The Point of “Can”

The following is from Oswald Chambers' book Baffled to Fight Better:

"Bildad uses an argument from Nature and he tries to make his argument consistent with his illustration.

"We are apt to run an illustration to death in logical sequence; the Bible never does. An illustration should simply be a window which does not call attention to itself.

"If you take an illustration from Nature and apply it to a man’s moral life or spiritual life, you will not be true to facts because the natural law does not work in the spiritual world. In the first place, a law is not a concrete thing, but a constructive mental abstraction whereby the human mind explains what it sees.

"God says, 'And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten . . .'; that is not a natural law, and yet it is what happens in the spiritual world.

"In the natural world it is impossible to be made all over again, but in the spiritual world it is exactly what Jesus Christ makes possible. 'Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God' (John 3:3). What is true is that as there is a law in the natural world so there is a law in the spiritual world, i.e., a way of explaining things, but the law is not the same in both worlds.

"Bildad takes his illustration from the rush and the flag and applies it to Job, but he is more concerned about being consistent with his illustration than with the facts of Job’s experience.

"If you are a logician you may often gain your point in a debate and yet feel yourself in the wrong. You get the best of it in disputing with some people because their minds are not clever, but when you get away from your flush of triumph you feel you have missed the point altogether; you have won on debate, but not on fact.

"You cannot get at the basis of things by disputing. Our Lord Himself comes off second best every time in a logical argument, and yet you know that He has in reality come off 'more than conqueror.'

"Jesus Christ lived in the moral domain and, in a sense, the intellect is of no use there. Intellect is not a guide, but an instrument."