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Chapter 7
The Versatility and Architectural Liberties
of the Spirit of Man
In the book
of Proverbs, in such sites as 15:20, 30, 16:9, 22, 32, 17:4, 9, 18:4, 15, 19:8,
21 we see some fascinating helps as we address the topic, How Do We
Think ?
You may wonder
why this topic is arising … ? In fact, it has come because my wife has reminded
me that when our son and first child was around 4, he asked just that question.
It is an elemental and absorbing question, and requires attention.
To start
our approach, let us cite from
Acme, Alpha and Omega:
Jesus Christ,
since this
will set the tone.
Dancing!
unwise. Flying! unsafe. Soaring, insufficiently pedestrian. You will usually
get grumpy glooming somewhere. On the other hand, it is easy to be flamboyant,
effervescent and fail to recognise the realities of a situation.
But
air! There is something so free, and birds, it is their habitat, element and
highway. How their liberty is admirable. Striking to memory is the recall of a
vast panegyric of motion, a flinging and winging of masses of birds, once seen
near sunset time by recollection, birds that sang in motion, cavorted in
captivating swirls and whorls, with changing leaders, hundreds of yards of them
in vertical ascending puffs of wing.
This
was first mentioned in The Spirit of Envy, Ch. 8 of The
"Then seemingly
unaccountably, they burst out laughing, for they had just noticed the swallows
flitting with such an energy of desperate contortion that they themselves
exploded like iridescent soap bubbles. I watched another thrust of birds, in
their hundreds, rising and dancing, ballet-dancing, in teams and in arms of
bird-flight, then re-assembling in what makes ballet look ignominious by
comparison, soaring up hundreds of yards in luminous artistry, regrouping,
separating into elements, geometrical in display, then collating themselves in
glorious vigour and indifference to 'technical problems'. Life! What
exuberance."
WISDOM
You
will notice the association of the children with this flight and extravagance
of imaginative motion. Theirs too is to find the wings of thought and life, and
to soar with exuberant wisdom. But how may the wisdom be found ? As Job puts
it:
"But where can wisdom be found ?
And where is the place of understanding ?
Man does not know its value,
Nor is it found in the land of the living.
The deep says, 'It is not in me',
And the sea says, 'It is not with me.'
"It cannot be purchased for gold...
From
where then does wisdom come ?
And where
is the place of understanding ?
It is hidden
from the eyes of all living,
And
concealed from the birds of the air.
"Destruction and earth say,
'We have
heard a report about it with our ears.'
God
understands it way,
And He
knows it place...
He saw
wisdom and declared it;
He
prepared it, indeed, He searched it out.
And to
man He said,
'Behold
the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom,
And to
depart from evil is understanding.' " (From Job 28.)
The birds, you will note, do NOT have wisdom, but oh they SHOW it! It has been
searched out (see Barbs, Arrows and Balms
27 on the delightful presentation in Proverbs 8 on the everlasting and
lively wisdom which is God's constant companion, His word who became the
Messiah, clothed in flesh, exuberant with power, imagination, immovable in
truth, incarnate from heaven). Like the birds, we do not have wisdom either,
that is, mankind as such; but we can KNOW it. THAT is one fundamental
difference.
THE FEAR OF THE LORD
While
many of the creation can perceive things, follow instincts and activate
equipment, to us it is given to KNOW wisdom ... IF we go where it is, for "God understands
its way" and hence
"the
fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is
understanding".
Beautiful words, like cascading waterfalls of pure, mountain waters coming
through the lively verdure, adorning itself with butterflies and the drone of
active bees.
It
is the perversity of man so frequently NOT to see this "fear of the
Lord" as an
invitation to the directed energies of divinely donated dynamics - like that
flight of the birds observed above - but as a crimping, cramping, damping, if
not damaging restraint, restriction and penalty for being religious.
It
is quite true that religion CAN be the movement of cultural occlusion,
the profusion of imaginative follies and extravagances of thought of man, and
so can the stomach become bulging (one has seen some examples recently with
which the imagination does not wish to be connected by memory) through misuse,
or a mind disordered through misconception. It is not abuse but use which is in
point.
To KNOW what is wisdom, when you see how bountiful are its
dispositions in the creation; and to find it in the source, the creator, the
conserver and the judge, and to find Him amenable, available for discourse, and
to find that He even HAS discoursed in the Bible on precisely what our position
is, and is not, and where truth and righteousness and purity and the splendour
of cleansed spirit and comradeship in the love of truth and of God may be found
... what is this ?
End of Excerpt
It is
where it came from, in the earth’s construction, in this mind’s organisation
and dynamism, in this spirit’s enduement and imbuement with the power to
realise the real. It is to be found in God, whose it is.
Let us pursue aspects of
this, for the time, in the validated and verified source book for spiritual
code, the Bible (cf. SMR, TMR).
Thus in Proverbs
The
glad father is contented, for wisdom has nestled under the wings, beneath the
vision and in the mind of the sound son. The lad has grown to perceive purity,
realise reality and to walk not only where paths are, but to make paths on the
principles of understanding, so that even innovation is bound by faith to the
grandeur and scope of creation’s master, occupied with the spirit of truth, so
that he pursues that exhilarating capacity into the realm of things which man
has to invent, without rancour, spite or egotism, yes for the glory and wonder
of that God who made all.
In
Proverbs 15:30, we find this: “The light of the eyes rejoices the heart, and a good report
makes the bones healthy.”*1
HOW do we
think ? There is a dynamic which thrusts into the scope of thought, a purpose which
grips the soaring spirit of man, for beyond the forms of thought, there is
ideation, ideology, imaginative recreation, and past the logical topography of
the splendour of the garden of man’s mind and spirit, at least as it was
created or is redeemed, comes the meteorological, the spiritual grasp and
vision, the elevation of understanding and the cordiality of energy which looks
to the heavens, and sighs with relief, to the earth and governs the
understanding, giving perspective to life and power to perception.
