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AN
ASTRONOMICAL REASON
EVEN FOR A SLOW WEEK ...
MAN IN MUDDLE:
THIS ALSO HAS A REASON
Dr John Zarnecki, British scientist on the joint NASA and European Space Agency mission, gave an explanation of a short time lag on the part of earth - around one millionth of a millionth of a second.
As the Latin poet, Virgil, said of bees, My topic is small, but not small its significance. (He spoke of the buzzing bees, rather than of whizzing space-stations - but each is physically small in its particular environment.)
The slow-down - statedly caused by the giant spacecraft Cassini,
two storeys tall, when it came to within 1200 km of the earth, and was given
a 5.5. km/sec boost towards its next target, is certainly not great.
You would not build empires on a margin of such a character.
However the PRINCIPLE cited for this slow-down
is significant, even if, as reported, rather ungrammatically expressed: "the
principle of you don't get something for nothing".
You don't, it is quite true, so long as you understand the meaning.
SOMETHING FOR NOTHING ?
The principle, really that of sufficient causation, means just this: whatever is, has characteristics, and what these are relates to what it does, and why it does it. In the case of man, there is body which allows inter-relation directly with the physical-chemical world of matter and its energy components; there is mind which allows analysis such as we have just cited; and there is the spirit which enables folly such as we witness in wearisome succession in the politics and militarism, the greed and the mindless seeming griping so much associated with this world (see The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, Chs.1, 3,10 incl. pp. 348ff., 284ff., 264ff.).
Without this, nothing could be what it is (see SMR Ch.3),
nor would we be here. Nothing is indeed precisely what comes from nothing
(cf. That Magnificent Rock, Chs.5,7 and Joyful Jottings
3, and
A Spiritual Potpourri Chs.1-3, with The Other
News, Appendix III). The definitional
dystrophy which would make it otherwise, is not wise, nor does it come from
nothing itself, as we shall see! If you start with self-contradiction you
avoid the need for anyone else to contradict you, having committed intellectual
hari-kari.
How readily does 'science' use this simple logical necessity, 'you don't get something from nothing', when it is a matter of earning its bread and butter, doing what it is good at. Like a worker after labour, at the pub, some of its practitioners then engage in preserving 'its' philosophical excursions into illogical incompetence for 'higher' pursuits, to be followed when it comes out of scientific orbit, and becomes merely the misused playground, not really even attached to the laboratory, of experts in another field. That, it is more than a slow-down, it is a stoppage, and it does not come, this also, for nothing.
MAN does not come from nothing either, no, neither his body nor
his mind nor his spirit have such a contradictory origin. Their cause is sufficient
and the heightening of capacities from zero, in non-existence, to what man
in fact does, was achieved by work*1.
In his nonchalant seeming way, which in fact CAUSES the destruction and agony of millions, man can give himself a very bad name with great ease, dispossessing the origin which is his and wishing to repossess the construction which its exponent made, as if a building was weary of its architect and began one day, imagining things, to think: "Well, I'm not bad! I have air-conditioning and heating, height and lightning protection, insurance contracts and occupants. The fact is that really, I suppose ... it is all mine, and I must have made it!"
But sometimes he is not as bad as that. It is rather then that 'Nature' made him. In this case, Nature first makes itself and then makes him. How it came to be and how it came to make him remain little questions that unfortunately, as with all day-dreams when the air clears, have no answer, small or great. Nothing really makes itself, Nature included. As Dr Zarnecki relevantly notes, You don't get something for nothing. Even a minuscule slow-down in million-millionths of a second has a cause, and a precise one, which makes just the difference!
A SPIRITED PERFORMANCE
WE are NOT a million-millionths of a second, but can compute in that way, and dispute, and confute and reject the necessities and become confused, and reel off a million or so deaths in the befuddled confusions of communism, nazism and all the scarcely impressive pretences of using other systems and keeping the name, which man in the inventive genius of his spirit likes to do quite often -as in China today, where the authority, but not the philosophy of communism, is what is kept in practice (see Index, China). Our roving spirits can become intelligent origins of research, or raving instruments of torture of mind or body or spirit.
