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Chapter 3
On
Spirit and Will in Man
Excerpt on Soul, Spirit and Mind in Man
from
SMR
for word references see the original text at
SMR Ch. 4
3
EXTENSION on THE LIFE FUNCTIONS OF MAN :
IN THE IMAGE OF GOD.
(See Trinity, pp. 96-100 supra, 532-560 infra.) It is to be noted that
*3 and *6 are dealing in various aspects, with the image of God in man.
Granted
that man is designed by God with specifications that allow a certain finite, created correlation with the
Creator in fellowship, so that the unity is one of concept and overall
function, what are the
parts ?
We
do not need to look at the biological, physiological, anatomical here, for this
is not our point; nor at the complex syntheses involved. The functionalities of
spiritual and mental kind are in view. The Bible speaks of the soul, the mind
and the spirit of man. What is the inter-relation of these ?
The
'soul' is attributed, in Genesis, to any living sentient being: its
life, its differentiation from the inanimate.
In the case of man, of course, this life is, if you will, the hardware
core and the vitalised total, fitting for man. It is the image-of-God
structure, specific to man. As to the body, it is a resurrectable correlative
of the soul: the design format for action.
What
however of the spirit ? The Bible indicates that the spirit of man is
the candle of the Lord by which He examines the innermost parts (Proverbs
There
is a spirit given to man, as we find in Genesis 2:7. Man has this distinctive
image-of-God dynamic, this operative facility, this enquiring ability, this
ability to review situations and make thoughts and review these thoughts and
criticise one's own actions, and re-formulate
and re-formulate again, verbally, acutely and conceptually, analysing and
analysing analysis.
How
then, as image-bearer, does man or may man relate to God ? God is independent
and wholly uncontained; and in His image-bearer there is, despite vast and
obvious limitations, this extraordinary facility for questing and imagination,
analysis and discovery, perception and thought and interception of concept, and
formulation.
This
allows a measure of functional fellowship with God, who made man with such
facilities and with the power to express in communication verbally, or to
conduct ideational forays, pushing these into expression, to some extent, at
will. These are some of the functions and facilities in the fellowship which
the term,'made in His image' implies; in such ways (among many others), is
found their fulfilment of this mode of construction of man by God: in His
image. Without doubt, it is the greatest thing about being human, that one may
thus relate to a Being so magnificent as God is; and derivatively, relate to
others of one's race on such a basis, in such a setting of grandeur, which the
Canadian Rocky Mountains, for example, merely illustrate in terms of the
capacities of their Former. The spirit then, has its ranges; but also readily
involves the special contribution of the mind, with the hinterland of
understanding. (Cf. I Corinthians 14:13-15.)
The
mind ? The expertise of spiritual entrepreneurship, if you will, is not
left without an operative facility in the area of reason,
processive and processing. These three, life, spirit and mind,
interact and enact. Sometimes the entrepreneurial
facility becomes inflated with the concept of taking over from God, displacing
God, ignoring God and seeking instead sundry childish lusts. This is the vulnerability of its virtue, when misused. In
I Corinthians 14:15, Paul makes it clear that the spirit and the understanding
may in practice have some measure of divorce - substantially indeed they may be
sundered. This is not desirable.
The life and the mind and the spirit of man are components of a design by which their joint operation as a trilogy is the way of choice function. They are far from being oddments, jostling with conceptual chaos together in an empty bag, which is ... not there, in a Freudian three-bits, irrationalist extravaganza. Here the pure naturalness of what we see, mutuality, has its meaning from the embracive design
,
that design of which these are functional components: the image of God.
The divine trinity has in man created a responsive triad
which - sin apart, may be in spiritual harmony both with itself
and with its Maker. (The cacophanies of misuse however are almost infinite!)
Some elements to consider. First, mind is able to err, in
that purpose and performance may be a mismatch. Matter, a merely descriptive
entity without arbitrary powers to range freely, has no power to prescribe.
Prescription is a facet of purpose, and poor prescription is a facet of error.
No prescription is not a facet of mind. It is one of matter. The GAP between
purpose, prescription and performance is another aspect of mind: that is error
either in comprehension, apprehension or execution or some medley. The
respective entities are not only diverse, they are contrary. Reason dies when
contraries are identities.
Further,
mind can estimate conduct in terms of general principles either intellectual or
moral or spiritual or all three, or in some variable combination. It can
discern consequences and weigh them. This involves not only analysis of which
matter exhibits no sign, but synthetic analytical power, in discrete diversity.