The
concept of HEIGHTENED PERCEPTION enters here, for a man may look, for
example at a page in some book with dull eyes, seeing words and little
meanings; or with happy eyes, seeing thrust and point and gaining
understanding; or again, with heightened perception, and if you will, seeing
THROUGH the words and paragraphs, movements of mind, finding the thrust of
spirit, tendency and trend of discourse, meeting to some degree, not only the
mind of the author of the work, but the very spirit of the deliverance.
Perhaps in
some instances, where the work is good, the reader may even be lifted towards
or even into the perception of the world of objective reality to which the
author’s mind addresses itself, and move with him/her to the territories themselves,
and share these. If the birth is right, the equipment is donated: that of
course is the limit (John
Shakespeare
is perhaps a good example of what predisposes towards such meta-mental action,
such spiritual inducements, and this is precisely why so many of the
soliloquies to be found in his works have such appeal. You may perceive
not merely the particularities and personal adjuncts of the historical person
who is speaking, but the principles which are pursued, the themes which grip
the character who discourses – like Hamlet in his “To be or not to be, that is
the question” - that one thinks WITH the writer, ON his topic, and moves
like an accompanying glider in the same upthrust as that of his neighbour,
above the fields of the actual situation, to begin to perceive why it is what
it is, how it is what it is, where it trends, why it does so and in what
atmosphere of reality it is after all, moving.
Beyond
this, one may consider, as it were peripherally, the adequacy or otherwise of
the parameters of the thought, the truth or otherwise of the principles it
directly adduces or indirectly assumes, dispose sympathy or abhorrence on the
relationship of the thought to the actions of the person, who perhaps seeing
much, does little, or knowing much perversely distorts, or knowing but little,
wonderfully disposes it to good.
In Repent or Perish Ch. 7,
in a way
which is so cognate to, yet diverse from the above, we considered an
environment of actualities in the work of the mind and spirit of man, which is
reproduced below, since it also is so germane to our present point, and
extends it briefly.
THE
ELSEWHERE-EARNED EDIFICE,
WITH OPTIONS PROVIDED FOR MAN
(View as one skyscraper: floors are in general in order of their management significance, though this may vary.)
1. Principal (top floor)
2.
spirit
3.
perspective
4-6.
personality-imagination-expression (PIE)
7.
principles
8-10.
priorities, penchants, affections (PPA)
11. purpose
and purposes
12-15.
comprehension-analysis-intelligence-mind (CAIM)
16.
proposals
17.
corporicity
18.
procedure
19.
principial error
20.
plan
21.
performance error
22.
program
23.
unsuccess
24.
significance
25.
semantics
26. syntax
27.
signification
28.
symbols
29.
cells (equipped as per 24-28, the 5 S - Words)
30.
system
31.
sequence
32.
series
33.
singularity
34.
subsistence (ground floor)
These are operational data relating to man.
Added to these, further functionalities could be noted, such as:
CREATIVITY, INTER-PERSONAL CONSTRUING; LOGIC, MEMORY, SYNTHESIS, SYSTEMS, DISCIPLINED-IMAGINATIVE-CONSTRUCTION;
SURVEY - WITHIN AND WITHOUT.
While these extend our sight of the donated territories accorded to man, they can be understood in such terms as: mind, spirit and their intimate inter-relation. Here we see not only worlds within worlds in the construction called man - a multiplicity of cosmoi, but a disparity of components, duly combined and correlated to work as one unit: that is the art and essence of creation.
Ø
The splendour of the architecture that creates, together with the
wonder of the elements in man, themselves creations -
Ø
the legally inert substructure; the vitally informed, the alert, the discerning, the comprehending;
Ø
and the volitionally directive, the spiritually profound,
soaring inexorably:
Ø
these in their display and their unison attest and verify at
work... the sublimity of divinity.
End of Excerpt
A New Excerpt from this same chapter follows below, to allow us to
condense to our purpose, the survey from that site. Parts of it are emphasised
for our easier action.
At
the outset in our site, we have first noted and then examined two
"books" - and it is very close to LITERALLY two books. They are both
exceptionally well-known,
the Bible for the mind and the heart of man, and
the DNA for his structure.
Each
is inscribed with efficiency, profound symbolic coherence and cohesion,
intimate capacity for correlation with command, system to the finest point, and
just that combination of meaning and symbolic method which constitutes design,
direction and communication. If this is not communication, nothing could be.
This
however is not all. There are two additional books, somewhat more figurative,
but not in the least imaginary. The FUNCTIONS to which EACH OF THESE EXTRA
'BOOKS' REFERS is as real as any between two covers in our ambit and purvey of
scholars.
The
third then, or the first of the two extra books is this:
the co-ordination of mental world and physical world,
auditory reception and command execution, between the man whose bodily equipment is
programmed, and the world
which
has its physical and botanical, biological equipment programmed. The programs
intermesh well; their symbolic sub-structures are unitary in kind, so that the
efforts of the one, avail in the other, the impacts of the one are understood
in the other, and (cf. Predestination and Freewill, Part 4), there are no alogisms to be
found: the logic is unitary.
More,
the mind of man, using programmed sub-structures for its ultra-programmatic
progressions and pursuits, can understand the products that surround him.
There
is therefore, and this is the fourth book, this second unit in our second
series: and
this is the comprehension-combination that
transcends.
It goes far beyond the mere structural logical cohesion and synthesis.
To emit and receive in terms of a common system is one thing, extremely
magnificent though this created product undoubtedly is; but to be so prepared
in spirit and mind, so that the raw materials, themselves coherent and cohesive
between the two systems, within and without, are able to be grasped, intuited,
subjected to imaginative incursions, brought into the scope of thought and will
and analysis, yes of understanding for action by the non-material,
purpose-proposing, imaginative dimension of the being called man, his spirit,
this is the next generation of marvel. (Cf. SMR pp. 348ff..)
