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Chapter One
OVERFLIGHT OF PERSONS
TREATING PERSONS PERSONALLY
IS INFINITELY BETTER
THAN CONNIVING WITH CONTROLS
The
Person who treats persons personally
infinitely excels the impersonal laxities of Man
News 294,
The Australian, October 27, 2003
THE UGLY PRELUDE
There has been a sense of passé, developing about the aims of World War II. In one sense, this is not surprising. It is now a long time ago. The idealism of protecting people from oppression*1A and allowing their free display of national desire, within the limits of non-violence, free speech, free religion, is now facing the new desires of a new age. The Atlantic Charter was pregnant with the conceptions of liberty, freedom from fear, from intrusion and manipulation. Freedom from "fear" obviously had to include whatever was famous for inciting it, and religion is one of the chief instruments of spiritual torture in history, as the Inquisition and the Moslem scourge alike, have amply demonstrated.
Yet as the new age evacuates light, in a sort of reversal of dawning, what do we find ? It is given in detail in Mystery of Iniquity, but on this occasion let us pass quickly, but clearly over the point.
In Christ the
Wisdom and the Power of God, Ch. 5, the issue is
considered for our day:
It is exceedingly strange that religious matters right down to the "question" of whether one can preach as Christ and Paul did, against what is wrong in religion or religions, as well as for what is right, can now be raised in this way:
- after two world wars seeking liberty,
- after the Atlantic Charter and its emphasis on freedom of speech and religion,
- after the idealism of these two wars,
- after the entire liberalisation in Britain over the centuries.
It is testimony to the danger of prosperity, the satisfaction of comfort at the expense of truth, which like a jack hammer used as an auctioneering device, ends in anything but comfort, selling the very soul of truth for the pleasure of convenience.Such may be far from the intention, as it has been over the ages, as now this land, now that, has sacrificed truth and its demands for power or other thrust or lust, philosophy or conception, and the demands made by that. It is the very subtle insidiousness of the invidious, which allows it to stalk for man as a hunter for his wild prey. We impute evil intention to none. It is a question of being deceived, misled, and the people imperilled.
But man left free again seeks to enslave.
Thus the United Nations in its very word on freedom of religion, in its document, "THE DECLARATION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF INTOLERANCE AND OF DISCRIMINATION BASED ON RELIGION OR BELIEF," has this in it Preamble:
"THE USE OF RELIGION OR BELIEF FOR ENDS INCONSISTENT WITH THE CHARTER, OTHER RELEVANT INSTRUMENTS OF THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE PURPOSES AND PRINCIPLES OF THE PRESENT DECLARATION IS INADMISSIBLE."
What are its aims then ? In the same preamble
we find these words:
"Convinced that freedom of religion and belief should also contribute to the
attainment of the goals of world peace, social justice and friendship among
peoples and to the elimination of ideologies or practices of colonialism and
racial discrimination ... " When therefore Christ declared that He had not
come to bring peace but the sword, namely division even within households (not
a literal sword - cf. John 18:37), but a black and white, truth and error, God
and the devil division, He is against this principle of the UN.
That is important since the UN is telling us that it will not tolerate the use of religion for such a purpose. It must be for world peace. If anything will create divisions which threaten this, it must go. If truth is going to stir men up, so that peace is not found, then truth must go. That is what the world actually did, with Israel and Rome in collusion, last time the test came. It is coming again. It is near at hand. The Christ was present; His return being near (Answers to Questions Ch. 5), they will be tested again, but this time HE is the judge!
It is well then to consider your place. The
United Nations has a place in confrontation with Christ. They are not the
first world power to be in this position, nor will they be the last.
Indeed it goes further.
Article 5 of this UN Declaration concerning Religion, in paras 3 and 5, advises us that
" the CHILD SHALL BE PROTECTED FROM ANY FORM OF DISCRIMINATION
ON THE GROUND OF RELIGION OR BELIEF. HE (sic) SHALL BE BROUGHT UP IN A SPIRIT OF... UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD, RESPECT FOR FREEDOM OF RELIGION
OR BELIEF OF OTHERS, AND IN FULL CONSCIOUSNESS THAT HIS (sic) ENERGY AND TALENTS SHOULD BE DEVOTED TO THE SERVICE OF HIS FELLOWMAN."
Hence once again it is in confrontation with Christ. The CHILD MUST have a sense of universal brotherhood, even though CHRIST declared of many religious people that they were of their father, the DEVIL (John 8:44). He not merely does not share the pragmatic, utilitarian UN view of religion, then; he implies that it is to be assigned to the devil. In what way ? In this, that some religious parameters, desires, ways, moulds are OF the devil, and USED BY the devil, so that the consideration that ALL men are brothers is to IGNORE the devil, and hence is OF the devil, a delusion wholly ignorant of his ways.
This sickly substitute is of pragmatic expediency for truth, peace at any price (we are not talking physical violence, but accord, as Christ made massively clear while being arrested Himself, and crucified, without resistance). You may respect the FREEDOM of religion, since God made it; but you may NOT respect the religions, or imagine any universal brotherhood of man, if you are a Christian, following the words of Christ in the Bible, since some are OF THE DEVIL BY CHRIST's OWN WORD!