The material NATURE of things that are merely material, and the MENTAL nature of the thought world, and the SPIRITUAL nature of the world of imagination and initiative, construction and decision, are all founded in something which is not merely NOT NOTHING, but PERFECTLY EFFICIENT and SUFFICIENT to produce them.
We have already seen in great detail on several occasions that God Almighty -
If however one opts for the irrational, then the system of thought one uses in stating or exploring this idea, is itself as systematic consequence, contrary to reason, and can find no ground or recourse or resource in it. It is sadly illogical to give reason for the invalidity or inapplicability of reason; for if it is inapplicable, then it is irrelevant, and if irrelevant then not to the point, so that it is pointless to use it to present or empower such a view.
What then ? IF REASON, then GOD; if not reason, then there is nothing to be said except this: we can neither argue nor speak, since speech involves reason, and our contribution is zero.
That of course leaves the field to those who are not of this self-destructive kind. It is not even possible to argue consistently that reason is unreasonable or invalid. It is all a self-contradiction, a self-exclusion. Even a view that all things are in fact irrational becomes something using reason, and hence a contradiction of the premiss. Only self-destructive silence remains, and suicide is not our present topic. All this is dealt with in SMR Ch.3 in detail.
For now however, let us consider things. Trying to avoid God with a magically present 'Nature', really many natures, which did not come from nothing but from construction, is such a pleasant task for idle, doodling day-dreams that it might seem like a spoil-sport to interrupt. It is just that the world is going into such pangs, and pains and rackings and ruins that although a few wealthy places remain, its contamination and its inter-action is beginning to arouse even the world-weary and the cynics (concerning which see SMR Ch.3, pp. 255ff. ). It is not really, as with Freud, a matter of the ego, super-ego and id, of the person, the individual, the moral constraints visited on him/her, and the relishes of pure uncontaminated pleasure.
The morals have source, the personality has source and so does
the break-down product of disintegrating pursuit of whatever will-o'-the-wisp
may appeal: the id, or idiotic. Neither the order of matter, nor the inventive
capacities of mind, nor the elective purposes of spirit - which make 'mistakes'
relevant - neither the imposing structure of morals, nor the curbing influences
of reason are for no ground. Nothing did not make matter; mindlessness did
not construct mind; insanity was not the cause of man failing to differentiate
custom and convenience, whether his own or somebody or some body else's
from obligation. Our very bodies and minds themselves carry
obligation, if one plans to retain them in good working order.
FREUDIAN FOLLIES, JUNGIANISM EXHAUSTION
I, it and them*2, the sort of folly of Freud in his arrant reductionism, is coming close to this oblivious psychological Naturalism. However, it is not components imagined, but realities that DID NOT COME FROM NOTHING, and require far more than nothing to maintain them, which are our heritage.
No National Trust protects them from abuse, whether from seers who try to construct, amidst their own (philosophically admitted) mental pathology, or militarist dictators more directly, who impose on them their insidious infantilities. The full scope of man's spirit, mind and body, requires assessment not merely of some slant which someone finds at some time in some sad setting; but of its origin, its conditions of operation, its vulnerabilities, susceptibilies, the source of its directed energies and of its directable decisions. WHEN HE IS FOUND, as we saw, ALL the problems evaporate, like water in a beaker.(cf. SMR Chs.5, 10). Failing to see the grounds of things and their causal repository is not science but superificiality.
As to Freud's sallow reductionism, Jung showed it up, pointing out that the imagined thrust of sex as the drive was so unscientific a construction as to leave no discernible inter-face, no construction in terms of which all is explained, action is resolvable and grounds can be set for this and that result - whether opera-singing or playing chess. He talked instead of the libido, the life force, which as C.S. Lewis pointed out, is so nice when all is sunny, and rather inadequate when it is not. FORCE ? the power to impart acceleration to matter ? How is that life ? You need everything else. It is like making force the explanation of a medical operation. You DO need it, but it is the least of the ingredients. There is thought and planning and co-ordination and manual SKILL and understanding and motive and method and perspective and conspectus - we merely begin.