Mind is also able to make a sort of intellectual counterpoint, in which major and
minor thrusts are pondered, and interlaced. Levels of operation, analytical,
principial, preferential are able to be compounded, analysed, synthesised, in
hypothetical models and so forth, involving creative thought, and planes of
operation dependent on the power and scope of the mind concerned.
After
this, there is a separately construable series of functionalities with an
integral base; so much so, that if this is lost, mental disease is often
clearly present.
These
include WILL (not WHAT would seem best, but what the person desires). This
could be wholly irrational; lustful involving known error in the vice-like grip
of clamorous passion, which could be despised either at the time of following
it, or later; or both.
Also
included are INSTITUTIONAL considerations, as distinct from OPERATIONAL ones.
Thus here is the plane for moral ACCEPTANCE, as distinct from moral
application: forming one's beliefs as distinct from using them. Basically the
mind is a resource of analysis and comprehension intimately allied with the
spirit as a fund of will and personality purpose. The mind is capable of
infusion and intrusion from the spirit, in that its clear dictates on normal
parameters may be arbitrarily, passionately, or imaginatively invaded and
compromised . . . or recast.
Matter
lacks all this, and is in fact, known primarily as: a theory of the mind, which
is the immediate consciousness, and a disposition of spirit, in which it is
conceived. All of man's own thought about matter depends on the
prior assumption both of the validity of mind and the correct cast,
perspective or alignment of spirit per se. It is therefore a derivative thing, conditioned by man,
and secondary in his line of operation. Materialism is thus not only a
reductionist mirage, but a self-contradictory one.
Human
responsibility is founded partly on the above; partly, as shown in its place
(e.g. Chapters 1, 3, 4, 5) on guilt, shame, blame and universal proclivities in
the race - if not often too readily to feel the former, then incessantly to allot
the latter! It also relates to what Franklin (q.v.) refers to as the
disposability of the will, in which propositions, proclivities or pursuits may
be pondered in dubious apprehension and tendential assessment, deliberatively;
a matter at the kernel of conscience, that not wholly disciplinable resident -
if not active for oneself, then most often, on behalf of others! As noted
elsewhere, man in his aspirations for and conceptions of 'good'
(his criteria for it indeed, and in association with this, his conscience)
can rove contra-culture, para-culture, and indeed, supra-culture and
sub-culture; can survey the scene of centuries and opt way back, or assume
things and opt far forward. Man's conscience can be altogether a most
imaginative facility; and yet not, as much psychiatry (Jung e.g., q.v.)
asserts, as manipulable as many would wish.
What is not
thus variable is not responsible; nor what is set, assessable in such terms. What
is, is so, and is so construable. In this function, man is wholly divorced
from matter. To make contradictions identical is to abort logic.
We
have also seen that man has such great facility in these spheres, that
not only may he act responsibly, but irresponsibly; indeed, he may relish
acting irresponsibly even while formally acknowledging that it is indeed
irresponsible, before, during and after such actions! He may do so with or
without rationale; and the rationale may vary from wholly lunatic ravings of
proud paronoia, to deluded idealism which despatches millions with ultimate
cruelty (like the Khmer Rouge) while alleging splendid ideals, and not
self-interest; as indeed, was the case with Himmler also, on the other side.
Man then has liberty but not autonomy; possesses
responsibility but not always responsibly; can assault conscience but not
always successfully; can rationalise, but not always with logical rationale and
is altogether, in potential the pertest piece of goods, able to lie, deceive
with variable lashings of self-deceit, to strive, squall, bawl, protest too
much and too little, be fanatically deluded, ecstatically deluded, ecstatically
inspired, ideationally fired, idealistically driven with pro-or anti-life
'ideals', listen to reason and abuse reason, synthesise the process and show
such a spurt and spawning of capabilities, facilities and functionalities in
this sphere that to ignore them, is merely one more illustration of the fact .
. . that they are there. Such arbitrary caprice is the very stuff of
philosophy, using the very facilities it would often deny in the very act! In
so doing, it merely illustrates them. (The reader could
here look at the ancient truth of Jeremiah 17:9-10, which being the word of
God, millennia do not dim! and consult SMR pp. 40,
26-27.)
This
edifice of formulation, inspiration, dedication, degeneration, aspiration,
compilation of components, penetration with survey and incisive oversight, this
spirit of man, integral - in possibility - ramifying and dedicated to
illusion or reality, and to illusion in the name of reality and even touches of
reality in the name of illusion: it is far too blustering and anon beautiful to
ignore.
