WITHOUT REALITY, FUN CAN BE PERILOUS

CHAPTER 7

BEING PLAYFUL IN LIFE AT TIMES CAN BE FUN

PROVIDING YOU ARE FIRMLY FOUNDED FIRST IN REALITY

These days one hears much about purpose in life.
This is in one way a welcome change.

The tendency to the Heracleitan flux,in which nothing means anything except the person who means to tell us it is thus, and pauses flux longer enough to be there, to know the stable truth and convey it in a miraculous manner, is rather like flabby fat. There is an amazing amount of over-weight in Australia and the USA, it seems, to mention but two. There is new concern at Type 2 diabetes in the young, which once was more the preserve of those middle-aged or older, and this comes with questions attached.

For example they ask, If the middle-aged with this pathological affliction got heart and other dangerous results, what will appear in the young when, in a way once untimely, they now contract the disease ? Some had apparently thought it might reserved for the excesses of middle-age, with too little exercise perhaps and wrong diet, among other possible causes. Now that the malaise spreads, yes in cause and effect conceivably, to significant representation in the young, where is the end of it all ?

So is it with the Heracleitan dream, in which there is this flabby and wasted, this diseased and ludicrous failure to attend to one's own needs. The disease moves more to the young, corrupted almost from the womb.

This world of flux is a fiasco, as flabby as fat, as unwelcome as other disease. In such a world as that envisaged, neither would the subject be unsubjected to change long enough to BE a subject, nor would the object of his survey be subject to order long enough to be knowable, but if it were, truth would not be available with which to know it, as all things changed continuously, except of course the theory about all things which is in view!

This self-forgetfulness as in Hume's case (cf. SMR pp. 262ff.), has indeed been a sickening substitute for rational thought. It is therefore quite pleasant, by contrast, to find the mention more often today, of purpose, than yesterday. It has been a primary emphasis in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, and this advisedly, a work published in 1992. This we see in such sites within it, as figure below.

Yet when it comes beyond the emphasis on a neglected facet of life, to seeing life in such terms as a massif, a director, then the case changes. We then enter into the phenomenon of playing about with life, not of rejoicing IN it, with the joy and exuberance of knowing what one is doing.

There are many sorts of drivers not only for computer soft-ware, but for human hardware, especially when it is the heart that is hard.

To be driven instead of led is a sad fate for a human being. It is necessary to meet the driver before being driven, and to consider the vehicle and its actual destination, before consenting to go.

For example, delusion, drink, drugs, dynamic, activism, rising act as disease, replacing ends with means, and truncating ends to leave mere sensations of the mind, body or spirit, as the driver.

Personality, family, self, nation, culture and 'religion' (that of man) are mere partial aims, based on aspects - as foolish as worshipping your legs.

Ease, resentment, attainment, envy - but for what ? These are limited, all partial in scope.

I am not partial to what is partial, but wish to know the whole so that in so knowing, I am not deluded, blind or ineffective.

Judgment ? but by what vision of understanding and by what assurance of its correctness ?

Partial things have a place, and when in it, like pistons in cylinders, they can work well; so long as one is not deluded to making pistons a separate wonder, apart from their place.

In the end, without God, man has no answer, no organisation, no meaning, merely DRIVES and DEVIATIONS.

Through Him, theory becomes truth, and truth a ground for activity which is a means, not an end, and the meaning of purpose becomes manifest.

Then vision is sourced in reality, and testable (cf. I John 5), enlighening life with meaning, aim, end,

Nothing remains then, that is self-centred, even self-fulfilment and self-glorification and self-will.

Then you do not say, It does not matter whom you marry, for the word of God prohibits being unequally yoked to unbelievers, and you do not replace any more, God with a part of the human psyche.

Now as to actions for the purposes, these are related to the kingdom of heaven, to Christ's values, and the glory is for the Redeemer, the very expression of God, who having so acted, presents a timeless reality in time (John 8:58, Hebrews 1:3).

That therefore involves His word, His book, not yours. If Christ could say, NOT MY WILL BUT THINE, how much more those who now realise that not mere vision in hope, but the victory in fact which He confers, who came to earth in the flesh, is to the point (I John 5:4, Romans 5:12-17, 8:1-10). No more is it the latest thought, or philosophical fashion, some sleight of mind to make 'purpose' king in PRACTICE, and not the living Christ, whom to know is life that is eternal.

Such a life as now lived in Christ, is one which was driven to repentance, led into faith and enabled in action; which faces judgment with equanimity, because of His atonement, and continuation with joy because of His resurrection, and knowing Him who was resurrected personally, with access to His wisdom and lovingkindness, has no folly with enlarged or even spiritually cancerous psychical functions and philosophical follies (cf. Colossians 2:8, I Corinthians 1).

This is not new. What IS new is His faithfulness, fresh every morning (Lamentations 3), is He who meets the one who walks in rejoicing because of the truth, and remembers Him in His ways (Isaiah 64:5).

