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Chapter 4
THE GRACE OF GROWTH
and its reciprocal
The Stricken Towers
INITIAL CONSIDERATION
Consider indeed the lily of the field as Christ exhorted us!
Consider the baby in its crib, the calf in its paddock, the adolescent in the mutations of consummation, changing and yet still essentially the same.
If you were to be required to cover all the components,
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the collaboration of endless cells in many organs and fibres
of many kinds |
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not merely the DNA and RNA, but the sub-components, |
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the provisions for checking and the a priori organisational
structuring |
then not small indeed would be your power.
To create the material sub-structure for this brilliance, and its susceptibility to command and control, law and directive, this would require energy yet more massive, and conception yet more vast, and while the universe stretches like a cat yawning in all directions, its grandeur and enormous dimensions make enormity of any requirement of man to construct such a thing. He comes into it, as part of it, yet able to survey it and to find reason for its construction (cf. SMR). His gift of looking requires first his institution to be able to look, then the correlation with what is to be looked at, then the conceptual notations implicit in the latter and implicit in the former, to make it meaningful rather than intellectual static (cf. SMR Ch. 5, and Causes).
Men do not create anything remotely like life because they cannot; and if they could, it would merely be following the plan already provided, which is always for centuries by ardent humanists fully understood, until they come to realise as in the helix in DNA, there is more, and yet more, as in the 'junk' DNA*1A now realised to contain a new aspect of the amazing schema involved.
PREJUDICIAL CONSIDERATION
Science is not - or better many scientists habitually, or exceedingly often, wanting to 'know it all', and even when disclaiming precisely this 'knowledge', shouting out their mythical preconceptions such as organic evolution from every school class-room via the message-people, are not a dab hand at such dabbling
(cf. Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, Wake Up World! ... Chs. 4-6, Earth Spasm Ch. 1, TMR Ch. 1).
Philosophers, which many such become, immature and often ill-educated in this field, in so doing, are not well-dressed in white coats
(cf. Earth Spasm Ch. 1, 7, Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 7, CASCADE 3 ).
The fact is that in the last 70 years, such enormous advances have been made in geometrical realisations, biochemical and neurological functions, interplay of organs and disease invasions that it becomes at times almost amusing to realise how much was 'known' decades before, now often seen as simplistic and wholly inadequate.
LOOKING IN ORDER TO SEE
When however you simply use your eyes, there is a vast array of data obviously required for even the physical aspects of human life. Thus when cells divide by complex means of vast sagacity, and form others, all controlled and checked, and then these group and specialise, now this way and now that; and when those grouped becoming specialised into this or that sort of cell, have to specialise further, into this or that aspect of this or that organ, so that it is like a giant building project with many contractors, each poised ready, all under command, all obtaining their materials, all deploying the components in ways allowing construction in exquisite complexity and timing to occur: it is all but a beginning.
After the organs are of this or that type (such as the lung, at first not called on to operate in air, and then suddenly to be READY to do the same at birth), or experience transition, all appointed each for its day and way as Psalm 139 specified (cf. Bible Translation No. 4), or maturity as this or that; and after the whole has LIVED during all the transitions, rather like an aeroplane flying happily along while becoming a continually different sort of machine for some months, always being required to fly (live) and always being required to have co-ordinate functionality for the whole array at any one given time: there is much more to come.
Firstly, all the organs have to be, despite their enormous internal cellular complexity, design and designation, orchestrated continually into an integrality; and then, as the child grows, and when these things are done, there have to be developments within the organs, as in the case of the brain, where new connections are being made with due regard to usage required, and within their functionality. Thus one school has it that man is not mature till near to twenty one years of age, there being functions within the brain which are not mature until that time.
Thus there is a schematic whole, and there are series of steps for total life in the integral whole ON THE WAY to this; and this applies not only anatomically, but physiologically. Inside the integrality, there are mini-integers, systems and organs to provide this energy or that mobility or this responsiveness to will, and to provide the other unconscious and wholly automatic activity, or some yet further capacity to INTERVENE, as in breathing, at will.
Past all this, there is the geometrical change. Thus when a toe grows longer, there is not only SIZE, but contour to consider, and functionality while the contour changes; and within the contour, are vast numbers of cells not only at the multi-layered skin, but in the nerve-endings and musculature; and these have to be co-ordinated in size and capacity to act with strength, WHILE the change is occurring.
The forearm is a good example. It lengthens in youth. Each cell, each layer of skin, each blood-vessel, each nerve cell, each diameter, each length must be correct and the contours kept. As the millions of cells continue over a year, there must be a geometrical re-assignment so that length and strength, width and functionality are apt for the whole. Oddities merely emphasise the norm and the enormous mathematical complexity involved in seeing to such things as the changing shape, the functional power, the correlation of the aspects of shape and the total continuity.
This is merely one world. At the same time, capacities to consider, to invade areas of knowledge, to relate knowns to unknowns and investigate the latter, to find methods of investigation and to find modes of storage and seeking of wisdom, these must arrive on the pulsing human tarmac; and at the self-same era, there must be increase of language, of power to analyse it, to comprehend it, to apply it and to relate the same to thought, so that thought stimulates the desire for words, and words the need for thought; and all of this must be brought under the aegis of ONE person who in MANY ways yet continues to cover these aspects, and relate them to will, value, moral and mastery*1.
MOVING ON, AS ONE DOES IN GROWTH
As in the body, then, so in the mind.
Moreover, this is far from all. At the very same time as this twin company of worlds is operating, it must co-operate; and while they do so, a third realm must be GROWING.
Thus the spirit of a man, though the race increasingly becoming ignorant that it so much as has one (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Little Things... Ch. 5), this too must grow. Man must become aware of the realities and implications of choice, both in practical and theoretical matters, and of the reality of values, morals and purposes. He has to learn to relate knowingly to God, or else to stray from this realm, as if shutting the eyes, and to wander, subject to impulse, as if refusing to exercise the legs (cf. Matthew 13:14, Isaiah 6).
If he does not deny God, then he has to find HOW to know Him, and to respond to the call to receive the instructions of life, follow the way into life and learn to walk with God, just as earlier he had to learn to walk with legs physically.
In all these worlds, including the Domain of Deity, he must find the ways of growth, of correlation of growth in one with the other, the meaning of each and of all, and continue to live as he does so.
The COMMANDED part of all this is contained in the encrypted language which directs the paths, patterns, programs and constructions in his body, and makes available the capacity to learn and think and consider, itself a vast platform of capacity which is there in potential, and to the extent necessary, already in action, ready to be developed. Thus in learning to walk you do not invent the idea; you follow the capacities inbuilt, not so rigorously as to require no effort, but far from so inventively as to obviate requirements for the prior institution of the power to learn and the apparatus for its exercise, with the mental and physical correlation of learning with doing. While these are both inbuilt, and subject to heavy programmed, they are partly free and require application of capacity.