In
Jesus Christ you see of what it is capable; and few there be that criticise the
Christ in the Bible. In multitudes of others, you see this too . . . but in a
negative sense. You even see some who would WANT to be conditioned and
controlled, to escape with noise or constant work, or appetite, or friendly pursuits,
or unfriendly pursuits and contrivances, and so to go on a sort of auto-pilot
without thought, without pain and without utilising what is there. On the
contrary, in Russia, you see in one of the wild characterisations revealed in
the writings of novelist Dostoevsky such wild ravings of philosophy that one
party USES the deluded ramblings of another, in order to gain something which
he himself desires (designs) - in a case of gross manipulation. In a sense, and
in view of recent revelations on Lenin, this almost encapsulates what the
Communist Party was to do to the nation!
The
spirit of man is alive - but not well. This is not a universal statement; but
it is one of vast application.
Where
however is human responsibility ? What if culture coding wreaks havoc with
reason and reality (see Chs. 1-4) ? What if deluded education,
as in S.A. Schools in their religious State indoctrination sessions in aspects
of science, as in Hitler's Germany and in who knows how many other deluded
States who know no answer, but know what they want - what, I say, if deluded
education shanghais the children and drowns reality in the wash ? Yes, that
limits responsibility (on the part of the children), but it does not entirely
remove it. Christ said WOE! to those who made children (who believe in Him)
stumble; but there is no question of mere determinism here. Children are quite
capable of heroism, as are university students, when treated to insidious,
irrational and surreptitious philosophies, which appear routinely in much
economics, biology, physics and the like. Sharp young minds, or even discerning
personalities may see through the smog of social deception. This however is
merely one instance of many.
The
position declared in the Bible neatly cuts the cord of bewilderment and
substitutes clarity, system and competence in covering the facts of the world
system, and man in it. WHERE is he ? Answer: He is a sinner, without God, who
yet should know Him; without Covenant, who yet should have the one divinely
offered; and without hope, which cuts the throat of much of the sacred and
visionary in man, leaving him like a loose gun, and often acting like it,
whether at the highest levels of finance, or the lowest of menial levels. The
philosophy of survival of the fittest, in particular, has passed any biological
use in terms of arrival of the fittest, and has become a sort of parasitic
philosophy about self, how to maintain it without regard to its worth. For my
part, I would rather be a slaughtered saint than a living rat!
It
is not that choice is not proper; that is, as shown, a domain of the human
spirit. It is just that so many imbibe such irrational philosophy and act as if
science had shown it true. In fact (see Chapter 2), creation is the way it
came; and how it goes is up to the individual. IF he or she desires to continue
without regard to the quality of what continues, THAT is a decision, one for
which a person is fully responsible. It is the OPPOSITE, just for example, to
what Christ showed and did and taught (cf. II Corinthians 8:9, Matthew 26:
52-54).
The
world moreover is not lacking in information, as its system spirals to shame.
While the living race of mankind in millions assaults the ways of the living
God, His property, proprieties, necessary principles and His being, deriding
His greatness, caricaturing His life, mocking His power, flagrantly, or
deliriously, anon imperiously: God with much patience, visible and declared,
for an interval provides a remedy that preserves His integrity, meets the need
of the flailing, failing race, delivering many. This remedy, long announced
before it came and right-protected through prophecy (cf. pp. 873, 1002A, 1110
infra) and power,
both inter-personal and predictive, and stamped with the personal presentation
of Jesus Christ, works precisely as specified, while history is led like a lamb
by the predestining power of the God who declares His mind in advance in His
word (cf. pp. 633-643 infra). All
this verifies the Bible just as it was at the first demonstrated (Ch. 1 supra). Moreover, its own statements
further resound (see: Amos 3:7, Matthew 24:35, II Peter 3:9, Isaiah 59 esp.
last verses; and Chs. 8-10).
Meanwhile,
the created spirit of man either surrenders to such a compassionate sovereign,
far more profound than the petty dictates of men: reconciled in, with and
through the remedy, Jesus Christ; or with quasi-autonomy, anon comically, anon
raucously, exhibits the wonder of its created spirit, though through folly. The
world, not run by force, proceeds in its demented divisions precisely as Christ
predicted.
