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CHAPTER  6

DEATH TO DESIGN OR LIFE THROUGH DESIGN

A Dialogue

It was the sort of day when the clouds are near, they are grey, the air seems clammy, it is filled with moisture, the sun is hazy but not lazy, heat is dispersed and one has to watch that it is not enervating.

At the beach, however, near the quietly glistening rocks, it was still gifted with some cool breezes and the air over the ocean seemed to be brisker than elsewhere, as if the sea, while admittedly not vigorous, yet had no intention of yawning or going to sleep.

There he was, on top of some rocks, with his hands behind his head, reclining as if master of all he surveyed. Beneath, as if too indolent to care, were fishing lines, not within too easy reach. Any fish ? I asked. Nothing, no fish! he said with an accent that left me wondering his place of origin.

You have a fine view! I continued.

Alas I also have grief, he declared, but his visage still seemed quietly smiling.

What is the problem ? or is it a loss ? I asked.

His face still seemed lambent, his eyes alight, but there was an indefinable sadness.

I have lost my wife. God has not been good to me, he mused. I sometimes wonder why, if we are a design in our very bodies and minds, and an operating marvel in our spirits to choose, seeing many things, and taking only some, rejecting others, choosing principles and seeking to do right, things like this happen.

You mean perhaps that yesterday she was there, and now is gone: it is sudden, even remorseless ?

Remorseless ? Exactly. She had cancer: it came suddenly. In a month or two she was gone. It scraped the fat away from my heart.

I loved these figures of imagination in him, and pitied him in his plight. It is, one supposes, like suddenly losing the use of an arm.

Are we designed ? he asked. It seems totally impossible to believe that we are not, or that we are. I am confused, he mused.

Of course we are designed. First of all, I said, glancing to see if he were in a sufficiently receptive mood, there is the verbal, then come the ontological, then the aetiological, then the empirical and the definitional aspects.

Tell me, I want to get my mind around it.

In terms of definition, design is a contrived work aimed at the combination of entities of known or somewhat known characteristics into one whole with a view to its achieving some purpose, aim, contribution to something or someone, to fulfil some thrust of what is able to engage in such activities, that is mind. The contriving agency may have more or less comprehension of the entirety, but at some point there has to be intent. If it is man, who does it, then if he is not drunk, drugged or desperately ill, but with a clear head, then there is likely to be a considerable comprehension of the aims, the means and what will fulfil the thrust of the thing.

You mean, he queried, that I am here, perhaps, or imply it, because of my sadness, to muse, to fish as an excuse to survey this vast ocean as a figure or feature standing for the universe, and looking beyond, say at the sky above that glorious roving ocean before me, to study the question: WHERE is my Maker, and why did He make me ?

I had not had this more than very slightly if at all in mind, I replied, but surely this is the sort of thing that would illustrate it.

I myself design things, he communed, such as a fishing expedition, or a mode of casting my line into the moving waters, and I do it with more or less intent, but always with sufficient for it to make sense, express a desire, inhabit a scheme of things.

And did you find what you are looking for ?

Alas, I am as a sea covered with mist, and see nothing but a little ahead.

Tell me what you do see.

I see that you are right. Of course we design things, ideas for thought, shoes for feet, travels for attainment of this or that purpose, modes of conduct for achievement of ideals, objectives, and just as we are ABLE to do this, so we are MADE able to do it by a vast network of neurologically moving parts, that is parts capable of internal movement by electrical current, expressive of action mode for ideas, just as the ideas are themselves messengers of action for the spirit which in turn has meditated on the issues and options, and chosen what to do. Nothing works by chance, for chance is a mere misnomer, an evasion, a word suggestive of some arch creative power IN A SYSTEM where viable options already exist, and a structure is already present to allow ANY options*1.

I agree. A system is what it is, has its limits, powers and potential. A pack of cards is not an organ, its usage more limited. An organ is not an orchestra, though it is an instrument for great creativity of heart and mind, and a heart of man is not the heart of God, who makes the systems with the imposed limits of form and law, so that things are characterisable at all, and knowledge is possible. We find what God has put in, because you cannot just 'have' all this, that is not scientific. You HAVE to have a causes for a result, and without that system, not even thought is possible. Thoughts would be scattered like leaves before the wind.

