Man Defined: Earth's Choicemaker
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. We are
obliged and privileged to participate in its proclamation.
WELCOME GENERATION-CHOICEMAKER Joel 3:14 KJV
by JAMES FLETCHER BAXTER
Human knowledge is a fraction of the whole universe. The
balance is a vast void of human ignorance. Human reason
cannot fully function in 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 for the
rule of appetites, desires, feelings, emotions, and glands.
Because man cannot invent criteria greater than himself,
the humanist lacks a predictive capability. Without
transcendent criteria, humanism cannot evaluate options
with foresight for progression and survival. Lacking
instinct and 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 man-made, humanism, and thereby lack
transcendent criteria and fulfilled prophetic validation.
The vision of faith in God and His Word is survival
equipment for today and the future. Selah
* * *
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 environment, 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.
* * *
The 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. 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 re-
acting 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. 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 AND 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
"What is man...?" EARTH'S CHOICEMAKER
choice.maker@verizon.net
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/2728
Copyright 2001 James Fletcher Baxter All Rights Reserved