Chapter One
NEWS 166
CLONING, CLOWNING AND CROWNING
See
also News 153, and Sparkling Life ... Ch. 6.
When one hears from the New
York Times, 30/5/2001, reported in Salt Shakers July 2001, that
Germans are debating experimentation using human embryos, a topic also focussed some time past on DW TV in Berlin in an
interesting series of interviews with experts in the field, it is not
surprising. In its report in 30/5, the magazine notes: "Those who have
learned the hard lessons of the Nazi experimentation are totally against such
human experimentation and reject the economic benefit such unethical practices
may bring." This via the New York Times report.
On the other hand, we hear
of rigorous determination from an Italian scientist that the work of cloning
humans MUST, repeat, MUST proceed. The two are not unrelated, in the final
background for information. What is to be said on this topic
? Passions are opposite. Even in Europe, opinions rage, minds cleave,
morals protest, battles of thought rage.
What, then, are we talking about ? It is always essential to know
this first.
One may say, Oh that! it is this which one will
find out after years of research. Great! So we build a bridge, and later
find out about engineering. We do our income tax and later find out about its
laws! We perform medical operations and later do medical training, to find out
the nature of what is our focus of cutting.
Oh no! no! says the enthusiast. Of course we cut
to find out! How else know! But cut WHAT! A dead or a living body! Do you
enter arbitrarily with knives into the pulsing unknown, and explore with
anything but cutting edge knowledge, by cuts!
SCIENCE AND CERTAINTY ?
The secular man loves to
fiddle because he does not know God. Hence he is like a young dog, always
finding out in all directions all sorts of things with great haste, and there
is a sort of impelling passion in the doing of it, a species of disdain,
dislike or at least unfriendliness, for those who do not share this constant
running. (Cf. Little ThingsCh. 5
esp. pp. 84ff..)
This, however, is not some mere pleasant behavioural
characteristic.
In this, many among mankind
want to know, do not understand the nature of a master, or the wisdom of the
same who is his OWN Maker, and thrust, lust or bust in reckless seeming endeavours to know it all, always being careful to tell us
how little is known, except of course, when such wish to assure us that they is
fully informed.
So it is with man in large
quantities, in large measure in much history. He knows nothing, and everything;
is humble and arrogant, if not simultaneously, then in terms, like a
presidency. There is a sort of vacillation in this matter which is more than
the occasional lurching into social grace. It is that at times he feels
inundated and incapable before a universe which both beckons and rebukes him,
and at others, as if fitfully awake, he feels in control with knowledge
unspeakable, if not unthinkable, and amusingly enough, Kant has
done much to popularise the latter concept, in terms
of course of what he has been thinking! (Cf. Predestination
and Freewill Part IV, SMR
Ch.
5). Secular man is hilarious, but hapless and to be pitied.
Why pitied and not lamented ? It is because his ignorance is wilful in the very midst of finding out!
Man is not the product of
nature, and nature is not Nature, but merely a series of products which have a
series of characteristics in a series of settings which have integrally a
series of characteristics which, in the individual and the total combinations,
proceed on the lines of their construction, being incompetent to create, but
competent to alternate and interact, within the parameters of their performance
criteria, as determined from the first. It is a product, not a producer of the
components. Life does not make life, observably. Procreation is not creation.
Books do not write books,
but are repositories of the wisdom of the code manipulating contriver of the
same. If humanity wants to deify nature as 'Nature' in view of its parameters,
codes and contrivances, despite its inability to make itself continuously
demonstrated, inherently obvious and logically demonstrable, so be it*1. It is merely a 'primitive' characteristic, in a
technical mode of today. But primitive ? Earlier
models of man were no less inventive in ignoring the obvious than modern man,
and like
him, in vast
numbers were religious as well. The mixture of multiplied concepts of one God,
with these debased and irrational creations of man's imaginations is the same
now as before, except less excusable since man now knows more; but it is so,
for a far more important reason.
