, or that statistics are mentors, to
what does he look in his researches, his surges and resurgencies, his passions
and his oversights ?
THE
IMMEASURABLE CONFUSION OF MISPLACED MEASUREMENTS
Far is one from proclaiming
the humanist conception of man as measure, and the resulting confusion when the
question, as it must be, is asked:
Ø
Then of what
source is the measurement of man himself ?
After all, if man is to measure, what is his own calibration ? WHAT
is the validity, the efficiency, the source
and the value of his own use AS the measure ? If you use a ruler, you
have knowledge of its claim as representative of a system of measurement,
understood by all, applied with common knowledge that its calibrations are
clear and meaningful, useful and unambiguous.
If, however, man is to be the measure, then of what
standard and meaning is his being the measure ? and is it his heart, or his
emotions and concerns, or his mind, bent to this or that purpose or philosophy,
or is it his custom, the result of centuries in this or that land ? and if it
be the last custom, then which set of customs is to rule, when many of them are the subject of political
controversy, in any case ? Custom is by itself, and in itself, in the humanist
conception, an entirely meaningless position, and without value or systematic
applicability.
What would you expect of
something born without its consent, apt to die without its permission, to be
sick with cancer at its own dissolution, to besubject to temper or passion, and
not less for righteous indignation ?
What do you expect in such a case, if you wish to elevate man to being
his own master ?
And even if you did, WHO is
the master ? the 50 year old man subjugating a new human being to decisions and
trading done by her parents before she
could so much as think about any of the concerns involved ? or the
tribal society which (perhaps) says, Yes, good! This is right and should be done
? or humanist conceptions which (in this case with some ground, but
inadequate systematically at that) declare, No,
wrong, she should decide assuredly her own husband, and not be treated like
small cattle, subject to contract. Or is it government which in this case,
via a Supreme Court Judge, has apparently indicated, this: Yes, in principle it is right, for she should know that this is the
tribal way, and have adapted herself to such an outcome (though the under-age
sex and the firing of a gun in order to dissuade her from leaving him, along with
her friends, led to a short sentence). SHE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN ?
WHAT should she have known ?
Is CUSTOM king, then ? Is the law of our land irrelevant to some of its people ? Now one must be clear.
LAW IS NOT GOD, either. Law can be good or bad. It is only ONE of the
contestants for RIGHT, which exists. There is conscience, there is reason,
there is culture, there is custom (and LAW may be set for or against any of
these), there is philosophy, there is logic which however, must be consistent
and move to ALL relevant conclusions, not just to a superficial minimum, there
is psychological ‘welfare’, and personal sensitivity.
WHICH of these things which
are being PRACTISED in their different spheres, is it to which she should have
grown accustomed ? Why to one rather than to another ? What is the determining
criterion, and which is the master principle, concept or constraint which
allows anyone to say this, IN THIS SOCIETY, or SUB-CULTURE, or PEOPLE, or CASE
indeed, this is what happens, so therefore, it is what OUGHT TO HAPPEN!
How can you, with even a
faint regard for logic, declare that
WHAT
IS
is
WHAT
OUGHT TO BE!
How does description make
prescription ? and even if a happening became holy by the mere fact that it happens
(so that suicide and murder, recently reported to being happenings per minute,
rather than per hour, in this land would become ‘holy’ too, or more so by the year as it seems!),
what is the principle which dictates this ? or even if there were one, which of
the customs is to be the criterion ? Some commit suicide, and this in our
country and
But THEIR culture is sacred ?
Is it ? Then was the US enslaving of
Africans sacred, for there was assuredly enough of that incredibly callous and
often bombastic evolutionary folly, as
if some races were not entirely human, or to be despised, or as if power were
right, and incapacity to resist were the moral rule, so that negroes OUGHT to
be enslaved, and OUGHT to continue to receive such privileges from their
captors ? Culture is neither practically nor theoretically possessed of even
the slightest moral power. It is too variable*1, to superficial, too mutually contradictory, too
irresponsible and too irrational.
What then has it ? and what
is even reason to say on such a case as this duality of law, for the indigenous
and the later arrivals, implied in the case of the assailed girl, stricken with
the tokens of what many find may relate
aptly to love, but with no known
evidence in this instance, of any relish
for her personality and her sensibilities ? Indeed, many women consider the priority of personal
love to be aptly so, so that they and their beloveds may relate physically with
a prior meaning which this simply expresses, but does not in itself by any
means constitute! The physical, they find, is the expression of the personal,
not the butt of the power of some maestro who dictates.