Freedom alone is a marvel and the nearest thing to mystery on this earth. HOW could you be so made that you have potential to act, but capacity to resist ? A person may cut his throat, spend hours in research, smoke out of action his lungs, marijuana his way into a split personality, become pre-occupied with sexuality, financial accretions, personality acclaim, golf, women or men as partners or whatever else, and thus is not programmed. People in the worst of conditions often arise to greatness; people in the greatest of commencements often sink to folly. Deprivation may lead to vast endeavours leading to strength of character, or to gruesome grumblings leading to skiing down skid row.
The disposability of the will, the acceptability (or otherwise) or value systems, the drawing power of spiritual or moral or political or social things, the resistance to the drawing, the survey of it, the detestation or delight in it, the realisations of the nature of things: all of this is a matter non-programmable
(cf. Licence for Liberty, REF 9, incl. End-note 1 (esp. programmatic psychology and its ilk), PREMARVELS 7, including *1, It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Little Things... Ch. 5, Predestination and Freewill Section I) .
While it is true that you can cite thousands of aspects which have 'led' to your being this or that, with another most similar to you, they may have 'led' to the exact opposite in such a number of worlds, that there is a resemblance between the two of you, less obvious than that between a mosquito and an elephant. Lives part, and values arrive.
The decision may be to hate, to
revolve on pride's call, or the resolve may be to proceed with following Christ's call
and thus to love it; it may be to ignore it in order to
follow laziness' desire or lassitude's whim. Culture, past or present, concepts
novel or old, may direct, or attract, but the person is disposed with
consideration and relates with responsibility. Guilt arrives precisely because it is
known that such is the case, and psychologically, it is not significantly
resolvable (palliatives are not a removal van); while exultation can come
because it is realised that the right decision was made, and not 'right' merely
subjectively, but objectively. It is then that the fact of God and right and
wrong may be the more apparent, when perspective, explicable of all, overthrown
by nothing, is discovered as beyond all price (cf. TMR
Ch. 5, It Bubbles ... Ch.
9, *1A).
INHERITANCE AND ITS DISPOSITION
All of this is part of the inheritance of man in the realm of freedom. The subjectivities would not even be sanely extant, if it were not for the presence of the writer of the DNA and the formulator of the integral reality called man, first in body, then in mind, then in spirit, then in collaborative unity. Because however what logic requires (cf. SMR Ch. 1, 3, 10), psychology exhibits (cf. SMR Ch. 4), man does find guilt and exultation, retrospective analysis and prospective evaluation, and includes among the variables, the possible variation in his own values, morals, spiritual perspective and religious commitment.
The liberty of man is sometimes pressed to a ludicrous degree, just as at other times in philosophy it is compressed to a no less ludicrous degree, both in total defiance of the whole scope of the evidence. Moreover, if man were not free, truth would be irrelevant, unless he were programmed to have to have it, which in view of the vast presence of lies, he is not!
Thus the God-aspect of his life has to be resolved as well as the requirements for his spirit, his will, his mind and his body. It is here that the whole thing becomes almost absurdly simple. If a man finds God, then he finds the Designer of the design which is his, the meaning of the freedom which is his, which ultimately comes to being liberated from confusion and the kaleidoscope of componency as lord, and being received by the Lord of bits, as the maker of wholeness, so finding his own design in words and in works.
With this comes the power to operate, so that the design, to know what is to go where, the Designer, to know the strength and wisdom, the vision for PERSONAL operation, and the designation, to find what is the will of the Lord for your occupation time on this earth, a creature among creatures, but now a friend among the rest of creation: all of this becomes yours. The UNITY starts at the drawing-office of the architect, and beyond that, in the heart and mind of God who drew it up.
When you find it, then instead of being like a car, so many screws, so much plastic, of such and such colours in these and those amounts, so many kilograms of steel, of this kind here and that kind there, so many computing elements and so many areas for driver liberties, and so many provisions to mitigate driver error or difficulty: you find a handbook where all fits together, and your responsibilities are met with the provisions.
Enticing, it is exciting; exciting it is challenging; challenging it is lovely, and above all, since as we find in the identified word of God, the Bible, that love is not merely topical for the invention of man, but necessary for his operation and co-operation with God, it becomes an adventure in meaning and a joy of acquaintance. It grows into a depth of friendship with the Maker, who being also the Redeemer, is One past all beauty, the source of wonder and the mover of mountains.
That is one advantage of knowing God truly, for He CAN and often does move mountains in the way of holiness or ignorance. It is possible to deepen this knowledge, and many do; and some being half-hearted, which is a non est with God, do not actually find Him. As far as sincerity is concerned, there is no honest non est (the Latin for IS NOT, NULLITY). If God be Lord, then serve Him as Elijah put it; but if you want natural gods of your own cultural composition, follow them. There is no room for improvement on God by your own constructions; for though He has made you creative, it is virtual spiritual insanity to try to use this imaginative power, a component of freedom, to find new ways, to obviate the One who gave it to you.
THE SHEER WONDER AND POTENTIAL FOR GROWTH
Growth then can be in spiritual depth as well as in moral perception, in friendship with God as in discernment of His will, in integration of understandings, and in perspective with which to see.
Growth is a glorious reality when you know where you grow, and have the plan before you; and it never lacks just that degree of mystery which comes from the fact that God is infinite, so that although you see in this and that principle and command, requirements, there is yet the personal interchange which is friendship and which moves as He will, opening this vista, that mountain chain or the other river in the path of life.
Growth may of course be positive or negative. You may grow a CANCER, which is a net negative, in that it can cancel the operating power of the whole of the being on this earth. You may grow in bulging FAT, which frets your efficiency and challenges your continuance. You could grow in impudence, audacity or wimpishness, depending on the case, and in all of these kinds of change, you deteriorate, growing negatively, like a garden infested with weeds. More things grow, but the pattern, purpose and principles are being denied. It is a backward garden. Its 'inventions' of freedom to hate standards and means of peace and beauty are no achievement, but merely a manner of spoiling past achievements.
Indeed, to be physical, cancer is one of the reminders of the amazingly deft and extraordinarily controlled way in which the billions of cells in the human body and brain, continue organised and operative in their integrality, for years and years, despite in many cases, misuse so horrendous (as in one sense in the batterings of war), that it staggers that life can continue at all. Thus it has been found that the brain, when injured, can transfer parts of its function elsewhere in its maze, which is no maze in any merely arduous sense, but an amazing series of capacities, even allowing for basic changes in order to preserve the purpose and the programmatic whole, for the use of will and spirit, with value and principle, or by choice, without.
It is growth that the Lord gives firstly in the language of command, secondly in the provision in this, for construction, thirdly in the development of organs, fourthly the passing designs allowing the immature and the incomplete stages to operate, each as in childhood, early and later, in youth, in its own domain and stage.
It is growth then in mind, from early commencement, in language, in power to use it and find it and understand it and apply it, and issue it, in spirit and in will. It is growth in completion or otherwise in the non-programmatic fields, such as value and morals and perspective, which may be missed by obstinacy, wilfulness or plain hedonism. It is growth when God is found, in knowing Him and His paths, His presence and His direction, His deliverances and His integrity, more important than the discovery of physical light at first, with the physical eyes.
