Chapter 3

 

Violins and Vile Inns

 

News 242

 

The Advertiser, October 23, 2002

 

The news concerns single parents and non-visiting absent fathers, but first, let us see the scene and the setting for it all.

 

It is simple really. In Church we have a violinist, who accompanies the author on the organ. His intimacy with the instrument is strong, and as with many musicians, the music is a very personal presentation. Last Sunday, one asked him to take the bow and give it some scope for enjoying itself, in some exotic fashion. When this mode was past, he then re-introduced it to the violin, at that time distant from it. There was also, of course, the case. What then had been missing ? It was its association with the ensemble of which it formed an expressive, a personally significant element, but still, a part.

 

This was far from all. It also needed the music, and of course beyond that, the conductor in the final sort of presentation.

 

The bow is like man, the violin is like his brethren, the music is like the drafted life work, and the conductor is Christ: all this for the Christian. Without it, one is merely bereft, irrespective of belief or faith. Faith does not change the facts, merely one’s relationship to them. Merely ? Without faith one does not even SEE the violin, distinctly and clearly, KNOW the music or have even acquaintance with the conductor, Christ. Fiasco faith, which is eloquent in expression but mute in reality, does nothing to the point, any more than does the association of the bow with a rhinoceros, which however lively, is a different sort of thing altogether – it might stir it up to terrorism!

 

Then, if you look further, there is the Composer of the music. The Bible is the source and standard, and the living God the One who applies, having composed it and also man, both, and He brings it all together. Without this, man is denuded or deluded, or both. He gasps at grace, grasps at his desire – land, the lives of others, presentation of this or that, money, notoriety, obscurity, whatever it is – and continues as one without ears, aloof in mind, astray in heart, without life but merely living, a continuation of form with a hole for the crucial function. The bow may be bowed or flippant, flying or frenzied, still or reclusive; but it is apart from where it belongs.

 

Proverbs 27:8 declares this: “As a bird that wanders from her nest, so is a man who wanders from his place.” Hair out of place can sometimes be attractive, but that – unless a hirsute declaration of some kind – has limits. It should relate closely, even intimately, to the head. It can also protect from the sun, from knocks and transient dust, to some extent. If associated with natural oil, it can help preserve the skin. It has a PLACE. SO does man whose it is, just as his bowels, though not renowned for loveliness, have a place in his energizing, and his brains, though not brawny, lend mental strength a scope for application; just as his DNA, best unseparated from his living cells… also has a place; and their orders have a place, as does the assemblage of materials according to order, have a place, and the environment from which the materials may be ordered amid relevant action of the mind and hand of man, has a place, and the progress of the feet of man, has a place; the processive organisation of the feet in the first instance, has a place.

 

The synthetic correlation of the mind and spirit of man with his equipment, like the hand with the bow of the violin, has a place,  and man before this world and before its Maker, has a place;  and it is well that he be in it.

 

There is more than this. A man has a place before and IN God. Just as his mind has a place in his ensemble, inwardly, this outwardly, though God may also work within directly as a friend, when man is in his place. That place moreover involves various procedures. There is the introduction procedure, when he realises his condition, one which, by sin and without relevant repentance, makes him excluded from his place with God who made him (cf. Isaiah 1:1-03, Jeremiah 8:5-7, Ephesians 2, 4 Psalm 51:5).  That is out of place, and like other things in this condition, it does not work well, if at all. Man talks of meaninglessness (cf. SMR pp. 292ff.) precisely because, out of place, he has rather as much  - and as little – meaning as a bow without its violin.

 

You can do things with it; it is cute, interesting; but without its violin it is a displaced member, organ, unit. It cries for its fulfillment, and the more it is misused, or miscued, the less it would be satisfied: for it is clear from its specificities and specialisations that it has a place in any ordered musical universe. Moreover, there is an exquisitely apt fit, each element crafted for the other (cf. Matthew 5-7, I John!).

 

In fact, the place of the bow is perfectly obvious, when you do not refuse to believe in the violin, in musicians who write music, or THE musician to whom you are devoting your work. When you do – if you personify the bow – then your place, meaning and authority, final functionality now minus fictionality, it is all clear. It could not be clearer. The music confirms it, the hand expresses it, the violin intones it, the musical script defines it, the conductor interprets it. It is all integrable, but in the right order, dimensions of freedom and authority, and realisations of reality – not least for the scope and work of man in his universe with its universal prescriptions,  their origin (cf. SMR Ch. 1., TMR Chs. 1,5, The Other News 19).