Man
now has the entire Bible and the advent of Jesus Christ in the most strict,
stringent and scientifically testable way, conforming to each detailed
prediction and having fulfilled each detailed prediction of His own; and yet he
ignores the necessities of logic of the actual Creator, or makes new gods of
his own mind when the evidence for the one with the advantage of being there
and personable, glorious and holy is even more certain than that for any of his
scientific theories.
How is this so
? It is because all science, in detail, depends on exhaustive knowledge,
as shown so eloquently in the Newton-Einstein case, where special and unusual
conditions (in terms of man's normal experience) were found to favour certain views to cover them, when these more
rarefied areas were found and investigated. Prior to that, the early model
seemed adequate. So there is review, not of the logic, or of the method, but of
the results of its employment. It changes. Its texts of fifty years ago may now
stir amusement; of a century aft, mirth. Yet at that time, they were portentous
at least!
GOD AND KNOWLEDGE, WITH WISDOM
Two Instant Rules
With God, however, there is
no review. NEVER are NEW things found to alter the old. When His accredited
speech, self-authenticated in its power, precision and authority, demonstrable
His (SMR Chs. 1, 10), is the question: there is but informed
answer. It stands though the world should fall. That is empirical.
That is the nature of the
case in principle, since God knows all, and in practice, since all things
tested so confirm; and when NEVER is there found an exception, we have what
science intrinsically lacks. It is far more certain than science. It is
absolutely certain, since only on the demise of reason is it avoidable, but
then, if you forsake reason, so does speech lack meaning and so there is no
other proposition even to be articulated (cf. SMR Ch.
3). The knowledge of God is frequently psychologically not desired, morally
disdained, spiritually avoided and endlessly, tirelessly resisted by what, in
the mainstream, is a dissident race, departing from its source, strength and
wisdom like a gangster in movieland, hieing into the dusk. The dusk ?
It is a darkness which envelops in the end, which is not far distant (Answers
to QuestionsCh. 5
), for the free exercise of this kind of liberty.
That too, as seen
in the reference given, is coming to pass as predicted, in strict conformity to
the revelation given these several millenia. God has
things well in hand.
Man however does
not.
The case is not difficult, as so often, when viewed in the Biblical
parameters.
FIRST
FIRST, it is cruel
to use sentient creatures to gain knowledge, while they yet live. The godly man
is kind to his beast, and mercy and truth are criteria of godly living
(Proverbs 3 and 12:10). You do not
therefore ADVANCE your knowledge on the ground that NOTHING matters except YOU
and YOUR RACE. You imbibe a little modesty and much mercy and do not use what
is not yours. It is one thing to have dominion over things, and another to be a
merciless ogre or rogue in the process of your rule. Man has the first
opportunity, and biblically, the second obligation.
IF this knowledge
were not gained, and IF only dead creatures were used, in the sentient domain,
then the ignorance would be greater and the temptation less. It is from God,
not 'Nature' that idol, that knowledge of such moral questions comes. We do not
expect our vassal, if you want to think of it that way, to give us wisdom.
THAT! it was the folly of Eve from the first, that when a creation, a created
thing - one obviously NOT endued with wisdom in
competition with God, one over which they had the RULE by divine word (Genesis
3), in terms of that divinely donated wisdom which was to rule THEMSELVES -
told her not to worry about what God had said, she heeded it! Does mother
listen to a babe on the topic of wisdom!
She should not
have heeded. As to Eve, firstly, she had contrary instructions from the
Almighty, and secondly, this creature, attempting to 'educate' her, was meant
for her wise disposal: she was not there for its disposal. It DID dispose
of her very aptly and most capably, being a stooge for the devil. She however
should have recognised this pantomime, and did not,
despite the perfeclty obvious fact that RANK
disobedience to the divine PROVISIONS of the Creator for her actions should
have been avoided. It was not. She fell, gulled by rebellion and invited by a
lust for 'knowledge' without God. YOU will have knowledge of good and evil ...
like God! came the lust challenge. How fine!