Growth is not mere change simply because firstly, there is the visible totality in integrality of the whole at the visible level, with its provisions for distortion, abuse or completion; and secondly, because there is the plan for the person which being merged into freedom, yet convergent in the mind, allows depths and dimensions, like those of a lake, over the years receiving new increments from the bulging rivers, sometimes less, mostly more, until its placid surface is the more so because of underlying depth.
Growth is the opposite of schizoid divisions into disaster-ridden components mentally, of spiritual eruptions into competing components without direction or rule, indulging themselves. It is as far beyond mere program however as is the genius of a composer from the practice of scales. It implies willing co-operation in the spiritual, moral and yes mental levels; and even then, it requires effort and ardour and delight in the Lord. There is a wholly different life to be lived when you LOVE the Lord and when you DELIGHT in Him. For one thing, as the Psalm 37 declares, if you trust in the Lord and delight also in Him He will give you the desires of your heart. This may involve enormous changes IN your heart, as you know Him.
Thus the author of this volume would love with a vast intensity to live by the ocean, and could have done so; but found it was not according to the will of God, and so did not. The writing of 103 volumes in Praise of Jesus Christ was not the form of ministry which would have been chosen from all the facets of spiritual ministry; but it is now quite certainly the one which HE chose! One learns in wisdom, to follow the One whose is wisdom; for it is not to be found in culture, or in oneself, or in the world, but in God only, and it is filled with exhibitions of its glorious nature in His word, the Bible*2* .
Since Christ is our wisdom, and we who believe in Him are His, then such riches of wonder are also available, the enlightenment required and the marvels of depth, complete now in kind, consummated then when we see Him face to face (I Corinthians 1:30-31, 13, John 14:6).
Thus it is part of GROWTH, to learn to take up one's cross and to FOLLOW Him, what His will may be, and in view of the love for Him, to delight in doing so, and to find by experience His wisdom; for one is not in this world for pleasure, as many die in agonies unspeakable; nor is one in one's self-hood for luxuriating in it, before Him who consigned it. One lives because God lives, and as Christ put it, Because I live, you will live also (John 14:19).
So far from it being a failure in growth to walk with one's God, one's Creator and Redeemer, it is a failure even to live, to find the life which is created in purpose and plan of God; it is like being made a plough-share and not even knowing what one is or that ploughing is something that is done, let alone, to BE done, and let alone, to be done by YOU.
Growth ? when it is done, what is it that remains, that is found, that is extant, that sits upon the surface of this earth and looks to the heavens, to the stars, to the oceans, to the hills, ascends the mountains and discovers the depths ? What is it, that now being complete in form, is able to bring or at least call for woe and blessing, curse and striving, hatred and guile, goodness and nobility, grace and toleration, intolerance of truth and passion for it ?
What is it that remains ?
ENVIRONMENTS ARE BASICALLY THREE
WHILE OUTCOMES ARE TWO
It is man, with his inner environment, the psychic, anatomical, physiological, mental, moral, spiritual domains and their mutual involvement: not as a mere consensus, but as having a potential pinnacle of emplacement, he or she who has been made, carefully fashioned over the days. It is man with the outer environment, the clouds, the valleys, the rain, the thunder, the lightning, the structures of things and the buzz of life, the thrill of fellowship with others and the spill of blood through enmity, pride and disdain, intemperance, drunkenness whether of body or soul. It is man with the ultimate environment of God, with its light and lordship, meaning and message, consummation to growth and beginning of spiritual growth, with its repudiation and reciprocal reprobation, or reception and realisation in the acmes of blessing. It is man brought to the point, and passing it, brought to completion or depletion.
It is the INEV, the OUTEV and the ULTEV, to use the current passion for acronyms, and be all things to all men, the inner, outer and ultimate environments.
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When the ULTEV is disdained,
grumbled at, |
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when consummation of the
entire growth regimen is concluded |
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then what is to be found ? |
What then has been built ? What comes when the consummation goes!
It is a skyscraper uninhabited, or the realm of rats, mice and vermin, possibly even of devils, where pride or cynicism, passion or pollution, self-reliance or selfishness in the ultimate sense of being your own man or woman, making your own gods or vacancies at your own discretion: it is this which is left.
In what way can it be conceived, or what images will represent this ? The mansion may be imposing, but the management is mere displacement. It is but piracy on the high seas of life, sequestration of property, or the prolongation of the dance of death, a piquant delinquency, trusting in a product and ignoring its Producer. It is war on God and waywardness with His construction; but it is will in the seat of truth, wending its way with callow inadequacy, and witless thrust.
Much was built with tremendous intelligence and wisdom; but no wisdom is then to be found in the completed construction. It languishes, unoccupied or the residence of illicit settlers, spiritual squatters, with or without name, unable to understand, wayward and without way. On its unmapped course, its way is that of the mariner who finds phosphorescence here and there, and witlessly follows this; or the explorer seeking gold, that he may die with it, and not live.
Thus is growth disdained, and so does its purpose lie unfulfilled: it is a skyscraper denuded, left to rot as the rising waters seep into its foundations. It may have glass and steel, but its communications are corrupt, its systems corroded, its methods a mere matrix without meaning except what is invented. It is a house robbed, a voyager pillaged, a very pulpit of emptiness and a thing of wonder, that so much should produce so little.
Pride complains describing its attainments, but this is mere numeration of the stories in the skyscraper, and no excuse for their self-will. It may speak of its longevity, but what does length matter when direction is missing, and the end of the race is not even known ?
It is like runners who do not even see the oval, or sprinters who do not know the lines, far less the tape at the end, and invent tapes, or have them constructed, and have men note that they passed these or those, when the actual tapes spoken of by Paul, who had run a good race to, from and for the Lord, are not even seen.
Growth ? It is not for this distortion and delusion; but for consummation in the Redeemer.
Man is not made for such delinquencies, but if he insists on them, he is made for ruin, not nothingness; for not from nothing has the grandest design in the world come into invisibly fabricated being, and not for nothing have the systems and phases exhibited themselves, not for nothing was consciousness given or was spirit donated, the resource of thinking, enquiring and dissecting man.
Nothing produces nothing and what produces man is adequate for the result, the key manipulator on the DNA writer, the core thinker for the very system of DNA, its codes, commands and its implementing ingenuities, past finding out; for man follows loosely over the millenia, and finds this and that, always thinking he is at the end of it all, but yet, he merely begins in his knowledge. He is slow, but God is fast, and institutes more like the flash of thought, and causes the individual man to mature in a few small years: this vast construction, useless and meaningless without its integrality and its collaborative concoctions. Just as these presume the assignment of design, so they live by it as the phases come and go, each meaningless apart, brilliant in collocation; and the dynamic and directed development finds the mature completion in the end, which also lives in its complete design phase, then for the first time.
Complete ? yes, it is so, but for its emplacement, for this is no flotsam and jetsam.
Is this then to be aborted, not in the womb, perhaps by wilful selfishness, not in infancy, by being dropped on its head, not in childhood by being smashed in some auto accident, not in youth by drugs or motor licence foppishly governmentally granted too young: but in physical and mental maturity, by the ultimate shrinking. Is the womb to escape the shrinkage of appalling salt solution or scalpel in its intrusion of virtual murder, only that the final construction may abort itself! Is man to be loosed from the source of these wonders in order to become an adult abortion, self-wrought, the victim himself, and of his own making!