TRUTH CANNOT
make peace with error. They are contrary one to the other. Christ declared
this:
"I am the way, the life and the truth" (John 14:6). So we see in the UN
background, or better that in the very spirit of this dying age, the
prostitution of religion for this world's preferences, desires and projects.
It is 'INADMISSIBLE', we read, that religion should be used EXCEPT for the PURPOSES of
THIS WORLD. Christ, on the other hand, makes it clear that before the Judge of all, it is
inadmissible that religion should be used EXCEPT for the purposes of God,
since in truth God is, is to be worshipped, made the world and is its King.
The world, as in Psalm 2, is by no means in agreement with this, and the UN simply is a mirror of this world. It wants any religion, dealing with ultimates for man, human objectives, to be centred on brotherhood conceptions, although sheep and goats are NOT brothers: it acts to bypass the fatherhood which is found by repentance and faith in Christ, and to invent one invested in anything at all (where is the set of brothers with NO father! so you have to invent one if you PRACTICALLY ignore God, as normal now with many in power).
"Let us cast their bonds asunder ..." is still the spirit of relationship to the One Lord who is in operation above all. USE the word which relates to Him, to manipulate the world, divorce brotherhood from fatherhood, manipulate man by mouthing empty phrases, nostalgic of Christ but in frank and gross contradiction of His word ? By all means, this is PRECISELY the work of the devil, to deceive, to draft to his own desire, to divert from God, to convert to ANY other thing which will divorce from God. A liar, as Christ declared, he is the acme of idle and vain invention, and the nadir of truth.
The world has then one option: to return to the Lord who will abundantly pardon, or TO FORSAKE ALL PEACE BECAUSE OF THE WAY IN WHICH IT IS BEING SOUGHT.
That is the divine irony. BECAUSE it wants to USE religion ONLY in ways which are judged to bring peace, by compromise, by containment, by removal of extremes of opposition (as between Christ and His continual adversaries), by respect for others in their religious ways via a meretricious brotherhood, THEREFORE this world is to have war. It is DECLARING WAR on God by so pragmatically seeking to utilise Him! What else ? Would you expect that the LIMITATION on religion in the interests of this world's conception of peace, by muddle, by method, by compromise, by qualification, by limitation, by law, is going to bring happiness before the God who IS the truth, which in this medley of muddle is being bypassed ?
THE POLLUTED PRINCIPLES
Is it peaceable to war, then, on your Sovereign ? or in the case where He is also your Creator, is it wise ? Does it bring relief, to know nothing of your disease, and to dismiss the findings of fact and reason in the interests of statistical pressures and the satisfaction of the lusts of power pressure groups, so that what is desired, is voted into existence, and neither truth nor scientific method are satisfied, but ignored! Is terror at terrorism, now that the weapons are so huge, to become the new means of avoiding truth ?
Is fear of man to replace fear of God ?
That however is PRECISELY the lust of the present day, when the addled work of the UN in this dimension is being forwarded vastly as first the US, and then in measure, Australia, among the West, speak highly of Islam (they have some in their countries, who follow this cf. His Time is Near Ch. 9, *4, Red Alert Chs. 6, 8, Dastardly Dynamics ... Chs. 1, 10), as if it were part of the strategy of the day, to make religious evaluations in the name of the people whom you supposedly represent, in politics.
Howard, Monday Sept 17, 2001 is reported as declaring this: "Barbarism has no ethnicity and evil has no religion. We should take pause, lest we engage in the evil of scape-goating individual groups. And I say to my fellow Australians of Islamic faith or of Middle Eastern descent, I extend to you the hand of friendship. Wouldn't it be a terrible, tragic, obscene irony if, in responding to these terrible terrorist attacks, we forsook the very things that we believed had been assaulted."
Now this approach has some value. It is wrong to accuse religious people because SOME enmeshed with their religious beliefs, do wrong things, to be sure. Elsewhere however Howard is reported as speaking of terrorism involved in "hijacking" the Muslim religion, in an interview with Phillip Clark of 2GB Sydney, Nov. 22, 2002.
It is however one thing*1 to avoid traumatising those who do NOT, whatever the Koran may say, want to use violence in the service of their religion; and there doubtless are such as PM Howard claims. Indeed, he makes it appear that only a very small minority are of another view, seeing virtue in religious violence in this land: and this too may well be so.
Yet it is another to speak as if the religion in its authoritative source, accepted also by the vast majority of Muslims, the Koran, did not SPEAK very differently in a whole array of passages (More Marvels ... Ch. 4), just as it has DONE very differently from this non-violence in a history of aggression and glory for Allah, which came close to rendering the world subservient to it.