The intense irony
that she quickly, indeed virtually instantly finished this new course of
KNOWLEDGE, by BECOMING evil, so finding indeed this wisdom about 'what is good
and what is evil', by at once inhabiting that whole domain: it is pathetic and
has had enormous ramifications. Just so, one recently saw three little children
in haste and with address and self-discipline climbing in the lower Flinders
Ranges on a path so vertical that the author paid for some time for his
audacity in trying to climb it, as it would appear. Sounds and shouts below
indicated that perhaps a teacher-parent was in pursuit, harassed by weight from
such efforts. His remark, when one told him in answer to query that the
children had been courteous and pleasant, was this: There is always a first
time! His heart was not rejoicing in them.
It was, indeed,
conspicuously evident that they did not have the advantage of his admiration:
he was in fact wrath with them! Why ? Presumably, at
least for this reason: that at any moment they might fall on the steep ascent,
very open as it was, with much rubble to slip and slide on. If they did, they might
fracture a bone, or worse, and hence they might find BY liberty that they LOST
liberty! Injury at best might be their acquisition from such temerity. The
parent, as he appeared to be, was hence concerned, anxious and disgusted.
The children were
being simply wilful. It was impish, extravagant, a
thing of gusto, of enterprise, alluring, adventurous, liberty with wings: but
notwithstanding, in wisdom it was wrong. The terrain was far beyond safety for
their age.
SO is mankind in
general afflicted with rush and haste and discoveries and presumptions, though
it is true that some find that narrow way of which Christ spoke (Matthew
7:15ff.), which, though much maligned, has eminent long-term wisdom.
Thus, to return to
our primary topic: the failure to heed the concept of kindness and to
avoid cruelty is one of the instant areas of wisdom in the arena of man's
living, and this militates heavily, if applied, against his present near
obsession with playing about with life in cloning. Experimentation in the quiet
dismembering and disorganising by scalpel and reorganising with suture and replacement, even to the
brain, it is a matter revolting to the thought of responsibility. It is taking
the law into one's own hands, to ignore the Maker and to use His provisions
contrary to His rules.
It may of course
be said that sympathy is another biblical principle, and that this REQUIRES
cruelty to animals in a complex world, even living and sentient ones, capable
of terror and anguish. Too bad! comes the cry. Man
first: me first, at the racial level. Is it not obvious ?
No. Eve thought it was too.
You CAN and SHOULD
find out all you can where pain and suffering of man is concerned, in order to
help; but as in all things, there are rules. Our very bodies obey them, our genome
expresses them in its own domain, and our minds are made so incredibly
intricately that we can even analyse and estimate for
ourselves the application of such rules. ONLY God can make rules which NEVER
need bending. A failure to realise this can be as
dangerous as the opposite confusion, imagining that mankind can make any rules
it happens to prize, when it prizes them and because it prizes them. This ,
without being brutally frank, is mere self-worship; but it is simply to
state the obvious, to observe that if there is ONE THING which transparently
does NOT deserve worship, it is this sinning and often heartless race, called
mankind.
It is CAPABLE of marvellous things; but it usually omits them. It usually
omits God; the two are intimately related!
The rule broken
involves here this small particle of wisdom: do not EXALT yourself or your race to the point
that it absurdly acts as if it were a god. (Matthew 23:12, Luke 14:11, cf. Ezekiel 28:9, 17). The fearful irony of the word
of God, the more pointed because of the accompanying pathos, is this:
· "Your heart
was lifted up because of your beauty, and you have corrupted your wisdom by
reason of your brightness", or as the NASV has it,
· "You corrupted
your wisdom by reason of your splendour."
Mankind can neither make life nor use it rightly, and is frequently and
in much inveterately, without Christ, in a deplorable bind of resentment,
grudges, self-interest, passions and propaganda which make it more to be pitied
than adored. Thus excluded is this intensity and propensity for RESEARCH
without adequate rules. The POLITICAL reflections, after Hitler's no holds
barred approach to research, are merely ONE phase of just concern. It HAS been
prodigal in horror with bodies in the past, when applied with the same
recklessness of spirit as now, in the political realm by bullies; and so the
PRINCIPLE of a control appears obvious to those who have suffered. They do not
want to see this incline revisited!
