Consider: The way we define 'human'
determines our view of self, others, relationships, institutions,
life, and future. Choose wisely...there will be results. In an
effort to diminish the multiple and persistent dangers and abuses
which have characterized the affairs of man in his every Age, and to
assist in the requisite search for human identity, it is essential to
perceive and specify that distinction which naturally and most
uniquely defines the human being. Because definitions rule in the
minds, behaviors, and institutions of men, we can be confident that
delineating and communicating that quality will assist the process of
resolution and the courageous ascension to which man is called. As
Americans of the 21st Century, we are obliged and privileged to join our
forebears and participate in this continuing proclamation.
"WHAT IS MAN...?" God asks - and answers: HUMAN DEFINED: EARTH'S
CHOICEMAKER by JAMES FLETCHER BAXTER (c) 2004
Many problems in human experience are the result of false and inaccurate
definitions of humankind premised in manmade religions and humanistic
philosophies. Human knowledge is a fraction of the whole universe.
The balance is a vast void of human ignorance. Human reason cannot
fully function in such a void, thus, the intellect
can rise no higher than the criteria by which it perceives and measures
values.
Humanism makes man his own standard of measure. However, as with all
measuring systems, a standard must be greater than the value measured.
Based on preponderant ignorance and an egocentric carnal nature,
humanism demotes reason to the simpleton task of excuse-making in behalf
of the rule of appetites, desires, feelings, emotions, and glands.
Because man, hobbled in an ego-centric predicament, cannot invent
criteria greater than himself, the humanist lacks a predictive
capability. Without instinct or transcendent criteria, humanism cannot
evaluate options with foresight and vision for progression and survival.
Lacking foresight, man is blind to potential consequence and is
unwittingly committed to mediocrity, averages, and regression - and
worse. Humanism is an unworthy worship.
The void of human ignorance can easily be filled with a functional faith
while not-so-patiently awaiting the foot-dragging growth of human
knowledge and behavior. Faith, initiated by the Creator and revealed and
validated in His Word, the Bible, brings a transcendent standard to man
the choice-maker. Other philosophies and religions are manmade,
humanism, and thereby lack what only the Bible has:
1.Transcendent Criteria and
2.Fulfilled Prophetic Validation.
The vision of faith in God and His Word is survival equipment for today
and the future.
Man is earth's Choicemaker. Psalm 25:12 He is by nature and nature's God
a creature of Choice - and of Criteria. Psalm 119:30,173 His unique and
definitive characteristic is, and of Right ought to be, the natural
foundation of his environments, institutions, and respectful relations
to his fellow-man. Thus, he is oriented to a Freedom whose roots are in
the Order of the universe.
At the sub-atomic level of the physical universe quantum physics
indicates a multifarious gap or division in the causal chain; particles
to which position cannot be assigned at all times, systems that pass
from one energy state to another without manifestation in intermediate
states, entities without mass, fields whose substance is as
insubstantial as "a probability."
Only statistical conglomerates pay tribute to deterministic forces.
Singularities do not and are therefore random, unpredictable, mutant,
and in this sense, uncaused. The finest contribution inanimate reality
is capable of making toward choice, without its own selective agencies,
is this continuing manifestation of opportunity as the pre-condition to
choice it defers to the natural action of living forms.
Biological science affirms that each level of life, single-cell to man
himself, possesses attributes of sensitivity, discrimination, and
selectivity, and in the exclusive and unique nature of each diversified
life form.
The survival and progression of life forms has all too often been
totally dependent upon the ever-present mutative potential and
undeterminative appearance of one unique individual organism within the
whole spectrum of a given species. Only the uniquely equipped individual
organism is, like The Golden Wedge of Ophir, capable of traversing the
causal gap to survival and progression. Mere reproductive determinacy
would have rendered life forms incapable of such potential. Only a
moving universe of opportunity plus choice enables the present reality.
