NEWS 46

VERIFICATION THROUGH PRINCIPLES,
PATHOLOGY AND SECTS

TIME Magazine, January 25, pp. 44ff..

In this place, Time seeks to analyse the practices of The IOC... the International Olympic control group. These are subjected to scrutiny in terms of possible malpractice, receipts of large and even grandiose inducements or gifts... and the rest is much reported. This and that party divulges in shame or horror, concern or journalistic rigour the malpractices real or imagined, and with much emphasis, the manoeuvring that may have replaced objective survey for Games operations is surveyed.

The irony that such high international 'ideals' should be sub-let by such lowly, if not low practices is not lost. However it is the issue of PRINCIPLES as such that arises. IS it wrong, the question virtually posed by one of the parties cited, to pursue with whatever it takes, the business in hand! IS it normal practice in fact ? "If, " said one, "you measure our conduct by the way people in this city do business, it's no different. You support your friends and their causes, and that's what we tried to do" (p. 48). This related to the now famous Salt Lake City case, whether it should be a venue for the Olympic Games (it seems that it is to be so anyway!). It is to be read in the context that "Past officials of Salt Lake's 2002 bid committee now admit that the munificence extended toward I.O.C. members in the form of contributions, scholarships  and health care was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars" - Time, p. 47.

The lawyers can examine the details, but the issues are clear. IS it a sound principle to offer inducements, whether in a friendly format or in a direct vote grabbing pursuit ? For that matter, is it proper to have millions sent from Japan through a business magnate's efforts, towards an Olympic structure, in a context of possible choice of a Japanese city for the Games! Is it in fact WRONG in principle to make people inclined to vote for what you want in a matter of city choice, by using money as a lever, especially when the money may magnify the Olympic movement's riches and power ?

It seems evident that some would regard this as 'normal'. Someone is inclined to something you have, and you give them something they want, and so you do business...  What however if you want something which evacuates a NOMINALLY superior party from the ALLEGEDLY just treatment of comparing sites for the Games, by such aggrandising moneys sent to Olympic bodies, whether for buildings or more frankly distortion of objective voting ?

IF the  INTENTION is to select the city most appropriate as a site by virtue of physical adaptability to the purpose,  buildings, environmental pleasantness, grandeur or colour, inspiration, edification, suitability for aspiration and so on, then of course in PRINCIPLE ALL of this other action is quite wrong. It is beside the point. It becomes virtual hypocrisy. If however the intention is to bring glory and greatness to the Olympic movement, riches and power, or to the Committee which rule it, then this would need to be clearly declared: WE WANT RICHES AND POWER AND GRANDEUR AND GLORY AND/OR OUR COMMITTEE MEMBERS WANT MONEY. If that was the nature of the business, it would, however, not seem in the slightest degree compatible with the alleged ideals of the Olympic movement, by virtue of which it is regarded with a sense of awe, an aura of wonder and an appetite for something better than squalid devices and artful manoeuvre. To the extent that such ideals are a major draw and decisive tradition of the Olympic Movement, to this extent the failure to DECLARE the actual intentions, becomes doubly wrong. It is distortion of specific as well as general principles, in that case.

Let us merely note in passing that this failure of integrity, morals and vision is as a trend imputed to this generation which fits so perfectly and aptly the designations in the Bible for the last before the return of Jesus Christ (see II Timothy 3; and The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, Chs.8-9). However more to our present pursuit is this: there is here an issue of principles, changing principles, ruling principles, even contrary principles, the one to the other.

It is not only in Committees that such things make themselves prods and challenges. It is also in the life of individuals and of political parties; and indeed of churches, the more so when there is in this same predicted period a vast falling away of many of these same bodies (cf. II Peter 2, Matthew 24, II Thessalonians 2, and the above references).