What Mahathir has mouthed in Malaysia is by no
means wholly contrary to what has been cited in the above reference, and
elsewhere on this site, from the Koran. Subjugation by force is far from absent
either in the work of the leader himself, Muhammad, or those who followed him,
or in the words of the Koran. Mahathir in the report on his speech is not
deploring the past use of force, but its failure; he is not advocating peace but
triumph over Jews, whom he slanders so grossly, as if they set aside their own
efforts and let others do the fighting,
 |
not only in view
of their near extermination in World War II (and HOW near is to be
measured not only in the millions slain, but in the nearness in 1942 of a
victory on the other side, something very palpable in Australia at that
time), |
|
|
but no less in view of their massive military victories of 1948, 1967, 1973. |
To be sure, they received in 1973 massive help, but they did the fighting; just as in 1948 many Moslem nations sought to exterminate the Jew, but failed against its own singular efforts. Singular and to the point is this: That these wars, and giant deliverances for Israel, were precisely as predicted in Zechariah 12, where the sort of disproportion which happened, for a victorious Israel, was evocative of that actually met! ONE would be like a thousand! That was the prophecy. So it was; and ... they fought in desperation, dedication and perseverance. Ultimately, it was the word of God which won! but the Jews fought, indubitably, they fought, notably, hard and long!
Although, as a nation at that time, they did not believe in the very Messiah God sent, yet their actions verified the word of that same God, to whom they are equally and immediately afterwards, in Zechariah, predicted to come in large numbers in repentance at the piercing of the Messiah, here seen in the prophecy, speaking as God and as 'pierced' by them. In this phase, they were to fight, to succeed gloriously, BECAUSE God had His own faithfulness in view.
Yes, they fought as did Chaim Weizmann, Director of the Admiralty Laboratories, who so helped the British in the realm of explosives in World War I*2, as an industrial chemist, a fact not irrelevant to the Balfour Declaration giving Palestine to the Jews for their homeland. The congregating multi-national enemies have been nations like Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Egypt massing forces, while from them one finds those citing Allah frequently from this or that source.
One of the most notable was that from Egypt where pamphlets were dropped telling Israel that the war was regrettable but necessary, and that Allah would act! He failed to do so, but those naming him assuredly sought force in religion in exterminating a nation. It was not exterminated. God spoke, and allegedly Allah spoke; and what God said happened, as always, while what Allah was reputed to say, stayed undone.
Similarly, the 1991 Teheran pan-Islamic Conference did not suggest a use of non-force in exterminating Israel in terms of their Muslim desire.
From SMR let us remind ourselves of
Jihads of modern times, formally or in function -
like that of 1948 when Moslem Syria, Jordan and Egypt dropped differences
to combine against Israel, Egyptian planes dropping leaflets saying,
"In the name of Allah, the Almighty God, who always speaks the truth,
it was not our intention to begin a war.
It is your resistance which has caused us to attack you . . ."
(Elon's The Israelis, p. 202 - it. added).
This was their word of 'peace', while calling
on Jews to surrender!
Resistance to Allah evidently was not deemed a correct move, but submission. It is precisely this misuse of force and its language which is much a concern in the Islamic midst, as in its past history. Further, such multi-national enclaves are not irrelevant to what they claim to represent!
It is fundamental error, therefore, in RIGHTLY seeking to clear Muslims in Australia, generally, or 'generically', a favoured word of the PM Howard, from attributions of violent intentions, THEN to proceed too far in this more general direction. It is wrong, therefore, to act as if the ACTUAL RELIGION in its book, is not of this type at all.
That, again to parallel the PM's reference to history, is NOT what has been found in the history of that religion, the crusades and clashes, invasions and national actions, many of which to this day have created an abhorrence of violence, similar to that felt relative to the Roman Catholic Inquisition. The cry for Jewish blood from Middle Eastern nations, the cry to demolish the State from the Pan-Islamic meeting of 1991, the fanatical hatred, the straightforward endeavours to extinguish Israel as a nation, have been open, manifest, continual and cruel. Islamic jihad elements constantly pursue such themes, just as Islamic nations meeting may do no less, seeking to forward terrorism in Israel or otherwise to accomplish its demise.
That, it is no mere philosophical push, but rather in this way or that, a political putsch.
In general, perilous is it for political purposes, or through confusion, to stylise what is one thing, in terms of another: what is ignored at first, may bite at last. Strict and stringent historical and literary realism is essential, in accord with righteousness and truth.
Vain is it to seek to legitimise such things, for Arafat himself is strong in his sympathies with such actions, negotiating and bringing about the downfall of Mahmoud Abbas, the transient PM, who in resigning, noted that there was refusal to let him have control of forces which could physically crush the terrorist movement in that land. Efforts made by many nations to liquidate Israel, are not without fanatical Muslim claims and desires. It is by no means presented as a merely national aggrandisement movement: it is a religious thrust, with jihad constantly propounded by those who are not only financed liberally, but supported explicitly in their 'work' by many nations of Islam.VIEW WITH PHILLIP CLARK, 2GB
Thus it is unwise to confuse good intentions on the part of many Muslim people, with a good religion relative to the use of force in its interests*3. It may be populous, it may be historic, to a point, starting some 6 centuries after Christ came as predicted in date and performance; it may control much oil through its adherents, and vast wealth likewise; it may be on record via meetings of many nations, in intention to remove Israel from this earth, from its place; it may refer to passages of force to secure submission in the Koran, which are not lacking, and Islamic leaders may applaud or endorse movements to dismember Israel: but it is not advisedly to be called good or great on some political platform which is intended to be peaceable.