What must be said is simple.
There is no law without the conferment in this realm from outside man, no law
which is MORAL. What OUGHT to be can only exist, even in PRINCIPLE, if there is
something other than happenings, events, to determine it. Happening is not
holy. That is the point. This or that CUSTOM or CULTURE is in the same
position. It needs evaluation; and one of the reasons for this is actually of a
delicious simplicity: it will be evaluated whether this is “done” or not. The
very concern that this CULTURE must be followed shows a DECISION and a GROUND
of determination: culture is the thing, or this culture, or this custom. But
WHY is this one or that one adopted as if it had more than custom to commend,
or exhibit its depravity ?
What makes this or that which
has occurred, what OUGHT to occur ? Is it ten years of doing it ? or a century
? or three centuries ? Is it to be so if 10% of the young people disagree, or
50% of them ? is it to be even ‘righter’ if these are intimidated by force and threat, and
social duress, so that they dare not express a contrary opinion ? In what way then is statistics even
relevant to right! Is it to be on a basis that no culture can be wrong if it
lasts a while ?
Is time God then ? On what basis ? If Hitler lasted for less than a decade in his
role, and Communism for more like 70 years in its initial homeland, is this
‘righter’ than Hitler ? On what ground ? Is tyranny the less because it is the
longer ? Does happening become holy when there is enough of it, or because
ruling cliques find it acceptable ? On what ground, on what basis, and in what
terms of history, with its endless revolutions, revulsions and outcries ?
There is then NOTHING which
can make a thing right, such as the necessary outcome for our great race, or
the manifest destiny of the American people (President T. Roosevelt is so
reported re taking over the land), or the commercial needs of a flourishing
society, or the agreeableness of some event to most people (as occurs in
various tyrannies in terms of those who rule).
Statistics is not morality,
and when one considers the revulsion afterwards often felt for what, at a time,
was accepted and imposed custom, such as the Spanish horrors in invading parts
of what is now the USA, pillaging and enslaving with mission stations and
proceeding to exploit cheap labour under such circumstances, without due regard
for their being human, then one must ask: WHAT has tradition to do with it ? It
is merely a continuity of what is good or bad, or in measure, both.
What MAKES it good or bad ?
this is the question. It is assuredly
not politics or society. Doing is not evaluating. It is what is done which is
the data base for evaluation. Who is to do it ? the rich or the poor, the
democrat or the vulgarian, the tyrant or the tyranny of convention ?
EVALUATION, DEVALUATION AND ASCRIPTION
There is no answer in these
terms for the very good reason that there is an endeavour to mount up one
step from doing to being, from
performing to evaluating; and yet without a proper measure, you simply cannot
do more than exhibit your explicit or implicit principles, founded on NOTHING.
In
The Other News 19, we considered such matters as these
in broad principle, and regarded
1) agnostic
morals
2) synthetic
morals and
3) dogmatic morals.
and their bases and validities or lack of this. In the last category, where authority and knowledge, as distinct from preference, may enter in, we looked at
I) carnally dogmatic
II) celestially dogmatic.
The latter is again of 2 types:
a) celestially synthetic and
b) celestially authentic.
This with all its
preliminaries and grounds, may be read, but for our present purpose, let us consider
the last case. Unless our Maker has measurements, principles which show what is
good and right, man CANNOT find more
than preference, nor is there either indication that he is in any danger, in
general, of accepting preference of
dictator or regime, philosophy or cant, as RIGHT; for he is to be found arguing
and fighting continually on many fronts, as if this MEANT good or right. Guns
and jaws fight it out, and go round about, with mighty clout, but reason does
not consent on humanist grounds. It is empty.
Data can never be
determinant here, when man is the unmeasured measure. Paul put it crisply, from
the mouth of God, in II Corinthians 10:12-13:
v
“For we dare not class
ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves,
and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise. We however will not
boast beyond measure, but within the limits of the sphere which God appointed
us – a sphere which especially includes you.”
Either the Maker tells
man, or man does not know. That is his simplicity, which when he returns to his
Maker, becomes a touch of sublimity, the very hand of God. If man tries to make
an amalgam of religions, this is merely of historical interest. It has no force
or validity. If man USES his imagined measuring power, to make this or that
right among the religions, then this is merely an indirect case of being void
of measurement and using the void. If you import elements into your void, you
are as void of power to exercise your void as you were. It is merely being
cluttered up with irrelevant rubbish.
