W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc.  Home Page   Contents Page for Volume  What is New

 

 

CHAPTER SIX

EGO, OUT 'E GO!

Barnard and a New Heart

but there are hearts and hearts ...

 

PUTTING SOMETHING FIRST
DOES NOT MAKE YOU THIRST FOR FIRST

Christian Barnard has an idea about hearts which is not to be found in the Bible. This, to be sure, is not the idea for which he is famous, concerning transplanting physical hearts. It is a spiritual idea.

It is to be found in a condensed book in the Reader's Digest Volume: Today's Best Nonfiction, 1994. It is entitled, "The Second Life", and is intended to show what happened to the famous heart surgeon after fame surged.

In the part which concerns the initiation of that fame, near the beginning of journalistic acclaim, he has something to say about motivation. It is this which concerns us here. He indicated that when in the earlier phases, a patient of his died, apparently because immuno-suppressive drugs to help the heart not to be rejected had opened the way for infection to come too easily (in fact such can enable fungus, viruses and bacteria to have too much liberty, he indicates), he was devastated.

He asked himself, he reports (p.10), this question: Was he pushing himself - and everybody around him - to the limit for the patient's sake or for his own ego ? ('Ego' is his word here.)  What was the real reason for his thrust ?

It is good to hear someone question matters of motivation and find him ready to be dispassionate. Indeed, Dr Barnard says (p. 17), concerning the opinions of wives whom he had at different times: that they had all been likeminded in regarding him as moody and selfish. Moreover he was a perfectionist and irritable. Other than that, the opinion reported seems to be that he was rather nice. Such is the report he gives.

To have someone say such things about himself is disarming, and pleasant. After all, when one acknowledges opinion to be correct, and that opinion is in essence derogatory; and when one does so because of a conviction that such is not contrary to perceived reality, and is in short an apt criticism: then this is but one step from repenting and seeking deliverance from (whatever) faults. Of course, some might feel that aims in certain individuals IMPLY faults because of the limits of the person's intellectual, psychic or other abilities, that restrict those aims. In this case, the person might choose the disproportion, keep the faults and so not repent, but just resolve to be that way because of the payload.

But WHAT payload ? It is apparent that the doctor did NOT like a patient dying and had a certain affection for the one concerned. Faults are not to be construed as pervasive because invasive. To be an irritable perfectionist in itself does not say WHY one wants to be what one is, or at any rate IS a perfectionist. It could be for the sake of the patient, or for pride or for a passion for the work, and indeed for various other reasons. Certainly pride blinding to such faults as these,  does not appear to be a fault in this case, since there is such ready admission of imperfection.

So we return to p. 10, and the question which Dr Barnard posed: Was he driving himself and others to the limit for the sake of patient or his own ego ?  We shall, to avoid complications here, use his term 'ego', merely the Latin for "I", to mean desire for personal acclaim, performance or significance, or something of that kind, something self-centred in category, as least of this kind, as far as focus is concerned. As to Freud who famously used this term 'ego' in a technical sense: that psychiatrist's  delusion is dealt with at Spiritual Refreshings Ch.  9, incl. End-note 1 and SMR 4, for example (see Index, under philosophy). Accordingly,  we shall proceed in the general sense of the term.

Now we come to Barnard's answer to his own question: For his patient or his own ego ? He gives an answer to this. He asks us to be honest together with him. Doctors, he says, are human. Moreover, he generalises about humans to this effect: A doctor, he declares, like others, has satisfaction in mind, and it is that of his own ego, and his own ambition. That, apparently, is to BE HUMAN, and to admit this is deemed to be honest!

In other words, he is asserting that selfishness plus ambition are motivation common to man, and they are so imperious that the concept one could be living for service to other people (here the patients) would be a dishonest one if applied to people. It would be so to the point that it would be misrepresenting what it is, to be human. This is of course philosophy, but it is not presented as such, but as fact. That is not uncommon with philosophic opinions; and indeed, people often fail to differentiate between their assessment in these areas, and fact, to the extent that if it were in their normal trade or profession, such lack of discrimination, analysis and cogent thought as seen here, would be nowhere near acceptable.

It is indeed a common human fault to do this; but like the case of slang, commonness is not the same as acceptability if you want good speech.

Let us then examine these propositions.

IS man as such selfishly ambitious ? Is the human race, as such, OF COURSE not concerned to be serviceable so much as to be selfish ? Is it naturally looking after the impetus of Number One and so equipped with only secondary thoughts for others ?