You may claim rightly to protect those Muslim people wrongly felt to be violent, but you may NOT in the same interests start to characterise their religion with mere pragmatic subjectivity, personal political desire or other extraneous motive, relative to mere factuality. What is claimed concerning a religion is far more significant than what is claimed about Mars or atomic bombs; and it must be wrought with scientific method, logical finesse and extreme care. Bombs spoil, Mars data shows nothing pertinent to wisdom (cf. A Spiritual Potpouri Chs. 1-3), but truth liberates, and finding it in God, through Jesus Christ whom He has provided, saves significance, confers eternal life and provides orientation which nothing alters. HIS goodness never fails, HIS truth never varies (James 1:17, Matthew 5:17ff., I Peter 1:24-25).
Good religion ? Good in its use of force ? Good in its statements on force ? Good in the example of Muhammad himself in the use of force for the achievement of religious ambitions ? (cf. More Marvels ... Ch. 4).
It is not a matter of seeking gratuitously to attack a religion, on the part of the government: unless of course that religion is inciting to attack people and property, removing liberty by misusing their own liberty, by physical violence or threats of it. No, rather is it a question of seeking at ALL times to be free to comment in truth, as it arises, and not to commit to this or that, whether by intrusive and dictating law, as if men were gods, or by belligerent threats.
In fact, this sort of liberty already in part of this country is now violated, just as the unification of religions program (cf. News 121, 122, 152, 153) proceeds now with more political vigour, and more scope for intimidatory action in the future, which indeed is biblically predicted (Revelation 13)!
In Australia at least, the problem as yet is not one of making an ACTUAL unity of this or that religion and some other (though there are those who specifically seek this), but the immediate and dangerous thrust seems rather to be this. It is a matter of making an EVALUATION which enhances claims to integrity, reality and truth on the part of various religions, ahead of ground, without reason, in the mere interests of people feeling good.
This prostitution of religion for a concept of peace, emotional peace, ethical peace, inter-face peace, without using truth as the uttermost in criteria, and applying it assiduously, is precisely what lowers a nation, advances the deceptions of the devil and brings about that prelude to disaster for all, which spiritual subversion breeds.
THE HISTORICAL ESSENCE
Imagine if the people
had objected to Christ's attack on the Pharisees as in Matthew 23, and
it were governmentally declared that this was unfair to the people, that
many were good Pharisees, that the concept of their trying to kill Him
was ludicrous
(cf. John 8:38ff.), that such was not at all to the point.
If that were said in that day, it would have
PERHAPS in that case, have had some truth. Perhaps many Pharisees would deplore the use
of violence against Christ; but through legalistic trickery, through stark and unvalidated unbelief, they termed Him a blasphemer and killed Him.
Their controls, their authorities, their people in power, their
articulation experts DID proceed to His death; they WOULD not tolerate
His existence, not least because they could not answer Him, and WOULD
not meet His truth (cf. Matthew 22:46, John 5:39ff., 8:38ff.).
Truth was to be dispersed, convenience and survival reimbursed, and the pot of gold sunk in the earth with their hearts. Such is the way of the ungodly, the spiritual insurrectionists whose spiritual terror campaign could never intimidate Christ (cf. Mark 14:61ff.); and it is anything in this direction which Australia must if it is to be wise, scrupulously avoid. In His day, they thought otherwise; and suffered accordingly, a few years later in the city's own destruction, a thing of great thoroughness!
They ? Who then were the neologists, the inventors of ungodly theologies and idealogies, and their descendants, those who sought to ensure that they nailed Him, with nails indeed! They were those in power, those who activated things religiously, those who represented the Pharisees, their power base. Perhaps as a power base, with its sanhedrin, it poses a parallel to the international consortia of Muslim nations which meet from time to time, seeking to bring Islam as a victor over Israel, in a way not unlike that recently articulated by Dr Mahathir. Indeed, that leader, in making his most extreme anti-Israel assertions, in fact anti-semitic ones, was apparently given a standing ovation: at least in the same meeting.
Further, the report from Putrajaya in The Advertiser states that the speech of Mahathir, with its various elements dotted throughout, drew a standing ovation from the summit meeting of Islamic leaders from 57 nations!
This was scarcely an expression of distaste, of horror, of thought that the man was subverting the religion of which he so explicitly spoke. Rather it showed a response of enthusiasm to the Muslim triumphalism with which it was adorned, the acute denigration of the Jew, and the thrust to ‘final victory’ for Islam in its drastic struggle. Are to ignore, then, such talk not once, not twice, emanating from Islamic meetings and regard them as wholly contrary to the religion ?
Personally, I can feel drawn to Jews and Moslems quite warmly, and seek their good of course as I may, as with all men, but my concern for their destiny without Christ does not permit me to make my personal respect for them as creations of God, and my concern for them as fellow human beings, and my desire to help them in any legitimate way, to lead to a quaint view of their religious errors which could cost them a sad eternity.