This is negative growth, this is downfall, this is the Twin Towers with the impacting aircraft of one's own making, self-directed at one's own towers in order to deface, defile and conclude, so that merely the site of such constructions remains, ready to be rebuild under other management for other purposes, ignoring the realities of the rush into life, and disdaining the remedies for its lack of reality, a building a mere hulk, devoid of appointment, despite all its vast constructions over many a long day of preparation!
Is young manhood or womanhood to become a desolation in misdirected dynamic, a site and a situation without its conclusion, its consummation and its connections ?
This is not the objective of such goings, such growths when much was automated and more was to be found! This is not the opening of the floors to their due occupancy, but the flinging of the building to any taker, to any ruinous project, to make of it a thing of wonder, for praise and pride, or of disesteem, for meaningless cynicism and ill-will, a thing to be occupied by itself, declaring and declining for its tenants at will, though it never made itself, and ignores the One who made it!
Yet growth when it arrives at God, and comes into connection with the Architect, the Mathematician of marvel and the Creator of man, when it comes to its very Spring-time and look! there are its perfumes: in this, it has its meaning, its portent, its purpose. Yet it first requires recognition of its LACK, and surrender to its LORD, as well as RECEPTION of His residency through the Holy Spirit, and PARDON for its disconnection from deity and its dealings in its own name, instead of in His. It requires a name for the building, construction of Christ, and a cover for its indemnities, covered by Jesus who died, the just for the unjust to bring us to God (II Peter 3:18).
Our GREAT GAP, that between enormities of sophistication in our construction, leaving our own powers as babes, and the enormity in the other sense, of our lacks in spiritual guidance, knowledge, understanding and concurrence, resulting in pain, anguish, evils innumerable, follies unmentionable as if a pall were spread instead of a cover on a new car: this is not for nothing.
Nothing is for nothing for nothing does nothing. What is, has a cause. The gap has a cause. Its reason is lack. Its absence of the essential is because our demonstrable liberties are not deleted, having been made, but given scope.
We MAY resolve to deny our Maker, ignore His work, His word and His actions in Christ, predicted for millenia, fulfilled both at the time and since, as from His own mouth (cf. SMR Chs. 8, 9); and thus we continue in our disconnection. If not, however, then the growth into the glorious presence of God becomes the ultimate and matrix, the meaning and source, the destination and the deliverance for man.
It needs commencement as did the babe; and it needs not the creation of a zygote now, but of a new heart, a cleansed spirit and a pardoned person (John 3, Titus 3:3-7, II Corinthians 5:17-21). This is no labour, except in humiliation and aspiration, in surrender and in fealty: it means entering a door, provided and open. It is then that the power of God operates (John 10:9,27-28, Romans 1:16). Children are formed to be born, and need not seek to create themselves, nor need man seek to re-create Himself, but trust in Him whose first work is creation, whose grand work of one Redemption is complete, and whose second work is regeneration of fallen man.
Man without this is an anomaly precisely as much as this world shows. Its knowledgeable war, its idealists murder, its pacifists abhor, its wanderers collide, its great seem corrupt so often that one looks for one who is not; it looks precisely as it is. Anomalous, undirected, equipped with deadly dynamics and ready to hate, to parade, to take pride in itself and to go it alone.
Man, he is NOT his own creator; he is NOT his own redeemer; he is NOT his own note of pardon and he is NOT competent to play God, far less to invent gods in spurious exercises of misled dynamism. He must RECEIVE what God has offered, just once, in just one sacrifice, at just one predicted time (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4), in just one place, the Truth consummating the Temple, when HE Himself as for so long announced in the Psalms, Isaiah, Hosea, Zechariah, showed life's meat and meaning to man, as God in flesh, Himself the temple, the sacrifice and the priest (Hebrews 7-10). Dying, He showed the shame of the divorce which now exists. He did not send an envoy, but came Himself. Resurrecting others, He was resurrected Himself. With power over disease and death, He was both exemplar and deliverer. And this ? (cf. Joyful Jottings 22-25) ...
He did not specify a few months before, but millenia.
He did not come to destroy, but to save.
He did not come to dictate but to consummate
(cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 2, The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy).
Growth then is a glorious thing, because God is a glorious God; it is challenging and choice, it is amazing intellectually and spiritually, and staggering morally. It is like flying an aeroplane: the equipment is staggering but the use of it, to arrive at the appointed destination, using the apt principles, is a thing most charming and delightful. Of course it can involve pain, suffering and even agony; but for all that, it is meaningful, directed and development. Through it all, one grows.
Praise be to God! There is no depth or dimension without meaning, and the destiny is more than destination, since the one who created persons, is personal, so that the culmination is a consummation when one sees God face to face, whom on earth one has known, though He be invisible to mortal eye (I Corinthians 13:11-12, Hebrews 11:10, 23-27). Nor does God leave this result to mere systematic components, any more than one leaves one's car to the wind or slopes.
He it is who, knowing all, and knowing all persons, is well acquainted not only with their universal rebellion against His will (Ephesians 2:1-12, 4:17-19), word and way on earth, unless they be taken and changed, brought back to the design for their liberty in which alone can it actually operate (Titus 3:5-7). He is cognisant indeed by divine foreknowledge, not for this of their mere works or attainments (Romans 16:11), but of their uncovered and undamaged response to His will, before all time, His mind knowing all before it is even created (Ephesians 1:4). It all depends not on man, or his operation, but on God, on His knowledge, His foreknowledge, His illimitable love toward all, and His inability to be gulled by any.
Thus does this wonderful creation of freedom, a part of being in the image of God, thus does liberty have its very paragon. Love requires nothing, gives everything, provides the payment of justice, the gift of purity, the incarnation fee for this, that "by His knowledge He shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities." It has even declared it (Isaiah 53). It has even done it (Galatians 1-3, John 1-3). It has provided the grants and having foreknown the recipients for such love, which forces none but seeks all, it has consummated what no man in sin could (I Corinthians 2:14), and completed what sin had rather seen destroyed, the image of God in man (Romans 6:23, Colossians 3:10).
in this, is His glorious foreknowledge, on which predestination is statedly built (Romans 8:29ff.), a to be found a guarantee. It means that neither can sin, nor devil, nor death, nor event cause a person to perish, who is or will be His; but only the will of God in view of His love and knowledge. At that, for the unredeemed at the first and to the end, this is possible only when in His sight, love has no other option (John 3:16-19, Colossians 1:19ff., John 1:1-12, Luke 19:42ff.), and love being one, is satisfied, though grieved, at that. That is why Jesus wept as noted in Luke.
Liberty is a wonder of God: He made it, He traced it, He secured it, He penetrated even through the dark recesses of sin to apply it, being all-knowing and subject to nothing; and then He has granted it. Nor may any now repine, nor is grief the last word; for in joy triumphant, having for man and as man borne all, and broken death, and having known all, and overcome ignorance with wisdom that penetrates all hearts, and knows all people, He has borne into His own kingdom every last soul of man who is His own. Nothing fails.
