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CHAPTER I

Harmony is not Hapless

but Comprehensive, Available and Brilliant

Dizziness does not really contribute accord, since it is out of alignment with reality. Clash does not produce wisdom, since the contest either wounds, or kills or even if it stimulates in victory, does not produce the truth, and at most attests it, if the clash were not hapless, but holy.

There is a place for godly contest, for those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law contend with them (Proverbs 28:4). If you do not stand up for what is right, can you blame evil for engulfing your state, demeaning your situation, polluting your discipleship or ruining your crops ?

Such is the case in the Church, as you see in the frank discussions of Acts 15 or II Corinthians 11-12, where evils were confronted or summarily dealt with; and in the State, if evils be not met with exposure, then the democracy merely drifts into the realm of forces, like a ship moving towards a whirlpool, which are increasingly beyond its capacity.

Yet when it is all done, it is FROM the truth that the correction is to be made, and truth is not manufactured by hitting people, murdering them or making them into a sort of biological piece of machinery under the dictates of some deluded paranoid.

It is not good for such dictation among men: whether of male over female as so often is reported of the Islamic condition, where women in many cases are made to abide in the home, or suffer that vast misnomer, 'female circumcision' in direct derogation of the construction of the Almighty at a fundamental level; or else of sharia religious law  made mandatory in an open State, now closed, without due discrimination. In such style, it is as if God were to be reached by basic correction of His creation, or else by compulsion or might of arm; for if mere automatic responses were the divine desire, some type of programmatic alarm-clock apparatus could have been made, instead of man.

Truth and force are as different as diamonds and coal, and more so; for those are both carbon, but truth is the knowledge of what is, whereas force is simply a contrivance to make something happen, maybe, if it is sufficiently strong; or induce it to happen. Force, or push, or thrust, or the capacity to impart acceleration has nothing to do with perception and understanding and comprehension of the nature of things, and of their origin so that things they might become, delimited, definable and characterisable in their set conditions.

Clash is not productive of truth.

Harmony is not productive of truth either, but it IS a potential consequence of it.

Let us suppose that men and women lived in an idyllic island, in some beautiful place like Fiji or the Solomon Islands, where it might be felt that nothing could ever go wrong (though of course it DID, in no small way, when its time came). Does this harmony with a quiet climate and a lapping watefront with beautiful scenes imply harmony with one another ? Or if a tsunami comes, does this imply that it will
bend at the sight of such a site, and displace itself and foam away where it would be more appropriate to surge ? In each case, certainly not.

Harmony has many depths. To commence, one must consider the nature of a man or woman or child. There is a capacity to will, and to absorb or be affronted by frustration; and since we are none of us anything in the remotest degree like all-powerful, desires and designs are sure to be frustrated, unless they are in alignment with reality.

There is no harmony with frustration.

Hence reality must be known if harmony is to be found. It is not found in the sea, which rises like a wall to confront civilisation. It is not to be seen on the land, where earth-quake and searing heat can demolish the work of patient generations. It is not found in the tiger with his ageing frame, or the lion with his borken teeth, no nor in the grass-hopper or the locust, with their withering ways, which come and pass into oblivion after their job is done.

Nor is it seen in the constructions of a democracy which, wisely avoiding the dictatorship often of ninnies (and God made this expressly clear in Daniel 4:31-37, and 4:17, that He appoints whom He will over the kingdoms and may set over them the lowest of men!), can present something little better when, despising the liberties in grace granted, to rule themselves, they rule by misrule. Readily in history do they distance the Almighty in their songs and wrongs, and act the fool, as if they had made the earth, themselves included, and needed to consult only their wallets, their wallowing morals or their quarrelling selves, in order to find the path for the creation called man.

More is needed than this, but certainly not the dictatorship of those whose god is folly and whose name is lust. Nebuchadnezzar in the cited verses of Daniel above, found to his sorrow, but eventual relief, that power is not purity, that conquest is not wisdom and that God has His own paths and plans, and can demolish the impregnable and reduce the proud without difficulty; but democracies may also find that what was individual folly can as well be social and political, aggregate and national!

What is the source of law, of designated components in billions, involved in integral consequences enabling unitary action, of design in other words ? (cf. SMR pp. 211ff.). Where is the source of freedom, so that man may if he so desires, deliberately make errors to deceive or mislead ? Where is the rationale of rationality to be discerned, or of what is it comprised, that it enables the possessor to reason in a realm where it is applicable, and find causes, sources and conditions ? From what does understanding come, and where is the origin for the composition of mind, matter in designated form and unitary composition, with spirit in man to be found ? (cf. SMR Ch. 1).

It is not found in man, since he is a learner to this day concerning himself, and in many ways seems to understand progressively LESS, while mere techniques yield progressively more (cf. Great Execrations, Great Enervations, Greater Grace Ch.   6,  Defining Drama Ch. 10), to the point that arrogance in ignorance becomes a trade-mark of his having traded in the truth, to become a sort of dissevered inhabitant, like a fish in water indeed, but minus its skin.

Man even alone, can have so many passions, dispassions, depersonalisations (cf. Acme, Alpha and Omega Ch. 8, and Cascade ... Ch. 9), and roaming ruminations, leaving angst and anxiety, that harmony is by no means a hall-mark. Even if he resolves to slide and slip along with whatever does whatever, and just use what is there, as in the USA, once one could purchase studs on tyres to increase traction in ice and snowy conditions, and limit sliding: yet he still has the ultimate uncertainty of being a highly contrived piece of apparatus, with a spirit which can even use and attempt to abuse it; and the answer to be rendered is to more than other parts of the creation, each with its place and consignments. So his spirit cannot numb itself, nor can his heart be clean in his mists, limit the ventilation to reality as he may.