Yet
it would seem indeed scapegrace in gratitude to God who performed this
production with the necessary linguistic, mathematical, comprehensive,
analytical skill to manufacture symbols and significances (symbol targets),
intimations and executions, thought sub-structures in logic and meaning, and
interaction with a subject also formed, if we did not notice a fifth book.
This is the power to ruminate concerning the Maker Himself.
This
naturally is the copestone, to which the imaginary relationship of Pinocchio to
his craftsman corresponds in reality. Right through to the inward realisation
of the thrust of the logic, the communality of the communication, the direction
of the design, the strategy of the construction, man can peer toward the God
who made him.
He
can do more. It is not necessary in this field to speak of a 5th book, although
it would be perfectly meaningful. One prefers not to do so, as at the level we
have now reached, the affair is inter-personal to such an extent that the term
'book', so fitting earlier, is somewhat distanced. Rather this is the
intimacy-provision for creator and creature when that creature is man. This is
what book No. 1 provides for (the Bible), book No.2 is sub-structured to enable
(the cells DNA and allied phenomena, atomic parameters and provisions), book
No. 3 ascends to substantiate, book No. 4 arises to confirm. We shall however
give it a name: there is in this fifth dimension, a correlation that is
spiritual in kind, so that it may be termed scope for spiritual communication,
and for concord.
We are moving from the concept of 'book' to that of 'look',
or
inter-personal interchange.
This
allows testing of promises, assimilation of pronouncements, reaction to orders,
comprehension of commands, in a SETTING of illumination of conspectus, like a
search-light revealing from the nose of an aeroplane, the configuration of the
land far below, and something of the ways of those who live there.
This is an ultra-programmatic conspectus, and an inter-personal
opening.
It is a vista on the divine.
In
Repent or Perish Ch. 7 we proceed to the Biblical realities which
give just as stoutly certain a basis for all the innovations, excursions,
flights and surveys as radar plus cameras could of the surface below as an
aircraft passes swiftly through.
End of Excerpt
ADMIRING THE CREATED ARCHITECTURE OF
OUR SPIRITS,
THEIR SCOPE AND AGENCY
What
then ?
The spirit of man over the realm, the
multiplicities of which, the integration of which, the sheer precipitous
heights of which, the depths for which are so profound,
·
is at work estimating, consciously
evaluating, assessing logical rectitude, perceptive accuracy and accord,
conceptual adequacy, orientative acuteness, display and disposition of
elements, cohesion of parts, comprehensibility of the whole, reason for it,
results from it,
·
so that the intellect, the mind,
supplying the interface between spirit and those realms into which man is so
acutely placed by his constructor, sings with joy at the magnificence of it,
·
and his spirit rejoices with heart
at the conspectus of it,
·
while the one who has FOUND his
Maker, exults in the personal acquaintance with such a Master builder, such a
fountain of wisdom so exuberant,
·
and thrills at the prospect of
walking and working in the very presence of such power, understanding, yes …
and WISDOM!
There is an
exhilaration and exuberance which comes, like the look and fragrance of flowers
to the ardent horticulturalist, which not merely draws, but enables (Ephesians
1:17ff.), reposing like flowers in their scenic display, coloured by the sun of
benevolence, moved into comprehension by the wind of understanding, coming from
the Creator of all, known on His premisses, by grace, and in His premises, by
faith (cf. Ephesians 1:6,11), no mere meeting, but a positioning as in a
household.
Matter’s
own design moves beneath all this, as paper is beneath the pen of the
author, or a blank screen in front on his electronically applied eyes. The
spirit of man is however not merely an instrument committed to such
glorious gyrations, such commanding adventures, such U 2-like surveys, such
glidings into territories formerly but vaguely intuited, but now seen; for like
your car, it has its own needs.
Why does
one sometimes find in a given area (as one found late yesterday) such a spirit
of negativity, of callow and bold indifference to God, such a very fever of
aversion in the children of men ? Some neighbourhoods seem almost to BREED it,
like rats in
It is because the spirit of man has needs and if
these are neglected, what happens ? It is like the beautiful and expensive car
which one man given much money following an accident, bought for himself. It
was so wonderful that its needs of oil and the like, did not appear to occur to
him. The engine appeared ruined! Great as is the car, great also is its need.
It may not be complicated if you understand it, but it is NECESSARY.
The greater the inworking of design, the greater
the integration of parts, components; the higher the flights of thought
involved; the more the exposure to the environment, the more likely is it that
the need will be crucial and perhaps occur soon, or if not, bite hard if in its
time it is not met!
It is so with this glorious series of interfaces and
interactions, regions of realisation and scopes of performance, this
multiplicity of action interchanges and this whole skyscraper of co-functionalities,
supervised by spirit and interpreted through mind, known as MAN! There is, to
follow the car image, a spiritual need for oil, for water, for adjustment … NOT
principally to respond to measures to the environment, since it is DESIGNED to
meet that: but to meet its OWN changing jars and thrusts, which may
displace this or that at first slightly, but then so as to be unsightly,
dysfunctional or perilous.
There is for the spirit of man, a need quite
simply not for a mere mechanic, as is so also for the mind, which is more than
an automated organisation and so does not respond to mere drugs or psychiatric
manipulation, except in dull or inadequate ways, lacking the sparkle and depth
appropriate: there is need for the Spirit of the Maker. Spirit begets, for love
gives, and tends to amplify; and what is so begotten, needs spirit. Hence man
is social in kind. His spirit is a communicative medium and a personal
disposing agent, and it is built for company. If necessary, as in solitary
confinement, it can commune with itself; but there is always something missing
if man does not commune beyond himself.
If necessary, as in a submarine or space craft,
it can commune intensively and intimately with other spirits, or it may suffer
the chills of being able to do so while in fact socially indisposed, and so
forth: but there is still something missing when man is alone, even without the
companionship of God. He is made otherwise.