Truth is a friend to man; without it, he is constantly in danger. From truth comes deliverance; indeed as Christ declared, HE IS the truth. He can be spurned by foolish indeed the man or nation who dissents with force, seeking to compromise the liberty of the only One who ever failed in anything in His whole work, to be exposed, rightly contradicted, who ever met with no defeat of virtue, word or project, using death as a mere stepping stone, and hatred glowering upon Him as a mere method, in delivering those who fought against Him : IF THEY WOULD RECEIVE what He gave. Even on the Cross, He was for a time continually crying, Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing!
Truth is never incoherent, bears up under all things, continually affirms, is negated in nothing, endures forever, shows what it is by what it does, as Christ did. It is indispensable at all times.
Thus if it should become 'politically correct', in a way which the UN Declaration on Discrimination would readily enhance, to avoid any statement which makes religion an OBJECTIVE matter and truth no less, so that assumptions of mutual reliability and support for religions become mandatory: then this is a way to penalties of unknown magnitudes to any people who so fails. Neither in science nor in religion can man afford to make this so, for selling the soul is subject to the rights of the purchaser, and that sale has historically had enormous results in the devastation of nations.
Jesus Christ as you see in John 8 and Matthew 26, is most explicit on this lamentable tragedy, and was unsubvertible in His testimony to truth: refusing both to use violence to support it, and to allow threat or actuality of violence to deter Him from its gracious and benevolent declaration!
Free speech, Bush said advisedly, he loves, and so he was willing to suffer disrespect during his presidential visit to Australia! Well done! The USE of this freedom must be such that convenient despots who may dictate, as Russia seems intent on doing, to independent 'news' or presentations, are not given rein.
This land is threatened with such in the interests of a pragmatic 'harmony' of appearance which would lead as Howard was reported so well to have put it, to a denial of the very principles on which this land is founded! That was not his point when he said this, but it remains pointed at anything which contravenes it!
This land is not founded to support deceit or pretence, yes or pretension for that matter, but for the sake of righteousness, truth, justice and liberty, originally in a context of Christianity; yet in view of the inability to establish any religion, as in the Constitution, such things remain as a moral core in its law.
Moreover, to establish a politically pragmatic effectual agnosticism, so that no one can in practice speak the truth AS truth, but must always on pain of law, become subject to a political contrivance which forces without reason, fact or any demonstration whatsoever, a religious view about religions, one which is itself tantamount to a religion: this would be treason, not only to God, but to the constitution.
THE
DEFILEMENT OF RELIGION:
SUBVERSION INTO SUBJUGATION ?
Religion requires the absolute loyalty, reality, the fundamental motivation and aspiration of man: and where this has to be channeled for convenience, then religion is subjected to a RELIGION OF CONVENIENCE, and that is thereby established. The Constitution dies, and Australia lives until it finds the cost of such contrivance. It is essential to this land that truth supersede convenience however; for unreality is not a poker game of mere cheek, but a request for devastation, whether personally, nationally, politically or historically.
What then ? It is not that peace is not essential; it is that it must be found in LIBERTY, not affront; in REALITY and not in verbal masquerade. No less to religion than to any other field must reason be applied, and when faith is present, it must not be because of desire, but reality. Desire may inflate pride, demand wars, excise truth, establish false alibis; but truth will none of any of this: as with Christ, the truth, so with the behaviour of His people.
Reason to be sure does not create faith, but it is a valuable item in its legitimation; for it is God who desires us to serve Him with ALL of our minds, hearts and strength: Himself, and not some itemised select list, with special omissions for convenience, political or other. If to become 'safe', we cease to be 'men', depart from what man is, then the cost is infinite, in the end; both in justice and in judgment.
In true religion, true man is preserved; for what ends him, as C.S. Lewis put it - what causes the "abolition of man", this is mere error.
It is no part of the reason, ground and meaning of life merely to end it. That is defeat. When to this is added this decline from deity occurring in the sheer face of unanswerable logic, as an affront to the Creator Himself, who has given us reasoning power, and evidential reality (cf. SMR, TMR, Repent or Perish), then it is rebellion as well.
Thus we pass beyond the mere politics of any one nation, or of all nations, to the individuality of man. When a PERSON CAN no longer be treated as a person, but by legal, physical, academic, or religious VIOLENCE has his functional operation precluded, his abilities closed down, his way covered in the shame of a contrived path to SUIT a majority, a plurality, a dictator, or indeed ANY power whatsoever, then that power, that nation, that structure has failed.
It is clear in the book of Revelation, as indeed in Christ's own life, that in the end, this world INSISTS on its own way, without God. This it does by redefining God (rather like the case of a man who is a 'failure' succeeding by redefining 'success'), or by controlling man as if he were a beast, in the interests of some lust, such as safety, security or other idol (which becomes so when it subverts man's powers for convenience, survival or other faithless insistence). Thus it redefined God and killed Christ; and it does so with every false prophet, if not in body, then in spirit as Paul makes so clear, and Hebrews (Hebrews 6, 10, II Corinthians 11, 4). This both has been the trend and will be the finale, in its thrust to a condemnation which no guise can quench, nor pretence withstand.