No synthesis has moral
force. Religious statistics are no more impressive or less than any other; and
for that matter, some religions, whether
as in Islam (cf. More Marvels … Ch. 4) with their ‘scriptures’ giving no small support to
invasive violence, or in the Romanist Inquisition (cf. SMR pp. 912ff., 1032ff.), they are and have been
exponents in word and deed of just that antipathy to the spoken word of Christ,
that His kingdom is not of this world, and that otherwise His servants would
fight. Some religions do in fact do evil with both hands, if ‘evil’ is to include
the abuse of mankind by mankind so that those who have power use it to evade
reality, logic and truth, bypassing in thought, but not in hand, gobbling up
riches and thieving them on a grand scale!
As to Christ, at HIS
requirement, His servants, after an initial and rebuked flurry, did not fight,
and He was duly sacrificed as He planned.
Others, as in various
forms of Humanism, often refuse such support for violence, though the
bureaucracy can be so leaden-spirited and personally insensitive (cf. Defeat
of an Ideal, by Shirley Hazzard), that it becomes a tyranny of
psychology, social mores and intrusive patronage, like some kind of
aristocratic office.
There have been more
reasonable things, in measure, among the nations, at times.
Thus reason is not
only released by it, but sated through it. The impasse of morality is here
solved, but NOT by adding more culture to it, call them traditions if you will,
or removing words from it, with the liberals, or seducing its commands, as when
many pray in tongues together without interpreter (cf. A
Question of Gifts); nor it is made an excuse for the status quo, just
because patience is required. The rulers need more than patience, they need
JUSTICE (cf. Isaiah 1-2, 5, 58!).
Neither action nor
thought of man in man, for man, can constitute what is right; though reason can
and does point indefectibly to the revelation which the Bible constitutes. In
this, justice is a major criterion, and it is divinely defined, for all of us
are His property.
Does it not say this
in Isaiah 1:
When you spread
out your hands,
I will hide My eyes from you;
Even though you make many prayers,
I will not hear.
Your hands are full of blood.
“Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean;
Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes.
Cease to do evil,
“Learn to do
good;
Seek justice,
Rebuke the oppressor;
Defend the fatherless,
Plead for the widow.
“ ‘Come now, and let us reason together,’
Says the Lord,
‘Though your sins are like scarlet,
They shall be as white as snow;
Though they are red like crimson,
They shall be as wool.’ ”
Righteousness
and justice are the foundation of His throne, we read in Psalm 89, and mercy
goes before His face. The whole idea of some of his creations oppressing others
of them is wholly repugnant to Him who made all; and although liberty, that
grand invention (cf. Little Things Ch.
5,
It
Bubbles… Ch. 9 and Index), DOES leave scope for this, it does not remove
scope for divine judgment, whether on empires (cf. SMR pp. 712ff.) or individuals, whether on
nations now, or in the time of their “visitation”. How often does the
oppressor, individual or national, racial or religious, political or personally
peremptory, imagine that the status quo is sure, his/her way is clear, and that
nothing can stop it. Not hard to be seen is the movement of history as it turns
like a pig turned on a roast, and the other side appears, charred.
The
prescriptive is found in the validated, verified and exhaustively attested
Bible, and the Messiah who confirming it, was confirmed by it, caused addition
to it through His own words, which in turn does this all over again (SMR). Its
words will not cease to act till all fulfilled, and His will continue though
heaven and earth pass away. Again, what would you expect ? that the God who
made time would alter because of it! As to the Bible, its words are NOT the
culture, the tyranny or the predilection of the race to which it was sent. Far
from it! Indeed, if ever there was judgment, it is in the Jewish race, or
rather more accurately, the nation of Israel.
This
has been considered many times (cf. SMR Ch. 9).
Isaiah 30 shows the extent of the divorce, while the prophets have been so
often and so vehemently opposed, even in times of desolation (as in the amazing
resistance to Jeremiah even when his words were vindicated and the need of the
people was enormous, in Jeremiah Chs. 34, 42-44). God is JUST, and HIS morals
do not allow for favourites to disport themselves in folly, as if it were some
divine right, when in fact, such things are divinely defined as WRONG! (cf.
Isaiah 5:8-14).