Each individual human being possesses a unique, highly developed, and
sensitive perception of diversity. Thus aware, man is endowed with a
natural capability for enacting internal mental and external physical
selectivity. Quantitative and qualitative choice-making thus lends
itself as the superior basis of an active intelligence.
Man is earth's Choicemaker. His title describes his definitive and
typifying characteristic. Recall that his other features are but
vehicles of experience intent on the development of perceptive awareness
and the following acts of decision. Note that the products of man cannot
define him for they are the fruit of the discerning choice-making
process and include the cognition of self, the utility of experience,
the development of value-measuring systems and language, and the
acculturation of civilization.
The arts and the sciences of man, as with his habits, customs, and
traditions, are the creative harvest of his perceptive and selective
powers. Creativity is a choice-making process. His articles, constructs,
and commodities, however marvelous to behold, deserve neither awe nor
idolatry, for man, not his contrivance, is earth's own highest
expression of the creative process.
Man is earth's Choicemaker. The sublime and significant act of choosing
is, itself, the Archimedean fulcrum upon which man levers and redirects
the forces of cause and effect to an elected level of quality and
diversity. Further, it orients him toward a natural environmental
opportunity, freedom, and bestows earth's title, The Choicemaker, on his
singular and plural brow.
Deterministic systems, ideological symbols of abdication by man from his
natural role as earth's Choicemaker, inevitably degenerate into
collectivism; the negation of singularity, they become a conglomerate
plural-based system of measuring human value. Blunting an awareness of
diversity, blurring alternatives, and limiting the selective creative
process, they are self-relegated to a passive and circular regression.
Tampering with man's selective nature endangers his survival for it
would render him impotent and obsolete by denying the tools of
diversity, individuality, perception, criteria, selectivity, and
progress. Coercive attempts produce revulsion, for such acts are
contrary to an indeterminate nature and nature's indeterminate
off-spring, man the Choicemaker.
Until the oppressors discover that wisdom only just begins with a
respectful acknowledgment of The Creator, The Creation, and The
Choicemaker, they will be ever learning but never coming to a knowledge
of the truth. The rejection of Creator-initiated standards relegates
the mind of man to its own primitive, empirical, and delimited devices.
It is thus that the human intellect cannot ascend and function at any
level higher than the criteria by which it perceives and measures
values.
Additionally, such rejection of transcendent criteria self-denies man
the vision and foresight essential to decision-making for survival and
progression. He is left, instead, with the redundant wreckage of
expensive hindsight, including human institutions characterized by
averages, mediocrity, and regression.
Humanism, mired in the circular and mundane egocentric predicament, is
ill-equipped to produce transcendent criteria. Evidenced by those who do
not perceive superiority and thus find themselves beset by the shifting
winds of the carnal-ego; i.e., moods, feelings, desires, appetites,
etc., the mind becomes subordinate: a mere device for excuse-making and
rationalizing self-justification.
The carnal-ego rejects criteria and self-discipline for such instruments
are tools of the mind and the attitude. The appetites of the flesh have
no need of standards for at the point of contention standards are
perceived as alien, restrictive, and inhibiting. Yet, the very survival
of our physical nature itself depends upon a maintained sovereignty of
the mind and of the spirit.
It remained, therefore, to the initiative of a personal and living
Creator to traverse the human horizon and fill the vast void of human
ignorance with an intelligent and definitive faith. Man is thus afforded
the prime tool of the intellect - a Transcendent Standard by which he
may measure values in experience, anticipate results, and make
enlightened and visionary choices.
Only the unique and superior God-man Person can deservedly displace the
ego-person from his predicament and free the individual to measure
values and choose in a more
excellent way. That sublime Person was indicated in the words of the
prophet Amos, "...said the Lord, Behold, I will set a plumbline in the
midst of my people Israel."
Y'shua Mashiyach Jesus said, "If I be lifted up I will draw all men unto
myself."
As long as some choose to abdicate their personal reality and submit to
the delusions of humanism, determinism, and collectivism, just so long
will they be subject and reacting only, to be tossed by every impulse
emanating from others. Those who abdicate such reality may, in perfect
justice, find themselves weighed in the balances of their own choosing.