What
then? Thus man is deludable, confusable and manipulable; but responsible. Yet
there is this too: he is answerable to God, the Creator and only Saviour (see
Chapters 1, 7-10); and if REFUSING the covenant, the gospel, the offer of
Christ, then he is doubly arraignable: 1) for sinning short of his stature,
status and capacity, and 2) for rejecting the pardon, remedy and empowerment to
do it differently. All this can occurwithout anything to offer but will
in its own service, as though it were the centre of the universe, answerable
only to itself: which is contrary to fact, and hence irrational.
Some
may say: It is NOT irrational! But this is merely further illustration of the
FACT of will, that it WILL have its say, even if being 'God' is the
implication; or being autonomous, when in fact it is born by another,
dies without consent and is fashioned amidst a multiplicity. One last word: it
is this. THAT particular delusion (matter is not deluded) exhibits the Biblical reality that man is in the
image of God: Hence he feels or may feel answerable to none, even while in fact
depending on many!
Jung and Fallen Man
Not
merely is Jung's experiential finding that relativism is bad for patients
something highly understandable, as an irrational impact in the area of
psychiatry: That is, as a pathology-productive intellectual 'drug' tending to
damage what it misrepresents. It is also rather easy to interpret as to
possible origins ... when taken in Biblical perspective!
Thus
it may tend to create evil results, but likewise it comes from evil beginnings.
Once
one conceives man as in general, salvation apart, reconciliation with God
apart, regeneration and acceptance through Christ apart, in his unredeemed
psychologica1 setting: it is easy to see how some minds may proceed,
consciously or otherwise.
The
experience of no warm and loving Father, resulting from alienation from
their Creator, may be projected into a philosophy, an induction if you will,
from what they find emotionally. Like a separated wife, they do not
experience the love and closeness and care and concern of the husband. If
they could forget any such marital infelicity, they too might induce the
concept that such did not exist, domestically, even, for an invisible
husband, if such were the way things went: that he did not exist! It
might prove convenient, and deafness may be useful for some in such a direction
as it is!
Thus
spiritual alienation as an unremedied condition of the heart, plight of the
spirit of man can lead to illogical, but experientially driven concepts of... ?
of what? It will depend partly on the imagination of the person: but it could
well include just such concepts of a sterile, or meaningless, or uncaring or
crushing or heartless or statistical universe as we have seen, though wholly
irrational, to be common.
Thus
while such concepts are self-contradictory, as exhibited in Chapter 3 supra, they are psychologically
comprehensible. This they are, in very much the same frame of reference as
delusive impressions of mirages are comprehensible when the tiring body and
longing eyes see mirages; though here the projection is from the unsatisfied
heart to the 'punished' universe, of the patient's alienation, one cruelly
conceived of, in the absence of what the 'patient' by his own folly, rejects. This
could be conceived of as the mud-puddle mirage, in which the alienated person
takes his pleasure or revenge, or breathes his hostility and insatiable
dissatisfaction into a punitive philosophy: sharing this with other
psychological mirages, or their 'creative' engenderers... reason the while,
dropped in favour of a partially and temporarily satisfying illusion. Indeed,
in II Thessalonians 2, we see that when people do not 'receive the love of the
truth', it may indeed become a judicial divine act in the end: God may send
them an 'active delusion'.
The
Physician Infinitely Qualified
'Perfection' fails to satisfy;
Perfectionism's blind -
Convenience never will from truth
Its entertainment find.
Peace and power and truth are found -
Perfection's quarry too,
Where mercy rules and Christ to 'fools'
His graces makes abound.
Jung and the Perfect Doctor
Christianity
declares from the start what Jung seeks in vain to find in the end. The perfect
doctor is indeed basic; it is in fact one phase of the very basis of
belief! His perfection is neither illusory nor idolatrously affirmed: it is
natural because it proceeds from One whose 'understanding in infinite' as Psalm
147:5 puts it: ''Great is the Lord and mighty in power: His understanding is
infinite.''
That
is the Great Physician, possessed of the power at once to create - past - and
to remedy - present, at will. While it may readily, through custom, be taken
for granted, all these satisfactory articulations of concept upon concept
constitute one of the most intimate and utterly amazing testimonies of the
Bible to its origin. It is always competent.
If
only some of Jung's flair had been matched by faith, he would have known personally,
what is that 'medicine' which is the match for man, instead of moving in
the deluded dimensions of frustrated perfectionism.
The
provision of the perfect doctor, as the Great Physician, is more even than the
solution of Jung's insoluble problem. It is both natural and necessary that
this should be so. Jung's problem is predictable, and this is in itself, a
further line of verification of the Bible.