When terror and error are wed, then the security-conscious world indeed, or the ambitious world seeking some 'wonder' of its own creation, may begin to insist - as in Victoria already (Secular Myths ... Ch. 6, *7 and Pall of Smoke, Diamond of Joy, Ch 10, Galloping Events Ch. 7, *2), and as in many countries - on people ACTING AS IF they believed what they do not believe. It then becomes a matter of doing what they are told in religion, since otherwise they will be deleted, imprisoned, fined or whatever else the State in its insane self-aggrandisement, sees fit as it dismembers man. Then the 'beast' of Revelation, so prominent in Rome's day when Emperors had to be worshipped, takes in the end, not national but an international shrine (Revelation 13), and man, like so many ants, becomes a devotee of unreason, a follower of survival and an object of ruin.
What better end for such a world than that shown in Revelation 19, when the Word of God, the Truth Himself judges what, quite simply, has betrayed Him.
THE TESTIMONY OF FICTION
While then these things show much evidence of their will to develop, under the special interests of a 'safe' world despite atomic power, and despite terrorism, a sort of sedative with political VALIUM, there is at the same time an interesting parallel seen in some of the works of Le Carré.
In his book, "Looking Glass War", he is almost explicitly a preacher. The setting is this. England is conceived as having lost some of the vision and even virtue of the efforts often made in World War II. It is now Cold War days. East Germany is a target for spying, in order to verify whether or not there is a new weapon that could endanger England, at a specific location. A man is needed to find out.
In the training of a Pole for this purpose, one is allowed to feel his idiosyncrasies, sense his weaknesses and to watch an Englishman of some feeling, attend to his sudden training to become the spy on the spot. Emotional support is strong, companionship becomes an art form to assist him emotionally to face with cool self-control, the task ahead in what politically, for him has become an alien country. While for this brief return he is being prepared, friendship is extruded, though in the special case, to a limited extent, some degree of attachment is also felt by the officer trying to set the mind of the spy-to-be at rest.
There is explicit effort from the man in charge, to ensure that the Pole is not without illusion. He is to be deceived into imagining an England which is no longer there.
Steps are taken to ensure that he IMAGINES that he has long been held in high esteem, since his military service in WW II days in fact, that there is something akin to brotherhood about, that he is a part of a loyal and informed, intelligent and caring body of people: just as in the war, he may have felt to have been the case. In this expressly intended illusion, he is preserved long enough to get into the field, and then, when he has given the crucial information back by radio, at risk of life, through enemy position-finding techniques, he is dumped.
To be sure, he failed to limit his broadcast in the ill-trained and sudden nature of his adventure, and thus needlessly risked his life, when in the field. However, when it is found that the Russians have massively reacted, the British realise that it is useless to do more, that he is as good as dead, and do not even seek to audit his last broadcast, which he therefore repeats vainly, trying to raise them. As he does so, of course, he is fatally detected, and shows in the process some ethical conscience in pretending to be threatening the life of the person in whose flat he is staying, to avoid their suffering with him.
This contrast presumably is intentional, just to highlight the more, the stupendous perfidy of those who sought by many means to appear brotherly, and by all means were not.
This is in line with another of Le Carré's works, where there is a flight of conscience and a sense of camaraderie between those of opposite camps, developing into treachery, which however becomes a complex, multi-faceted thing, since who is really the good guy ?
In this way, you see the trend towards ultimate relativism. WHO is right ? is the question. Is the British way so brotherly, if such survival techniques for the nation, obviate any need to be even minimally faithful to EXPENDABLE PERSONS ? Is it not totalitarian in its total disregard of individual personality for the sake of the nation ? Is there even any flavour of value which is distinctive, left ? These seem to be the questions, and to underlie the other work when moral relativism again appears raised, as if there were any peace in that , between the nations.
That is one approach. It is to look to the future dimly, instead of to the past informatively.
But WHY was Britain different in the first place ? It was through its Christian commitment. Of course that was far from total: but it was assumed, and in the case no doubt over history, of millions, really present. It was this which made freedom meaningful, rather than the mere instrument of whatever brutish, ambitious or cynical British national character might arise.
It was the sense of Christ, of love, of meaning through reality, of delight in truth, of arising to help others to find a reality which was worthy of man, to find his source if he would, his base, his due and true height by having an adequate and awesome depth. That, it was not in himself, but in his Creator. Only by being founded could be avoid being confounded.
Thus, liberty and love had real application to the Lord.
THE TIDE OF TRUTH
Naturally many did not feel this; but the institutions and ostensible apparatus were in significant measure meant to reflect it; and in the former times, great revivals in England, with Whitefield, with the Wesleys, in Wales, in Scotland, with famous exponents and massive results, bore testimony to the strength of Christianity in the nation. Just as many exploited with shameless opportunism, the allegedly Christian empire for sordid gain, and did unspeakable things, as in the slave trade before the Christian Wilberforce sacrificed nobly and vastly to have it at last removed: so did many others contrast or even conflict with it. The land beyond question had come to allow a degree of liberty of speech and thought which, though Marx exploited it in British libraries, was an ornament to history.