Love is its own stimulus; and God Himself needed no punishment to induce Him to send His only begotten Son. Love works in His own; and their responsibility is realised as they seek Him, for without Him, they would not be brought near; and without them, the message is not publicised. But wisdom does not pretend that my sin makes another go to hell; nor yet that my love is such that practical realities can be ignored. God's competence is no excuse for my listlessness or incompetence, and when God says WARN, we warn. It is all done in liberty, because of love, faith working by love.
NOTES
This excursion has now doubled since the original, and while given here in larger measure for help, it fits more neatly into the 2008 work, The Message ... Ch. 2.
The Proper Place for Junk is not the Home but the Cross
and the Correct Site for Creation now is the Heart
The continual augmentation of office for 'junk' DNA is in itself an important lesson in the history of science.
The idea of 'junk' of non-functional DNA, highly contrived, and integrally associated elements of production capacity that yet don't do anything noticeably useful for the extant creature, has been assigned with the all too common 'scientific' filling of gaps. Thus if you don't KNOW what it does, it does nothing.
This specious and in effect hilarious non sequitur, rather like saying that if Mr Smith, your neighbour, some of whose affairs are known, and some not, does not work in the way you conceive, then he is a loafer. In fact, he is a) a spy b) an author c) on special leave d) resting after a massive task e) on assignment to meet special emergencies for which he is studying, or which require instant availability, and so on.
Fascinating articles have appeared in the Technical Journal (TJ), in Volume 14 (2) in 2000 with a supplement in Volume 19 (1) in 2005, recently out. Here the matters are traced in enormous detail, with reference to ongoing research. It is shown that there are an increasing list of highly complex functions of what had been derogated into 'junk', in terms of many actualities or possibilities, and some are traced in detail, including disease related elements.
Batten cites a prominent geneticist, Prof. John Mattick of the University of Queensland in Brisbane with the position that non-coding DNA is part of a sophisticated 'operating system', and with the data given, deems this to have adequate justification. This does seem an excellent way of handling perspective when one examines some of the detailed work this non-coding DNA does. There appears to be provision for the means of facilitation, acceleration, early generation embryonically, duplication for dynamic and the general work which enables a 'simple' thing to become a multi-task, multi-functional entity, fit for a multitude of concerns and considerations, so that it may continue to be what it is, a kind of thing, just as an aeroplane may in storm and tempest, heights and low-flying, and landing.
Indeed, Professor Mattick is cited as declaring this: "the failure to recognise the implications of the non-coding DNA will go down as the biggest mistake in the history of molecular biology." (The reference given is : Genius of Junk (DNA) Catalyst, ABC TV, July 10, 2003, transcript).
A few elements of this labour of the non-coding segments which are being investigated with acumen, may be noted.
First, there is the multi-task phenomenon, unlike that in older computers, and this requires DNA machinery to enable it, when required. Sophistication is on the ground floor here!
Again, there is gene diversification provision, which may have accelerated multiplicity of forms within kind, after the flood. Speed can be of the essence under pressing challenges.
Recent research shows, says Dr Don Batten in Vol. 19 (1) that a large chunk of 'junk' DNA is operative in embryonic development. From the Jackson laboratory in Jackson, Maine USA, come experimental indications which suggest the field for this to be DNA regulation of gene expression, in the case of more than one third of mouse and human genomes "previously thought to be non-functional."
More than one third is thus at one thrust put back into function. How ludicrously misnamed was that junk, almost as if some immature 'kid' had in riotous disdain talked of all the old bald-heads who did nothing useful, because he simply did not UNDERSTAND! How imprecise, again we must stress, is this philosophy of science which displaces knowledge, and masquerades as in bombastic assignments of this or that on the basis of preference, prejudice or ignorance, it mars or marries things off in various ways. Those who do not refuse such premature pontifications deserve the secular popes they get! Those who like Mattick in the case in point, point to functional actualities and knowledge, are to be congratulated.
Thus, if in any point, one opts for knowledge properly so called, then it is necessary to SHOW by what you KNOW that such and such is only this or never that. Guessing is not God! As Dr Sarfati points out in his Refuting Evolution pp. 128-129, the DNA has to be translated, and the enzymes enabling this are themselves encoded, as is the editing machinery required for its work. Code stares in the face the dissident, and a code compact in mutual complexities is no less than a systematic conceptual apparatus expressed in practical terms. Why harass the stars when intelligence pats one on the head, and says, There, there! but you did not collect it from there!
In reality, the genes in the DNA are encoded, the key to 'unlocking' them into practice is encoded, the correction apparatus is encoded. It is one thing to have a force impact on matter and accelerate it quite directly. If however you have codes, and these are present in an integral correlation within feature after feature of a construction which operates to produce the most brilliant design man has ever seen invested in matter, so that unless all work, none work, and that all work with an economy of force, because of the codes' provisions, mutually co-operating; and if moreover, the language everywhere found to be translated in such ways, is one and common: then you have one system, one word, one work.
That is how system discovers itself: there is common ideational expression, symbolic unity, co-operative function. It is not only irreducible complexity, but mentally producible symbolism, cohesively constrained unity and functionally focussed outcome. When these elements are all present: ONE language, ONE coding, ONE decoding, ONE editing and ONE outcome for each structure, then we do not appeal to nothing as the cause, but something. (Cf. Stepping Out for Christ ... Ch. 9, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, esp. endnotes.)
There is no greater causative phenomenon on earth than the material, moral, spiritual, mental and aesthetic, spiritual and ontological nature of man. Required is something adequate.
What has the power to impress symbols in a world of symbolic expression, to encode command with a minimising dexterity and maximising diversity within the kind, enabling its life in stages of its initiation into working life, as in the embryo case (as it now appears much of the 'junk' DNA does), and to use spacing techniques (by entrons, once thought to be junk) for various administrative purposes, depending on the case, the need and the scope of the entire plan ?
What is to manipulate the symbols of thought must think, and what has to integrate systems must have understanding, and what is to integrate systems to a functional focus must have purpose, and intelligence of a kind more robust than that of man, when man himself is the product! (cf. Sparkling Life ... Ch. 8, SMR Chs. 1, 3, 10). Media do not disguise the necessity of means to manage them, but merely provide scope and opportunity for such action.
Since this is the working room, it is not the worker. Since these are the materials, they are not the maker. Since these are produced, they are not the producer. He is not junk, and He is vindicated in so many ways, of which the substantial number of extremely sophisticated provisions in what was once called 'junk' DNA is merely an example, as man begins to learn instead of dash off notes, that modern man is unmasked as an imposter in his blind hypothesis, based in guesswork, alien to logic and contrary to scientific method.
It is always the same: nothing produces nothing and nothing inadequate produces results divorced from its powers, when you come to ultimates. If it is not there, it does not come. The ONLY thing that can EVER come is from what was adequate to produce it, and talk of 'chance' which is merely the absence of purpose in a given system, is sheer waste of time (cf. Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Chs. 9 and 13).