Indeed, without
God, there is no POSSIBLE ground for it restraint in such a field; for it is
then all a matter of illogical preference; and when someone has power,
it is his preference which counts. End of story.
However, being
made in the image of God: we as a race do not respond so simplistically. There
are strands of conscience left, and just concerns about our fellows. If in
rebellion without God, there is then left no logical ground, reason having been
dumped: yet there are psychological hindrances and residual moral inclines
against the obstreperous disdain for some at the expense of others, which
remain in man. Such concerns, such brakes are however quite certain to
diminish, as the secular man takes strides, and mythical religions like organic
evolutionism, receive constant barrages of propaganda, necessary because of
their logical demise (*1), to make preachers seem almost
quiet by comparison, in the media! So man wants it; so he gets it. He is serpenting away to make Eve feel comfort, if she has not
yet learned ...
With God, however, there is a MANDATE FOR MERCY, and this is not to be
broken. It is not a matter in the least degree, to be indulged, despite the
arbitrary and unprincipled selfishness of casuistry, courtesy par excellence
of the Jesuits. One's own conceptions of religion or anything else are not in
the slightest a ground for disobeying the divine requirement not to LIE!
The author and father of that is the devil, Christ indicated (John 8:44 cf. Colossians 3:9 - "LIE NOT to one
another..."). To 'interpret' via pope or any other person or institution,
'DO NOT' to mean 'DO', is mere fiddle-faddle, a
specious protocol of rebellion.
DO as you are told
is something even little children can teach us; but with us adults, it is do
what you are told by your AUTHORITY in heaven. The ones on earth, who disdain
Him, are what one might expect: wholly unreliable, without knowledge of where
to stop, or for that matter, to begin. Man learns, generation by generation,
war by war (allowing prodigious 'learning' at the present time), the results of ignoring the truth. With dedication like
death squad, however, he continues in his forsaken path.
High-flown names
or sounds do nothing to alleviate rebellion. They merely sanctify the thing,
making it more loathsome than ever, glitter on filth.
Twisting truth
then is no way. You have to face it, or rebel.
SECOND
The second
principle is this: do not meddle with life without authority.
Where, you may
ask, is that found in the Bible ?
It is implied in
Psalm 131:
"Lord, my heart is not haughty,
Nor my eyes lofty.
Neither
do I concern myself with great matters,
Nor
with things too profound for me.
"Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul,
Like weaned child with his mother:
Like a
weaned child is my soul within me.
"O Israel, hope in the LORD
From
this time forth and forever."
There are things
too profound for us. It is not that we are sacrificing our intellects and
failing to use them, heaven forbid. We have talents for their use, not
suppression. It is that there is a place for discovery of everything in its
place. That when it comes to constructing man, it is not
ourselves where our very limitations of necessity harass our discoveries.
Thus psychology CANNOT find from itself the nature of man, but can merely consider
some of his parameters and some of his statistical procedures. What he ought to be doing is
another matter, related but not deducible. What happens does not ordain what
ought to happen. That is simply to beg the question.
It is so likewise
with our genomes. We do not have the power to create human beings because the
NATURE of human beings is beyond our powers to elucidate. We can find what they
do, to some extent what they can do, and often what they incline to do. However
generalisation is quite fatal here, and a small
number are so morally different, spiritually alien and otherwise directed that
it is merely a distortion to ignore it.
Further, our genomes are merely some of our equipment, that which is
instrumental, and to some extent, structural.
When you come to
the fact that man is a SYNTHESIS with INTERFACES of three vital ingredients,
you begin to realise the complexity and depth of the
whole matter of trying to INVENT methods of making man.
SYNTHETIC
INTERFACES
The mind-body
interface is of the utmost fascination, and psycho-somatic medicine is merely
one of the expressions of this. Yoga, ignoring for the moment its religious
overtones, explores with hypnotism likewise, other features and facets. The
automatic, the semi-automatic and the reaches where these may become under some
measure of voluntary control, this is another feature and facet. The conflict
often apparent between instinct and reason is yet another symptom of phases of
our construction.