Let us look at individuals. A person may be 'happily' living along with certain priorities of principles - good neighbour, reliable citizen, faithful husband, good father, honest operator or whatever. Then suddenly, there is a tension. Life becomes complex, demanding, harrying in fact. After a while the issue may (with or without a psychiatrist for the secular man) become clear. It may then appear that TWO principles are in conflict. To be a 'good' father for example, the man may feel that dishonesty is the only way to afford the power to provide for the children or the wife or both. Suddenly the mould or cast of character is cracked. In such a case, a person may become neurotic as principles jostle each other, without resolution, and an uneasy pragmatism may resolve the matter in terms of minimal dishonesty and reduced standards of provision for the children or in any other CONFLICTING fashion.

Again, principles may become utterly and admittedly, harshly discordant; but intolerable to part with; they may seem both indispensable and incompatible. This could lead on to psychosis.

Further, they could become so harassing and in terms of other people's observed or supposed behaviour, so embroiling and unpleasant, that the erstwhile idealist may capitulate, do something somehow and so enrol in the lists of the cynics. NO ONE does this, and YOU NEVER FIND that, he begins to intone. The world is askew and he likes to think of himself as AT LEAST AS GOOD AS ANY OTHER, and sharper sighted to boot, so giving an edge of superiority which may stir the pot of devilish self-esteem most happily, even if it is a decidedly sweet and sour sauce which develops from it.

Again, one may decide to IGNORE ALL OTHER PRINCIPLES save THIS one, and so become an eager eyed fanatic, unreliable in all things, except in terms of this ONE thing, which is perhaps personal power, or personal pride or personal dignity or whatever it may be. This can lead to a species of paranoia, self-congratulation and passion in one broth of affliction (to others).

These and other relative movements of principles in life can destabilise and lead to people in a sort of self-deceiving rationalising, making themselves abominable before they speak, like some species of particularly obnoxious cane toads, rough and afflicting, and never aware of it!

In all these things, the trouble is simple. MAN is not RELATING to the PRINCIPLES of his Creator, not perhaps even READING them, is like a car with an exceedingly amateur owner who looks at the handbook only when the cylinder head cracks...  (cf. I Timothy 6:3-5, and history). It is so simple both to detect the ground and cure of such pathologies. The priorities are set out; the principles are automatically coherent and do not conflict, by nature; but they are to be understood in a personal way, because they are the formulations of a personal GOD, for a personal CREATION called mankind. It is necessary not to seek to imitate a robot or a computer, since this is not what one is. It does not work that way, as it never fully works when one thing is conceived as if it were another! Reality demands payment when crossed!

When the PERSON of a man/woman is re-created so that the nature of the system and the heart and the understanding is restored to normal, from the STATISTICALLY normal pathologies, then the operator being restored, the principles are understood in their context;  and for their target persons, that is mankind,  the issues are resolved in splendour (cf. Ephesians 1:17-21). Paul puts the matter keenly in his inspired words of Colossians 3:9-10:
 

• "... you have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of Him who created him...",

where you have decisive regeneration together with constant conforming to WHAT MAN WAS MEANT TO BE in terms of the ONE who so made him. This is the experience afforded by living in the presence of the living God in terms of His impregnable word, which does not pass away (I Peter 1:23, Isaiah 40:8) by which, as Christ declared, by EVERY ONE of which, man is to live (Matthew 4:4).

It is, to be sure, a little difficult to bother to read the handbook at times; but then, the equipment is a marvel, that of man, and a little care is to the point; and indeed, the instruction should start from childhood (cf. Ephesians 6:4).

This resolution is simply one more verification of the Bible as the word of God. It declares that departure from the word of GOD WILL CREATE such tensions and defeats, warrings and strivings, false imaginings and so on (cf. I Timothy 6:4-5, where the concept of being spiritually depraved and deprived of the truth is stated); and it equally declares and shows in detail how to see priorities, principles and procedures in perfect harmony, demanding only ONE THING, that one forsake all that one has, as a Christian redeemed by the ransoming death of Jesus Christ, and follow Him as Lord. (See esp. Luke 14, and in particular, vv. 27ff..) Since He is alive and wonderful, this is marvellous; but to those who are blind, every sight is mere verbiage, as to the deaf, the sounds do not charm (cf. Matthew 13:15). In THIS case, however, the closing of ear and eye is perfectly voluntary, and the result has thus a cracked ring, which peals across the earth in a perfect cacophony which stirs the cynic and depresses the optimist. Optimism without reality is mere delusion, just as depression when one is actually in view of it, is mere failure to adopt it.