Only God
knows enough about the heart and motives and will of man to be assured of
understanding in the complex oceans of human thought, psychic dramas and
motivations, sometimes hidden both from comrades and the individual himself
Jeremiah 17:9 is explicit in covering precisely this point, so that Jung merely
verifies it, in the field of his experienced observation.
Thus
psychiatrists may have not merely their own obsessions, anxieties, neuroses and
fears, so that they may be driven to seek analysis from one another, perhaps
belonging to different 'schools of thought' the while: they per se also, as
limited sinners, lack the total comprehension which Jung rightly sensed was the
desideratum. In so doing, they may be an infinitude away from the psychic
realities, being blind to some for spiritual reasons, or disinclined to others
for moral ones, and so on.
The
provision of the perfect doctor is a systematically needful thing when one is
moving in this level: someone without a speck in his own eye, and with the
fulness of God. There is however yet another resolution which Christianity
provides, that is, which Jesus Christ provides, through His people. In Him,
it becomes possible for one imperfect sinner to be chastely helpful to another
in such a sphere as this, in that the Great Physician stands by, ready and
illuminating to the sober and spiritual heart, to prompt, enlighten and
constrain, to restrain and alert, keeping the heart purified and the mind
attuned to the dominant realities, which are His own.
The Soul of Man
Here,
within the confines of the Creator as God, lies the soul of man. Here it gains
its meaning, its significance, being, dynamism and the contours of its
character. It is a product; but the product of a Person, creating derivative,
dependent persons. It is in this combination that is the wonder and the scope
for the woe of man.
Here
is the intelligence, creativity, imagination, analysis, will and life active
in, through and with a spirit that bears the insignia: God's personnel
department.
The
meaning of this creature, of man, is limited to inter-active response on a
created personal base with God; and that meaning is fulfilled in doing this.
Without
this, man becomes a degraded absurdity, vastly more poignant than the merely impersonal
throwaway: as well verified by the squadron of anguished acknowledgements, made
by the many high-flying philosophic atheists with their unyielding despair,
accent on angst, even elevating the by-products of personal pollution into
something lofty, if disturbing... and well disturbing, as is all discard from
the functionality of reality to the bin of banishment. How well did Milton
express the spirit of so much of this: Better to reign in hell than serve in
heaven.
The
word of God, focusing the Remedial Redeemer, God-as-man, who delivers from deserved (because denatured)
meaninglessness that issues in judgment (Psalm 1:4-5, contrasting with vv. 1-3,
6), has a word here, from the lips of Jesus Christ:
For whosoever desires to save his life will lose it, and
whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what is a man profited if
he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul! Or what will a man give in
exchange for his soul ? (New King James Version - Matthew 16:25-26.)
What is the gain for this loss ? With what will a man buy back what is once
lost... when the loss is his life! Mr Lange of N. Z. may feel that socialism is
a genial seeming reverse: gaining the world when you lose your soul; but what
point is a world when what appreciates it is denatured, degenerated, when the
means of life substitute for the purpose and character of life, when the way to
get there... seduces man from the question: Where is one to get, and what
is it that will in the end get there!
With
what will a man buy back what is once lost when the loss is his life:
and what will be the power of will when reality is gone, which houses it ? (Cf.
Psalm 49:7, 15- here ie the prerogatives of God, whose way is as shown!)
Small
wonder then that the same word of this same God, speaking in Ecclesiastes 12
this time, gives so deep an expression of heart, has such tones and overtones,
when so much is at stake and so much has been given, so much so vastly misused:
Remember
now your Creator in the days of your youth,
Before the difficult days come
And the years draw near when you say
"I have no pleasure in them" ...
Remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed (spinal cord ?)
Or the golden bowl is broken (skull ?)...
Then the dust will return to earth as it was
And the spirit to God who gave it.
The dissolution of the solution to the question: how make in the image
of God ? that is to say, the terminus of man in his current format, death, is a
time deep with significance; and the Bible consistently shows the emotions and
the perspectives correlative to its teaching. God, being personal, speaks as He
acts, to the case, and to man with a severity which offends some, a truth which
does not bend, yet with a preparedness and yearning of love that has not merely
a summit, but the source in Him. Departure from Him then, becomes ultimately
and even qualitatively, a deviation from what love is: He is it!
A refusal of Him, is a breach of some part of love, a raising of some personal
desire, lust or insistence, which will not be found where love has its actual
base, source and entire effectuality.