As always, these
are resolvable on Christian lines, since then the handbook for such operations
being available, there is to be found, indeed read, a greater wisdom than that
of puny man (as he indeed is, when separated, like an infant from his mother,
and in this case, not from someone on earth but from GOD in heaven). Here we
find what does indicate the extremes of knowledge involved, and hence the
inordinate depths when the wisdom of God being ignored, the territories of His
creation, even ourselves, are taken as available without limit or control, for
our own administration. Such LIBERTY WAS NEVER GIVEN!
All things
necessary for godly living are given (II Peter 1), but the Creator is God, not
man, and it is HIS word which rules, such that humility in the face of
ignorance is one of the aspects. Knowing HOW to make a mind, BY a mind, when it
is of the same order as that to be made, is a proposition which ignores basic
facts. These ? that the WISDOM and PURPOSE of
mind-making are those of the One who did it, so that we might have it, and hence
be able to use it, as now, and in such matters as this genetic drama
currently becoming melodrama, and as so often, one pregnant with tragedy!
How then would we
use it in this current spectacle of man's desires ? It
is used in two ways: firstly in due and restrained research not involving
cruelty, and secondly, in repair within that limit; thirdly, we can indeed
research its meaning and methods, as we watch it, for adjusting disease
situations; and then finally, we can justly use it to follow the teaching of
its Maker on our limitations, and rejoicing in our prodigious liberties,
therefore ceasing to seek for yet more, as if to become God. Being infinitely
less, and a mere derivative, we can learn not to seek to duplicate the Almighty
in our puniness, which might, if not so common, seem a sufficient condemnation
for any in danger of such enormities.
What the
derivative, rule! the made become Creator! the result become cause, the originated masquerade as the
necessary Origin and Maker of all! the temporal become
everlasting and the constructed over-riding all restraint, pretend, strutting,
to be his own author! Such is the madness of man from early days, and he is no
different now, only more advanced in degradation morally, in departing from the
whole testimony of revealed truth, and in using with the same abandon, the
knowledge he gradually obtains. (Cf. SMR Ch. 3.) Yet this, it mounts. As the
impudence becomes more heady with technical knowledge,
so the aspiration seeks new ways, above Babel of old, yet in the same spirit.
All who use various means may not be so infected consciously; but the end of
the matter is here.
The capacity to extrapolate from the USE of our minds for
their domain, to the CREATION of our minds (implicit in creating ourselves) is thus
the old story: measuring themselves by themselves, they are not wise (II Corinthians
10:12). WHAT is a mind FOR ? To what is it DIRECTED in
its current creation model ? IF the powers implicit in
the creation of mind, snatched and stolen by this generation, should be used to
make something else with that design, then this is to use and therefore to
abuse, what we cannot understand or create, being ignorant of its purposes and
total inheritance and synthetic interfaces with spirit. It is to prostitute a prodigy
for the sake of overweening arrogance, and intensive theft. The results as with
all inflated imaginations, ignoring facts, can end only in disaster. As is also
far from uncommon, the rewards of delusion for a time (ask Hitler if you could)
seem brilliant. They appeal. So does candy to a kid.
One said above, that we do not know what a mind is FOR or
to what it is directed: but this was in the REALM of rebellion, and given
there, as a caution. If, however, one is in the domain of divine wisdom, by heeding
the word of God, this absence of wisdom of course is not the case. But THEN,
when we have this divinely accorded advantage, we STILL have the caution
found IN IT, not to exercise ourselves in things too high for us. It is creation
under us, not ourselves, over whom we have domain (Psalm 8). WE are under GOD!
We may use what He has given AS He enables and directs. HE
is Lord and it is HIS creation which is to be put into our hands, as a
fitting object for research, at HIS direction IF He wants this. He has however
said nothing such, concerning the making of man; but much to the contrary.
Imperial longings over all the power of the universe is not new; and here it is
only some sorts of mankind which now seek what the political sort sought
earlier. Power and dominion.