So we come to another special case: that of the sects. Let us take Mormonism as example. A young Mormon recently visited our house, telling us that Christ is in the Godhead, that the Father and He are one and the like, as if his claim to be following the whole Bible could conceivably be true. That was ONE PRINCIPLE: he would follow the Bible. However at the end he used another principle, to follow the book of Mormon. Now in fact the Bible tells us that the word of God is commanded to a thousand generations (Psalm 105), COMMANDS that we live by EVERY word which proceeds out of the mouth of God, and so is committed to the supply of the same, for God's requirements are not grievous, as John tells us, and His commands are not harsh (cf. Matthew 4:4 and I John 5:3). Indeed,  Psalm 111 tells us most appropriately in view of these things, that "all His commandments are sure" and that "They stand fast for ever and ever, and are done in truth and uprightness", a plain contradiction if they were void and departed.

Moreover Christ taught that the gates of hell would not prevail against His church; and a millenium plus of being prevailed against is really not an interpretation of such a prohibition! (Matthew 16:18). It would be a cardinal, mirthful and absolute contradiction! To prevail against a city could happen in a moment from the 'gates' of hell; but this negation is unqualified. Those gates of hell, said Christ, WILL NOT prevail against it. The concept of God having His truth buried for that time, in total obfuscation and gross denial of the word of God, the Bible, is so ludicrous that it is a testimony, like the church of Rome, to human deviationism, to see millions follow some novelty when we are expressly warned against such change in terms involving damnation (Galatians 1), and against it in particular (II Peter 2) when the seasons noted in detail for the return of Christ draw near (Luke 21:28,31).

The book of Mormon therefore cannot be allowed, in Biblical terms, as merely absent for hundreds of years when the church of God was in many places most willing to know, when it was equally unnoted by  apostle, unused by any Bible writer, and then to appear at leisure some 1800 hundred ;years later; let alone when the book of Revelation in Ch.22 tells us that if anyone adds to these THINGS, calamity itself will fall on him/her. The WORDS, we read in Rev. 22:18-19, must not be reduced; but it is the THINGS which are forbidden addition. What things ? The issues range from past to present to future, from salvation to obedience to world history, from praise to shame, from churches to nations, from heresies to bliss. They could scarcely be broader. No addition! Again, says Proverbs 30:6,DO NOT ADD to His word lest He rebuke you and you be found a liar. This is what the Bible actually says about addition in both these places, and it is really unwise to assume that when God speaks, the one thing He does NOT mean is this: what He says!

It is true that once a part of the scriptures lay in the Jewish temple, by obvious neglect and gross and culpable negligence, simply not utilised. So be it. That is simply one form of rebellion of a unitary church which felt its shame and paid in full in the approaching national calamity at the time. This short sojourn does not compare with the absenting of a document never heard of or mentioned in the annals of the history of the New Testament churches, many of which, like that of Philadelphia in Revelation 3, were models of abiding in the presence of God. Nor does the time meet such an illustration, for that was short, irresponsible and warned against (cf. Deuteronomy 30:16ff.29:18-19,  28:45). Nor does the situation, for that case HAD ABUNDANTLY the historical knowledge of the book, once greatly used and quite central; whereas in the Mormon case, it remains over millenia an unknown as an iceberg in the tropics.

Again, Galatians tells us that the gospel which PAUL HAD PREACHED (already) was the one to be preached, and that ANY OTHER would be wholly damnable. This was so EVEN IF Paul or indeed, for that matter, an angel preached it. Now that is highly relevant. Joseph Smith was spoken to, the tale goes, by an angel, Moroni. The Moroni subject or angel allegedly involved in this post-mature presentation of 'the word of God' certainly had another gospel, where for example striving and energy are to supplement the sacrifice of Christ to make sure the salvation of the party. It is not question of the fact that those saved do in fact show such energy, for good trees, as Christ said, bear good fruit. What then is the case ? It is good trees as is natural, bearing good fruit. It is not a case of good fruit making good trees; the one bears the other, not the other the one. In fact, said Christ in Matthew 15:13, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up."