Many in World War I had had great ideals, and seeking to render for mankind, a world which was habitable by something better than glory seekers, racial triumphalists or political innovators, many suffered vastly over those four hideous years. The nation perhaps recoiled, and after one more war, began in Socialism, to assert the need of some comfort. It took moral liberties in vast doses likewise, as did Holland for that matter, and the USA. Indeed, it began to become so self-serving in part at lest, that you could have Bevin, in the national Ministry, declaring quite expressly that oil was an important thing, so the Arabs had to be given an important place: vis-à-vis Israel's treatment. And as to that ? it is among the most shameful episodes of what Shakespeare's (through a character) called perfidious Albion, that you could wish.
The religious adherence to the Church of England fell until any attempt to characterise Britain as a religious, yes and a Christian nation would, except other Christian institutions arose in massive amounts, become ludicrous. Indeed, the concept of a nation which was NOT Christian in any distinctive and spiritual sense (since you cannot mandate conversions) trying to rule a Church which ostensibly WAS so, was always astray. Christ and the nation as Lord, do not cohere! They differ. ONLY one of them is authorised (Matthew 23:8-10 cf. The Other News 13, News 113).
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What then
of the OTHER OPTION to cynical disregard,
uneasy admissions, to coarse relativism among black pots, on the part of a black
pot, to disesteem of whatever is left in England of liberty and opportunity
... |
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what of the option to be human not in fancy but in fact, without therefore as many or as corrosive tears as may be found in many an Eastern prison ? |
It is this. It would be a movement BACK, not because back is
earlier, but because earlier there was a clearer commitment to what is beyond
time, eternal, to the Lord, to the God whom Christ displayed alike in power
and purity, love and compassion, truth and reality.
It is not to say,
Oh well! we have spent the first hundred thousand, and we might as well gamble the rest!
Rather it is to say,
We have lost much, and it is time to return to base, to the rock from which we were hewn, to what MADE us great: not to the effort to survive, by whatever rattishness, in order to become consistently as debased as those who use force to control life, and know neither its meaning nor its wonder.
So even in this fictional notion, you see the same trend, towards an oblivion of what is excellent, and in the case of the Looking Glass War, something not far from a cry to cling at least to the loyalty and sincerity without which life comes to look more like a barren desert. However you cannot have these things, without their source, sense, meaning, purpose and initial grant. You need their basis, their point, their giver. You need God to give you truth, so that in truth, you will know HOW to love and to WHAT to give loyalty, and with what LIMITATIONS to man, so that you may be integral and truly manly or womanly, before God.
Without that, there is no way. Even, then, in this fiction, you see the trend: a wrench because of the loss of elemental things for man in his spirit, in his person, leading to disregard of what persons are - and for what! For mere insignificance of life, morbid clamour of diseased souls, play-acting. You see what feels like a flash of desire of spirit, for things past. But you do not see with the poignancy, a light to regard, or a source to find.
That was there all along; and it is not a matter of finding a home, but returning home.
If it is so in Britain, it has application in no small measure in Australia and in the USA. Christian elements have been profound in both, and are becoming so polluted by anti-biblical licence and immoral contradiction of the Bible, even on the part of many who still refer to it as some sort of religious source, that their past history is not likely to resemble what is to come, unless they repent, and that speedily.
But what is to govern persons ? and what is the blend between national and personal, employe and employer regions, male and female, child and adult, war and peace ? It is only God who knows what man is, and can give PRINCIPLES beyond dispute to apply OBJECTIVELY, so that loyalties can be tamed, and named, both in integrity, things specific resting on things absolute and finding their precise relative value from there. Only then is there a way where values, morals, objectives, inter-race relationships, love and labour, truth and fiction, interchange and purity can be found. Without it, man's spirit and powers are such that there will be, must be strife, and hatred, and emulation and confusion and confrontation.
As it must be, so it is; since man refuses, and in some of these national cases, increasingly refuses the assignments, the principles, the promises and the personal communion with God where HE MAY BE FOUND (Isaiah 55), he acts in deed as he is designated in word, as lost.
You seek an education, and you go where it may be found. You seek God and you go where HE may be found. It is irrational to do otherwise. God may be found where He has SHOWN Himself to be, in Jesus Christ (SMR Ch. 1). In the Bible, He has in validated and verified, unique and sovereign ways attested all of these things. The door is open; but if persons desire to avoid it, there is no other way, in the end of being so much as personal. The treacherous subjectivities seen in The Looking Glass War merely illustrate the enigma and the paradox.
TRY to get what you want, and without being objectively right, where do you end ? In power pushes, in personal striving, in variable morals, uncertain loyalties, competing systems of concern, variable ultimates, misty preconceptions, fuzzy conceptions, foolish dramas and meaningless meanders, like a river of lava, finding the lowest spot to go, as soon as possible.
NOTES
Formosa, now Taiwan, is an excellent illustration.