It is far more than this; but at least Jung saw the folly of making reproductive elements the whole of life's thrust or its operational basis. They no more explain the thrust of man than does the lust for power or for money or for self-importance or prestige or security or protectiveness of the young, or nobility or the willingness to die for a cause. It was infantile, the not very usual result of an observant empiricist moving into threadbare theory with a sort of ease of the dispossessed, gliding without brakes or road in the air.
The 'unconscious' of Freud being that inaccessible lair of motivation
which can so distort, disturb and invest thought, renders his OWN thought
invalid and unreliable (Cf. SMR Ch.4, first
section) . IF however he COULD get beyond it, then it IS NOT that lurking
lair of dominance he would suppose, but merely a pathological intrusion, which
is in fact what it can be. You can never damn the integrity of man without
damning your own, and so removing your consistent capacity to do anything
in the field worthy of note. If you CAN retain integrity of thought, despite
the theory, then the theory is one of corrigible containment; you are merely
sick and when well, operate in a different way. That of course is far nearer
the truth of the matter, just as it is the only way Freud could have told
the theory as truth. Unfortunately for him, as soon as you allow this correction
its scope, then you have ditched the theory. Such things teem in the wilderness
of philosophy, diverting perhaps to some, but not directively significant!
WHY ?
However, there is REASON for all this, even for the views of Freud and Jung. THERE IS much that is repressed in many people. THERE IS a desire to avoid the reality on the part of millions. It is manifested in the various field to which man relates: to God, to truth, to his race and nature and to sin. THERE IS a life vitality which has an origin, naturally, and a meaning: and a result if it is baulked in mindless endeavours to avoid its Maker. THERE IS a payment if this is done, and there is a destruction of the personalities proper precincts when this IS done. It may be called disintegration if you like, as a first index, for it certainly removes the purposeful activity of the man from its due depth, and hence makes him a sort of accident site.
However these are merely inadequate and artificially circumscribed ways of considering the reality. NOTHING comes from, and you do not get a result from, no cause. In fact, it is far more complex than these two philosophers, Jung and Freud, allowed - just because the realities have far more depth than they realised. We have already seen in SMR Ch.4, in the first section, the inadequacies of Jung on other fronts. Thus his realisation that authority is needed for 'integration' of the personality was at odds with his inability to get beyond the relativity with which he began. HOW give authority (to patients, to assist their recovery) when there WAS none, but rather a bevy of mutually contradictory aspirants (as he would see it)!
Hence he had doctor fixation problems and no resolution of his
desire for a wholly desirable and objective source for due and adequate integration
of the disordered personality.
PATHOLOGY IS NOT NORMALCY
In fact, as shown in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, NOT ONLY is there a necessity for an eternally adequate Being, but His nature is self-declared. Hence there IS just that authority which pragmatically Jung realised was needed, but the problem is just this: that he was avoiding Him. Hence his theoretical impasses. Freud too was avoiding Him, hence his ludicrous and indeed (scientifically) infantile reductionism with the theoretical error shown above. BOTH saw empirically several facts, and NEITHER could cover them in theory. The perceptive empiricst in Freud was betrayed by the 'unconscious' intrusions of desire.
Sin as the result of hiding from God leads to its emblems and repositories, in which through fear or other grounds, man hides what is inconvenient or distressing, or suitable for the particular truth he rejects for wilful reasons, whether in the midst of a pathological confusion or in clear-headed rebellion. Hence yes there is a hinterland in many minds which is poisonous, impressively invasive and distorting. Life does have a power and force and character, and hence if it is misdirected, it tends to gain all sorts of sores and troubles and these can be passed on in measure to offspring, in their blind spots or their equally blind reactions. Its genre remains; its troubles however, thereby increase.
Pathology however is not an all-inclusive study. Far less is some philosophically futile and merely llimited study of it. Man is not required to be diseased. When God is found and the hiding is removed and the hinterland is a mere mirage of the imagination, when integrity is found in the truth and peace in the paths of reality, then there may indeed be a areas not current to the mind. There may be a FORE-CONSCIOUS, since it is too much to keep EVERYTHING ALWAYS in mind; but this is not secretive, repressed or distorted by desire; it is merely as it were, a memory bank device of keeping things available, but not immediately present. Again, seen in this perspective of reality, obsessive pursuits of pleasure or pre-eminence of other kinds ('id'), become as ludicrous as any other wheelies, and no more need any such desires seek, each one, for the pre-eminence (personal power with Adler or sex with Freud, or life force's streamings with Jung).