It is what, then, in the life of the spirit of a
man, that is quite indispensable to the ardour and the amplitude of life ? It
is the Master Spirit, the Creator who made man to have not only the THOUGHT
capacities and the ROVING realizations of adventures of mind and spirit, but to
have the SPIRITUAL NEEDS of that supervisory being who made it with interface,
if you will, or spiritual fealty provisions, if you won’t, for Himself.
Without this, the THRUST capacity of the spirit
of man can become the BUST desire of the suicide, the peacock VANITY of the
proud, the PUSH proclivity of the eternal adolescent, never realizing the
nature of truth, and putting himself/herself into that central command module
which it manifestly cannot rationally have, being itself a product in a place
of portent, not a king in his majestic domain. The universe certainly does not
revolve around any one of us!
With this Spirit of God Himself, then man must commune or
become distorted, like one of those horrific looking major crash cars, still
vain with its pretence, its memories, but hideously dysfunctional.
Ø
It is this dysfunctionality which breeds violence of body, as in
terrorists, or of mind, as in dogmatic intrusivists, that bane of afflicted
universities, as in the evolutionary myth (cf. SMR pp. 140ff., cf.
TMR Ch.1,
Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming … Chs. 4, 5, 6, Secular
Myths and Sacred Truth Chs. 6 and 8).
Ø
Likewise it breeds those unhallowed self-adulations of spirit which, be
they clothed with specious humility, or arrant in manifest arrogance, strut
their way like beserk struts to an aeroplane’s wings, walking away in ‘glory’
to the devastation of the flight powers of the aircraft itself!
Ø It is this which breeds most often, the cynics, and sours the sceptics. They do not like what they see, and hide their eyes from the pathology, ignore the opposite examples of clarity and charity, and as if seized by a spiritual coughing fit, distort reality to suit their mood (cf. SMR Ch. 3).
Man, then, has need of an embracive spiritual communion not
only if possible, with others of his ilk, but as necessary, with the wonder of
His Maker. It is not an option, any more than is food to the body. You can
fast; but not forever. You can boast of your fasting power, but it will not
merely slow you down; it will destroy your body in the end, just as inept
spiritual fasting from God, will destroy your spirit in the end. To that,
there must be added the prospect of judgment, for the Creator has made
wonderful spiritual automobiles, but not so that they neglect the oil, or use
paraffin instead.
Let us
change, however, the imagery, after stating it principially. Man’s mind is
instrumental, his spirit purposive, and it may communicate its purposes to the
mind, which then adduces purposes of its own in fulfilment of the perspective
of the adventures, the plans and the perspectives spiritually in view. All
these components, though wonderfully integrated for procedure, have their own
needs.
Let
us look at the phenomenon of programming not only for comparison, but for
contrast with the ‘running’ of man: in this, that much is beyond our own
specifyings, but with care, for it is not nearly adequate for comparison, since
the very spirit of man which CREATES the computer program in deference to the
spiritual confines and profiles of the person concerned, is itself not a
program. We can make what resembles in a little, what we are, but in so doing,
we are conceiving and creating in a way which transcends what we are making!
Our
programs thus invented may run as directed, but man can make errors on purpose,
or even despite his purpose, one of his properties being independent will,
which though it can be captured by culture, enslaved by sin (anti-creator
specifications which the roving mind illegally institutes for its own pleasure,
defying the maker and defiling the equipment concerned).
Nevertheless,
in limited degree, the concept of program can contribute to our understanding
of some features here.
Thus
it appears that in the program on this computer, which is currently being used,
there is a programmatic whole which is integrated to the purposes of the maker,
to interact and respond mutually with that necessarily adeptly and acutely
correlated conceptuality which enables cohesive action; but there is more. It
seems that the SCAN DISK operation, which is to check for deformities,
enormities, irregularities, disk distortions, like chaff among the wheat,
displaced file pieces, non-correlations of names and items and the like, is
somewhat sui generis*2.
That
is, it has a measure of independence PRECISELY so that it may help to preserve
the due DEPENDENCE, mutual inter-dependence of the REST! It has the function of
offering and working in a somewhat surveying scenario, over the scene. In this,
it is of course limited, being a mere slave device. It is its survey with
comparative independence which is striking, for so do we survey the very work
of our own minds, and investigate with our own principles the devices and
indications of our own spirits.
Thus,
the spirit of man must do far more than respond even to program, in considering
the features of its field, both internal and external, yes and towards its
Maker, that third dimension, that ultimate environment. It must SCAN the scene
and relate each part to the other and to specifications; but it must also
consider the developments, the principles and the very purposes themselves.
This then takes us two steps upwards: first to the CAPACITY for review, prone
to error of appetite and apperception, and then to the ultimate character of
its assessments.
To
do this, it needs PRINCIPLES, and these need CORRELATION WITH REALITY, rather
than merely with imagination. This is but one reason why it is ESSENTIAL that
the spirit of man be prompted by reason as well as drawn by its spiritual need
and aptitude for reality, must find what is the case, and not merely imagine
that in religion, imagination is of the slightest relevance, if it is not
disciplined by data, truly operational by being duly constrained, and not
erratically fey, as is the way with some.
TAKING THE GRANT FOR
GRANTED
Such was the spiritual swagger, to be sure toned down with that sense of sad inadequacy and strutting superficiality germane to such cases, that after advising that this disbelief IN ANYTHING, would not remove it, one considered the mood of this person.
To
disbelieve in ANYTHING is logically impossible. If you have a PERSON yourself,
is this to be the announcer of such a view, the propounder and the sustainer of it ?
What then is its validity, assumed in order to enable such a declaration ? Is a
thing, call it human: to be born without consent, to die without
permission, to have parents without selection, to have schools often without
participation in the final decision, politics without desire, diseases of mind
or body without permission, and is it to think by equipment donated and
to reason by premises unpropounded by itself - is this, then, such
a protoplasmic item, such a personal icon, as it quickly may become, to
make BELIEVING in something to have anything to do with its actual EXISTENCE ?