 

 

2+2 really does equal 4: that’s why it works

 

It is the same with mathematical order. People often love the pseudo-sophisticates talk about simple maths. In fact, however, there is all the reason in the world for this equation. First,  there is the DEFINITIONAL aspect, in which 2 + 2 is simply defined to equal 4, in a numerical system, and a whole system of mathematical correlates occurs. This would be of small  value (rather like defining the precise character of a leprechaun) if it did not relate to things outside your definition.

 

There is however a place for it. The world is made by the One whose outreaches are material (like the paper for this book, not very inspiring, but rather lovely in its way,  and exquisitely well prepared with precise technology, and natural resources), mental (helps mutual communication and assemblage of thoughts from a base which is both inspiring and real) and spiritual (enables escape from irresponsibility masquerading as freedom, as from ponderous responsibilities beyond one’s means, by being IN PLACE). Hence the world, being part of the book He wrote, if you like that image, has its codes (like DNA, or words here), and its criteria (like singularity and multiplicity of units), and its comprehensibility (the juxtapositioning of these and other varied components, as in any design). They match inwardly and outwardly, since that is what they are meant to do.

 

These realms of order are in a unitary system with manifold and lustrous opportunities for creativity because of its meaning and stability, since they are made by One. You can consult your own system, to the extent you organise well,  and understand what you are doing. In fact, you tend to do just that with ever so many elements, components, procedures, and to use the systems others make (like those of this computer) as a matter of course, because of the unity of the mentality of the human race, and its kind,  of its mentality with the universal modes of operation, especially those pre-selected and specialised for correlative use with you where you are, upon this earth. This,  like a sheep-station home, is of a local importance far beyond the measure of the universe. It is where you operate, in a personal sort of a way.

 

Thus 2 + 2 has no chance of not adding. It has to do so, just as your speech capacities are correlative to grammatical capacities, if need be creative grammatical capacities (cf. SMR pp. 13-16). These can be and sometimes ARE creative anew, and are investigated, correlated and composed with these or those logical additives, subtractions or refinements from time to time, once made for any one given system of the many linguistic systems found in our race,  all relating to the capacity to create and to compose and to understand and to think, and to be composed with physical apparatus,  mental application and lateral application to others. It is one system with multitudes of components, all of one design, for one purpose. There is not so much mere cross-linkage,  as rather the intimate bow and violin composition, together with the music and the musicians which is made integrally available, one total, all-embracive system.

 

It is one as originated in the Originator, the never absent cause of it all, always present since never logically able to arise from nothing, always adequate since never able to realise a potential without another having given it, the Eternal One whose embrace covers and invents all system, being there to do it, and one of those systems is time. There is accordingly only one DNA language for all of biological life, be it never so high, or so lowly; just as man has one universal logical font, crafted and fashioned for his use, with probity or folly as he will; one type and form of spirit in order that he may will – for example to cease reading this script at this point: and this, it is all efficiently correlative with other domains for thought and understanding, action or inaction, without severance (cf.  SMR Chs. 3, 5-6) or interruption of system, merely of LIFE itself, by death (cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 7).

 

That “all” in “all-embracive” above, accordingly, is merely an approach. The system does not embrace all, but it is embraced by its Maker and ground of existence, cohesion and integrality (cf. SMR Ch. 1, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-0, TMR Chs.  1,  7, Wake Up World! … Chs. 4, 5-6, Earth Spasm… Chs. 1, 7, Stepping out for Christ … Chs. 2, 7-10). It is therefore an outstanding omission when the bow does not find the violin, or even recognize it, as for example when people hate one another, kill and maim one another, as if this could change the reality of thought, the grounds for allegiance of heart or the realities of the world. Merely using the instruments of power does nothing to determine their correct usage, where they fit or how they proceed, any more than a brilliant and budding teen-ager really teaches us very much when he lands dad’s car on some bowling green, where in fact, in that locale, it is just out of place.

 

And there is Far More …

 

People however, often ignorantly unimpressed with the total correlations, become annoyed when something goes wrong (cf. Things Old and New Ch. 1). Why should it not do so, when the bow does not even know the violin ? Why should it not when the composer is ignored, the music deemed garbage and the point is missed ? It would be amazing if it did not go wrong. Discouraged musicians, or abrasively arrogant ones, either of these for example,  may form a group to blow up music halls, or invade the world or whatever other idea attracts, in the absence of music, for which they are prepared, but for which they now find themselves … misplaced.