Like leaves ? yes, and I would go further, he pursued the point like one running. The leaves are filled with rules and laws about their various cells and the specialised functions each has, joint regional works, as in an organ, say a nerve network surrounding a hand, and these relate to other regions, and those to each other very often and to the centralised control, which relates to the organisation of the control methodology in use, and that to the capacities of the whole as one, so that the desire and decision is made to operate the one, say a hand, and the other, say a foot, in answer to a directional motif of some kind, such as running away from responsibility or fulfilling an anger, or indeed any other purpose, program in any other perspective such as we choose for operation.

You are on the ontological side of design, I concluded. It has to have something in which to work, a mind to do the directive input, means for fulfilment, and one has to relate to these with discretion to achieve the design. In other words: To be or not to be is at first the question for the Originator of the whole thing, not about Himself, who has to be eternal and adequate for anything to be, nothing having no future and the inadequate no sufficient one. It was to be, so it was made by the One sufficient for the utterly diversified systems, no one of which is sufficient for the other, all calling on their creator-synthesiser.

And once it is, it works by the methods devised!

Yes, and there we begin to touch the aetiological, I said, that side of design at the same time. Thus with the BEING THERE aspect covered, we have the ORGANISATIONAL impetus aspect. Because it is there, and because we are going to resolve thousands of questions before becoming effective operators in this milieu, when the time comes, we work on the cause-and-effect basis of what happens when you do this or that, or have the other thought or intent, and how best to operate to achieve the desired end. We purposively investigate, correlate and achieve perspective. Purpose plans, mind attends to it, will executes, wisdom finds its ways, causality co-operates, characterisable entities move as directed. Without cause and effect, law and order, organisation and channelling of dynamic, you have a prison, incomprehensible, inoperable.

So you see how it works! Alas it is man's huge operational abilities which are not the least cause of his troubles, but his spirit which chooses them is worse. Yet even then, if man were in an inoperable prison, contrary to reality: THAT is organised to deprive you, but it does not strip you completely bare. I gave him a disk and told him where to find Causes, which touches this aspect. You cannot like Kant invent a cause for causation in the human mind, since in that case you already have it in mind, at the very time you are trying to account for it. It is simply begging the question. Our thoughts operate on this basis all the time, and 'explanations' designed to jib at this are merely impossible, a contradiction in terms.

We are far from being bereft in an inoperable world. Prisons are often of our own making, both metaphysical and physical.

What of God ? he said.

 

God is not stripped at all.

What do you mean by that ?

Where are the limits of the illimitable ?

Why is He illimitable ?

If you look for the causes of things, you have mini-systems and maxi-systems. Thus, a man has a hand, mini-system, and a mind, maxi-systematiser, but it too has a system in which it is caused to exist, so that it can have an ontological status and an aetiological functionality - that is, work as a mind. On all sides there is contrivance, means, system, with organisational structure within and beyond the system, until you have the whole of creation, contrivance in virtual words, millions of them, in the DNA, themselves organised, with rules and laws, as for example expressed in the meta-information, information ABOUT information (like a dictionary in terms of analogy), which is supra-organisational, but internal after all to its totality.

It is all THERE, expressed in functional operational code, commands to matter, expositions with concepts implied (in that they can be found and formulated by us, to match what they already are, we discovering not creating them, as we research). Matter itself  is at a much lower level, but not in the input visible in form and function, expressible in law, and sometimes ineptly expressed in terms of 'chance'*1 which is merely the name for the conceived absence of apparent purpose at a total level. The idea is there this:  the provision of a method and means which allows action and provides results if one acts in it, but will have impact in ways many agents did not suppose, or like or preconceive.

To account for all that ... ?

Is God. The entire systematiser of all systems;  for the operational organisational totality of what throbs and roars or is quiet and nimble, has to have a cause. It must be allied as near as possible to the power of the cause, in the mode of its operation, either directly or derivatively. This lies for man in his present state in the realm of discovery, something man is well equipped to make, because the organisational structure of his mind is allied to that of what he has to investigate, just as there is only ONE language for our physical construction, one DNA linguistic system, expressive of the mind of the Cause, in all living objects in their generations.

What however caused the cause ?

You mean, What caused the CAUSE of it all ?

Yes.

The point is not academic. You see if you define causality, the operation of a causal system and the principle of its operation, as an isolable entity of conceptualisable kind (so that we can talk about it, in concepts), then you may at first conceive it as one efficiency within a system. But if you define it more broadly, as any agency capable of achieving results, accomplishing outcomes, then you are not limited to what is WITHIN the system, as you would not expect to be, knowing that part of the total realities involved in diverse dynamics and ways, is itself expressive of conceptually formulable methods with attached results, down to the micro-level which never cease in their sheer sophistication, to astonish. The system or systems with all their operationally, functional and formal features constitute merely an excursion. It is derivative, and supported; but cognate to the point, it is expressive in some way of its superior and founder, that it might be, and be so limited and delimited. The language of creation is merely one system, but it is profound in its expressive commands and organisational correlation, so that commands do not hit empty air, but prepared products for ongoing production.