To be sure, many are thus, and Dr Barnard may be rather hard on himself in making this assertion. After all, he makes it clear also that he is concerned in such a way that if HE is the best (surgeon, practitioner, doer of good with hearts), then his patients will GET the best. It is not misanthropy which he is enunciating but priority of his own person and its aims and designs.

One might say, Well anyone is going to implement his purposes, because individuals are responsible for their purposes, and have to choose, so in that sense, it concerns their own selves and is selfish. This however is a logical slide. To HAVE a personality, and to MAKE decisions so that some course of action or priority is the one on which one acts, does not imply to the slightest degree whether this choice, this preference, this priority is for being selfless or selfish, godly or gummy, a grumbling, penny-pinching grouch or a liberalising philanthropist. HAVING personal aims is not the same as having selfish ones, for that is merely one option.

Having removed any misconception there, we are the freer now to consider the case; and it is now to be taken quite generally. Does a mother OF COURSE consider her own drive, ambition and ego first, when her child is dying and she catches the fever, knowing full well that she might, and so becomes a cripple for life, or dies ? I think not. Death is so telling. Does a soldier who goes (as some used to do) for king and country, to defend the homeland, to prevent Hitler from taking over with his barbaric inhumanities, even if IT KILLS HIM, OF COURSE do it as part of a selfish program of ambition, death being its keystone as the imposing and prominent part!

 

TAKING THE 'GO' OUT OF EGO
AND FINDING THE GO IN GOD

Some may do so, to be sure, being afraid of social censure; but to assume all act on such a restrictive basis is to manhandle innumerable facts, autobiographies and observations in detail. The writer, to take a case, energetically seeks to eliminate personal desire (such as living in a house by the ocean) from the agenda, so that what Jesus Christ wants for His kingdom is given conscious priority, and indeed, prayer is made to avoid any confusion and to ensure that this desire is effected. That, it is true, puts GOD first, the SAVIOUR in pre-eminence; but it is stil not oneself. The ambition is for Him and since His desire is towards the deliverance of man, then one sets on just such a course, with the Gospel, the Word of God and the way of life, as enabled.

OF COURSE one does this as a Christian, in aspiration at least. It is where one's heart is set.  How otherwise would one stop being double-minded! If Christ IS first, and He gives an example of offering Himself as  ransom for many (Matthew 20:28), in contradistinction from the alternative approach in some of His disciples (Matthew 20:21-22), there is the paragon for practice, the example to take, the way to follow. Further, He right there rebuked the fault of wanting any pre-eminence, that of wanting to be first, or great, for anyone who one acts on that. THAT, says He, is the COMMON way of the nations; it is utterly distinct from the path of service before God for mankind.

Thus, it is impossible to say that of course ONLY the self is the first, when actually it is consciously de-prioritised for the sake of One better than oneself! Hence the generalisation of Barnard is incorrect. What does not cover the case cannot aptly be used to characterise it. It is then mere myth, however many it may cover.

A SELF is first, to be sure, but which one is another question. Moreover, the very term 'self' has to be specified clearly. It mean an individual, a being personal in character. In that way, it sounds less slanted, and so can do more neutral duty for analysis.

As to this very proposition about priority, let us examine it. It might be said that it is not only some SELF which will be first in one's life priorities, but something! It might come to that, but not initially. Actually, one cannot cease being a person, an individual, though one may cease being the one that one was, if according to the power of God and the perception of the heart and the word of God, one receives Christ and so is regenerated (John 3, Titus 3:3-5, Romans 8). Whatever individual one may be, however, that of the first birth from the womb, or that of the regeneration with its Holy Spirit operation, one is an individual. One may indeed be connected to one's Creator, and so able to be changed in various ways in an orderly, concerted and skilful manner; or one may not, remaining outside Christ, and so be what Christ regards as cut off branches,

That is an unnatural state for man separated from his Creator, a psychological residue, as Christ authoritatively depicts it. Those who follow His way do not number in this slot.

 

AT LAST THE GRASP THAT IS NOT GRASPING

But what of putting SOMETHING first ? One sees a priority and takes it. It is oneself that takes it. In this way, so that all is from a self, a person, and it may or may not be a selfish person; in fact, it may or may not be an isolated person, for it may be one connected to the omni-fashioning Creator, who like a sculptor, works on what one is to make it more like what He wants.