 

Feeling misplaced, they become it. Being it, they act differently. Indulging, they afflict, inflicting themselves, or afflicting themselves in some cases (like some of Dostoevsky’s weirdly evanescent or deviously scheming characters), they cause disorder. What else could they
do ? Even when they merely seek wealth and comfort, it is not music. It is merely a pre-occupation with the things that help continuation, without being overly concerned about what one is to continue IN and FOR  and to, in the end of it all.

 

There is an end. It is well and wise to understand it from the beginning. A waterfall is a brilliant thing when devoted to its cause, enabled for it and properly placed in an environment of joy to the heart. If the water oozes comfortably off instead, it is losing its opportunity, and the means are not devoted to the ends.

 

Ø   As the DNA has point and program,

Ø   integral meaning and final results,

Ø   before man himself takes over the equipment when it is grown, and uses mind and spirit as compositely provided in the synthesis,

Ø   so man as one unit and one race has point and purpose

Ø   (sometimes seized on by him for promiscuous pretence as in racism – SMR pp.  126-127, or self-worshipping pretence, as in humanistic religion – SMR pp.  1008-1111, depending on the negative or positive distortion of the demanding fact);

Ø   but it is, like his DNA, to relate to what is written.

 

MAKING a sports car does not teach you how to drive it, or where.

 

When it is in the right hands  … whose ? a dictator’s ? They are in general not particularly popular since they use their inferior wisdom to seek to direct often greater wisdom (so that may prefer to die, to accepting such direction, and in thousands, men so act in  war … in millions, and that recently!). Man may choose ‘my country’ as goal; but this, while it includes obligations to many, is an  aggregate of thoughts and purposes, can stray wildly, and often does, even in sophisticated cases. This may be, and often is, the very blind sophistication, the brilliant folly which is the problem,  as seen so clearly when the nation goes bankrupt, as with communism, or is impoverished, as with Britain in its Empire, when resources were not always well directed.

 

WELL  directed ? Where is the wisdom beyond man and his aggregations ? (cf. The Kingdom of Heaven … Ch. 4, Acme, Alpha and Omega: Jesus Christ Ch.  4). Where is the music in its standards ? As demonstrated in SMR, TMR and the rest, it is precisely in the Bible, where the ONE God has given once and for all the ONLY verifiable, validatable ground for any knowledge, starting with that of Himself. THIS directs to an intervention for restoration of a fallen race (and if this is not fallen, it is rather difficult to know what meaning could be applied to the term), one which, in fact, was duly announced over millennia before it happened, dated for centuries before it happened, and then done as it was announced with such an intimacy of meaning, a continuity of comprehension and a power of performance that it is not only unique, but majestic^*1.

 

That means Jesus Christ, not as a name for cursing, but for curing; not as a thought for uplift (for mad people are not uplifting), but as a ground for life (for truth is not mad, and validation and verification without parallel is its precise converse); not as a word for thought, but as a person for recomposition, replacing, re-ordering, re-organising, re-newing and regenerating indeed: that means that this is the answer.

 

Accordingly, John 5:39-40 makes it most clear that while the Bible IS THE SIGN-POST to Him, it must be FOLLOWED so that you REACH Him, the living God, and knowing Him, find your place in Him. There is nothing comparable, nor is there any permissible additive (John 14:6, 5:19ff., Acts 17:30ff., 4:11ff., Luke14:27ff.). That is just the way it is. You need to take it, or talk of it nominally on your way to something else, also nominal, not phenomenal, vapid not virtuous, nebulous not necessitous.

 

Exclude this, and it is like not eating.  Your systems are there, your mouth is there; but the will to eat does not occur; or if it seems about to occur, vacillation or pre-occupation,  fear or apprehension, self-assertion or regression arises like a cloud,  and like a mountain hidden, it is not seen by the obscured eye: or even if it be open, it is enclosed in its mists.

 

Christ put it like this:

 

v          “And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says:

 

‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand,

And seeing you will see and not perceive;

For the hearts of this people have grown dull.

Their ears are hard of hearing,

And their eyes they have closed,

Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears,

Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn,

So that I should heal them.’

 

v          “But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear; for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”

 

That is Matthew 13. It is part of the musical library which deals with semantics, significance and authority, the basis and the provision for all  musicians. As Isaiah 8:20 puts it, “To the law and the testimony. If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”

 

That is a most interesting case of causality. The cause of displacement, is the absence of light. If it is dusk, growing dark,  and you need to change a wheel on your car, following a puncture, and you are not too familiar with the various provisions of the system involved, then the cause of your stumbling about is clear. It is not that you cannot walk, or work, or understand; but given your condition, the light is lacking. HENCE your actions might seem to some to be relatively meaningless, especially if such were expert mechanics. WHY ON EARTH did he go there, or try that! What extraordinary waste he has displayed!