You mean DNA ?

Exactly. But matter itself has laws like jaws thrust out, its forms and formulations (which we can increasingly re-formulate, just as they were put in, to find out), and it is all in a causal nexus. Hence since there is the material domain, and the thought domain, and the will domain, purposing away, and these features have causal connections, we look for the formulator of it all, so that it can BE, the means of it so that it can act, that is the ontological and the aetiological aspects of the totality, just as we had to start with the definitional aspect of design. This is what it is, that is what it has to be, and this is the arena of thought, which we can formulate, by which it proceeds.

You mentioned the empirical aspect of design ? What did you mean by that ?

I meant that when you look for design in the thing that works in composition after the manner of design, that is, with many contrived parts of conceptualisable character, working together in articulable systems and mini-systems, which in turn are part of macro-systematics (as in the case of matter, on the one hand, without internal thought, and man on the other, equipped in his case with it and will as well to fulfil purpose as contemplated in spirit): then there are consequential items to consider. Thus IF the arch-Designer who gave it its ontological validity and aetiological reality and definitional specifiability, had been a mut, then we would be littered with the now absent trials and errors of a diminuendo intellect.

But that's precisely what we do not find, isn't it!

Deliciously so, for the empirical smacks these ideas just as does the logical. These derelict failures of inadequate flair, they are not found; and even simple cells, as Dr Michael Denton tells us in his work, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, are wonders of a complete and complex character, with forms and features, language and outcomes, that require more than operation at one level for their existence. The simplest are profound products, comparable to New York city in unequalled miniaturisation. Where are the preludes ? In fact, muttish mismakes and mismatches are not found. That is the empirical fact. They ought to be in overwhelming multitude. There should be continually renewed exhibits. There are none. That is fact.

They should LITTER the shores of time. We are NOT, repeat NOT in the area of inferior intellect, but what transcends our own when we come to the exhibitions of what is definably design. That is the empirically confirmed reality. Far less are we in the mindless vacuity for ingenuity, as if a pauper were the first choice in seeking to understand why someone had built a new village without financial difficulty! That would approach insanity. That is not where you look, but to what has sufficiency of funds, in this case.

You mean we should drop the pseudo-savvy nonsense of in some incoherent way not being ABLE to move from result to cause, from design to designer, just because the issue is macro- and not micro- ? that we should travel quite simply to God and then in Him, the source and authority and author of it all, with its laws and specifications and sub-specifications and sub-sub and so on, aspects of the same hierarchically expressed series of systems and avenues for operational control, find not a 'cause' of some aspect, but the BASIS of causality itself.

Certainly, causality as we know it. Obviously, when you look in terms of the free perspective of the Creator of the lot, then our type of legally controlled, legislated systematics of minor input and output and the system back of this so that it could have characteristics at all, this, our version of 'causality' has to be created also. With God, there are no limits, for if there were, we would merely be wasting time, talking about a controllable creation, or at least a delimited operator, when the point is to reach what created the limits, laws, specifiable systems and complete units of purposive power. That is the logical enterprise. It works or it does not. It must be followed with a canny care, not a diffused and outrageous irrelevance, shameful in any other field or topic.

SO you would say not merely that God is the cause of it all, but of our type of causality, so that we HAVE to wait (unless He acts anew in a miracle) for the result because the totality of cause and effect at our created level has STANDARDS, and METHODS, and QUALITATIVE CHARACTERISTICS which in our system are a GIVEN.

Of course. He is the PERSONAL BEING who having purpose has made devices in order to achieve aims which are themselves wrought in a milieu, all of absolutely from first to last, methods, modes, systems and sub-systems, over-arching laws and underlying characteristics. The Second Law of Thermodynamics*1A, for example is merely one of these, which means for our present purpose, that designs tend to lose their newness and amid impacts of one kind or another, to become liable to downgrade and not upgrade. Our genome as I noted in another place*2 is losing its competency over time, wearing out, like our radios and bodies. It is vain to try to account for downgrade on the assumption of upgrade. This is empirically irrelevant, logically absurd,  directionally amiss, purposively awry.