To be sure in becoming another person, a 'new creation', one is moved by being granted this role by God Himself (as in John 6:65), so that it is not a choice of one's own self. Nevertheless, this is merely the pathological side of things. If you like to use such a form of expression: in the disposition of men, God uses immuno-suppressants to ensure that the new heart can both arrive and take, in a metaphorical sense.

Let us be clear. The Bible teaches that sin blinds and so people are in themselves incapable of 'choosing' God: hence in John 1:12 we find they are born not of the will of man or the flesh at all, but from God's own action. It did not depend on you. On the other side, however, it is made equally clear (Colossians 1:19ff.), that God would have all to be reconciled to Himself, in such a way that to imagine that He sovereignly excludes some because His heart is simply set that way, and He declines certain perfectly godly options regarding a new heart for some, for lack of love, is manifest distortion of what is clearly and repeatedly stated in the Bible (cf. To Know God ... Ch. 1, Great Execrations ... Chs.   7 and   9). That is to use philosophy instead of eyes in regarding all that God says.

True, He sovereignly selects, not true this is because love is limited toward any in His fatherly attitude beyond time, as in Colossians, I Timothy 2 and John 3. To be sure, in so doing, God knows what is what, and the situation does not hang in eternity in some sort of limbo. It is known. But HOW was the selection made! that is the point. WHEN is indifferent when it is before our time altogether (Ephesians 1:4). He SO loved the world that He gave so that believers should not perish, and He did NOT come to judge but that the world might be saved.

Since God does not change (Psalm 102, Hebrews 1:12), then in the act of predestining (worked before creation - Ephesians 1:4, passing time being part of creation), that same love was just as real and active as seen in Jesus Christ on earth. Hence THERE He had the same desire, so that

bullet when in John 3:19 Christ declares perfectly clearly that the ground of condemnation,
in the face of the love for this world that whosoever will may come,
is the adverse preference, the wrong priority on the part of those human beings concerned,
 
bullet He means it.
 
bullet In moral responsibility, it is NOT His doing; it is theirs.
 
bullet If He secures and ordains it, yet it is they who set up the situation which is so created!

God is love (I John 4); and this does not mean that it fluctuates and fails and falters. What you ARE is not what you are not occasionally, in this case loving a little, periodically loving, or in qualified ways loving. Love rejected, being ready to depart, is still love when it does; but it first is applied! Otherwise, the One concerned would neither BE love nor DESIRE all to be saved, come to a knowledge of the truth and be reconciled to Himself.

The fact, then,  that things are settled, before our kind of history, has nothing whatsoever to do with HOW they were settled; and we KNOW that in love they were settled, the predestination making SURE that none whom that love would reach, would or could fail for merely circumstantial reasons to find Him.

Love in the presence of perfect, all-knowing power, indeed does not take some, since love never forces, is not an enslavement or a deception, even in principle, and is allied to truth, which makes it so grand; but it WILL NOT LEAVE ANY where it may come. If this is in God's own pre-temporal, non-works based knowledge, what is strange about that ? He IS beyond our sort of passing time, even if He invented it. I for my part AM beyond my books, even though I invented them. There is no hardship for the mind in that.

Very well, God seeks us every one, the matters all resolved in predestination freely, and even though sin paralyses the relevant response, God knows how to liberate man, and does so. Since nothing deceives Him,  the priority which is true is the one which is found. HENCE condemnation in the very face of this absolute love is assigned to the person concerned. Love at the outset did not fail, but man failed at the onset.

Priority then, it is what it is. It may be for God or oneself. Fancy then, leaving God out in a matter of preferring oneself or one's hand-made god! The option is perfectly real, even if complicated by the disease called sin. This does not deceive the Great Physician. He implements reality in love, not making subdued robots but saved sinners who love Him whose love never twists the arm but removes the twist, and is amply wonderful for worship in the living God.

Hence it is NOT EVEN true that one can only act as one's self allows. One may be moved to act in such a way that this very self is changed. It is God in the end who acts. In faith we receive that it is in love; and with all the endless seeming illustrations in the Bible, it grieves Him when one is not found, and delights Him when one more is found, for being beyond time, He is not limited in emotion to WHEN a thing happens. It is WHAT happens that matters most.

Of course the case is clear that Christ (who became a real man) did not act for ego, for self and ambition. He was not trying to establish Himself as first, since He already was that (Philippians 2), being equal with God and His perfect expression.