In
fact, He MORALLY announced His spiritual decisions in advance, partly in order that
the people might KNOW, and be able to TEST (cf. Isaiah 48) the legitimacy of
the prophetic warnings and HEED them when these things occurred. His ways were
v POWER in the Exodus,
v ENLIGHTENMENT as in bringing the
people with His law to their land,
v REPUDIATION for their refusal to be
led into it (Numbers 14ff.), one of the wryest dealings in history on the part
of a people, but the class is large even at this level. Moreover, His ways
are
v CONTINUATION as in bringing
according to promise, the CHILDREN of the refusniks to the land,
v HONOUR as in bringing the Jews back
to Israel according to a promise made millennia in advance (cf. It Bubbles … Ch.10)
and PERSPECTIVE, as in His intimation of the structure of things, their pattern
as well as their particulars, as the
time for Christ’s return to rule, having duly suffered on MORAL grounds, for
others who would receive Him, as vicarious sacrifice (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).
HIS
MORALS involve a WILLINGNESS to help, PURITY of continuance (Romans 6, not to
gain place but in attestation of it), KNOWLEDGE of all things and SACRIFICIAL
LOVE, to bring people where they belong, both in their created freedom and
their disciplined dealings, not as autonomous autocrats, but as members of the
Kingdom of the Maker, God Himself, expressed to perfection in His living and
eternal word, Jesus Christ. Those who object to such things, object to
themselves, for this is their institution, constitution and the words express
the situation; they appeal against love, which is willing to bring them back to
their place; they drive away liberty, since there is none in opposition to your
nature, justice and truth, which last, without God, does not have the facility
to exist (cf. SMR Ch. 3, 7, TMR Ch.
5, 7).
Do
they want to rule the world ? impossible since it is not their own.
Do
they want to order man to become their own vassals ? merely a lie, since they do not even
understand him, and cannot do so without
truth, itself a function of the most
elemental, of God before whom all is known, and all not Himself, is His
exhaustive creation, even to that liberty which abused, becomes the sin which
appeals, wantonly or listlessly, for
judgment. .
Is
it to deliver tirades against truth,
that they desire the liberties of autonomy or the freedoms of faithlessness
? useless, since it will not change. Is it
to oppress others, in injustice and self-glorying, self-centredness ? Ludicrous, since they are
not in fact the centre.
MORALS, QUARRELS and JUDGMENT
Morals
are devastatingly apparent, non-existent without God, and though they involve self-control,
standards and principles, promises and inter-personal communion between man and
God, and a knowledge of the divine will, SUCH a divinity is not found merely in
the mind or fact, anywhere. It is not to be sought as part of the creation at
all, but obviously in the sphere of the Creator, whose power has made, whose
intelligence has contrived, whose informed and effectual concern has given the
meaning to ‘love’ not in part, but in whole, and whose provisions are deeply
embedded in His own nature, even to the point of the Cross of Christ, and the
rupture of the heart, as He died, becoming sin for us who so receive Him (II
Cor.5:17-21), as an antibiotic becomes health to those who receive it, but has
nothing to do to aid those who ignore it, and trust in their ignorance, or
imaginary powers.
But
to the case of the aboriginal girl, grossly affronted ? Is it the case that one
family can use the reproductive result of a liaison, marital or other, as their
PROPERTY ? On what ground ? Did they create the world ? You might, also, on the
same ground, ask whether the Australian
government has any power to act
autonomously as if God were not there, and statistics represented authority ? To be
sure, this is so, but in a given country, laws do exist, and even where they
are disastrous, the Christian – except in the case where they would force
him/her to disobey God – is to obey
these (Romans 13).
This
does not validate them, or remove the divine
judgments which may come on the legislators or nation in due course, as in the case of Nazi Germany and Communist
Russia, both of whom committed ‘legal’
atrocities of the highest order, in multitudinous cases. When however a given
country has a given way, then subject to divine intervention, sooner or later, and judgment, it may indeed
pursue its course. Many on moral grounds may have to leave it, or disobey
anti-Christian laws, for example. The time may be drawing near when in order to
obey God, it could even once more become necessary, as in Britain in the days
of Bloody Mary and Charles II, not to mention James II, to disobey man in order
to obey God (cf. Acts 4:19-22, 5:29).
What
is to be the course of Australia ? Is it to become so blind that its Christian
basics in law and in many principles and practices in this land, founded by an
ostensibly Christian nation, Great Britain, that it ignores the blessedness
which has resulted ? It is doing just that in tremendous steps, so that unless it repents and
recaptures some of the realism and resource of former years, it may soon
or before too long become a vassal to some obscenely indifferent power, unaware
of morals except to grab and to dominate.