Harmony requires a deep penetrating oil, for all the parts and programs, the personality and the capacity of man (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Little Things Ch. 5). WHY is he here ? for WHAT should he strive ? HOW should he act in so immense a stage ? WHO is his mentor and in what PERSPECTIVE is he to be understood ? If you do not even understand yourself, what can you DO, that is wise, other than be what you happen to become ? and what knowledge is in that!

In answer man needs to go beyond relationships with State, his fellow man and even with himself, which is possible because having spirit, he has investigative power whether of his own psyche or natural objects which lack personality and power to voice choice, including perspective orientation.

He has to go to the source of all these contrivances, creations and dispositions, and finding the correct perspective, if he is able, share it, apply it and act accordingly.

However here his psyche, his personality, his liberty gets in the way. Firstly, man finds that though his mind may rove dispassionately at times over the affairs of the universe and its original composer of its ordered being, as distinct from its mere existence, yet there is an impediment. He may not DESIRE to find out, and if he begins to discover the answers, they affect him so greatly that at times it seems he literally would rather die than be informed. "I am all right!" says one, who desires NOTHING. All right ? for and in what ? All right in blindness and unknowledgeability ? Is it all right to know nothing of precipices and walk in the dark ? What does "all right" mean, but that the party has no desire for knowledge since will
is insistent on its appetites, whether of sex, money, power, prestige, greatness, self-fulfilment or savagery ?

This does not solve the problem; for it merely verbalises it, by being dismissive of its interstices.

One told this author, one now an enormously rich man, that in his youth he did not abandon Christianity because of any offence, anything wrong with it, but because it was not convenient! Honesty is always refreshing and how one could wish for refreshing for that soul, that in truth it might find what may indeed be inconvenient, but still reality.

Some say compassion, as shown so much recently in this land of Australia, is unreservedly good, for it shows an awareness of the plight of one's fellows, and though no right forces one to give, there is an awareness of need which has no bounds and needs no law. Yet is this really so ? Is there no moral law which impels so many to give to Aceh ? Is there no formulation that it is GOOD to regard people in gross misfortune with sympathy, since they are of our own race ? If there is not, it is still being acted on, and is formulable, whether or not the effort is taken to express it.

WHY then is it good so to regard other members of our race ? Iran does not seem to have burst its seams, for example, in the endeavours to help those in need, who presumably have some measure of fellowship, since Islam is dominant in both lands!

It is good because ... ?  and now opinions as shown in PRACTICE, obviously differ. It is not an indisputable proposition. Hitler and his numerous and continuing crew have thought or the latter think that it is good to let what is going go, so that what is staying can be genetically stronger. Let the powers of nature practise, and man be perfect! is the slogan, it seems. What powers to create are to be found in what is created is not at all clear; since new information in design is not found, and although man can create, he does not create the domains of matter, mind or spirit. The arrival of these wonderful genes and devices is not at all to be found just by waiting; for it is not what goes but what comes which is the point in such equations! (cf. SMR pp. 157ff., Barbs, Arrows and Balms Appendix  1).

Thus there is no rule, unless an UNDERLYING PERSPECTIVE be opted. If man is the product of God, then assuredly some sort of concern is needed in considering the property, others of our race, of this same God who put us into being. If however, the facts are avoided, and 'Nature' comes from nothing, or by magic, and law by aberrations, then there is no such conclusion, nor any place for logic, which makes that position literally indefensible. What is the reality concerning this giving ?

It is of course in this land,  the consequence of generations being taught of the way of Jesus Christ and the Good Samaritan, and concern for our race, including ourselves, even to the point of death if without force, we may by any means show the good which God has done for us, and which is available to all, while we in our own ways seek likewise to do what is good in the presence of all men.

It is only when, then, we move by the force of LOGIC to the fact of God (cf. SMR Chs. 1, 3, Repent or Perish Ch. 7), and then to the necessity of declared remedy (cf. The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy), and then repenting, surrender to the hands of Him, who as that only remedy declares, placed Himself, divinely incarnate, in the hands of men so that man might freely come into the hands of a God who loved so much that He even did THAT! - it is only then that perspective comes.

It is only then that reality is known. It is only then that the peace which penetrates follows, moving like sweet oil without the grit of presumption or the sands of pride, to the source of our own psyches. It is then that one understands WHY one was made, WHAT one is supposed to be doing, and HOW one is to do it, and more important IF POSSIBLE, does it out of love of the Redeemer, with the output of love to one's fellow men enjoined. Possible ? It is even made the more natural when our natures are conformed to His, by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5-7).

It is then that the penetrating oil reaches all the dimensions of man, and then that he can live at peace in each dimension - to be sure making war on the evils which seek to spoil and entrammel, but this as a doctor makes war on germs, seeking at all times the good of the patient; and this, though this world continues its whirling dance of iniquity, its passions, thefts of souls and children, and its inane ineptitude, being blind. Such is the grace of goodwill, founded in harmony with the holiness of God, in the grace of God's own prior goodwill to our race, and here, with whatever resistance from the prince of this world, the Christian proceeds, alien to the unharmonious dissidence, growing in the grace which engenders grace, into the knowledge which being of the truth, is liberation, in the love, which being placed where it belongs, reaches the destiny which is consummate.

This, welcome, it is the Kingdom of Heaven!