As soon as ANYONE follows Him, and so heeds His orders to seek to minister to others, seeking to serve first Him and then those to whom He sends, this - and not to be first, not to have dominion or power or prestige or place, and to do it for Him who served us, then this priority operates here as well. It will be imperfect since we are all sinners and He is not; but the idea that of course anyone and everyone puts his own self and ambition first is thus waylaid and destroyed.

Whatever priorities a man has, whether foolish or wise, they are not all of that type.

We need now to distinguish something. One may be redeemed, and many of one's readers are like one's own self, redeemed. Does this mean that one has no ambition ? Not at all. Mine is to abide in Him and in His love, being formed in it,  so that always clearly understanding His will and worshipping Him, I may fulfil all His desire for His own good pleasure, in the beauty of holiness, with a heart made pure and so purged of evil, and with a will responsive (like a good horse with a good rider) to His wish and will, living for ever with the Lord as redeemed friend and regenerated through redemption (cf. )Psalm 27).

That is a scriptural and personal desire. Not to have a pure heart is hopeless, since then it is a cloudy day without light. Nothing matters if one is diseased and spiritually deceased. One may indeed need periodic cleansing and that is fine. I wash my car; it is not the less but rather the better for that. However, such desires are certainly not for self, however ambitious for the kingdom of God and His glory one may be, and for people to find it and live in His life.

Nor does it mean, to be a Christian, that one has no desire to develop one's talents to the uttermost IN ORDER THAT what one has been given may reflect most glory on God. This may mean at times the most horrendous seeming humiliation, as one has to work in something seemingly rather barren; but in the end, by faith one follows where one is led, and seeks to obey the commandments in the fear of God, with however many slips here or there, seeking better discipline and more profound love for God. Christ humbled Himself so why should one not do the same to one's own self! especially since He has re-invented it (II Corinthians 5:17ff.).

 

AMBIVALENT AMBITION THAT SEEKS GRASPINGLY FOR GOD!

Here another problem can enter. Peter was ambitious for Christ as you see in Matthew 16:22, but his ideas were at his own priority level, and not inspired or illuminated by God at this point.

Christ is to die ? He is telling that ? Not so: with His power and purity, His touch and loveliness of service, this is the last thing. Something like that seems to have been in Peter's mind.

Get behind Me Satan! came the thunderous response of Christ. Having dealt in the temptation with the devil, Christ was at once on his tracks. To deny the Cross of Christ which is the thing most to be gloried in as it both quintessentially depicts the love of God and fully covers the cost of restoration for those who believe in Him, this is liking denying numbers, when you are a mathematician.

Knowing the source of Peter's misplaced concern, Christ rebukes the devil himself, directly. This IS the way, and none can move Him from it! (cf. Chapter 4 above).

Again, after Christ's further temptation and testing on site trial at Gethsemane, as the Cross looms like a mega-Everest before Him, the traitor and the troops come to secure Him by force. Unutterable infidelity is shown by one who identifies Christ to the troops by the kiss of greeting, a thing loathsome and lost, as anything in the Sargasso Sea.

What then is Peter to do ? Force is attacking Christ, Peter finds, so out with the sword, Peter will for Christ attack that force. This is precisely the cardinal error of the Roman Catholic Inquisition which was not corrected in one minute as with Peter himself, but took centuries before its inhuman, ghoulish masterpiece of spiritual gluttony ended its rampancy and horror (cf. Ancient Words ... Ch. 14).

For this, Christ rebuked him. He even healed the shorn off ear of the High Priest's servant, whom Peter had used as a commencement exercise, it seems.

What was wrong with Peter desire to use force to protect the Saviour ?

It was this. Peter had erred at the very heart of Christianity, when using his sword to resist aggressive force used against Jesus Christ Himself (as in Matthew 26:51ff.). He slipped like a horse on mud, as he did at the earlier issue of Christ quitely declaring that this was going to happen.

Peter however was righted again swiftly in both cases, by the Lord Himself.  That is part of the wonder of His discipline: it is so effective, and can be so swift! You don't have to wait for hours to see this doctor: He is great not only in name but in function. HE is serviceable and asks us to be the same to one another.

Serving whom in so doing ? Him. How ? by walking in love, treading with truth and keeping His commandments which are governors for life! Thus you do not serve a murderer by helping him sharpen his axe... It is help for godly purposes, including as in the Good Samaritan case, helping people out of tribulation as one may, in passing.