Ø It is good to notice that the Attorney-General in our Northern
Territory, where this moral violation occurred concerning the aboriginal girl,
“while ruling out any influence on the Northern Territory Director of Public
Prosecutions to appeal the sentence”, made a statement to the effect that
“there were people in customary law who did not consent to the customary law and
that the law of the land was there to protect them.”
Ø This is, as far as it goes, rather a
noble statement. We are not going to
say, it appears, simply that if there is another race in the land, say Italian
or Japanese, or aboriginal, that its customs simply become law. There is
another standard than custom. It is “to protect”. It is to protect, we learn in
this case, from undesired customs. Murder could be one of these in a culture of
violence. Rape could be another,
Childhood could be another!
WHY
protect ? Because it is assumed that it is moral to do so. WHY ? In our case,
probably because of an amalgam of Christianity and its negative offshoot,
humanism, UN provisions and cultural past; but also because individuals also
sometimes have strong conscience and DETESTATION of power replacing humanity as
the basis. If it did, where would humanity be ? Merely an enslaved possessor of
liberty, in monumental affront to its Maker, a problem child in the hands of
atrocious ‘parents’ who sacrificed it as far as possible, to their own wishes,
lusts and philosophy.
It
is not for this, that man was made; and woe to those who act as if gods, when
they are but men! (Isaiah 2:17,21,22, Ezekiel 28:9, Psalm 82:6-8). There is no
other ultimate ground than God, or rational
ground for any God but the Lord God who sent Jesus Christ, His only
begotten Son to be a sacrifice for sin,
instead of having the race sacrifice itself,
and various of its members throughout history, to sin.
NOTE
An
Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, of Macquarie University, Sydney, has some
words on this score, to the point in view. Says Kenneth Murdoch, “Both the
hopeful husband-to-be and the girl’s parents must have known when entering into
their contract in 1986, that the system was breaking down because of the
rebelliousness of the rising generation. They should also have known that even
in earlier times promises were not always kept, that a girl might be promised
to more than one man meaning that some promises had to be broken and that girls
would sometimes resist being handed over to men, especially men a lot older
than themselves.”
The Court, he continued, heard expert evidence, and would
have been told by the anthropologist advising, of such data as are exhibited in
the work of a bevy of anthropologists such as Lester Hiatt, Jeremy Beckett,
T.G.H. Strehlow, David McKnight and David Tonkinson, attesting
“well-established facts about change in Aboriginal societies”.
He
proceeds to note that in NSW, “younger people were wresting control of marriage
from their elders during the first half of the 20th century…”
Proceeding with various illustrations and interpretations, he makes the point
that there is indeed a need for common law to
rescue people from practices, however common, which should be surveyed
rather from compassion and humanity, than from mere conformity to the
changeable customs of societies.
In
this paper, we have shown WHY that is so, and on what GROUND alone it may
rationally be protested. The Professor’s contribution however is valuable, for
it cuts through the cultic rationale of permitting anything that goes, on the
ground that it has gone. What has gone may be anything from horrific to an
hiatus in thought, the rule of the rich, the powerful, the dominant, the
domineering, convenience or fogged thought. It has exactly no sanctity.
The
only sanctity, as distinct from cause for sensitive concern, is found in the
Maker, whose word is the only law that does not change, cannot change and will
not change. This has reached its quintessential development, its flower of
Spring, its consummation in the performance of Christ, after the tenacity of
the law was made clear: that He would bear the loss sustained by human ineptitude,
decrepitude of morals, folly, on one basis… JUSTICE would be done, but on Him;
and TRUTH would be sustained, by Him (Romans 3:23ff., 5:1ff).
Love
sustained Him (Titus 2:14, 3:4, Hebrews 12:2, John 13:1) and His Father’s power
preserved Him (Luke 4:30, Matthew
26:52ff.), as at His own cost He wrought the basis for the deliverance of man
from the prominence of false autonomy (Matthew 16:25ff.), the dominance of
false philosophy (Colossians 2:8, John 8:34-36), together with the captivity of
sinful distortion (John 43-44) and the guilt of transgression (Matthew 20:28,
Luke 22:36-38), all this laid bare in His corpse, duly buried: yet itself, with
assured hope for those who receive Him, resurrected from death before the maw
of rottenness could maul it, in a life subject not even to death, eternal in
the end, as at the beginning (John 17:1ff., 1:1ff., Philippians 2:1-12). This
is where vitality and sensitivity lies, in the truth.