As to those so planted, "By grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." Indeed, salvation in which works play any part is specifically prohibited as spurious (Romans 3:26-28, Ephesians 2:8-10, Galatians 3), to the point that in Galatians Paul is speaking of those starting in the Gospel of grace and trying to proceed in the energy of the flesh, as if their works could turn the tide, as bewitched!
 

• "Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? " he asks. "Having begun in the  Spirit, are you now made perfect by theflesh ?'

Indeed, so vast is the antinomy, the antipathy, the one with the other, that the apostle asks this, indicating that the 'new' look way, actually precisely that prescribed by mormonism, is such that if followed it would mean that they had "suffered so many things in vain". It is another gospel which slights and blights salvation so that this is not found!

Further, the angelic visitant, according to the account, was specifically disenabled by the apostle Paul, by the Bible, from being the news bringer of doctrine. In Colossians he declares this:
 
 

• "Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with increase that is from God" - 2:18-19.

The Greek word for 'worship' here refers to religious discipline or worship. Following any such visitant is prohibited in such things; and it is starkly contrasted by Paul with the danger of being cheated either by philosophy (2:8) or spiritual beings from the HEAD and His way, Christ in whom "dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily". Thus in HIM is eternity and omniscience, omnipotence and righteousness, changelessness and all that is found in the divine nature, for otherwise the fulness is only in part there, whereas as not only is it the fulness that dwells in Him, but ALL the fulness. Again, taking God to mean what He says is quite decisive, continually. Hence the nature of the case with the book of Mormon is excluded in the beginning, before its covers are opened (or plates are turned...): to consider it is from the outset excluded by the word of God the Bible, and to consider both is a monumental case of conflict of opposing principles.

Indeed, there is even the folly of having, as the young missionary admitted, Christ as a separate being from the Father. The one, the Father, after all was at first in Mormonism, supposedly in Eden, in flesh and blood as Adam! ( a very different picture from the sinless God who created Eden and then man and then had man to be given a spirit, created absolutely from His absolute power, Genesis 1,2, Colossians 1, John 1, Isaiah 45:45:12). Oh true, that view of their early leader, Brigham Young, has now been denied: yet it is some religion to foul up on such a point for so long with such authority being so newly 'rediscovered'!

Some contribution. However, the fact remains that they still teach that our God, the Father,  is a resurrected person of flesh and blood, confusing spirit and flesh as to His nature. The "Father," they say, " has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's" (Joseph Smith in Doctrine and Covenants), being an exalted man! whereas Biblically HE IS A SPIRIT, Christ Himself having come from above, and having stated this fact (John 8:23, 17:1-3,John 4:24) concerning the NATURE OF GOD. Biblically (Philippians 2, Titus 2:11-13, 3:4-5), He resolved in pity to visit this earth in human format, THEREBY changing FROM "the form of God" as a condescension and action for salvation; and of course, Jesus  refers to GOD as the FATHER  - John 4:21-24, He Himself being inextricably One with Him - John 8:58, 5:19-23. In JUST the same way as the Father acts, He declared, does He; He does the SAME THINGS IN THE SAME WAY, impossible for anyone not having to the full the qualities and powers of God. Since God is but ONE, Christ is this ONE, together with the Father and the Spirit ( II Corinthians 3:17), ONE GOD everlasting, and from everlasting.

Any conception that Christ is a separate BEING from the Father is thus as anti-scriptural as the view that God so changes that He had have Christ as an additive to the Godhead, coming from man's domain as His start to this elevation! Infinity is a rather long way to be out in any concept!

Moreover, Psalm 90 tells us that from everlasting to everlasting He, the Lord is God, and Psalm 102, that He does not change. Again, He dwells in light unapproachable (I Timothy 6:16), and is "the blessed and only potentate", something infinitely different from being a man growing into a god, who in turn has another man grow into the kind of being He is. Change would be the order of the day, far from everlasting existence in immutable splendour as ONE, and ONLY God! In fact, from Hebrews 1:8-12 we learn that this eternity and immutability is true of Christ, of whom it was spoken. A visit as man does not alter Him; it merely expresses Him in this manner or 'form'.