The self is not the self to be served, when one knows God (John 17:1-3). He is then that One: He who is the eternal, sinless Trinity. If one serves Him, one most certainly does not serve oneself. That is a road that forks - and certainly on the other road, people will serve themselves in the sense that the self will be what decides on mode and focus for service; but even there, if you suffer delusion by avoiding God, then the devil himself may so blur your sight that you follow what he wants. Alas, but forgetting God is expensive; and bereft of His company, comfort and help, it is often found that people act as if propagandised into an immoral or even amoral pulp, becoming servitors of Satan, perhaps without having even the slightest idea that this is happening.

Thus, soon it may not really be your own self at all. It is possessed in principle, in practice or in power: indeed, in any assemblage of these, depending on the gravity of the case. The spirit of those so captivated and then captured becomes soiled with sin, pride, power, ambition, self-love, hatred of good or whatever else, and in chains without even knowing it, they provide a parade of pollution, like that of the rockets in Moscow in the days of ultimate vainglory.

However, even in that case, it is your self which laid itself open to the devil, in rejecting Jesus Christ and the being He would make of you.

Man as a self is vulnerable to the uttermost, so that even while in principle he may take the reins, actually as someone made FOR God, he is so liable to infiltration and infestation that this can become a sort of personal holocaust: the term is not used lightly. The 'principalities and powers' of which Paul speaks in Ephesians 6 are both powerful and to the uttermost polluting. A baby is a self when left on a doorstep, but it is ready for takeover ... So here with disembraced adults.

So far can this sort of blindness and blindfolding go, if one is not watchful with God, that even the disciples, even after much time with Christ, were on one occasion to be found busy arguing who was the greatest among them! And this ? it appears to have been SOON AFTER Christ had delivered with impact testimony to that fateful reality that HE for HIS part was about to die for them in the most grievous way amid sworn enemies, whose taunts and travesties would add to the scenario of death (John 1:29, Luke 9:43-48, Matthew 9:22-23, Mark 9:31ff.).

Thus it is true that selfishness can seek its prey; but in Christ, it is not its day. His is the other way; but so vast is the human vagrancy, that even in churches, the plotting of polluted principles (say for denominational 'greatness') may lead astray.

However not all is pathology; there are  those who endorse and seek scrupulously to follow divinely laid down principles, as in the Bible, unscrupulous people try to categorise with murderers. Some love to scoff at them, and to misuse one aspect, that of accepting God as totally in control of His mouth, so providing the infallible word of God*1, in order to group them with mass murderers who make their gods and then have them say slaughterous things. As to the saints who obey the living and self-demonstrating God, in the case of the rebuke to Peter, you see that force for faith is absolutely excluded. Indeed, so far from slaughtering their neighbours, or seeking to control them, that they follow the command love their neighbours and seek their good, not to have them 'submit'.

In fact, it seems that ONE of the reasons so many in the ancient Roman Empire were impressed by Christians is this: that they sought to help those suffering in an epidemic, without concern for their own safety. This rather differs from having people SUBMIT, and making them second class citizens in order to show your power over them. So-called fundamentalism*2 is thus a confused term in many mouths, as they equate opposites because both the God of love and the godlets of grabbing issue orders. It is like equating a Dr Death with a Dr Grace in a hospital system, because they are both doctors.

There are differences between doctors, and between God and idols of vaunting power and promiscuous passions, pernicious to the welfare of the human race*3. If then there are different currents in contemporary religion, it is good not to be carried away with one while talking of the other.

 

THANK GOD FOR GRACE,
OVERFLOWING FROM HIS GOODNESS TO THE RACE

Thank God then that man is not OF COURSE ambitious and serving EGO. When Christ comes in, out  'e go!

It is rather like a symphony orchestra. If you insist on greatness, then you spoil the whole.

It is like a body: if the eye seeks utter pre-eminence, then its mastery may incommode the back and so lead to back-ache and inability to walk and ... see what might otherwise be exposed by changing location! Moreover, if one is serving Christ, one is forbidden to try to get one's own back. This too is a symptom of self, its very own, and is to be relegated to the domain of shame. Forgiveness is so essential in the kingdom of heaven that not only selfish ambition, but selfish unforgiveness is wholly disclaimed, utterly discounted and irrepressibly forbidden (cf. Matthew 6, following the Lord's prayer).