Not so! some
may reply. It is for compassion and conservation. This may be a clear
purpose, but when it so treats the Maker, it implies a willingness to seek such
power for WHATEVER reason, and hence to gain DOMINION for whatever purpose. In
due turn, it is used for other purposes. So be it. The willingness to be
seduced into the misuse of authority in the first place has betokened the
imperial man is taking over the palace: if it is to give food to the poor, it
is still taking over the palace, and seeking power and dominion. If it is a
mere secondary thing, so be it. It is still there.
No! the creation (not
procreation) of man's life is for God not man. MAN is God's, and is not
available for man's dominion. This has as its other side, worship, and love
which God is. So is life for man.
But once SNATCH it from the clouds, as Eve did, and seek a
wisdom and knowledge over and above man, as she did, and you have results which
are in full conformity to the squalid tenor of this last century: holocaust,
horror, grievous sights and disorder, precisely as predicted as correlatives of
Israel's return to its land, accomplished in 1948 officially (Luke 21),
precisely as antennae, buzzing out the message, His coming is near!
FACING THE
INTERFACES
There is then the interface, on the one hand, of our
bodies with matter, and with mind; and then there is the interface of our minds
with spirit. Minds analyse; spirits will. Mind
explores, spirit can set it to do so, or not.
The evaluating, discursive, volitional power of man is
spirit. The analytical, exploratory is mind. They are not the same. Your mind
can determine what should be done in a given problem area, but your spirit can
disdain it, and seeking for some thrill or statistical marvel, thrust with
emotion and intensity of desire, into some reasonably rejected procedure. It is
personal, and in close and designed correlation with mind, IT has a total
synthetic beauty, one however often spoilt in mental disease, and in maniacal
thrust, of which Hitler is not the only example, but a suitably notable one
(cf. SMR pp. 348ff., Things Old and New
Ch. 9, Little Things Ch. 5).
That interface, so
often ignored, but vital, is further material for sobriety, for knowledge. As
Dr Paul Brand, illustrious and much honoured medical
missionary points out in his work Forever Feast, p. 169, it is
not merely a question of psycho-somatic medicine, but rather something like pneumo-psycho-somatic medicine, if we are to have a
comprehensive terminology and an adequate overview. Ignore this and you merely
are like an aeronaut in the making, disdaining the concept of air. You are then
more likely to fly into a rage of frustration than into the air.
This synthetic
series of interfaces in man, involving liberty, love, wit and wisdom,
analysis, discursive thought and logic, personality and purpose, and on the
other side, programmed matter and programmed systems carrying out subordinate
co-ordinates of the overall design, reaches as high as God Himself, in its
CAPACITIES, in this, that out of love, He has made us able to have fellowship
with Himself, and as low as hell, in this, that it is able to move into
dimensions illicit, like any other abuse, and with the personal domain
involved, this is the grievous result!
Able
? you ask. Yes, but only by grace. A child, as
Professor Van Til of Westminster Theological Seminary
used to point out, can slap its father's face, but ONLY because he is held near
enough to do so. And because of sin, a second thing, the reaching to fellowship
with God is only by grace, for sin blinds and you cannot see even when it IS
near enough! (Cf. Ephesians 2:1-12).
In fact, sin has
much of the nature of other forms of intoxication. It can not only blind to
reality, in precisely that PART to make it dangerous, but it can forge Dutch
courage, as it was once called, or intoxicated bravado, so that it hopes to be
able to do what manifestly the very spirit imbibed has debarred it from doing,
in fact increasing incompetence and pride together! A daring exploit is such
intoxication, and it is the same in this business, both awful in its intensity
(as is the normal case in this type of pathology) and deadly in its capacity
(as likewise normal in usage in this spiritually bibulous field).
It is then not
merely, or even chiefly, as some competent doctors point out, that there are
liabilities to brain and other disorders, dysfunctions, malfunctions and
imperfect developments, so that disorders of unnamed and perhaps yet unknown
types may arise, with sufferings unspeakable to the PERSON whom they hope to
make by such manipulations of its ingredients of the flesh. That is highly significant
and enough to stop such a thing at the outset, in terms of humility and care of
others, not to say love.