That is simply to ask the system that is to produce the system to be, to be something else; and without having the mental, intelligent, the integrating, the constructive, the mathematical, the coding and the conceptual power required to impart existence and co-operation with stringent system, yet so to act. It is the ultimate metamorphosis, the pantomime of entertaining children, though addressed to adults, the despatch of marvels by words, and the dictates of thought addressed to matter which always has the good sense to smirk surreptitiously as it refuses once and for all, in all ways and at all times, to carry out the perquisites of those who insist on bypassing logic with magic.
It is however quite useless to shut your eyes and chant the mantra 'chance' . By NO chance does what systematically lacks produce what systematically does not lack; and unless it had what it takes, it will not because it cannot provide. To import a smuggled in additive is the illicit imputation. You speak of one thing, but USE something far more, though failing to give it a name!
Mind, matter and spirit do not arise from nothing, nor does any part of them arise from itself or some illicit and unendowed substitute, as if 'progress' were some inane additive to any given layer of activity, and to come from thinking about it. You need for each what that has, and not some mouthing of a word. You do not add imposed features to a system which resolutely refuses to be so encumbered, by calling on philosophy. That, it is not science but daydreaming. In man's trilogy of life, EACH part requires a cause, their inter-locking requires a cause, their causative phenomena in principle require a cause and the refusal of each to act as if they were inventive of another domain, when they merely act as made, requires a cause (cf. Causes, Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 3, News 94, Wake Up! Chs. 5, 6).
To produce a SERIES of systems over time or a SEQUENCE or a SCHEMA for anything, you need what it takes; and to have anything ever, you need what it takes always, since nothing is SO unproductive! That is eternity, and it is as useless, as egotistic in trend, to turn from it like some thwarted child because you are not IT!
It is; you derive.
You need to know your place. If children sometimes forget theirs to their own regress, adults are no less prone; and if children may the more now, by erring education added to their natural sin, fail to consider the parental reproof, or the teacher's, so no less do adults tend to fail to turn their hearts to their Creator's response and call, even that from eternity.
The liberty to refuse is more astonishing as a POWER given to man than any other component, except that which is entirely dependent on it, the liberty to love. Freedom and love are inseparable correlatives, since what MUST respond in such a way is merely someone else's idea, and has nothing of itself.
The cause is sufficient for all of this, and is that God who purposes what He proposes, disposes what He creates and invents in correlative cooperation and synchronous dexterity, as any inventor does, what makes things happen the way he wants. Part of this is the person identity, which man has, and this it is which may defy Him, but not with wisdom or constructive result; or love Him with results as incalculably wonderful as is life in the first place.
The difference in invention is not only, however, the SCOPE of the inventions, such as these, but this: that the eternal God is author of all the systems, giving contrived and contained existence its place and time its invention. Subject to nothing, He makes time a form of constraint.
He is author even of the concept of system, and the capacity of things to be things, to exist, and to be schematised, organised and implemented; and confined existence for these, one and all, requiring now this way, now that, thought and mode and form and fabrication, attests His versatility, just as the common elements exhibit His signature in oneness. Indeed, these being one, with one only language of life, His vehicle, He makes them all interact with ingenuities more admirable than marvel can find, so that the only important question is how to avoid junking HIM, by pompous pronouncement, and instead to find Him (cf. Spiritual Refreshings... Ch. 13). As Genesis said, God SPOKE and it was so.
Science like reason itself, requires Him (cf. Earth Spasm... Chs. 1, 7, Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 7, CASCADE ... 3 , Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 16).
It is only a viral or parasitic infection into some of modern science which would have people think otherwise. Junk guesswork is no more than that. Reason's requirements are wholly other (see specifications below). Thus the specious, pseudo-scientific simplistic syndrome is popularised, while the realities are fought against, avoided, caricatured in a solemn high mass of idolatry of man, who ignoring the realities of power, progress, inter-face and the enormous energies of MAKING things, the fascinating CHALLENGES of making them work, and with all his prowess at SEEING these things in the interstices of his own computing exercises, waving a clowish hand, says with vain emptiness, Let it happen!
This world is not like that, nor reason, nor is science. It is time to wake up. The dream is over, and it has drenched this world in blood as Nazism and Communism and now power-hungry components of Islam, try to be 'fit' without fitting into what actually fashions things, whether politically fit, religiously fit, economically fit, fighting fit in this way or that, calling on what is not there, and presenting vacant man, from God a rebel, with all the deadly vulnerabilities to powers that are far from benign, ready to accelerate the evils (Luke 11:23-26), for negative growth is the ruin worse than recall .
Such things are considerably influential in a fallen world, seeking advance by 'natural' means, whether with Hitler or Marx. On this, see SMR pp. 127ff., 307-308, Aviary of Idolatry, Let God be God Ch. 13, History, Review and Overview ... Ch. 1, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 14; and as Encyclopedia Britannica points out, the purgation of those held to have weak genes resulted in millions slaughtered by the Nazis. It was the T 4 eugenics program. It also notes that the Fascist philosophy had deep roots in many writers, and that Hitler's special line moved past political anti-semitism, solvable by emigration, religious anti-semitism, imagined to be solvable by 'conversion', to racial anti-semitism, the death warrant. The Jewish race was but one victim. Rosenberg even had races as if divinely created nexuses of power, as if a horse race. Contest, survival, superiority was everywhere. Militant Islam is by no means the first, nor will it be the last means of religious adventurism.
Even early, in Mein Kampf , Hitler deemed it a duty to bring the master race to its eminence, all in terms of naturalistic push, survival and superiority, a philosophic distillate of the imaginary machinery of Darwin, with political putsch, that push as vain as any other. The vanity of man whether in religious escapades, philosophic ones, works of nullity, or of idols that are the same but with names attached, it does not escape the confrontation with reality. You do not make the worlds by trying to be yourself, or imagining yourself to be somebody, racially, religiously, nationally or otherwise. It is the One equipped who did it, to whom race and face must bow.
Wisdom, understanding, power, contrivance, creativity, vision, purpose and a vast intelligence, all are needed for the construction of the universe and of man in particular. These things, qualities, sufficiencies, they do not invent themselves, as in the fey world of fairies. It is time to face the real issues.
The important question is this: As to the Creator, what does HE require! This is found, like all the rest, by investigation, rational, careful and composed. (Cf. SMR Ch. 1, Barbs, Arrows and Balms Ch. 17, Ch. 6, Ch. 3.) Required by reason, it is received by faith (cf. The Bright Light ... Ch. 7).
It would not be so if He desired to remain anonymous, but the only anonymity is the humanist irrationalism which seeks to avoid the obvious. He has declared in so many ways, times, places, words and people, and in the end by the incomparable Christ, who He is, what He wants and does not want, the latter including compulsive obsessions about ideas of our own, in the light of His truth, that any pretence that it is not known is like denying the invention of the wheel.
There is one book, one Jesus Christ, one substance of prophecy, one language of life, one language of prediction, of interdiction, one history-controlling book, one analysis which answers without omission all questions arising from life, and one person whose work is enshrined in a millenium of foretelling, and two of fulfilling what He has said, who alone presents remedy for man, so that his systems may not be aborted, that his needs that he justly seeks may not be thwarted and his horrendous conflicts may be replaced with peace.
Junk needs to be junked and Jesus to be received.
On the specifications in detail for the above elements of logic and science, here illustrated, see:
together with SMR Chs. 1, 3, 5, 8-10.