The term 'Creator' would seem apt for such an overwhelming over-arching and undergirding operative agent.

Since it cannot come from nothing, and it has to come from competency, or by definition it cannot come at all, then that competency of mind and purpose and aim and action, delivering law and conception, command and control, in myriads of ways, is the name normally given to His functional necessity as back of our system.

But would that not mean that He Himself, who HAS to be back of our system, is not free, and that we are back into the naturalistic dilemma ?

No, for there is no lack of freedom on my part if I HAVE to be the ONLY one who could have written this Chapter. My capacities and modes and its existence are correlatives like finger-prints. This however does not even relate to the freedom with which I wrote it. It is a logical necessity in ascertaining a source, that is in view, not a constraint ON the source.

The point is quite crystalline, then.

That being clear, then, the Source of our subjects, ourselves,  acts freely, and God does what He wants, being limitless both internally and externally in power and purpose; and as to creation,  that is why it comes to exist. Purposive correlations of concepts clad in form and law or command and endued with spirit, depending on the case, life or man or matter, these things are minded by mind, and implemented by power, and there is no limit at all. WE have the limits. We need to recognise both what they are and seek to discover why they are; and the only way to do this is to know God. This too can be discovered, just as in a house to be lived in, there is a door, and you need to be no genius to find it, or to find God. He has made it that way.

But what of evil ?

Evil is the misuse of will to purpose an aim contrary to that of the Creator.

Why not call it simply Contrariety then  ?

The normal term is 'rebellion' since God who makes all things, makes none gods; for if he did, this would mean that there was no limit, and that would mean that there was no god, for all would limit each the other. When therefore a sub-agency such as man operates in contrariety to - rebellion against - God, then that is evil. It wears out the features of what He has made (such as ourselves) faster, brings on discord and disaster, and is very like some madman going around a ship's engine room with a spanner, berserk. If he thinks he is benefiting the ship, he is merely that much more insane. As God says in Hosea 9:7,  of the spiritual misfit, 'The spiritual person is insane.' To be very religious MAY be merely one format for rebellion. The truth of the matter is that the truth must be found, not imagined. That is why scientific method makes a good contribution when it is used, and not misused by having things most distant from powers required, postulated before those most near.

But surely there is a difference between insanity and rebellion ?

Not so much when rebellion is against the One who made the thing with which you are rebelling, so that in doing so, you are harming its very nature and so involved in a must-fail operation.

But ON THE WAY to eventual disaster, which I now see, must come to rebellion against the very rationality with which you were created, the correlation of mind and creation and conditions, is not a fair outcome possible for a time.  I mean, could not people have a limited and temporary satisfaction, say in revenge or venting their hatred of life, other people or classes of people which they formulate in their minds, such as the rich, the nations, the composed and orderly types or whatever else arouses jealousy or a sense of inferiority in the rioter ?

Certainly. The point in view however is that whatever limited and temporary satisfaction might come to mind manipulators and people devastators on their way to being outside the glorious wonder of the Creator, permanent dissidents, there is only defeat in the systematics of the whole, and beyond it: they have their being ONLY at the instance of God.

What then can be said about evil ?

Evil is what opposes Him, disturbs His provisions from their order, misleads people from their love of Him and leaves people in odd associations in disasters, without God in the world, as in Ephesians 2, 4. In such a position, and THEREFORE subject to various forces, like a child moving from the footpath to the centre of a busy road, they err in spirit and then invite dysfunction till they are so marred as to be scarcely like their design, and so mutually horrify one another! For this they can then hate each other even more, and so the cyclotron of evil boils over in wars.

That's pure turbulence.

Indeed! When people do this, they often mourn or moan or lament or accuse or invent silly systems of irrational philosophy and are never satisfied, for they are like scientists who despite their profession, are given to denying empirical reality. You see that in my work, SMR Ch.   3 and    10, and I have another on a better way, which is that line called scientific method, one of many potentially beneficial approaches. It bears the title, Scientific Method, Satanic Method and the Model of Salvation ...

You mean, that

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just as some try to pretend that the commands in the DNA wrote themselves,
the concepts invented themselves,
the criteria of mind arose like flamingos disturbed, in pink dress, from the deep (whatever that is),
and spirit supervened as an after-thought of what does not think, and added itself ingeniously, and
 

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just as they do not flinch when the evidence of non-design is EVEN empirically missing: 

so some are unmoved by ANY empirical fact.