Small wonder that psychiatry is resorting so much to drugs and so much less to psycho-analysis when its own secular and often naturalistic icons are themselves so far astray. Never was 'doctor, heal thyself' more relevant then here (cf. Joyful Jottings 2). .
But there is a far more vast arena of pathology in reality, just
as there is a far more vast construction in man than many would allow, being
blinded by culture, convention or desire. It is BECAUSE GOD IS THERE, as is
the demonstrated necessity of logic, that MAN BEING HERE, faces a spectacle
of need and a need of opportunity. If only God would provide a way, so that
a person could find Him, know the truth and become impervious in principle
to manipulation by tired old theories, thoughts, drives and desires, then
with the attainment would come removal of the impasse concerning truth.
Find God and there is no problem of self-contradiction by affirming what
one's perspective must deny, or lacking what one's mere need cannot by itself,
create!
"THE DESIRE OF THE NATIONS"
It is precisely because of this that the desire for truth,
and readiness to accept it as possible commonly found in man, is not illusory;
while it is precisely for this reason that such woeful prodigies of irrationality,
as this, that all is relative and there
is no absolute truth, become if not
excusable, then at least understandable. IF this were so, then it would itself
be absolute truth, and hence a mere self-contradiction. Yet people sell themselves
for such tiresome twaddle, mutant thoughts of muddle that only mire could
admire. Self-contradiction is merely one of the paths of destruction to which
sin leads, and eminently is this so of that sin in particular, of being
wilfully blind to God.
A PERFECT WORK MAKES A FREE GIFT
As God has however DONE WORK to make a GIFT available, it is NOT
FOR NOTHING that we can gain the necessary truth and knowledge of our construction,
meaning, responsibility and destiny.
WE GET IT FOR NOTHING IF WE DO GET IT, BECAUSE HE MADE IT AND
SO CAN CONFER IT. THIS is no breach of that admirable principle that you
get nothing for nothing. It is merely a becoming awareness that YOU can get
it for nothing PROVIDED THAT SOMEONE ELSE does the work! This is not to say
that nothing creates, but that when somebody creates by work, then that
being may elect to donate it. You could say, SOMETHING CAME FROM LOVE. It
is not really adequate to draw a mundane sigh and wriggle the brow at this!
We ourselves are doing it all the time, and in general would never have been
around if such attitudes of parents had not been involved in bearing with
us when young.
The Bible, demonstrated to be the written self-revelation of the truth of God, declares that this is so: "BEHOLD WHAT MANNER OF LOVE THE FATHER HAS BESTOWED ON US, THAT WE SHOULD BE CALLED THE CHILDREN OF GOD! THEREFORE THE WORLD DOES NOT KNOW US, BECAUSE IT DID NOT KNOW HIM" - I John 3:1.
One cannot help noticing that this restoration to truth, instead of the desolation of pretending to be able to speak it against reason, is selective. It is not for the naturalist, the mundane, the nature-worshippers, the magicians of matter who want something for nothing NOT as a gift from the worker, but as a PRETENCE from the void. Blindness is not the way you can receive a gift. If you think you are fine, you take no remedy; if you see nothing, what do you do ?
Our spirits as we all know if we use them, are vast bastions of originative power, and the power to rebel is amongst their provisions. IF that rebellion is the way we want it, then we continue unable to speak at all on the subject of truth, logically, and move towards the destruction which is apt and appropriate for beings of such stature as man, an eternal contempt (Daniel 12), situationally likened to rubbish tip refuse. How time, in the mercy of God, would operate, one does not know, and need not theorise; God Himself being author of any and all systems, such as our current space-time one, as far as matter is concerned.
WHAT is involved in this particular destiny, is without relief.