 

So is the case without the light which made 2+2 =4, and all the other systematics agree in one, so that you might be double-minded, if so be, in one of the greatest imaginable of travesties, that of life. Again, you might become a person of the fixed idea, harassed by your own imaginary competence, into an obsessive compulsion to avoid the truth, because of your dim vision and your callow grandeur in handling it.

 

Paranoia can have such preliminaries. The light of reality interprets all things, and when it is eloquent in its light, as is the Bible, and testable, verifiable, in principle falsifiable but never falsified, when in addition it alone is validatable, coming from what is not excluded by preliminary theories as non-existent, but from what verifies itself as the only conceivable or operable basis for ANY truth (cf. SMR Ch. 3, TMR Ch. 5, SMR pp. 99ff., 999ff., Barbs, Arrows and Balms  6  -7, ), then it is time to stop fumbling. It is time to come into that light.

 

“I am the light of the world,” said Jesus the Christ (John 8:12). “He who follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

 

 

Children and their Fathers, in the News

 

Families are another ordered and organised, composite and yet individually conceivable combination, which need light and law, truth and not fiction, for their basis.

 

There is the father and the mother, physiologically distinct, absolutely obviously mutually specialised, and with correlative tendencies in the areas of delicacy and deftness, or strength and direction, which relate in their place, to various needs of the whole family, of which they come to form a part.  As for the parents, there is both individuality and trend of specialisation psychologically, physiologically, mentally and socially (one test being fascinating relative to the greater social skills of early childhood persons!^*2). These ‘controls’ can be varied from, but they remain; they can be overthrown but their tendencies are there. Necessity can require new adaptations, to be sure; and these can be made; or they can be overlooked. In any case, there is what is known as a ‘father-figure’ and a ‘mother-figure’ and these are not the same.

 

Fathers do not cuddle to the feeding bosom, or have the immediate obligation at the birth of a child, to be both delicate and nurturing. They have many facets, phases and features relative to a child, but not the initial, immediate virtual continuance of what was going in more or less automatically in the womb, when the child issues from the place of origin, into this world. They do not possess that place of origin, in composure, for the child. They are without it.

 

The displacement of women into non-present professionals is very different from the displacement of women from the use of their talents. The two implied desiderata, devoted motherhood and professional scope where needed,  are not mutually exclusive; but any endeavour to ignore EITHER appears as merely a form of social reductionism which can have perilous effects on the family. It is not either-or, but both and.

 

Each has its place, in its time, if the call is there. Working out how to do this, is the point. Not all married women want to have a second profession, beyond that caress of concern and regard, that provision of social and intimate individual tenderness, underlying education and watchful availability for their children and household, with helpful wisdom towards their husbands which has adorned so much in history. Certainly, the very availability, knowledgeability and non-preoccupation of a mother are invaluable assets to any family and a their best,  a wonder in the human race.

 

What however, if intent not on mutual faithfulness and concern for the joint and mutual offspring, but on enjoying themselves, or asserting themselves, with pleasure or potency the governing principle, or some other alienating feature, the parents divorce. Now biblically for adultery you MAY (but do not have to) divorce. Leaving that aside, there is nothing else. You come together in a thing called LOVE (that is, there is such a regard of the one for the other, that the concern for oneself and the concern for the other are so mutual as to be virtually indivisible, and naturally, there needs to be, with this, an alliance in principle, for it is hard to be one when you go in opposite directions – things stretch or break, fracture or fibrillate). You stay together in that same environment, not of terms but of truth. If it IS NOT TRUE, so that you are merely deluded, a bow without the violin, perhaps acting with a saxophone, dreadful mistake, complete incompatibility…then your displacement at the outset, vastly complicates your emplacement in the end.

 

Let us suppose however, that for this reason or for that, for adultery unforgiven or chronic, or for marital  hedonism, whatever reason indeed, that a pair are apart. The mother  nearly always has the children after the division occurs (according to feature article in The Advertiser, October 23, 2002, p. 18). There is, in this article, some dwelling on the report of a Parliamentary Committee, Getting it Right, where the shortage of male teachers is considered, and the need for extra recruitment is considered. It is, indeed, presented as an overview from the deputy chairman of this committee, that the Australian education system (presumably governmental) has had three distinct periods relative to the point in view, favour to boys or girls, or efficacy for them, or both. It is held that from 11950-1970, the system was ‘boy-friendly’, from 1970-1990, it was balanced and from 1990 it has been too girl-friendly. Various non-performance results for boys in a comparative view with girls, are presented.