The essence of God however is a different matter. He either is immutable or not; He either is eternal or not; it is either true that He is the same, or not. The Bible provides this logically necessary and wholly distinct principle that HE IS; and the Mormon theology that HE IS NOT. How amusing to see in religion, this striving vainglory of obviously opposing principles, pushed about from time to time in radical ways, as in the case of Brigham Young's words, but still in writhing hostility to the word of God; and to see a body try to live with things as opposite as heaven and earth, flesh and spirit, immutability and infinite mutability.

Shamelessly, they would have as well as the Father, some OTHER being, called Christ, entirely on a par with other men in being at first a spirit like them, starting with other men as a spirit  made even in eternity. This they claim, whereas Biblically, in the beginning God CREATED the heaven and the earth and MAN in it, so that ALL things that were made were MADE by Christ - John 1:1-3, Colossians 1:16, John 20:28, to whom Thomas appropriately responded, saying to Him, "My Lord and my God" (the God of me, literally!).

"All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made that was made" - John 1:3.

ALL THINGS! The category of the made is under His total supervision, is wholly enacted by Him, has not exceptions or exemptions relative to Him. MADE? HE made it! He is MAKER, the rest of creation is the made. Of Creators the Bible knows but ONE (Isaiah 45:5-6,12,18, 43:10, 44:6-8,24): the God who did it "by MYSELF".

Further, since you have to be there to do anything, He could not have made Himself; ALL were made by Him, and He is thus eternal, UNLIKE ALL that He made. He is also thus God, the ONLY GOD THERE IS, as God declares in Isaiah for example (and as Paul states in Ephesians 4:6 - "one God and Father of all"). Thus He declares in John 8:58, "Before Abraham was, I AM", so using the signature of God the Almighty from Exodus 3:14, the God who knows NO OTHER. Indeed, it is the God who declares in Isaiah 48:16, that He, the Lord of Hosts, is sent; and sent by the Lord God and His Spirit. The same is found in Zechariah 2:8.

Who is this ? It is the One who says of Cyrus, "Yea, I have called him: I have brought him, and he shall make his way prosperous", and this, "My hand also has laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand has spanned the heaven: when I call to them, they stand up together"  - 48:13. Who is this that is sent then ? "From the time that it was, there am I!" He declares; just as Revelation repeatedly calls this same God-the-sent, "The First and the Last". That too, it is the signature of God, the ONLY God as He so often declares ( Isaiah 44:6, cf. 46:9, Revelation 2:8, where the first and the last was dead and is alive again, and 1:17).

For alleged Bible believers what do we then have ? Mere confusion. What is here found is the chaos of conflict and contradiction with the Biblical principle of the changeless deity of Christ, a person in the changeless trinity, who as Saviour again showed that He is God, for God knows no other Saviour as He knows no other Creator (Isaiah 43:10, 53:6-12, Acts 4:11-12): it is a monument to the torment of human invention, fearing not even to invent in the area of God, as if our created minds could alter the light unapproachable, or invade heaven. Not merely is this so: it is the case that the salvation in Christ is the ONLY ONE EVER and that it is FOR ALL THE UNIVERSE, the ENTIRE CREATION, and is the only one applicable in heaven or in earth, and is everlasting in its force (Revelation 14:3, Colossians 1:19-23, Ephesians 1:10-11,20-23). Name another ? THIS ONE is above every name that CAN be named, this Age and the Next: for this prilgrimage as likewise for that judgment before which heaven and earth 'flee away', with heaven, hell and eternity for its scope (Revelation 20:11-15, John 5:19-23, Daniel 7:13-14,26-28, Hebrews 12:25-28).