It is according to truth (Romans 2:1ff.). Rejection of the gift of forgiveness at the cost to the Christ
of the cross is honoured, but not honourable.
Being in operation, 'an autonomous unit' when one is not, is merely a lie. The capacity to opt is there; the power to create the situation of thought, and putting it into practice, this is not. To reject reality, whether in confused illusion or in dead-eyes solemnity - it is an impotent gesture. Of course, the devil in his evil and his liberty to be such, has a desire which many share, somehow to oust God. He does not always put it in those terms, since some prefer to make their subjective blindness meaninglessly objective, and to act without God. The devil is a salesman and he knows his clients to some extent; and indeed, when one is blind, it is not very difficult to deceive the mind that is so!
But look at the medley of events in the athletics of man-astray. Thus in reality, and not for no reason, and not from nothing, man can distort the facts through his spirit, mind and body, and for his spirit or mind or body, either with respect to these or their environment, or to his Maker. He can misuse his spirit, and worship NOT GOD (Deuteronomy 32:15-21)*3. This will bring problems to the spirit, since it is then being debased into this arena, from both its source and its kind. Hence all sorts of butchery whether in diminutive terms, from the pettiness of pride in social settings, or 'on the grand scale', in powers of struggle in military ones, eventually occur.
Wantonry is the fitting expression of denial of the operating reality: like that of a child behind the wheel of a sports car. He does not really know what a car is, and hence merely messes with it.
Man can likewise worship himself (not always with ceremonies, but with the ultimacy of regard appropriate for worship), and since there is really nothing there to worship, this becomes another ricocheting riot of the ridiculous, often dignified in places like the UN with the verbiage of grandeur and exhibited with the works of fashion, frivolity, or folly.
Man can worships gods he invents, whether calling them gods or
not. Hence he can become an evolutionist (cf. That Magnificent Rock.
Ch.10, section 2), and have God smuggled into 'Nature'
and Nature vaguely 'arising' from nothing, for no reason (cf. SMR Ch.4, pp.
422E, cf. Ch.2, S 21ff., That Magnificent Rock
Ch.1 , Barbs, Arrows and Balms
Appendix IV). He can invent such a process
physically, socially or mentally, and then some! All are irrational gestures
of defiance, illogical, self-contradictory, refugees from reason, but present
no refuge from reason, far less from God. Man ?
He can make the German race the epitome of evolution, and fight
to prove it; or the rising sun of Japan, with its worshipful Emperor the
criterion for man, and fight to make it so; but it is all, always mere delusion.
It is also very extravagant with the world's residual powers, as the work
of God is mocked, God is mocked and man is grandiose in delusion. Many people
are beginning to feel it economically, as they ponder the earth, even when
still paralysed in spirit!
What else ? Human worship of society as if it were the criterion is merely an application of autonomy to a group level, whilst the gurus are mere embodiments for the mind*4, of the delusions of autonomy. These in turn may embody the delusions of other autonomies, devised in this way or that from the universe from imagination direct, which they are to represent or tout. But as to God, it is He who made natures, and their self-magnifying misconceptions are as useless as their destructively viewed disgusts, which would ally the pathologies of man with a universe to be despised.
It is not alas the universe's fault that man so wraps himself in the clothing of despair, any more than in that of grandeur (see SMR pp. 294ff., 255ff. ). Neither illusion nor contempt will alter anything of reality; though it may conduct a soul muddled in mists of confusion, to hell.
It is not however the mere errors which do this; it is instead one particular result that they lead to - the blindness to the remedy. Christ remains the remedy for all and any of these maladies, able and willing to forgive all and any of these follies - for the ONE WHO COMES TO HIM, to receive in and through and by Him, the pardon which HE WORKED TO SECURE.
It was not NOTHING that He did. It was not NOTHING that He bore. It is NOT NOTHING TO IGNORE IT. It is not a very minute slow-down which is the result of this blind bravado. It is the closing of the grand doors of reality, it is self-consignment to trash. And that ? It is not for no reason..