 

For our present purpose, the point is this: that there is recognised to be such a thing as a male role model, the man in action, in teaching, in sport, in conduct, in personal activities. This is of course far too vague and generalised; but as a component it is being presented in this educational appraisal. It is needed, recognised as needed, in this approach from the educational wing, and without it, there is both an absence of specialisation and of balance.

 

It is conceived that the trend to private schools may be further engaged by a desire to avoid this imbalance of role models in government schools.

 

In one’s own experience, lady teachers, lecturers and pedants are similar in many ways to the male ones. They have some concurrence, but they are different in many ways also. It would be deplorable to have only one sort. To one’s own input, as viewer for years in different schools and colleges, universities and seminaries, there has tended to be, with the feminine ones, more social perception on the whole, especially at the earlier levels,  more scope at the more personal level, though not necessarily at the eventual outcome conceptions. It is a matter of mode. There has been more interest in the little ways and personal traits, at the social and interactive level. There has tended to be less at the stimulatingly challenging side.

 

If men can easily be boorish; women can be too personal, reactive. On the other hand, women teachers can be most solicitous and kind; while men, without lacking these features, more rarely show them in the same sort of way.  There are, if you will, territories, intimately related, in some ways able to function in complete identity, but like Australia and New Zealand, they do have their differences. One would be sad to see either country obliterated from the earth; or either personal mould.

 

You may argue that these things relate to custom, custom to convention, convention to philosophy, that there have been patterns emerging, not deposited. These things have bearing, but the tests on very young children (cf. News 51) are of another kind. There are differences among individuals, as always: there can be drastic women, perhaps in some  cases TRYING to imitate the male authority trend, and there can be willowy men, perhaps failing to find their ‘feet’, place, presentation performance correlation with their beings. Indeed, it is interesting to watch WALKING for exercise along the streets. NEVER has one seen a man with exaggerated, martial seeming arm action in such walking; but OFTEN one finds it in women. One could predict with almost 100% certainty, from the look of a walk, when there is this exaggeration, in one’s own experience at least, whether it is a man or woman, to be confirmed on nearer approach!

 

The physiological needs and the social  realities are there. One can try to overcome the facts, as when one uses a Cadillac to draw a plough; but there is always an element of  … adaptation.

 

Often this sort of discussion grows lost in the varied facets. Thus wide divergencies in this very field DO exist in both men and women; social forces do tend to concretise conceptions; sadly, many opportunities for women were ONCE denied (but far is this from the present case in many fields, where percentage of women may overturn simple merit for the work), and this has had results. Again,  physiological correlations do most markedly exist, as seen in mothers, and while some men in some things can double with considerable success, as our race is not only specialised but adaptable, physically and mentally by virtue of its mould and meaning, yet they are not the same. Social procedures can also resemble each other; and yet there is that difference that like daffodils and narcissi, is there.

 

Some narcissi are extremely fancy; some daffodils are rather small and undistinguished. Yet the two are without doubt, overall, developed in diversity.

 

The Disestablishment of the Order

and of the Orders of God is mere Delusion

 

THE PURITY OF PLACEMENT IN THE DIVINE PURPOSE

 

Now we come to our present application. There is a PLACE for man and for woman (Ephesians 5, I Peter 3 cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 10  -11). This simple statement may occasion the metaphysical equivalent of stars in the eyes, when one is knocked severely, for some; but it is not to be misunderstood. Mothers have a notorious tenderness, while men can develop marvelous kindness. This is the sort of thing which flows with the simplicity of tears. In the household, there is a place for the woman and for the man. It may be sometimes infelicitously misconceived, one way or the other; but there is one simple fact.

 

THE CHILDREN either get ALL of what BOTH parents can READILY supply with natural grace and ease, with whatever individual variation; or they do not (Ephesians 6:1-4, Psalm 127-128, 147:12-13, Proverbs 17:6, 20:7, 31:28). There are dimensions of the exemplary, borders of value, inspirations and intimations from each parent: it is an ensemble, as is the human body for each person. It is this which can be present on a domestic scale, with potential lovelinesses both specific and personal.