Indeed, the whole of creation is to be summed up, in its final dispositions which await judgment, in this, that the Father gathers "all things together in Christ" (Ephesians 1:10), who is not only the source of all things visible and invisible created whatever, but before all things, so that all things by Him can have any being at all, consist (Colossians 1:17). Indeed, after the judgment which this same Christ effects (John 5:19-23), He shares the throne with His Father (Revelation 22:3) with eternal glory (Revelation 5:13). Even with His earthly Messianic ministry 'finished', such is His glory.
 

The difference on the part of Christ, from mere man, is infinite;
from God is zero.
(See The Unsurpassable Pinnacle that is Christ, Ch.9, in Biblical Blessings.)
 

Indeed, to turn from man to God as the Mormon doctrine teaches, it is some change! but this being, who is God, HE does not change. This Saviour Christ, HE does not change.  From the first, the Bible teaches,  He, who became the Christ on earth,  was in the form of God, needing no grasping to be His equal (Philippians 2). The equal of whom? Why, of the God who neither changes nor ceases, and as such, therefore, is infinite, eternal, omnipotent as in Malachi 3:6, Psalm 102:25-28, Hebrews 1:10-13, Psalm 145:3, 90:2, Isaiah 43:13, Psalm 115:3, Revelation 1:8.

So again the Mormon doctrine is a false gospel, with the CONFLICTING PRINCIPLES of the word of God and the Mormon heresy. Like a tortured, writhing body, they contort and distort, dislocating and yet being held together by the will of man, providing a sort of crucifixion of doctrine, which however is not snared to their lair, where the gross and prodigious mock-ups are made, and dynamised by many missionaries, are brought to view with hideous result. How opposite is the eternal peace of God which passes all understanding (Philippians 4:6, Isaiah 26:1-4), available to those whose hearts are regenerated (John 3) and united in His love (Ephesians 3:16-20, Psalm 86:11)!

The Mormon doctrine and that of the Bible are as far apart as heaven and earth, as glory and hell. These principles conflict, they create confusion, they are contraries, the one is blasphemy in terms of the other. The whole concept of man becoming God is ludicrous, that is, God in the sense that the Father is, that God is: the uncreated Creator, the eternal producer of the temporary, the changeless producer of the changing (cf. II Corinthians 4:18). The difference is infinite, and so is the error.

"Before Me was no God formed, nor shall there be after Me," declares the One who IS GOD, in Isaiah 43:10. Similarly, we have seen, there is no other Saviour (43:12), such as oneself, as becomes the case when the dual control job brings home the sinner, when Christ is conceived as merely initiating a possibility, while the sinner making it happen: co-pilots. Not at all, there is no other name under heaven given among men by which they must be saved (Acts 4:11-12), and God detests the concept of any other Saviour, far less oneself - Romans 10:1ff..Grace is not works, or else work is no more work, as the Bible says and Paul declares (Romans 4:6, 3:35-28, 10:3).The Jews certainly believed in sacrifices and divine mercy and provisions, but their heart would not receive, as God required, by mercy alone the gift of grace (cf. Psalms 32, 51, Isaiah 52-53) which, presented in pictorial form in the Old Testament, had more than a picture in the New Covenant, when Christ presented Himself. YET THE UNBELIEVING and ZEALOUS JEWS OF HIS DAY  ARE DESIGNATED BY PAUL as going about to establish their OWN RIGHTEOUSNESS (Romans 10:3).

They are depicted as NOT SUBMITTING TO THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD in this, that the Christ risen from the dead, who is the propitiation without works at all, is not simply adopted, unadapted, as He is (Romans 3:25, 10:9, Galatians 3:1-12). A system of mere possibility is made one of going about to establish one's own righteousness, even when it majors on the concept of mercy and sacrifice. This is the problem found in Romanism, Judaism and Mormonism alike.

Now all these procedures and teachings, in this Mormon case, show at the religious level the same mutually destructive principles, which in individual cases can produce neurosis or psychosis, as they can at the religious and church level (cf. Hosea 9:7).  There is indeed a specifically spiritual madness, so that the Lord here says, "The spiritual man is mad!" It is like the MAD, or mutually assured destruction of the Cold War, owing to nuclear warheads deemed able to remove either side with such effectiveness that victory would be available only to the dead, the maimed or those assured of lingering death. So here, the principles cannot be contained together, but are contrary, the one to the other.