"How often," said Christ, "would I have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks, under her wings, but you were not willing!" - Matthew 23:37. Now this was to Jerusalem, about to murder their remedy, and often guilty of slaying prophets, as Christ there declared. THIS did not stop the love, nor did it remove to nothing what He worked to secure, the free pardon and place in the household of faith, with the children of God. Even when dying, He cried, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing!" (Luke 23:34), and He kept crying this. It is not only Jerusalem to whom He has so spoken: "Come to Me ALL you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light" - (Matthew 11:28-29).
He has it all prepared. It took work. It is a gift.
Life in the first place was a gift, one which He also made. The
code of body is a gift. The power of mind is a gift. The thrust and initiative
of the imagination of spirit is a gift. There was no intrinsic need for it
to be abused; but since it has been abused, it needs remedy. The adaptable
planet is another gift.
The universe is a sixth. The remedy for folly is a seventh,
the redemption to the place of children of God, it is another.
The physical birth is as much beyond us as the spiritual; and the
spiritual indeed is more, but it is His work. The Spirit of
God blows where it will - but not without power! It is not subject to direction.
However IF a man COMES TO CHRIST, in faith to the One whose word is securely
reposed in the book He has also MADE and GIVEN as a GIFT, the Bible; and
in repentance of sin receives that gift: then the result is sure. God is
sure. That is why anything is sure. That is where reason and revelation meet;
where results and remedy are found; where the insoluble follies of mind without
God are met (SMR Ch.5), and become the
gripping resolutions, as keen there as anywhere else. In God and God as revealed
in the Bible, and there alone, all is resolved. Without Him, the resolution
still applies; it is just that it hs a different outcome for the individual.
NOTES
*1
A nonsense
verse makes the nonsense seem more nearly literal by its imagination! It is
found in COMIC AND CURIOUS VERSE (Ed. J.M. Cohen, written by Christina Morgenstern,
trans. R.F.C. Hull, and publ. by Penguin Books. A small part is below:
There was a Sandwich paper which
Mysteriously began to itch.
And in its fear, although till now
It had no thought of thinking - how
Could it indeed, having no head
Worth mentioning - now (from fear, I said)
Began, commence (you'll hardly guess)
To feel the dawn of consciousness,
To think, to cogitate, to be
Acquire a personality
Which, be it noted, was not sent
By chance out of the firmament..."
No, it was
"A permutation, or a sort
Of evolutionary 'sport' ..."
and later we learn,
'Taking advantage of this fact,
The paper now resolved to act..."
Certainly, in this delightfully grave comedy, it had not yet learnt of the observable prohibition on the increase of information, on its deployment by 'annoyment' or any other cause, but intelligence.
Cf. SMR pp. 252Hff.,
cf. 252Aff..
*2
His little triplet ? 'I', the 'id' or pleasurable
portents and involvement machinery, and the outcroppings of 'morality', which
last seems soundly summed for this theory, as 'them', since they are reduced
to pressures from society, from mankind.
For these 'parts' of the Freudian 'man', or fabricated man, or any other parts, one needs an envelope, lest they be mere unrelated fragments, ordered only in the lax imagination. This, the organisational structure, is as inconspicuous in the Freudian mythology, as in any other reductionism, which by it nature, substitutes the partial for the total.
What is the whole of which these imagined ingredients are the parts ? Minus this, there is a double dissolution of the dream, already lacking application, or interface (see below). This means it is ineffective both at its own theoretical and internal level, and at phase of the output into the field.
Like a dancer minus legs, deprived of contact with
the ground of operation, this lacks something.
(Indeed, one has to hand it to it: it is footless.)
That lack is design.
As we are about to see, in addition it lacks consistency, using what it denies in its very formulation, which hence is not very informative. Thus it also lacks foundation, even if the legs were there.
For the presentation of the design as Biblically indicated
and empirically found: see SMR pp. 332Gff.,
348ff., 36ff., Ch.4; and That Magnificent Rock,
Appendix 1. On life more generally,
see
A Spiritual Potpourri Ch.6, SMR pp. 140ff..
*3 Deuteronomy here is magnificent:
"But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked;
You grew fat, you grew thick,
You are obese!