 

If the mother is away at work when young children come home, and there is a social group instead, that is a LACK of a unit of provision. There may be more language skill imparted if the day-care centre has a more impartive person; there may be some more social address if the group is a sound one and the home is defective in itself or its social interaction; or again, there may be less. However there is a diminished scope for bondage between parent and child, for mutual appreciation, co-operation and understanding.

 

In a mass-production society, the social equivalent in child-care centres may seem marvelous to some (though studies weigh plus and minus features in various diligent ways); but in a sacred and holy home, there is no substitute for the moral integrality, integrity, clarity and distinctiveness, since the synthetic social caste is per se of necessity limited in this! Again, the strength of impartation of these sacred feature with their numerous personal correlates is necessarily diminished. The responsible and unique eye of parenthood is to some extent, thus shaded.

 

The point is not group versus individual, ultimately, in this, but the PROVISION of all the elements, like vitamins. These, with all the reliable tenderness and imagination, concern and continuity of a specific mother, with all her individual features, and father, with all his special thrust and intimate correlation without social limits for non-offence of other children: these are present, overall, in the end, or they are not. In fact, one study has found that numbers of fathers feel guilty, since they find themselves unable thoroughly to grasp the entire significance and scope of their parts in the total process of upbringing.

 

Nor is this surprising: the more things are socialised, the more religion is synthesised, the more morals are depleted, homogenised in this or that current philosophy of culture or academia, the more febrile and ill-founded the child is likely to be, and the more diverse parents may find themselves floundering in the swirling currents. Where the parents are inadequate and unsound, wayward and irresponsible, the group may actually help; though it cannot contribute the elements where the parents happen to fail, merely making some sort of partial substitute.

 

v          Thus intrusive social philosophies, dominating political aspirations, declining religious clarity, increasingly ‘peace-bent’ sacrifices of integrity for survival: these things jointly are thrusting, and with the normal increment of sin’s independence from God, bursting and busting in and through the race, as its perilous surrogacies for God and for the created paths He has made, reach their appointed culmination (as in II Thessalonians 2, II Timothy 3, II Peter 2).

 

To revert, however: There is, quite simply, no substitute for any of the vitamins of life in the growing phases, and if efforts are made for the under-privileged, to make some helpful partial substitute, well: it is better to have a crutch than crawl. However the insidious assumption that parents are substantially dispensable is merely one of the social juggernaut conceptions, the humanistic racial intrusions, the moulding force for detached persons to become philosophical expositions, laboratory rats if you wish, subjected to society. It is society itself which becomes the loser^*3; and in the end, disgusted with itself, its mentors or its philosophies, and yet still recalcitrant against the God of grace, it will as predicted, seek for more and more artificiality and synthesis, until the antichrist blooms like algae. This is to be; and it is coming to be with a rush like Spring!

 

Children may adapt extremely well. They can be over-mothered, by anxious concentration that is unnatural and suppressive; or they can be under-mothered, so that elements are relatively undeveloped. They may in other ways tend effectively to compensate, or they may not. It is as with health, that some systems can stand deprivations better than others. There is however a place for each of those different, and ideally convergent rather than merely divergent, those diverse yet unitarily conceived groups, men and women. Divorce disrupts; separation secedes. Impoverishment is not first of all, of money, but of realities.

 

As the body has one unity, the family another, so family disunity and division, drawing and quartering in sybaritic, hedonistic or merely maverickish ways, is a disturbance, a disruption and has all the current social dynamic of personality disease. For the children, this can become like living in a hospital, without medicine or care. Consequences are certain to follow; and they do. There is further development. Just as the CAUSE of much of the disorder is increasingly pagan attitude (often given point in confused rhetoric cf. News 52, 125), so it is enhanced, even in some churches, by the practice of illicit trampling on the word of God while using His name, precisely as in Israel of old, before her disaster from Babylon (cf. Isaiah 28:9,17-18, 29:10-13, Malachi 2:17). If the trampling at times is instead, tampering, the result is not dissimilar, the tilt being similar in spirit (cf. II Corinthians 4:2, where Paul disclaims the fateful practice of adulterating the word of God).

 

Children, with adult confusion leading to diverse and often whimsical or woeful roles, can be touted and uplifted before their time, so becoming wild, disorganised or merely narrowly selfish with greater ease then ever, mini-adults, and for some of the uprooted adults, teachers or other, the youngsters can become pseudo-gods in their own right, undirected, uncorrected, presuming into their own destruction, of heart, soul, mind, or into their own flushes and flourishes of ignorant experimentation with what is present in ONLY ONE instance for each: life. We have seen some of the poignancy of this inept indulgence before (News 19). This squandering is one of the necessary perils of the secular society, the sectional society, the squalid society. It can oscillate between libertarianism and some politically grabbed program, as empty as th wind, destructive a s typhoon (cf. TMR Ch. 8).