But of course: provided it is objectively oriented to truth, knowledgeable about reality, logically apt, personally sound, has access to what really is the case and knows why it is so. In short, if such a being knows God, well, such a statement could, in principle, be meaningful. If on the other hand, the person actually DOES know God, then HE MUST be there to know. Hence the only way such a statement could be right, would come when it was wrong. It must deny what it assumes to have any chance of being right. This is not a good way to begin.
In fact, in terms of reason and of data (cf. Repent or Perish Chs. 2, 7, SMR, TMR), one not only must want to know the Creator, but know HOW to know the Creator. Even the Queen can not be arbitrarily summoned to an audience, except perhaps for that singular occasion when a burglar, or interloper came to talk to her in her own private bedroom at the Palace (human inadequacy of security, it would seem, not royal indifference to such interludes). How does one obtain an appointment ? There is certainly to be a sense of protocol, and often of need as well.
How would one gain interview with God ? Seeking Him might help, but it would, as with all interviews, have to be in the right place. It is no use seeking an interview with an Egyptian prince, if such still linger, by surveying the social scene in Iceland. Seeking Him with all the heart would be most effective, but this damaged and often deranged instrument of man can be obtrusively occlusive, darkening the motives, despoiling the search through the vanities of mind and flesh which would command otherwise (cf. Romans 7, 1).
Without
God, confidence is no substitute for accuracy, nor is self-esteem a replacement
for ascertainment of the facts. A date with data is precisely unreliable when
one has first a date with sin, a donation of alienation, a flirtation with
imagination instead of a meeting with majesty, a flit, conscious or otherwise,
from God rather than a meeting with Him, all this with the vanity of
self-pleasing to boot (cf. Ephesians 4:17-19, Romans 1, II Thessalonians
2:8-10).
God is
simply not available except on His own terms. It is even to some extent
parallel in material and mental things. If you misapprehend a matter, when
dealing with matter, as many physicists often do (cf. SMR pp. 403, 419ff.),
sometimes with vapid virulence from adjoining philosophers (cf. SMR pp. 262ff.),
this too prevents entry of understanding, the meeting, in this case, of the
realities concerned.
How much more is God not to be found by looking in the navel of matter, in the interstices of mind; for He is to be found where the constructor of the predisposed forms and formalities of matter and mind alike, have found their origin, and that being by definition not matter itself, nor merely a series of mental phenomena, but is spiritual! Thus in Isaiah 55, we find that God is to be sought WHILE He may be found. Such is the spirit of man, that fatuous vacuities of thought can impinge on it, like stray cats wanting to be adopted, and then seize it, making it subject to their thrust, as when cat fanciers become besotted. This is not to depreciate cats, but to deprecate vain perspectives.
In fact, if the DNA show the custom built parameters and procedures, so the Bible shows the custom made principles and commands. Both are verifiable in action, inspectable in kind, and assessable in result. The correlation in each case is over the whole contour, except that in the DNA, such is the intricacy of the dispersion of information, that one must take care not to ostracise the attendants in the acknowledgement of the chief source. When data in and data to parallel are in view, it is no great feat to match them. Small interpretative gift is needed to watch their consonance or dissonance.
GRANTING WHAT MAY BE TAKEN
God went far, as with the spoiled creation, man, made necessary, in multitudes
of prophets, in the governed State of Israel of old, in His dealings WITH it by
the prophets, His words TO it in the same way, and the eventuations only too
visible to those who often heard them! However, He went far further than this
(cf. SMR Ch. 1, where it is
demonstrated), and sent not only words (like the DNA procedures for action),
but a Person (like the researcher looking at the words or DNA, to use our
type). Exactly mirroring who He is, by Being God Express, this Person exhibits
the attributes of God, not in form, too glorious to study, but in our own
format, so lowly as to bear searching, and searching indeed was His reception.
They
assailed him with vehement lawyer type trick questions and interrogations (cf.
Luke
This
historical revelation does not change, merely has become more manifest as God
opened more and more aspects with increasing demonstration and illumination,
over the millennia till Christ came. It is as settled now as then, all resting
solely, naturally enough, on Himself, hence without diffusion, disturbance or
mutation (cf. Ephesians 1:10, Galatians 1:6-10, Philippians 2:1-11, cf. TMR Ch. 3
with Ch. 2). It is this
precisely which is one of its major criteria. It does not depend on WHICH man was
a prophet, which TRIBE he came from, which NATION he predicted in (Jews being
in
The New
Covenant likewise declares, in Christ, its total accord with the
unchanging God, from whom the Old Covenant came (Matthew
Thus we have met the DNA book, the Bible as one whole revelation, the Christ as the personal emissary and manifestation of God, incarnate and definitive (Hebrews 1), and the complementarity without alteration of principle in the least degree, of the Old and the New Covenant, Paul himself at length summarizing just this thing (as in Romans 4, 11 cf. references*4).
Love enhances understanding, helps preclude misunderstanding, aids
appreciation, aids the mind to envisage and be imbued in the perspectives and
pursuits of its object, does not aggravate the folly, but seeks to overcome it.
Without this, everlasting hatreds and frothing follies, revenges and
indifferences arise like rodents, grasshopper plagues, consuming all, giving
nothing.
With this
goes marvellous restraint, for goodness it not to be found in force, itself
mere abrogation of personality’s place which, except it be in divine judgment
to expose the chronic pathology in the acquired death syndrome. So God offers,
does not compel; operates but acts in integrity; confers but does not rupture.
It is in and to faith that not rupture, but recreation comes, like a seed that
bursts into life above ground, instead of rotting below.
Let us consider it then.