By way of update, one finds an interesting article in The Australian, February 19, 2008. The University of Queensland has created an algorithm which enables it to predict certain coding sequences, we learn.
In other words, the systematic thought back of these has been found out as to one of its coding controls, and being grasped, is re-applied to enable researchers to "look into this huge hidden layer of gene expression that hasn't been previously studied." That huge hidden layer ? It is in the arena of the non-coding RNA, not junk after all, which "controls various levels of gene expression in physiology and development, as well as in the brain."
Scarcely junk, is it! Speaking of an agreement between the University of Queensland and one of the "world's largest life science technology companies to commercialise the new tool", the journalist indicates that the "agreement involves an exclusive worldwide licence for the production of micro-array RNA chips, containing both coding and non-coding RNA probes." At first some 12,000 "of these non-coding genes" but later 100,000 are planned for coverage, to "boost the resolution of genetic information that researchers are able to target."
Thus the non-coding has not only information, but crucial and telling data concerning development, brain and procedure.
As pointed out, elsewhere and below, there is information about information, like a manual for the way in which to organise machinery and use it. Manuals are of course not a product of some material system, since they indicate an understanding of what they are talking about, so that you may know how to operate within those criteria knowledgeably. While ignorant and harassed students might call manuals junk, to the knowledgeable examiners, they are the very opposite: a sophisticated tool of understanding to orient what lacks understanding with that product of mind. Understanding is NOT a juxtaposition of particles, but ground for it, point for it in an environment of this type, cohesive in integrality for a unitary result.
What conveys decisions of mind in systematic forms and formulae is certainly transmissible in juxtaposed, oriented processive units: but what they transmit is not themselves, but knowledge, information, perspicuous orientation and direction on a basis that is fundamental, not fidgetty, an oversight and an insight, not mere perception.
The concept for example of junk DNA, left over from experiments or failures, is without attestation empirically. What has been found is far other. Thus, a recent Journal of Creation, Vol. 21(3), 2007, pp. 111ff., attests in considerable detail that DNA information is "overlapping-multi-layered and multi-dimensional". As with human speech, it has multiple rules and conditions, symbols and inventions to cover its inventory. This of course has to be put, like human speech, in a milieu able to respond to the symbols, with sophisticated and unified interface concepts and considerations. We find now that much DNA formerly little recognised for function (‘junk’), is found to contain information about how to use information.
So complex are the composure, composition and brilliant overlays of mandatory and executive symbolisation in DNA that there has to be a species of handbook, a governance of information disposition and disposal. So far from junk, this is one more overlay, supervisory disposition, in addition to that for editing copies of DNA to minimise mistakes, and the more direct information itself.
To have named 'junk' what is seen now to contain what is ardently or at least arduously supervising either embryonic or other action, conserving the kind, enabling the species of variation within code, or such things, is an irony superb, a confusion supreme, a question-begging now beggared>
It reminds one of the far earlier response first of Mendel, in his work on showing variability to order within kind. Now with more knowledge, we move yet further. Thus in micro-biology, in showing the sophistication to be far more intense and immense in the symbol-performance realm and interface than ever imagined, we come from the magical notions of ignorant evolutionism, always in hope, never in finding, always in funding, never in fact, once more to the actualities of creation.
That man has nothing like it despite feverish endeavours to make ‘nature’ DO IT, with the uttermost use of concerted intelligences over a long period, with great resources available, speaks for itself. What trails the productions is not failure, not realms of messed-up attempts visible as one studies the paleontology, the fossils: it is not this, but regions of information control which now come to light. BECAUSE of these, we do not get THOSE. We SEE these now in our minaturised research; but we NEVER see those exhibits of experimentation in clumsy dumpings, dig as we may. The facts speak with so much eloquence, that they even tilt the hat to logic and admit: it had to be so, which responds, can you at last see that!
You do not compose symbols to produce meaning to the impactive field by dreaming, doodling, and far less, by doing nothing at all. It is a discipline and requires enablement at the relevant cognitive levels for control by symbols, expiicated in their handbooks.
This empirical information has come through two projects, the Human Genome Project, published in 2003, and a recently published ENCODE Project. The contributions to the point in view have been successive and require as Alex Williams points out in the TJ noted, massive re-thinking of the topic. Indeed, he lists what was relevantly in view in 2003 and then proceeds to see the later advances from the ENCODE project.
An interesting volume in this field is titled: Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome (2005). In effect, it embodies a report and thought from Dr John Sanford about years of research, indicating that that genetic mutations are not only found to be recessive in terms of information, with none able to show any new information, but that the negatives relative to the original continue to accumulate in large blocks of undivided materials which mean that competition and survival are not really as relevant as might be thought. Thus the difference is often exceedingly small, in a given generation, as degeneration of the complex commands and implementation devices occurs, and the accumulation of these errors is not to be stopped by wishful thinking, or unrealistic assumptions.
The RESULT proceeds in an unfortunate way, for survival might take a long time to become relevant as an issue, for much time may pass before the negative regress, distortion or dismissal is discernible, by which period, a massive amount of degeneration has occurred. In this way, the subjection of the creation to 'futility' as specified by Paul in Romans 8, proceeds. It is magnificently apparent that on the one hand the brilliance of wisdom, and on the other, the marring by the second law of thermodynamics and various other means, proceed in their jointness, not pointlessly, as in a work of art left in the street, but signiciantly. God constantly is showing He means what He said in the beginning, when sin entered: so did curse, and so did the intimations of deliverance through redemption, already foreshadowed in Genesis 3:15 ().
You do not make an image better by changing it from its refined nature. This noted and downgrading effect, however, is shown to be occurring relentlessly, remorselessly; and even intelligent effort in laboratories to make better vegetables and so on, still does not create new information, while merely tending to maximise the deterrence of loss and concentrate what is left that is good, by inclusion of what was better from the past. When there is NOT EVEN this, then the rate of decline is even greater.
What then of the research into the genome and its components in this respect ? As more and more information about information and that about handling information with extreme felicity and facility is discovered so neatly set out in working order in biological wonders that continue, and that concerning coded subtleties ramifies and intensifies, making the genome a marvel and a maestro work of almost imponderable magnificence of conception and exertion to match, greater also is the empirical scope for error. It is not a motor-bike, if you like, but a Rolls Royce; but now it is not this either, but a futuristically conceived space craft, the intricacies of which are not yet fully understood, let alone mastered by investigating man with his limited intelligence.
This is your painting firm in contact with Raphael, Michelangelo and Renoir. How would one even compare! The works speak of the insertion of the workings, the cosmoi of thought, the conceptions of the mentality which held them; and the action based on this causally demands (cf. Causes 1), the power of the Conceiver, whose conceptions we read, but neither create nor are able to cause to be created. But what of the current position ? There is the mint, but what of the coins of the realm ?