Christ is not an option for use, like a sponge in the shower from time to time. As Lord, and Creator, Saviour and God incarnate, He is Lord of all or not Lord at all (Luke 14:27ff.).  Weakness is not here the point. If you fail in this and that, you need discipline or comfort or both, but you are not denying Him. If you affirm Him by faith (as all Christians do and must as part of who they are, branches in Him - cf. Luke 9:26), then by that same faith you overcome what would distort you, whether into selfishness or into servile pseudo-humility, when you do not even dare to stand up to wolves who try to take over your Church in the ways of unwisdom, building on their own appetites.

This both is and was predicted to be a great feature of the last times before the return of Jesus Christ (II Peter 2, II Timothy 3, Jeremiah 23), and it is part of BEING a Christian to realise that what attacks what Christ endorsed is not His, nor are those who do it, to be followed; but rather they are to be separated from, as if liver fluke from sheep. It may of course require an operation (cf. Ch. 3 above).

There is comfort in this, that whatever the trial, inward and personal or outward and organisational, subtle as the devil himself or simplistic, there is God who designed the heart, the power which regenerated it, the discipline which restores it, the purging which reforms its errors and the peace which endorses His way; and that since He is alive, He is lively to one's needs, whether to demolish pride, to enable service or to forestall folly. He may even let you slide sometimes, until you realise for yourself the folly of slippage and are hence both more responsible and reliable! God is very wise, to the unlevelled way of infinity (cf. Psalm 145:3. I Timothy 6:16). In this, there is profound comfort. He is not apply some ersatz psychological theory, but truth! How lovely a thing is truth when its savour is secure and its ways endorsed, when indeed, Christ who IS it, moves with His sublime majesty among His people.

To abide in Him, practically, is a path of service, since like any other vehicle, one needs to be tuned constantly, and as one moves to the music of His voice, like that of many waters as Revelation indicates, this is certainly a deliverance! It may hurt to be inspected, corrected; but what is pain, when the beauty of holiness is in view.

Worshipping Him is an expression of love, and how much would man have been spared if he had only done this, for then the worship of oneself, or one's surrogates or appointees, or in effect, the passions of the moment would not have grieved and grated this race, worn and festered in it to the uttermost point. Indeed, so near is it to that level,  that its end, if Christ were not soon to return, would be just a matter of rising suns of self with rising powers from God's creation, reached by knowledge and then invidiously applied till ... there would be no place left to go.  Already they are ludicrously searching for other planets, and for what better reason than this, they sense like rats, many of them, that it is time to leave the ship. With pirates at the helm, it heads to a rampant and rumbustious ruin.

Yet they would ruin any other 'earth', for the same reason. Treason to truth spoils what man truly is. He cannot live that way. He has his day, and goes his way; but this neither can nor does endure.

Discomforting ? Better the discomfort of a letter than that of disaster. On the other hand, the God of all comfort is able to deal with anyone in distress with knowledge, power and above all, remedy! ... whether it be the distress of press (the social), of dress (the financial), of safety (the political-military), of heart (the moral and spiritual) or of a personal character (the soul). Even Paul felt the thrust of circumstance at times (II Corinthians 1), the pressure of finding persons; but was enabled to comfort others with the comfort with which the Lord comforted him.

It is a matter for discomfort when a person tries to use God as a convenience; but when he comes to Him for His personal use, then the comfort of a Pastor impregnable to sin, a Shepherd of infinite address, who

 

NOTES

*1  See SMR Appendix   C and   D.

*2   See The Biblical Workman, Appendix 3

*3  See Divine Agenda Ch. 6 and More Marvels ... Ch. 4. While some in Islam are more moderate, its source book is clear. Nor is that submission-thrust the only such one, as you see in Divine Agenda Ch. 6  (cf. SMR p. 1079 alongside Israel Ch. 1). In the case of Israel, the initial violence against Christ has led to unceasing violations against the Jews, which as perennial victims of ruthlessness, ratify the realities of the persecutory religions - pseudo-secular or direct - as bastions of force, whatever else may be their habit or intention .

There is and has long been a nexus of such forces. Israel has become one of their butts, but not Israel alone, as Christians have long featured in the sights of the pre-emptive strikes of these malign dynamics that seek to dominate, whether moving against sites, in their lust for land, seeking submission and that loss of liberty which is a virtual trademark. Indeed, violence instead of virtue, vileness instead of truth, compulsion instead of conviction, these are singularly striking traits of betrayal of truth. In one sense, the whole of history shows the licence for liberty, and its fruits, and the exposure of evil, from its roots. Judgment terminates the trial.