Reason leads to the book as in SMR Ch. 1; the book leads to the Person who came at the announced date from hundreds of years beforehand (Highway of Holiness Ch.4 ), and did what was in precision and profusion announced a millennium beforehand, and then increasingly over the continuing centuries, till it had reached a vast array of identikit phenomena by 500 B.C. (cf. SMR Ch. 9). Thus the Person verifies the Book, just as history to the very day of Christ, and to this very contemporary hour in our own time, is verifying not only His words, but those in the covenant that was before He came (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).
Moreover, pursuing reason is not only victorious evidentially, empirically and
historically. It is a course which happily leaves undone what is better so; for
the demolition of the instrument of thought in the interests of thought's
constructions is an avenue for angst, indeed its expression, but it is far from
being its solution as devastating the moon with a nuclear bomb would aid one to
get there.
As to the book, that basis, necessity and criterion for valid thought (cf. TMR Ch. 5, Repent or Perish Chs. 2 and 7 ), it is nothing to do with the personal preference of this or that man, any more than feasible physics is this, though many try their hands in rationally ostracised appeals to reason! (see refs. above). Rather does it contain the summary, historically acute, the survey, the direction, the conveyance both of meaning and rule for life, to man, moving like a giant waterfall over its precipice, to flow on to develop fertility in the land.
What then
is a major feature in this divine presentation: after the Cross of sin’s
guilt-cancellation, provided in the life donation of the Messiah as a
sacrifice, accursed on the cross to cover all who by faith receive Him as He is
and for what He has done ? It is this: that it is the LIFE OF GOD which is shared,
donated, made available (cf. I John 1:1-4, John
There is at least part of the charm of it, that this being so, He yet condescends (Philippians 2): and a Cross as a calling card, it is scarcely haughty! Here then is the aerodrome for the aeronautics of the soul, the word of God its ground, the gauge of understanding and of destiny; the grace of God its construction dynamic; and the Saviour, God as man, the very air it breathes and cause of its existence on the one hand, and acceptance on the other (cf. Ephesians 1:6,11).
As to this,
it is made perpetual in ONE feature which is, in a creaturely sense,
transferable. Thus the life which knows God IS eternal, as He is (John 17:1-3,
That is the way it is.
THINKING ? IT IS A
SPLENDID
HOW THEN DOES
ONE THINK ?
One thinks in terms of a structure of mind, body and spirit, one trilogy; of an interface designed and pre-prepared for this mind with matter and the lower creations; of a surveying censor and overviewer, which if divorced from the Maker, distorts, disturbs and presents a truly unlovely face, which in turn turns many away from each other.
As to this,
it is presented for use in terms of logical profiles and forms on the one hand,
pre-prepared and duly installed not with a computer originator or technician or
both, but from the Creative Hand of the living God; indeed, especially
under the auspices of a travailing and availing spirit which deploys mind,
invents thought, conceives creations, effects purposes.
If again,
this created spirit of man be without God, it finds no place for purposes
except the adventitious, or the imagined, either absolutely or relatively, in
terms of some merely subordinate purpose. Hence thought can be noble, notable,
creative, disturbed, holy, happy, inspired, partially inspired with insights
and partially fired by hell, in terms of desire to rule all, be all, have all;
it can limp or whimp, lash or smash, construe or construct, moved by one’s
spirit, minding or not minding its business in the domains of liberty or the
acumens of industry.
We think because WE ARE PERSONS, so made, with adept equipment poured out into the moulds, the forms and the features of reason, spirit and emotion, personality and procedure, liberty and licence (cf. Licence for Liberty); and we think WITH this, just as we tend to disturb, distress or misdeploy these very things with the guile, the non-goodness, the non-grace which, being contrary to God, is also contrary to itself, so tending to make of man not merely a deceitful instrument (cf. Hosea 9:7), but a delusive thinker (Romans 1:16-19), occupied often with the more minor parameters (cf. Matthew 23) which depend less on the ultimates: man so further deluding himself into the imagination that he is competent to say this, I BELIEVE IN NOTHING!
The
paraphernalia for thought, and above all, the spirit which inspires and
directs it, can be trivialized, thus, as if this were no more than laughing in
a void, aching with disavowals of its very interstices, inventing its invention
by convention according to culture, not reality in terms of reason. Thus it
readily becomes void of ground, and groundless in haste, the braying of a
donkey because he has found pasture, but not at all considering the ground of
his ground*3, or on what terms, or indeed for how long, it is
available.
The Biblical word, perhaps, should be goats rather than
donkeys. The result ? it is the same.
END-NOTES
*1 Proverbs is arresting in this area. 16:9 tells us that “a man’s heart devises his way, but the LORD directs
his steps.” There is the supernatural character in the ultimate, whether for
the son or the renegade, as He assesses and disposes.
16:22: “Understanding is a wellspring of life to him who has it, but the instruction of fools is folly” – the intrusion of folly, the inclusion of understanding, the joint arraigning dynamics, the alternate illuminative dispositions, one such that if the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness, as Christ declared in the Sermon on the Mount.
17:4: “One who does wicked things gives heed to false lips, and a liar gives ear to a mischievous tongue.” The consignment of the spirit is to its milieu, and the interplay of evils is cumulative.
17:9: “He who covers a transgression seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates friends.” The function of love, found in God as essential and inalienable, works wonders in man when it comes from and with understanding, which savours of the spirituality of God.
18:4: “The words of a man’s mouth are like deep waters, and the wellspring of wisdom like a flowing brook.” Such is the blessedness, the refreshing, the naturalness of life when man walks with that supernatural Spirit who begot him, created his equipment, and can work in, through and with his spirit. When this occurs, there is a sort of scenic beauty, that of the composed, the comradely and of understanding of reality. It flows with a peaceful beauty.
Data are important, and arranging them in the categories of thought and knowledge is pleasant to those who, loving the truth which is definable only in God, seeks it with relish and stores it with comfortable harmony, each part with the other. For this, there is appetite which is just, functional and good.