Some scientistic scientists even go so far as to want materialism as a basis for science!  I deal with that in Repent or Perish Ch. 7 and Christ Incomparable ... Ch. 2, for example. Thus matter coming from nowhere for no reason yet equipped with formulable laws, also has to have in the end just what it lacked in the beginning, that is a cause, in that it is so powerful, though from nothing; and this prodigy of the impossible, impractical and unproductive, acts further so that it makes entirely different systems with different rules and potencies, contrary to its own, and this with no evidence and no causal capacity to be correct.

That follows from what I said, it is true. 'Matter' is thus made into a mere logical misfit, and harbour for intellectual boat-people migrating without passport; and this passport needed, is a logical one! When logically you go to God, then the answers are simple enough in outline. Evil whether in a scientific, political, military, social or psychic sense and setting, is simply what is against God, who is good. In goodness He gave us freedom to think and rebel, and it has been much used!

But why then did my wife die ?

It is apparent that God elected that it happen, though with so many systems and sub-systems, material, mental, each in its exquisitely definable domain, volitional and spiritual, moral (His standards of conduct), it is not easy to know why He so chose. For example, He COULD have decided that you needed to be ready to have this conversation, and that (forgive me, I am merely musing on possibilities as illustrations, and this helps that process) would lead you to the Gospel of His grace so that you would be redeemed.

Tell me more.

Let us suppose your wife was a Christian. She goes where it is far better. Let us suppose (for an example and illustration only of the SORT of thing that might be, there being thousands of other possibilities), and that you are left, perhaps with a general sense of the cause of all things (not nothing but what is adequate), but with a slightly muted feeling of distaste, dissatisfaction because it has been an enormous loss for your beloved wife to be GONE, and for you to be left alone in a new,  more naked-seeming world. Slowly your mind faces issues long shelved; and a sense of moral, divine existence which has as it were, lurked in the shadows of your life, suddenly comes out into the open.Meanwhile, your spirit mourns since this seems suddenly further away.

But that is nearly how it happened!
 

Let us suppose that in your grief you come near to rebelling explicitly, but instead came out fishing and musing.

And that you, a servant of God, came along and told me the Gospel by which I might know and understand God ?

Let us suppose that. Then we turn to the matter in hand, which is not material at all!

Yes, it is precisely, as in Jeremiah 9:

"Thus says the LORD,

'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,

neither let the mighty man glory in his might,

let not the rich man glory in his riches:

But let him who glories,  glory in this, that he understands and knows me,

that I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth:

for in these things I delight, says the LORD.' "

But how can I understand Him  ?

He has provided a verified and validated book*3 and has over centuries, been fulfilling its vast realm of predictions about the Saviour to come to this earth.

You mean, the Messiah ?

Yes, the figure in view is indeed the "Messiah"  or anointed and appointed one. The God who sent Him  has shown His hand and the glory of His being in the face of this same Lord Jesus Christ (as Isaiah foretold in such detail, and in kind in Isaiah 48:16). He came, God as man, the divine made understandable for ever. Thus He both fulfilled and completed His verbal apparatus, the Bible, in His personal incarnation, Jesus Christ, for all to see and hear and understand.

You mean that I have to come to the talk table, put down my cards, held till now close to my chest, to my heart, and repent of evil, of sin which is its conscious formulation, though sometimes hidden, and capitulate, surrender and become servile ...

I mean the first part but not the second. To be servile is to cringe before a greater power because you want existence more than dignity and so forth. To come in repentance to God, IF you do that, is to be serviceable, willing to acknowledge that having lived without Him, you are fortunate to be alive, and wish to live with Him, since with a love such as this, you see that evil is not to be desired, indeed is trampling you down, for He will be lifting you up to your correct, designed interface with God. Thus from being a lost rebel in the past, you now become in the present, a child of God. Then you may find more and more the marvel within your heart and mind, that He is, instead of going on like some witless robot, cringing before the unknown, or blowing out your diminutive chest (nothing personal here), and shouting meaningless words of unwisdom.

This appeals. Can I appeal to Him ?

It is called Calling on the Lord, or on His name (as in Acts 2:17-21, 36-39). It is the same in Isaiah 45:22-25). Then God in His pardon, goes yet further and attributes HIS own righteousness, found to perfection in the Messiah, Jesus Christ, to you as in Romans 5:17. You wallow in His righteousness, but being chaste now, work in it, not for it and rejoice in His rest (Romans 3:23ff., Hebrews 4), actually trusting in Him instead of someone else, such as yourself.

I suppose since He is the Creator He HAS a name, so that as in telephoning, you call the right number.