It
is happily consistent with the creative power back of man that a resurrection
has occurred and a resurrection phase for man is to occur, when the
retardations of sin become the consummations of salvation (yes, and for the wilful discards, damnation
is also available - for the 'gods' who desecrate what they cannot create).
Of
this we read from the divine perspective, in John 5:24-30. It is in line with
the love of God, that in the very passage where resurrection to damnation is
noted, there is before this shown the path to salvation by grace through faith:
Most assuredly, I tell you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life (v.24).
I Corinthians 15:51-58 details the consummation of meaning, in the meeting with
the Eternal God with the eternalised saints for whom His love has been balm and
His Cross deliverance.
It
is true that there is no reality without power; but this does not come out of
the barrel of a gun, but out of the mouth of God who burns up civilisations
which boast their immortality, from Egypt to that of the Third Reich, which fell somewhat short of
its projected thousand years. What greatly impaired the guns, was the
determination that freedom would not capitulate to a dictator, leading men with
wills and minds to create 'atomic' fire in the brilliant bomb crusade in New
Mexico. The motivation appeared far more to be based on their alienation from
power-with shame, as found in Hitler, than in any lust for force, if indeed
this figured at all in any. Not least, it was the love of freedom that moved
them. They did not desire a race where crude power trod freely. The invisible
took priority over the visible, so that guns did not blast, nor force subdue;
rather industry worked in human spirits, made by God to love freedom: and the
free did not yield to guns.
Men
make guns, and their remedies; but they do not deliver from death. The death
that smites man more surely than any gun, man has no power of any kind to
avert. Beyond the human spirit, is the divine Master, and without His
Spirit, misused power can flay the foolish, oppress and reprove the autonomous.
To
deliver from death! it is God only, who made death as well as
life (Romans 5:1-13, Psalm 49:7), who is able to deliver from it. As He began
and created man, so in His conclusion to the significance of man-in-His-image
on this earth: He provides for those associated by salvation with Him, a form
that does not end! It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body
...The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord
from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of Dust;
and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have
borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the
heavenly Man...
We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed - in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye... for this corruptible must put on incorruption... so when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: 'Death is swallowed up in victory...' (This is taken from I Corinthians 15:44-54.)
There is thus an adequate and consistent perspective which covers all aspects
and internally accords with itself, giving meaning to man with neither crass
and simple power as with deluded dictators, nor withering ideals, lacking
reality.
Thus
is provided for man, goal, purpose and meaning; and thus exhibited from the
power of creation, resurrection and remedy from Christ, the pertinent power man
needs.
The
word of God shows not only consistency, however, in its verificatory vigour and
virtue. It also displays an enveloping development rather reminiscent of that
of vast mountain ranges, as one climbs towards their depths and heights,
something that justly evokes wonder; and there is constant verification of
majesty of mind and grandeur of heart. When lopped off from God, man is
logically and psychologically lost in illusions and frustrations, as is but
natural for the unnatural...! but when linked with God, through faith and
through the remedy sovereignly provided, just as our creation was provided, man
finds the heights are higher than his highest, and the depths lower than his
dreads.
When
refashioned, he meets the Master who made him to sense, feel for, seek after
and long for Him; though often through sin, man has groped in idolatries and
those defeated illusions which breed delusions, both in hateful politics and oppressive 'care' from those
'carers' who neither know God nor understand Him.
With
increasing 'knowledge', man is becoming a subject increasingly for a pity that
is poignant, as he sits, drugged and deluded, very often, under a psychiatric
care which, as with Jung, does not even know where the answer lies; but seeks
to palliate the problem, sometimes thereby increasing its parameters for the
breached individual, straying from his own Creator, and His goodness
(Romans 2:4, Psalm 107).
On
the other hand, finding Him, in Christ, man becomes a 'new man' quite open to
experimental verification of the change, in the tests of life. These are
internal, and at times involve the enduring of discipline and the cleansing of
pollution; but they lead also to purity of thought, with the fragrance of heart
through the abiding presence of the Lord Jesus Christ by His Spirit,
generating an inexpressible joy, just as Peter says, one more verification,
at the practical level, just as is the power to move those mountains which
would afflict the man or woman or indeed child of God. This they cannot
do, for what precludes godliness is removable by faith: and this again,
is verification as the years of life pass for the Christian, in the way of
life, and in that of others expressed in numerous ways. (Cf. I Peter 1:7-9,
Mark 11:23, John 16:22.)