Thus it is that we come here, in this heresy, to such patent irrationalities as someone neither infinite (you cannot have two separate infinite entities, since each limits the other) nor eternal,  becoming so, and so becoming God. It is a form of logical abuse as well as scriptural desolation which reminds one of the end of Daniel 9, where the abomination of desolation is made manifest - the desolator as shown in Matthew 24, from the lips of Christ.

Let us revert then to PRINCIPLES AS SUCH in this world, having examined examples of conflict between them.

The beautiful thing is this. Not merely is there no need for the confusion and sinuosities that are racking  organisations like the Olympic movement, with which our discourse commenced. What SORT of principles in that case ? The sort of ring the Movement seems to promote might suggest something like this:

'Be true, honourable, clear and honest and do what you allege. That is a principle. DO NOT make claims that are sadly or even ironically countered by reality. Be humble.'

But HOW ? The answer is as simple as the practicalities when it is not received, are complex! You do it by the word of God. Find the real keys of knowledge and understanding underlying and directing the principles as put forth in the word of God; understand your stuff, for it is yours if you are human, for it is the word of your creator and you are His - whether you choose to steal yourself away or not. KNOW your God (you will meet Him some day anyway - cf. Amos 4:12ff.). He has plenty to say as Amos 4-5 (and indeed Ch.3:7) in Amos so clearly relate, coming in dramatic simplicity to this: "Prepare to meet your God!". His word, learn it, know it and in knowing it, ensure you come to Him as He prescribes, repentant of sin, delighted in Him, receiving His reconciliation in Christ Jesus, and becoming a lived-in being, with Christ in you, the hope of glory, the purchaser of eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12,15, Romans 5:7-10). Thus does it come to be that your God and you in harmony and partnership, you a child adopted and redeemed, and He, the everlasting Father, now yours (John 10:9,27-28, Ephesians 1:11).

THOSE conditions resolve the tensions -as seen equally, for example in cases such as sports in which drugs are taken, or supposedly so. Start with the truth and you can end without conflict. Let us look for a moment at that secular case of conflicting principles, in the area and arena of sport.

Is a man something to be toyed with in terms of his strength, the relationship of his parts, his longevity, sacrifices being made by changing things NOW to get more results, interfering with the design shamelessly as if it were fully understood ? Can performance enhancing drugs be legitimate ? The case is in essence the same as the male-female issue in sports, in cases where supposedly ladies only are to be in a contest. What IS the frame, the name, the condition of the competitor, what is interference and what is ... development! WHO competes ? WHAT is man ? and woman ?

Again, Is a man in tennis to be imitated by a woman, through drugs, to the detriment of the special features of women ? This has long been an issue. How do you know ? Who rules ? What IS a woman, what IS natural and so on! What IS unfair in particular, in male-female competitors when the contest is a ladies' one! What indeed is a MAN!

It is so incredibly simple. What is natural is the code and the qualification given in the nature God created for woman; and to use technical knowledge to change the design is rather like someone taking a Raphael portrait, painting over it and then saying, 'You know, I don't now really know what the painter was ... saying in this portrait!' It is almost inane; but the simplicity is hidden by the downgrade path of ignoring the design, so that the immediate problem arises, WHO has the right to legislate, who can SAY!

It is not Nature which can do so in the end, something which itself is subject to distortion through cosmic rays, cancer and mutation, conscious interference and manipulation, with endless submissions about re-organising the human frame, male or female. Who then can SAY! It is GOD. Ignore Him and your principles and priorities, for man or for woman, indeed your very capacity to understand the nature of principle is lost in the mists of confusion, worthless words and squirming squalor of mind, sinuosities of spirit and mutual antagonisms, doubts, suspicions, allegations of arrogance, of artful innovation, deceit and the like.

And that ? It is, as we have seen, just what the word of God has said, verified in this, that it is showing the resolution so simple and just of these things, as in this also, that it exhibits the ground of the pathology as clearly as its cure.