19:8: “He who gains wisdom loves his own soul; he who keeps understanding shall find good.”
Man is not the ultimate, nor an abstraction. Hence, being neither the matrix, centre nor fountain of the universe, he needs to find his foundation, to find it well, accurately and stably. This is the nature of life which is both derivative and significant for fellowship with God. It is not a reaction box, a response item, or a deployment utensil; hence it needs the understanding which appertains to persons, in the presence of the personal being who created him. Without this, he hates himself, finds evil and even if in the scurry of adventure, he rejoices in his own follies, yet is the end bitterness because empty pretence, pretension or both.
Man loves to parade self-sufficiency, either as a race, a person or a tribe, country or group. The majestic edifices of his construction become in due time, the grave-yards of ambition, the target of envy, the debacle of the passage of unkindly time, unimpressed with pretension, the spectre of folly or, if good and godly, the testimony of the abiding stability of truth. When God is with it, it has the realism of truth, the savour of spirituality and the tang to last.
Proverbs 20:27:
“The spirit of man is
the lamp of the LORD,
Searching all the
inner depths of his heart.”
Here is the interface with the divine; but because
man is NOT programmatic (he can make the things, has some of these for
accessories, in part or whole, subject to indirect influence or to nothing
conscious at all), but personal; manipulable certainly, but not machined;
capable of intuiting, discerning, discreetly cognizing, disposing the will here
or there, depending on the degree of its pathology, though not of course
absolutely, since he is derivative, yet for all that, answerable for the
condition of his will: what follows ? (Cf. Tender Times for Timely Truth
Ch. 10, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Chs.
9 and 13, SMR
pp. 23ff.)
We need a new term that is free of ambiguity, this
follows first of all!
What shall it be called ? Interactive
personal repository, IPR: too technical sounding. The human-divine
margin ? too spatially conceived to be stimulating to a sense of
reality. Spirit, you say, and assuredly this is what ONE of the
relating beings is, and the other has, but we are speaking of the notion of the
one and the other as they meet. Communing relationship ? This is what is
meant, so let us use it (CR).
Thus there is the CR between the spirit of man,
derivative but personal, and the Spirit of God, increate and personal. As the
One contacts, communes with the other, then there is a shower of light, which
rather reminds one of that glorious spectacle in the physical realm, the
It is a beautiful and awesome sight. Light
arises from its source, touches the earth like the hand of some
beautician, helping madam’s face with artistic pats as she adjusts its …
contours; yet it is electric also, but not too dashing, merely contained.
That is a physical phenomenon, but in its mode,
it says something of another one, equally from OUTSIDE, but this time, not
merely outside the earth, but outside the universe: for that, it is a mere
play-pen, or at times, stage, or again, country house. It is this which the
Lord has made. Its magnificence attests His munificence, its dimensions the
least of His thoughts.
Least ? Yes, for it is merely material, before
you come to the advent of life, and merely conscious or a sort of derivative of
a derivative even then, in the creative sense, in terms of structure; for man
has what the lower life orders merely touch, or may find as relatable, in
some measure or other, depending on the case. Man, puny in some things,
extinguishable in body in a manner most distressing to the majestic man philosophies,
is yet HIMSELF RELATABLE not merely to lower forms of life, but to the CREATOR
HIMSELF.
There, on the one hand, is the rub, for
rubbishing life is a dangerous, indeed perilous activity, like walking with
louds hurrahs on delicate alpine snow drifts, after recent falls. Yet on the
other hand, there is the wonder of it all. Children can relate to parents, and
it is this not least which gives them when very young a sense of significance
and meaning. They are germs of the maturation to come. Here however we have
seeds themselves MADE, created de novo, in terms of their category, this
as well as beings having to relate to their Maker.
What happens then at the CR, when the Spirit of
God, like Southern Aurora lights, lights on the darkness (for man without God
is really dark, with glimmers here and there, for all the pride,
magnificently attested by the very furore of folly which is the normal façade
of mutually destructive philosophies): what then ?
Then the light reveals, it does so with beauty
natural to itself, but with results depending on its field, its object, in this
case, MAN! This light, that of the Lord, searches, it exposes, it
manifests what is there: as Paul says, light is that which makes manifest. How
often in the early morning, when one arises, there are forms and shapes,
possibilities and things half-forgotten, but if one turns on the light, it is
all revealed.
What is it on which the light so acts in man ?
It is his SPIRIT. This lights up like a candle
lit, and the beam of the Lord - let us graduate to torches, moving through this
globe, exposes all. It is intimate, this spirit of man, it knows; it is bright
this light of the Lord, for it transcends but does not disdain to use the torch
of the spirit of man. It touches his innermost ruminations, meditations, or
grounds for the lack of them! (cf. Romans 8:26).
It researches in its searching, and can look beyond in its intimacies. He, it
is He who knows all, giving a liberty which is authoritative and a love which
is suffusive, like the Southern Aurora lights: commanding but not impelling,
except, that is, the love of the Lord is there where He moves, in the heart of
the subject found, one who either knows or is ignorant of Him.
What happens however, if the commanding power and
wonder of the light of the Lord finds a snuffed candle ? a dead torch ? Then
the light of His majesty is still sufficient, and He can recharge the battle,
re-light the candle, or even use it like a cattle prod, to stir the depths of
the very dead (cf. Hebrews 4:12, John 16:8-11).
Thus no
merely factitious fable disadorns the mental landscape or the spiritual air,
but a co-ordinator IN us, having made all, fashions thought, super-assessing all,
aligning it to His word, which is His depiction. This, the oneness which
results from His works, is now the cause of the effectiveness of our
contemplation, with both the means and the ground for it, nourished
inter-personally and lifting us as adopted children (if His) to the knowledge
of our Father; for without His Word, no way to Him could be found. Christ,
however, having come from Him with infinite intimacy everlasting, comes to us,
and leads us to Him (John 1:3,14,18).