Now there is on such a life, a divine imprint (cf. Ephesians 1:14), a divine affiliation (Romans 8:16), a divine indwelling (Colossians 1:27), a divine aid (Ephesians 1:19), and a joy which refuses to keep still (John 4:14ff., 16:22-24).

It is HIS purposes which are paramount, not one's own, with some slight nod of the prayerful head to Him, as if to the time clock as one enters the factory. It is LIFE, not procedure, which is in view!

Now is the time to obey Him who speaks in His word, the Bible, and not to follow one's own so sacred will in its oh so sacred purposes. His word has not changed with new philosophical emphases, and its potency is not altered by new omissions, such as those of repentance, judgment and the ground of Christ's salvation of the sinner who without Him was one with NO hope, NO covenant and NO ground for faith!

None of the parts of man, in his psyche or body, his mind or spirit are to the point as the ultimate operative, desire and criterion. It is Christ in life and His written word in mind who is this. God has spoken. He WHO LEADS needs nothing and no one else TO DRIVE! He knows His sheep, and they follow Him, undriven, but guided on the way with the tenderness, compassion and challenges which are His alone to give. If now your purpose is to find Him and follow Him and to be His, well - but He has a mouth, a Spirit, is the WAY, LIFE and the TRUTH HIMSELF (John 14:6). He needs no other occasions for the mind of man, to add or subtract.

The man of God, the man who find in Christ the life God made life for him (Colossians 3:10), should be driven no more by his imagined purposes, programs or pressures, be they direct or indirect. It is GOD with HIS DESIRES, designs, purposes and procedures, values and intimations, expressions and exhortations, it is HE, not seducible by any of the language of man into aspects of man, mankind or this world and its thoughts, He whose thoughts are not as our thoughts, but relate to them as the heavens above the earth (Isaiah 55:6), who is to be heeded.

Dependence on Him, not in form but in functional, day-by-day FACT is necessary, for like moving with your guide in the alpine heights, the case requires realism and rest in it. It is not a matter of form but of FACT (II Timothy 3:5), vital fact, all encompassing fact.

As to God's desires, they are written, clear, and require a removal of self-sovereignty, even sacred, religious self-sovereignty, even modish fashionable self-fulfilment sovereignty, even cap-tipping but actual psychic supremacy, from the heart of man; that he be crucified with Christ (Galatians 5:24), and if you are His, then this you will be as the apostle declares! A true soldier in spiritual arms (Ephesians 6), you follow with joy such a Master as He who is the living Son of th living God, not regarding Him as some mere ally, enabling you to negotiate with God or find a backing for his varied dear desires. As a Father, the Lord is compassionate to the requests of His children; but it as God He speaks, and not as some endorser of the actions of the formalistic functionary, mistaking his presumption for Christ.

Yet this is NEVER fashionable, for to live not for ourselves, fulfilled or otherwise, religiously or otherwise, but for the Lord Himself involves an awesome awareness of His divine authority, of the rule of His word, of the splendour of His majesty, and His prerogative to direct one’s entire life into HIS MOULD, in character, HIS WORK in labour. It is not an option to do as you please with your choice of partner, profession or anything else. Christ did not put His Father’s will above His own so that we might do the opposite, when saved by this passion! (Luke 22:42). Unless you forsake ALL that you have, make your insistences zero, but for Him, then you cannot be His disciple. HOW do you know ? someone may ask. It is because this is what HE SAID, about whom we speak. That is how one knows it (Luke 14:27ff.).

Without this however, so glad in reality, so painful like a dentist visit for a time, the world grows old in its partial pressures, its drives for this purpose or program, pleasure, rising, indulgence or crisis crusade of this type or that harrowing its ancient visage. Lines of self-life appear like moles on the cheeks, toying with truth becoming cancerous in the sunshine of self-deception. Christianity without tears rushes to your aid, comfort without crucifixion of the old nature in the bloom of the new, planted by Christ, becomes the new mode. Without the reality of Christ and His word, in the power of His Spirit, in the terms of His covenant (Matthew 26:28), man loves to move, first changing Christianity into religiosity, then all religions into a Man administered Ritual, Procedure, Process, under his control, the merest self-delusion, and pap of hypocrisy.

You might as well major in satisfaction (but Christ gave satisfaction for our sins, who believe), or in power (but God's power is available for those in His covenant, in Christ), or will (but Christ came not to do His own will, but to fulfil that of His Father), as purpose.

You might as well wander over the edge of the precipice, as miss the purity of the word and way of God, in Christ Jesus, the Lord. It is He who says,

As futile as that, and as perilous is it to spend your time in partial drives, instead of the will of the God WHO LEADS, as a Shepherd, His sheep, by His word, through His Spirit, by His covenant, in the terms of His promises, always present, not dumb, but to enable the performance of His will.

Again, if you are His, not in form but in fact, then when He returns, you personally know the Chief Agent and King: for behold have you not known Him from your first taste of His goodness, when He saved you, the repentant you (John 16:9-11), the convicted you, the you who faced judgment, but who now by His atonement and bodily resurrection, smiles with mercy before it, by faith secure! (James 2:13).