Imagine the splendour of the determination of Truman as he engaged to keep that land free. It was not a little thing of strategic disposition, as one recent newspaper article of apparent sophistication, would claim. Forget democracy, says one! Taiwan, quoth he, is not about that.
Really ? and why ? Is the capacity to be free from enslavement really outré and passé to such an extent as that ? Is that trifling loss of liberty which enables tyrants to object to the concept of the spirit of a man, as in the Falun Gong case, in case it should disturb the pre-occupations of the 'State' (not to be miscalled 'god'), or his redemption (as in countless attacks in China on the Christian liberty to serve Christ according to His own lordship in spiritual things without incarceration of pastors, for example): is this to be removed at the stroke of a knowing pen ?
Is coercion to be conceived as a passing wind that is pleasant enough when you are rugged up ? With what ? with teflon soul and plastic robes ?
Is man to be conceived and considered, then, as a programmatic product of the pulping industries of the State ? and in what sort of a state is a country to be found, when its rulers play God, and cannot do His works! It becomes a nightmare of presumption, an aura of arrogance and a pit of pollution, a fantasia of manipulation and a cynicism which breeds with emptiness a vacuous race; or else heroes! ... who suffer and wait. Is this the cast of the die ? Is death the willing slave of sophistication ?
The latest visit of Hu, who may indeed be seeking greater democratisation in China and have in some respects worthy aims, does not and cannot disguise the fact that at this present time, China is no fit place to be allowed to swallow up Taiwan or any other nation which prefers to find God at its own opportunities, and to allow its people to seek for Him if they will, if by any means they might please Him and live not as the byproducts of the thoughts of the mighty, but as the products in personal format of the Almighty, who alone either shows He knows, or knows what He shows, in the form of mankind; and exhibits this with unending frequency in the Bible. The Lord displays it likewise with unending faithfulness in the failure of man with his mannish wreckage which he wreaks on his own soul, among the nations, and within, by the vacuous vices and fearful devastations which are wrought in hatred, ferocities, faithlessness and fiascos.
To say that this or that country (such as Australia or the USA) favours, therefore, a 'one China' policy is prima facie a betrayal of liberty, of idealism and - not to forget the obvious - millions of people. It represents a policy shift from the Atlantic Charter Declaration of World War II, of eminent proportions. The stately prose of national self-determination, and the tenacity with which such things were sought, would then be a poetry of the past, written in blood.
Of course, if it be said that IF China becomes parallel with Taiwan in economic performance, and in liberty, then of course their native likeness would allow the proper consideration of a 'marriage': then that has merit. Yet even then, the concept of marriage is not of the shot-gun, or atomic warhead type, but rather of voluntary desire. To force things arouses the question, Why ? Do you not love her ? And if love is not yours, what are you offering your 'maiden' ? A life under veil, protected by your own mannishness, while she is kept tied up in her dictated domesticities for you ?
Are we not then confusing national roles ? Who is the 'female' in such things, and what SORT of female is being favoured ?
It is good to read that the USA still has its policy of protecting Taiwan from take-over by force; and it is sad to see Hu seeking an alliance in South East Asia with many nations, so that ONE of the planks of the platform would be ONE CHINA, for which may one read, forcible take-over of Taiwan, for such a beauty of romance as rape ?
Perhaps it is intended that of course there will be no force ? Let it then be said! Let not liberty be an unspoken sentiment, for those who have endured two world wars to secure it.
The PM, John Howard, is moderate and irenic relative to the social treatment accorded to Muslims in this country, thus far; and on this is to be congratulated. Love for one another is a specific Christian requirement among Christ's disciples, and doing good to all men is another. On this stress, therefore he is to be commended. Let the people, the Australians who are Islamic indeed be treated with all grace and kindness, something MOST desirable; but let not the grounds be confused.
While then this goodwill to the persons is altogether desirable, we must not allow ourselves to be bewitched by this one aspect of his words, to accept the rest of his presentations.
With grace, must go truth (cf. John 1:14). Standards which a country has, for its own function, may be ceded if in any respect they are shown wrong; but when it is to nothingness, or to some series of ethical concepts, variable if unbased, then it is not only failing its own people, but immigrants as well. If I went to the USA (as several times my work required), I did not expect them to insist that they had no basis, and to adopt my every preference as equal to their own; not did I find this.
There is such a thing as character, as well as Christian character; and when a nation performs the charade of using Christ at the first, and then dropping Him in the interests of a supposed tolerance, which in fact is far more than this, and constitutes a decharacterisation of its own nature, then we are allowing failure to masquerade as virtue.
*2 Encyclopedia Britannica advises us, in substance, as follows.
Weizmann took up residence in England 1904, when he accepted a science appointment at the University of Manchester. He gave valuable aid to Britain in World War I, because when in 1916, they lacked acetone, necessary for cordite, he discovered a way to use maize for this purpose. This aided the Zionist efforts he was making with the British.
One may note that it also aided the British victory, since explosives were not unimportant in their vast military enterprises in Europe at that time!
The Balfour Declaration of
course came one year later in 1917.