However it is far
worse than that. Because of the SYNTHETIC INTERFACES, matter-body-mind-spirit,
and their sub-sections, matter-body, body-mind, mind-spirit, spirit and the linkability with God, by grace, through Christ: there is a
toying with things eternal as well as a trifling with things personal.
One is quite
aghast. But then, it is merely part of the syndrome, the spiritual genome of
pathology, if you will, the totality of the sphere of
disoriented operations. That is normally in the same direction: it is deplorable, yes, a matter of sorrow
and grief, of course, but always and ever verging on the horrendous, the
ghoulish and the evil.
Evil is what is
for God when it is not there. (That is, it concerns what is His provision for
co-operative or conformed relationship, when that is lacking, so leaving the
branch severed, the design breached, the result sullen, soiled or prima facie
meaningless, like a fountain pen in the hands of a mouse).
As to evil, there
is a domain for it. It may be active or passive. It may be intentional or not;
but not to be where you belong is evil. It is not the same as arbitrarily
pursuing that path, to be sure; but it is in that domain. To pursue a dominion,
however, within that domain of evil, without God and explicitly over the things
of God, so that you, as if God, are dealing with design specifications, not for
remedy, but for research and realisation of your own
will and thought, directly or vicariously for others: this is going somewhat
past the USSR in the last century.
In what way is it
surpassing even that ? In this: that there people
tried to explode or implode or change and remould
minds, in order to have them accept their own irrational power lusts (cf. SMR
pp. 925-926, 611ff., Ch. Little Things Ch. 5, Spiritual Refreshings
for the Digital Millenium Chs.
3, 4 ); but
here it is to MAKE them in the first place with whatever disorientation of
design specification at the outset, and with whatever distortion, perversion or
conversion of synthetic interfaces.
Man is becoming as
he grows older, more like a very young child, devoid of discipline or teaching.
The more he knows, the less he realises, vain in his
pride, and the further he goes, the less he has gone, for his main
understanding is by a shallow substitute, lost; for it is the fear of the LORD
which is the BEGINNING of wisdom. Thus it is that man's human implements grow
as his power to realise falls, and he is altogether
such as is becoming, if you could use that word at all, for the sickly end of
the human opportunity phase, before the Lord comes.
The nature of sin is being taught us not merely in texts, but in life. We
SEE it. In that, we can be thankful; though the actors and agents, for them we
have only the utmost misgiving, and the most solicitous concern.
PUTTING THE CROWN WHERE IT BELONGS
For them as for
all, while it is day, there is ONE way to ONE God who remains the ONE source of
love and the ONE basis of authority, and the ONE provider of truth (cf. SMR Chs. 1-7). It is still true,
"Seek the Lord while He may be found,
Call
upon Him while He is near.
Let
the wicked forsake his way,
And the unrighteous his thoughts;
Let
him return to the LORD,
And He
will have mercy on him;
And to
our God,
For he
will abundantly pardon."
It remains the case, for the Christian:
"But when the
kindness and the love of God our Saviour toward man
appeared,
not by
works of righteousness which we have done,
but
according to His mercy, He saved us,
through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,
whom
He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Lord,
that
having been justified by His grace,
we
should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life."
THIS is a search worthy, and here is the result. It was a
research of Christ, done with knowledge, articulated in heaven, secured in
mission on earth, gained in obedience, given in grace, with a result for man.
That, it is one provided with wisdom, earned by Christ in love, where judgment
for man is taken by the grace of God as man, for man, even for as many as
receive Him (John 3:16, 1:1-12, 8:58, I John 1:1-4).
SEE ALSO: News 153.
NOTE
*1 See That Magnificent Rock, Chs.
1 and 8, Wake Up World! Your Creator
is Coming... Chs. 4-6, Stepping Out for Christ,
Chs. 2, 7-10, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, Spiritual Refreshings
for the Biblical Millenium Ch.
13, SMR 2 and 10 etc..
Consult index.