And that is this same Jesus Christ.

I understand and more than that, I see now how and why I understand: I understand because I am reconciled to God, and find in His appointed way the culmination of my spiritual career.

Precisely. It is as in II Corinthians 5, and praise God for the peace you are finding; for you now appear as one who has found peace, through  believing in the Messiah and His cause of coming and method of sacking guilt with sacrifice and overcoming death with resurrection, first His and then ours in colportage from His own when the time is fit (as once it was present for the creation). Let me tell you this: I'll read it from my New Testament which in small form I have with me.

"Therefore we do not lose heart.

"Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.

"For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us
      a far more exceeding and eternal weight  of glory,

      while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.

"For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

 

"For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed,

we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven,

if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked.
 
     For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed,

     that mortality may be swallowed up by life.
 

"Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

     So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord.

      For we walk by faith, not by sight.
 

"We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.

Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,
     that each one may receive the things done in the body,

according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
 

"Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men;

but we are well known to God, and I also trust are well known in your consciences."

 

Before we go on, tell me something. This judgment seat of God, is it a terrifying thing then ?

I find it so, for it would be like having an officer come to you in a foreign land where without passport you are incorrectly abiding, and then in response to questioning, handing over your non-passport, say a driving licence, merely hoping that will do. I now know who you are, the officer says, but see no identification of your right to be in this country. Are you a boat person ? a terrorist perhaps ? why are you here.

You reply: I really do not know. I have just been living away, and did not consider the nature of my life, and so here I am, without a shred of protection or authorisation.

The situation is unenviable, then ? he mused. After all, since God has identified the way back to knowing Him and living in a purposeful manner within the ways He has, as Creator, and has paid for the passage back to Him,  in such style that at any moment I can claim my part among His own, the true because endued citizens of His land.

That is the members of the kingdom of heaven!

Yes, it WOULD be hideous if I were horribly vacant and ignored the WHOLE point of my life, let alone while challenging God in my thoughts as an absentee, for BEING absent: when all that is absent is my own recognition of His holiness and love and the path and provision.

Surely you are right, Let me finish this passage which becomes more positive, having exposed the liabilities.

 

"For we do not commend ourselves again to you, but give you opportunity to boast on our behalf,

that you may have an answer for those who boast in appearance and not in heart.
 

"For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; or if we are of sound mind, it is for you.
 

"For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus:

that if One died for all, then all died;

and He died for all, that those who live

should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.
 

"Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh.

Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer.
 

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away;

      behold, all things have become new.
 

"Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ,

      and has given us the ministry of reconciliation,

      that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself,

      not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.


"Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us:

     we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.

     For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us,

     that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
 

We are designed to be saved by a gracious Lord who having created, broke through the bonds of rebellion to provide free pardon, and having designed us and our essential liberty (not as gods but as receptors who may reject), He even designed it all as you see from this passage in II Corinthians for our good. There is the creation design and the redemption design and they are twins. When the way back is used, then energised afresh, in a new life with a new understanding, because there is nothing without a cause, and no problem which has no solution: we spiritually luxuriate in His love, muse in His presence, seek His direction and accept His correction which instead of making us bound, because of His creator-redeemer profundity, MAKES for more freedom still. This is far better than eternal isolation from God, in fulfilment of a preference for the darkness of unconfessed and unatoned guilt, so that the will has its thrill and the result has its cause. It is just that God does not dictate, only appeals. He may blight our hopes for a season, that we might live eternally with Him in His love for ever. That challenge has solution, in the Gospel.

Praise God, then, that this day there is a new member in the kingdom of heaven. How it all comes back to me: I see while I have been fishing for fish, you have been fishing for men!

The  Lord brought me in this way, and He has brought you into His, and I praise Him for this mercy, my friend.

 

 

NOTES

*1  See on this topic, Ancient Words ... Chs.   9 , 13

 

*1A

See Ch. 5 above. at    *1.

 

*2

Even genomes may wear out (as Professor Sanford of Cornell attests - Waiting for Wonder Appendix), and the godlike strutting of the structure, man, appears ignominiously misled in what some would lead men to believe: for so far from being a god, he is subject to the decree of mortality, both individually and as a race, and only one thing satisfies his need: the God who having created and given command in the DNA, gives more important command in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Then fittingly for the roving and aspiring spirit of man, mortality is swallowed up in immortality (I Corinthians 15).

 

 *3

See -

SMR, TMRDeity and Design, Designation and Destiny, Light Dwells in the Lord's Christ.