The he forsook God who made him,
And scornfully esteemed the Rock of his salvation.
They provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods:
With abominations they provoked Him to anger.
"They sacrificed to demons, not to God,
To gods they did not know,
To new gods, new arrivals
That your fathers did not fear.
"Of the Rock who begot you, you are unmindful,
And have forgotten the God who fathered you.
"And when the LORD saw it, He spurned them,
Because of the provocation of His sons and His daughters,
And He said: 'I will hide My face from them,
I will see what their end will be,
For they are a perverse generation,
Chidden in whom is no faith.
They have provoked Me to jealousy by what is not God;
They have moved Me to anger by their foolish idols,
But I will provoke them to jealousy by those who are not a nation;
I will move them to anger by a foolish nation,
For a fire is kindled in My anger ..."
Thus His love spurned is not spent in futility. Nor, on the other hand, does He iron-clad, prevent
this human disporting in unreason, this proclivity for self-assertion and
misplaced worship, express or implied, of what is merely another product.
Rather the remedy, divinely provided, speaks in its very method and unique
preciousness, of the depth of the love which in zeal is greater than that
of any human lover, for his beloved wife or child, profession or ... self!
In procedure, the willingness of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, to yield life
speaks not only of the needs of the ransom which it constitutes by bearing
in death the death all mankind deserves apart from Him (Matthew 20:28, II
Cor. 5:19ff.). It speaks of the need of forsaking one's life as a fiefdom,
as a province for assertion and godlike self-love, or social love, or any
other kind of love, whether somewhat real or wholly imaginary, provinces of
nature and natures, and instead, following Him.
IF HE, the Lord's Christ (Luke 2:26) could do it, we must. If HE was willing, we are required to be no less. If we conserve our lives in self-sufficient mythologies like survival of the fittest as the way of 'Nature' and hence our own, then we los them. Nature did not create us, has no remedial program for us, does not love us, is per se incapable of love. It is its Creator who is the true and worthy object. Vertical ascent to understanding, not horizontal passion in pollution of thought, is the need. If HE yielded what was perfect, just to rescue the unjust, then the unjust must surrender the source of their sins and finding anew the creative design, continue as children of God, not of illusion.
You do not need to cease to be ; indeed eternal life is the objective in which we appear as children of God, who are His (Titus 2:14-3:7); you must however cease to be autonomous, self-governed without God, self glorifying or identifying, for in that there is true meaninglessness. Why ? For this reason: Such a self is a myth of arrogance's own creation. It does not operationally exist, and is merely a derelict illusion continuing while it can, on the resources created in limits, for another purpose. Denuded by mere desire of meaning, its existence becomes that of driftwood, when all the fuss and fizz of self-exaltation of thought or being is gone, and the results stay, like ashes after last night's fire, unstirred, at one's face.
As the spirit of man can be deluded into false worship, so his mind can become its own object, the stolid and turgid theorems of blindness about what it does not see - as in forms mathematical economics founded on philosophical reductionism - becoming the objects of its abuse. Similarly, the body can gain the odour of reverence, and become the object of delusion, as if all depended on it (against which psycho-somatic medicine with its sometimes ludicrous excesses of self-assurance of its own, has moved with sometimes supercilious and specious knowledgeability), all came from it, or for it, or would go from it! The seduction of man is at every level, and in virtually every degree.
Kaleidoscopic indeed is the creation of delusive options, glamorised into forms, glittering with appeal: but the option for the kaleidoscope rather than the reality of which it is a plaything, that is one exercised in a way evocative of the most intense sadness :
"Why will you die?"
comes the divine lament, appeal, exhortation. HE DID DIE in the form of the Christ, and resurrected offers life instead of the multiplicity of creative quiddities, strenuous somethings and devious devices.
Let us listen to the full text of this last quotation (from Ezekiel 33:11):
"Tell them: 'As I live,' says the Lord God, 'I have no pleasure
in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.
Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die,
O house of Israel ?"
Now there in the provision for salvation, there is neither Jew nor Greek (Galatians 3:28), "for God so loved the world ..." (John 3:16). The love however moves towards actual persons - "that whosoever".