Thus the metaphysical, the meta-religion, the epistemological, the logical, the material, the mental, the spiritual, the co-ordinate and the inordinate, and indeed the supra-ordinate are seen in that validity which only the super-natural can give, just as it gives to the natural both bounds and existence, being cause of both, the limit for the limited. The created ones, we see as in inspection; the Creator as in apperception, but when the eye is opened to the cause of our consequence, we find just why we are, though so small, yet of consequence at all!
What makes it like finding a gold mine, is this, that so far from achieving some minor consequence as a consequence of His action, we, when adopted on His terms, find ourselves even children of God. It is the lack of this consummation, originally part of the specifications for man, that make him such a parade of pretended consequence for the inconsequential (as divorce from God soon makes him, at the ultimate), and possessed passion for the inconsequential, seized endlessly in unavailing substitution for that God who has not only no equal, but no domain comparable: since He made them all.
In fact, of course, if you make yourself an
arbitrary arbiter, a baseless assessor, devoid of absolutes, including truth,
and without access because it is deemed not to be there, then all your
surmisings and surprisings, demisings and arisings in thought are one: they are
not there, in terms of validity at all (cf. SMR pp. 99ff., TMR Ch. 5). You do not have it. You simply
cannot grasp what you deny to exist, and then use it to declare that it does
not exist: unless irrationality is your god, logic your enemy, and reason your
foe.
If so, however, nothing you reason can stand,
and nothing you declare to be truth, can avail itself of that summarily
evacuated category.
If, on the other hand, you make yourself god,
and declare as deemed appropriate, we have the unfortunate fact that your
arising and departing in its time, do not attest such a position. The universe
manifestly does not turn upon you, nor do you uphold it, nor again, are you its
central focus and feature, far less its gird and guide.
If, in either ramblings, you assert that nature,
or matter, or what object you will, is the ultimate, then you are cut off a
priori, from being right. You are as excluded by your presuppositions in
this, as if you were making simply yourself the criterion. You have already
excluded that to which you make appeal in your declaration, for its ground. The
additional follies are noted, in part, in Repent or Perish Ch. 7.
You can flee from God (cf. Psalm 139), but
there is nowhere to go, logically, or personally for that matter (cf. Little
Things Ch. 5, Tender Times For Timely
Truth Ch. 10, Deliverance from
Disorientation Ch. 8, Predestination
and Freewill Section 1).
Thus there is no way for truth to be found
except in God, with knowledge and power, the origin and originator; but even
this is not sufficient for man. You need to KNOW Him, so that your own
proclivities, limits and assessments do not become a filter for the divine,
allowing like sun-glasses, only something, or like
You need, in short conversion.
In fact, the glorious fact, that which makes
life a delight and even a rapture, is this, that God HAS SPOKEN: we can
even see the logical certainty of it (SMR Chs.
1, 3, 10), as well as the empirical actuality of it (SMR Chs. 1, 4, 5, 8-9), and these accord in one. One
says “delight”, but this is potential only, and actual for those who knowing
this, also KNOW HIM. When His objective truth becomes HIS donation, testable,
verifiable, personable in Christ, reaching to all domains with solutions,
explaining and extricating man from his perennial philosophic problems (there
are none of any weight remaining, for “light is that which makes manifest” and it here does just
that!), what then ?
THEN you receive INWARDLY, what is available
OUTWARDLY in the Bible, and noting the prohibition on adding (Proverbs 30:6,
Galatians 1, Revelations 22), and the divine challenge to TEST IT and compare
(Isaiah 41,43, 48), and finding the very power of God within, which is made
apparent outside in creation and in His word, alike, and in concert in the
thing called history (cf. SMR Chs. 8 -
9): you rejoice. Who would not ? Peter
says just that, it is “joy unspeakable” (I Peter 1:5-8ff.). That is when you fit, where you belong.
It is sad when a bird is without a nest, as Proverbs declares it.
Yet a dog might fit with a hard master who has
bought him. That is an unfitting fixture for a misfit. When you find that you
fit where every desire for the noble, the honest, the true, the virtuous, the
brave, the excellent, the understanding, the affectionate, the brotherly,
the bright, the sound, the wonder and the majesty is likewise to be found, it
is THEN that your rejoicing knows no bounds. Indeed, to continue to citation
from Peter concerning this joy, it is “full of glory”. It is not a matter of dancing in the
twilight, or screeching. Does a man in love go beserk, or if it be genuine, not
calf love, or passionate lust, does he not inside himself, commune with joy,
and find no great desire to cast the pearls of his joy to the ‘swine’ who know
nothing of love ? (cf. Matthew 7:6). Yet here, there is one significant
difference.
A man with a personal love of her who is to become his wife, might be cautious in sharing this knowledge with a world often banal and wicked, not to say corrupt and unfeeling; but one who has found God has a duty greater by far than that of any physician, who has just discovered a cure for cancer, to divulge this. The physical cure might deliver for time; this, however, places man in his nest, in truth, in mercy, in reconciliation with his Maker, in the place of rest.
How this reality is brought to those in need, is
by the Gospel (cf. Matthew 28:19-20, The Kingdom of Heaven, Appendix, TMR Ch. 2,). HOW people are found is
by ‘fishing’ (Mark 1:17), for here we have the phenomenon of reluctance to be
found, often because of an assertion of ‘rights’ which are in fact wrongs
against God, the Creator, and the connivance with sin, which whether it be
pride or other lust, makes the appeal of some harlot to the lusty seem all too
similar, if not indeed rather less!
Concerning the love of God, see Spiritual
Refreshings for the Digital Millenium Chs.
9-12.
See
on Covenant and Covenants:
Questions and Answers Chs. 9,
11, 13;
Biblical Blessings Appendix News, Appendix II, Ch.
3 and Ch.12;
Barbs, Arrows and Balms 13, 17, 20, 23 , *1in 29, Appendix 2, 3 ;
Things Old and New