 

Instead of the blessedness of Isaiah 54:13, Psalm 127-128, there is the open door to that trampled track, the disenchanted child, the disillusioned fragment, the spirit of sedated values, coarsened wits, with no vision and limited virtue, where spoiling is in the very soil (Isaiah 3:4, Hosea 5:7) – whether imbed from the soul or from society. In the absence of direction, the dereliction from principles, the deviations from morality in her pure dress, there is a trend to give, in sheer confusion and diffidence, or shame, to children what is not yet their due. “And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.” 

 

They become indeed “strange children”, often strangers to truth and wisdom alike, stranded in pseudo-sovereignty. In one way, it can grow, quite grotesquely rather than charmingly, as was said of Rupert Brook before his early death in war by sunstroke, “magnificently unprepared for all the long littleness of life.” Again, they may become virtual State property;, as the State or society indulges itself, now this way, now that, through these young creations of God, now making of them virtually gods, now sods, dead occupiers of forsaken ground, strewn like dead leaves, blown by battle (cf. TMR Ch. 8, News 45).

 

Not only in the robes of regality, but in the domestic infelicities of moral abdication, such undirected dynamics threaten, while teen-agers, the so-famed outlet for strangeness in an ever-gathering storm, become the muddled measure in teeming emotion and uncertain distress, of the work left undone before (cf. News  51, Youth in the High Seas, and Generation of the Dispossessed, News 19 with its X-generation).

 

These are mere parts of the whole spirit of departure in the world (cf.  SMR Ch. 8, News 121, 122), with the limping cripples of false religions, unvalidated, unverified, without God and without hope,  seeking in the midst of the mêlée, to secure more devotees to share their dictatorial provisions and undirected authorities (cf. SMR Chs. 1, 10). New sects, new syntheses of old things, indifferent use of religion for  political or military purposes, congeries of consciousness, intimations of raging new ages from riotous old pages, these foam out their shame (II Peter 2 , II Timothy 3, I Timothy 4 have much to say concerning such a predicted state of affairs cf. News 152, Things Old and New Chs. 1, 3,  5, 10, Epilogue, Appendix, Acme, Alpha and Omega: Jesus Christ Ch. 9). These musics are not of the violin, but the creakings of the dismal beds in the hovels which are but vile inns, futile replicas of rest, without its reality.

 

Freedom is fine, but its misuse is not obliterated by the glory of its presence. Responsibility does not abdicate because irresponsibility is being inculcated in the sheer abandon of befouled philosophies, as well founded as houses built on gossamer and dreams (cf. Matthew 7:15ff., SMR Chs. 3, 10). The word of man, ever varying, or the echoes of his culture and hope (cf. SMR 422Qff., 315Aff., 422Eff., 348ff., 354ff.), displace with as much assurance as a child of six, untended, drunken in some abandoned  banquet, a scene wild, wiley or both, left to drift, wandering witless amid the throng.

 

Disorder is increasing in an increasingly aggravated lack of social poise, moral force, identity-clarity, goal precision, meaning for mentality, spiritual strength, patience and love. Hijacking, drugs, drug violence, lost, drifting teen-agers seeking for their souls and finding their species without solicitude, moving in the dark like runaway trains, careering down valleys and imagining this is life, these are the rampant product of moral lawlessness. Yes children not yet youths, with severe selfishness may even exert leadership among men, using weapons of power to address their naked day of premature authority.

 

All these things are a cultural base for the jihad mentality, its abortive cruelty, its arrogant disdain, its penultimate pre-occupation which never sees the light, and rather, exports darkness. War is endemic. Disease is growing in its despising of inadequate health systems, whether partially so, as increasingly the case even in some rich countries, or incredibly so, as in much of Africa.

 

Plagues of the mind and pollutions of the spirit are now followed very closely by those of the body; and wars help to integrate the disorder into one flaming mess of masses of components, flying waywardly, like a study set on fire.

 

It does not help.

 

The word is hindered by multiple aspirants for its disastrous rule, shouting if it were possible, to drown it in the sheer vibration and noise.

 

It is out of order.