That human institution which is structured on the principle, "...all men
are endowed by their Creator with ...Liberty...," is a system with its
roots in the natural Order of the universe. The opponents of such a
system are necessarily engaged in a losing contest with nature and
nature's God. Biblical principles are still today the foundation under
Western Civilization and the American way of life. To the advent of a
new season we commend the present generation and the "multitudes in the
valley of decision."
Let us proclaim it. Behold!
The Season of Generation-Choicemaker Joel 3:14 KJV
Contemporary
Comments
"I should think that if
there is one thing that man has learned about himself it is that he is a
creature of choice." Richard M. Weaver
"Man is a being capable of subduing his emotions and impulses; he can
rationalize his behavior. He arranges his wishes into a scale, he
chooses; in short, he acts. What distinguishes man from beasts is
precisely that he adjusts his behavior deliberately." Ludwig von Mises
"To make any sense of the idea of morality, it must be presumed that the
human being is responsible for his actions and responsibility cannot be
understood apart from the presumption of freedom of choice."
John Chamberlain
"The advocate of
liberty believes that it is complementary of the orderly laws of cause
and effect, of probability and of chance, of which man is not completely
informed. It is complementary of them because it rests in part upon the
faith that each individual is endowed by his Creator with the power of
individual choice."
Wendell J. Brown
"Our Founding Fathers
believed that we live in an ordered universe. They believed themselves
to be a part of the universal order of things. Stated another way, they
believed in God. They believed that every man must find his own place in
a world where a place has been made for him. They sought independence
for their nation but, more importantly, they sought freedom for
individuals to think and act for themselves. They established a republic
dedicated to one purpose above all others - the preservation of
individual liberty..."
Ralph W. Husted
"We have the gift of an
inner liberty so far-reaching that we can choose either to accept or
reject the God who gave it to us, and it would seem to follow that the
Author of a liberty so radical wills that we should be equally free in
our relationships with other men.
Spiritual liberty logically demands conditions of outer and social
freedom for its completion."
Edmund A. Opitz
"Above all I see an
ability to choose the better from the worse that has made possible
life's progress."
Charles Lindbergh
"Freedom is the Right
to Choose, the Right to create for oneself the alternatives of Choice.
Without the possibility of Choice, and the exercise of Choice, a man is
not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing."
Thomas Jefferson
The Question &
The Answer
Q: "What is man that
You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?" Psalm
8:4
A: "I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have
set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose
life, that both you and your descendants may live." Deuteronomy 30:19
Q: "Lord, what is man, that You take knowledge of him? Or the son of
man, that you are mindful of him?" Psalm 144:3
A: "And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves
this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served
that were on the other side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites,
in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the
Lord." Joshua 24:15
Q: "What is man, that he could be pure? And he who is born of a woman,
that he could be righteous?" Job 15:14
A: "Who is the man that fears the Lord? Him shall He teach in the way he
chooses." Psalm 25:12
Q: "What is man, that You should magnify him, that You should set Your
heart on him?" Job 7:17
A: "Do not envy the oppressor and choose none of his ways." Proverbs
3:31
Q: "What is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You
take care of him?" Hebrews 2:6
A: "I have chosen the way of truth; your judgments I have laid before
me." Psalm 119:30 "Let Your hand become my help, for I have chosen Your
precepts." Psalm 119:173
References:
Genesis 3:3,6 Deuteronomy 11:26-28; 30:19 Job 5:23
Isaiah 7:14-15; 13:12; 61:1 Amos 7:8 Joel 3:14
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 Psalm 119:1-176
DEDICATION
Sir Isaac Newton
The greatest scientist in human history
a Bible-Believing Christian
an authority on the Bible's Book of Daniel
committed to individual value
and individual liberty
Daniel 9:25-26 Habakkuk 2:2-3 KJV selah
"What is
man...?" Earth's Choicemaker JOEL 3:14 KJV