Having been minted by Majesty, in the unmajestic, they wear. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is seen to apply massively. Of course it would in such an exposure of such intricacy and complexity to a world of events not shaped to protect, but polluted by sin and degraded by judgments consistently sought, as might be a Gallery for works of art, set in the street! Yet for all that, these divine prodigies of crafting, allowing tests on many fronts, ways, to be used for many designs, as good or evil of man rules, show their origin in their degradation, sophistication and provisions for maintenance. These, wholly diverse from those for creation, are a unit in a genre, in practical terms, on its own, the former not found to be occurring in the 'arisings' of 'nature', as equally lack the means for them, but merely prodivind products degrade.
The ONLY other option is by REGENERATION by the royal command of the Creator (II Corinthians 5:17-21, Titus 3:5-7), which operates in the heart, mind, emotions, morals, spirit of the saved in Jesus Christ, whose spiritual new genes change the whole horizon of man back to its proper depths, heights and dimensions (cf. Ephesians 3:14-21), so creating peace in his heart, in a world almost entirely forgetful of it, among the nations. THIS is the life which lives forever; it is subject to the LAW of the Spirit sent from Christ (John 15:26), in whom is eternal life (Romans 8). But let us return to the physiological.
One thing is increasingly realised, not only in empirical demonstration, but from the tenor and direction of discovery: that the last thing that is being found is dude material, and the first thing that is being discovered is a consistent systematics that makes man’s best a prelude only, except that this preceded it, being from a Source Sufficient for ALL of it in that measure of simultaneity without which it is ALL useless junk, however highly sophisticated. Deny the source as eternal, and rationally, you either have to have nothing invent something in due course, a simple contradiction in terms, or confess to a ‘coming out’ in your belief in magic, a mere name. If you wish to be irrational, then you deny the validity of your means of argument, and become irrelevant to logical thought.
Another observation: it is that the rate of decline of this marvellously and minutely operative and increasingly massively relevant genome rises critically, in proportion as its working size is gauged to be more and more massive. Huge in significance and portent is the number of degradations in nucleotides in one generation only! MORE information is what is NOT found. MORE deterioration is what is found, and what variation in terms of different sorting or loss in diverse particles and symbols is found, does nothing to remedy the structural of the whole, as it decreases.
What inherently declines is not that which inherently advances. What cannot support itself at its own level, having come, is not showing itself capable of coming by that method. A disassembly plant is not a factory for novelties. It is as Gould attested in the area of major design methods in the Cambrian, far greater than those left: decrement is not increment, and departure is not arrival. That is to make the negative a positive, and destruction, construction.
If there is any normal limit to the arrant and erratic magic of the mythology of evolutionary theory, it is past here by a margin like that of stars in their distance from earth, compared with that of the moon. This concept of construction through destruction, in that sense, is over the moon.
There seems a never ending increment as research proceeds, on the utilisation of information in the cell structure. As already noted, this sort of thing is exhibited in some detail in the review of Alex Williams on the Human Genome Project, and the later ENCODE Project, results of both now published, to be found in the Journal of Creation – 21(3).
Increasingly it is found that there is information about information and the intricate and brilliantly compressed, interactive and concisely coherent systematics of different information sources, co-operating for action and construction are being feted as foci of life. The fastidious magnificence of the conceptually co-ordinated controls, symbolised in language, are not in the domain of the chatter of matter, itself with its own delimited facets and features, marvellous enough; but in the cosmos of code, composition, comprehensibly commanded and transmissible in orders, imaginative in perspective, starting in power and … the outcome ? It is this: man's physical equipment is simply one of the results of command, now seen as programmatic in style as far as the physical equipment is concerned, while his spirit allows him to rove through using program as a technical base, to find his own basis. In this he is helped by the word of God which declares these provisions as in Psalm 139 (Bible Translations 2 #n10), and it is now manifest to all, in verifiable format, in formula and in functional command.
Matter does not have the power to speak: it is spoken into being in its format (Genesis 1 and the empirical facts in total co-ordination and mutual confirmation and attestation), but is not functional for code manipulation; and that is why this is never found. You need code for command in conceptual proto-creation, outside intelligence, a fact that nothing can or does contradict, for the very simple reason that any system has its kind, character and bounds, according to the input for its creation.
Matter has power of various assembly in chemical organic and inorganic, aptitude for division and even release of contained energy, but it is mind which has the power to functionalise code into command through conceptual realisation and functional implementation. The range of imagination is the new limit for this action, and where there is spirit such that novelties of thought and enormities of error alike may be committed, we find further elements which CAN use matter, dependent on their own power, and these often do, as in the case of man. This is no nearer, however, to matter moving mountains to give itself code-creative power and unity-creating scope of imagination, even up to the level of that trilogy called man, than is a wood pile to creating a house. It is relevant, to be sure; but not sufficient.
Man loves to dither and declaim in this area, but never manages to escape the empirical facts, or the logical necessities (cf. Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ ..., and ...and Deity and Design …). The constant endeavour is rather like that of al Qaeda to possess the West. It is based on theft and may seem a good move for power; but in the end, it is an idle substitution of money and arms in the hope of snaring much of this world into an abysmal force-toting, depravity of abandoned dynamic. Man in general has a bigger endeavour: to grab all of it from God, a massive insurgency, insurrection and rational irrelevance. Man does not have what it takes to be God, and to seek to strip Him of oneself is nothing short of theft and mockery of reason, not to mention God Himself.
This goes on; so do the results of it!
Interestingly, the cost of failure to service the ‘vehicle’ man is spelt in considerable detail in that sole verified and validated book of revelation of the mind of God to man in written form, the Bible (SMR, TMR and Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer); and not surprisingly, when he imagines he or something less invents this dwarfing dynamic of code and command, concentrated into a neat compass with mind and spirit to boot, and refuses the necessary power concerned in its designable Source, the cost is as great as in any other delusion.
Indeed, it is more, since this delusion is not about something, some element: it is about himself, all of him. It is a delusion transmissible in turn, just as the code is, and its results are found socially, financially, militarily, in degradation, just as the genes slowly degrade in a world being held to account.
The auditor is shortly to conduct the final assessment. It is well not to tell Him the outcome, but to find it in His word (Acts 17:31, Revelation 20:12-14, Romans 5, 8), and in His mercy to find the REASON for life, and the GRACE God is willing to give in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:1-12), the Creator who came to His own (John 1:1-14), and will come for them when the task already founded in its basis, flowers in its income of the saints (Matthew 24:30-31).
See
Repent or Perish Ch. 7, especially Endnotes 1 and 2, on State of the Data, State of Mind and similar topics.
See also Life, What is it ? (A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 6), and Life, What is it For ? (That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 6), with Predestination and Freewill Part I.
See -
SMR pp. 48ff., Appendix C and D
Let God be God Ch. 6 (its testability and versatility to the uttermost),
Pitter ... Ch. 4,
Repent or Perish Ch. 7, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6 -7,
Answers to Questions Ch. 9
Joyful Jottings 17; cf. Little Things Chs. 9, 10
Things Old and New Ch. 10,
The Biblical Workman Appendix 3,
Lord of Life Ch. 3 ;
AQ 1,2,3; TTT 9 esp. Epilogue;
Pall of Smoke and Diamond of Joy Ch. 11;
Christ, the Wisdom of God and the Power of God Ch. 8;
SMR 316Bff.,
WOUNDS Epilogue (reason and revelation),