 

It is so in conspicuous non-correlation with what makes this phenomenon HURT, and this far more than feelings.  And that ? It is that man is intensively, extensively and comprehensively ordered. Out of order, he hurts; hurting he grows more disorderly; more disorderly, he tends to grows paranoid with steam up, or perhaps instead, puny or pathetic when the valve pressure is lessened, vulnerable to be gullible, manipulated the more by the unscrupulous who, with more power more cheaply available,  following the Cold War and its non-delightful by-products, blast the more freely.

 

It is as it was written. The script is most closely being followed (Matthew 24:12).

 

It IS, as predicted that, 

BECAUSE iniquity shall abound,

the LOVE of many will grow cold.  

 

A COLD heart is deplorable. It is unnatural. It is a body dented, a mouth smashed, a life in recess. It is available for new derring-dos, or old aches and revenges. It does not feel as it should. It is abandoned in its emotions, disbanded in its meaning and whether cuddling for its own comfort, or huddling for the discomfort of others, like the gunman in Washington, it does what it thinks… with whatever accomplices of its passion, meanness or guile. Similarly, false prophets the more readily abound (Matthew 24:24) because the cold heart is readily duped. It has a spiritual cold, it snuffles, it sneezes, it is discontented, ready for distraction, prone to destruction, that great code for the beginning of the 21^st century.

 

All this (as in Revelation 6, which brings out the authorisation of it all, at the divine level, when men at last are lurching, obstreperous and unbelieving in the truth, to the end of their Age, before judgment arises like the dawn), it is what was to be.

 

It is merely the nth fulfillment of predictions in the word of God. It is the attestation of the results of disorder, of displacement from the side of the divine One, of disbelief in the Redeemer, who having come, and done all needed, has His Gospel preached to man, as He said (Matthew 24:13-14), on the broadest scale, to the whole world. That Gospel, it is as it was predicted millennia ago, before the Redeemer came and paid (SMR Ch. 9 and esp. pp.  763-769); and in precision and detail, it moves as it was there stated that it would do! Time merely adds venerability to the settled scenario from the word of the living God. It cannot betray it. Therefore observably, it does not do so. History follows the shepherd like a lamb, though never was there such a lamb as this!

 

It is time to move away from being displaced. Spiritually displaced persons, like a displaced heart, may live in one sense; but in another, they are looking at death. It is not a desirable thing, this death; and having been borne by Christ, it has been removed from the palette of man, but not irrespective of the individual. Some prefer that dark colour, which tends like fungus to spread, until the whole heart is blinded, muddled and out of control.

 

It is necessary. Pathology has its place. So does the Saviour, the divine interruption for this narcotic, this deadening of the soul and enlivening of the passions conjointly. It is HE who is the antidote, and unlike the Russian theatre case, with Chechen hostage-takers, His availability and the knowledge of Him, it is most manifest and most readily to be obtained, when once the lust for rebellion is supplanted by the desire for repentance, and the enamoured flair with the insatiable romance of spiritual adventurism, dies into the life of the truth. There the flame is pure; in Christ, it does not burn.

 

I am come, said Christ, that they might have life, and have it more abundantly (John 10:1-3,9-10,27-28). Let us consider His words in John 10. There is a way in, an entrance, just as there is an exit from the physical womb that leads to life. It is important to find it, enter there and not try to climb over the wall, but instead to become one of the men, women or children who, having Christ as Shepherd, need nothing more. They are … IN PLACE.

 

 

 

NOTES

 

 

*1  See:

 

Highway of Holiness Ch. 4,

Jesus Christ the Wisdom of God and the Power of God Ch. 8,

Repent or Perish Chs. 2, 7, Biblical Blessings Appendix IV,

SMR Ch. 6,

Barbs, Arrows and Balms Appendix 1).

 

 

 

*2 See News 52.

 

*3 Various articles indicate the enormous increase in child-care centres, or Family Day Care sites. The latter in one nomenclature at least, are growing enormously and tend to specialise in small groups with one relatively unprofessionally developed carer. Some prefer this on the grounds of economy, others because flair at lower age levels is held better than academically instructed care, and the aggregation with the former in mind is seen as having advantages. Either way, there is a diversity from the parental situation, and the large hours often involved, make this substantial!

 

One example of the advance in this sort of upbringing, statistically that is, is found in an article in The Australian, March 9, 1998. From June 1989, it declares, to June 1996, the number of child-care places funded by the Government increased from 114,391 to 306,575. Funding is not quite the same as existence; but the financial stringencies of many suggests a large correlation!