Deeper Waters

I’ve recently seen someone going on a rant about how we respond to compliments. Somehow in Christian circles, we seem to think that it’s wrong to receive them at times. We want to be humble and if anyone says anything true of us, we tend to discount it. I don’t think that’s humility really. That’s insulting.

I’ll tell you all also that I’m a very bad one with this. My personality type is the type that would prefer to lower itself in many cases and make the worst out of anything and concentrate on the negatives. My friends really have to work hard to get me to believe a compliment, which I realize is an insult to them. It’s like telling them they’re trying to trick me or don’t know what they’re talking about.

Now granted, there are some people out there who will only give compliments so that they can trick you in some way. We’re not talking about people with ulterior motives here. We’re talking about people who genuinely do want to tell you something good about yourself and how you and I can tend to resist it.

I don’t see why we should. Do we ever stop to think that maybe what these people say is true? Would it be wrong of us to delight in what was said? Now we shouldn’t be dependent on it, but is it wrong to enjoy a compliment? Is it wrong to here something good about yourself and not cut yourself down in response?

But let us consider the ultimate compliment. What about praise from God? (Look it up. It’s in John 12.) What about the compliment given that God loves us so much that he sends his only son for us? What does it say of us if we lower ourselves when he has treated us so highly.

It is God who has all the truth about us and while we may want some individual truth, we won’t find that in Scripture. Still, we see the way he loves humanity and the church. If he views us in such a way, then it is a sin for us to lower ourselves in a way that we ought not to.

The medieval church said that the entirety of the universe paled in comparison to man. Do we agree? We should. Man bears the image of God and you are far greater than all the stars and galaxies out there. If that’s the case then, should you not accept the divine truth God has said about you in Scripture?

And ultimately, accepting such compliments is humbling. We dare not exalt ourselves over God. However, if we have a proper view, we will realize that God is that much above us. We must see him as he is and we as we are. We are defined by how we relate to him. He is not defined by how he relates to us.

So to all who have said something complimenting to me, I appreciate it, and I hope to learn to accept it better, but thanks especially to my heavenly father who thinks I am worth far more than many sparrows.

In a forum I belong to, there’s recently been a lot of talk as to whether or not women actually understand what men go through. I’m not saying this to discount what women go through. I am not saying that trials like PMS or childbirth and things of that nature are nothing. I’m sure they are. However, not much is said about what goes on in the mind of a man. Now I only know for sure what goes on in the mind of one man, myself, so that will be my example tonight.

Of course, some of it will be talking to other men as well. When men get together and talk, sexuality can be one of the things we talk about. Not so much the abstract of sexuality though as the reality of women. As for our individual lives, it’s been said that the average male thinks about sex every seven seconds and he’s lying about the other six.

I will say that thinking about writing this article did not make the struggle much easier. Readers know that I am a single male who is very very very much interested in finding Mrs. Right. I am a philosophy major devoted in my Christian walk. My hobbies including reading, video games, and watching Smallville. An evening with me will include….oh wait. I need to be blogging. Sorry. Got distracted.

This is mainly to you women of course, but I welcome comments from my fellow men definitely this time. Maybe what I say is what you can relate to or maybe you think I’m completely off. Either way, I believe it needs to be said. I’m not trying to excuse everything for us guys also. I’m just letting you women know what we deal with.

As I thought about writing this, I will tell you that a guy struggling about sex literally feels it. It’s an aspect that every fiber of his being is in a sense screaming out for it and he has to tell himself to wait. Now this doesn’t last for hours (At least not in my experience!) but it is still a very real experience. I think this is one reason  men can give in so easily to sexual sin. Something like pornography is a quick fix.

It also is because we are very visual. Women. If you could see what goes on inside our minds, chances are, you’d come out in public everyday wearing body armor that covered your bodies up entirely. It is not uncommon for us to move whatever way we can if we think that just for a second we have caught a glimpse of a beautiful female.

Also, that image can very easily stay in our minds. I could go down a list very easily right now of all the women that I’ve had crushes on. I can still see them in my mind’s eye. It would not be rare for us either to get so transfixed at the sight of a beautiful woman that we cease to pay attention to everything around us.

There have been times I’ve been driving down the road and just noticed that beautiful woman jogging on the side of the road. I have even pulled up to a stop light and noticed a female in the lane next to me and thought “She’s really cute.” I also know I’m not the only guy who has bought something at a department store he didn’t really need just to get in the check-out lane where a beautiful girl was. (And I have said that is why they’re called “Check-out” lanes. Note also that I do use the same system when I buy something at the store I do need to determine which line I’m going to get in.)

I’m even driving around lost tonight. Mapquest was not nice enough to tell me the road I was taking to get somewhere was one way. So as I’m driving, I’m listening to an apologetics CD and it’s a female speaker and I’m listening but in the back of my mind the thought is there of “She sounds really cute.”

Rest assured women, we are noticing you, which is why you need to be careful about what you wear. I’m not telling you to go Islamic in fashion or anything. There is a time that I think it’s appropriate to really dress up and make yourself look very attractive. Being attractive though is not the same thing as being showy. We men have very vivid imaginations and we will be able to imagine more based on what we do see.

The problem is that we do have such huge drives and we have to contain them. Now while I do not approve of the Islamic concept of 70 virgins for a man in Paradise, I can understand how a man would find that as Paradise. A man could spend much time thoroughly enjoying himself in such a situation. This is the way we are. We can be set in seconds.

I would not think this ends because a man is married either. A married man must guard himself as well. This is why many a married man can look up when walking down the street just because he sees a beautiful female ahead and he knows where his mind will go if he looks again. A wife walking with him may wonder what’s going on. Wives. If you are walking with your husband and he suddenly looks off at nothing, check to see if there is another beautiful lady nearby. (Other than yourself I mean.)

And men, we need to learn what self-control is. I am thankful now that I have a friend who asks me if I am staying pure. Now I do not watch internet porn and thankfully, never have, but even I have the struggles with wanting what I can’t have now. I am thankful that he comes to me and says “Are you staying pure?” Many times when I could violate my conscience I think of having to speak to him again and realize that I must resist.

Men. We also know that after a time, that intense craving does pass. At the time, it fills like we will explode, but it does pass. Of course, we single ones do hope we get married soon so we can enjoy this pleasure. However, we must be Christian in our approach to sexuality and wait. It’s never promised to be easy. It is promised to be worthwhile though.

I just wanted to say my two cents on it. Women. You need to understand what’s going on some in the mind of men and how when we say this is a struggle, we really mean that. It is a struggle.

I’ve been writing lately about our approach to God and how we fear him. Many times, we talk about the love of God as the main draw. (Interestingly, the word love does not show up in the book of Acts in the reaching of the non-Christians. It seems that the idea of Jesus being resurrected was the main emphasis. Paul talked about it so much in Athens that some people thought he was talking about two gods.)

I would like to postulate that one reason we are so hesitant to come to God is not that we don’t think he loves us. We hesitate to come to him because he does love us. Sadly, the last thing some of us want is the love of God or anyone else for that matter. Why? Because love from another means that that other seeks our good.

Now with the love of God, God does seek our good. He seeks to make us who we were meant to be. He is the surgeon correcting what is out of joint in us. Unfortunately, the operation is quite painful and a number of us are quite resistant because we really don’t know that what we want is not what is good for us.

Take as an example the young man who is addicted to internet pornography. Unfortunately, this is becoming a higher and higher number, even among Christian men. The only reason a person is with that is because they think that it is giving them some good that they need to have.

The love of God tells us that morally, that person should leave that behind. Why? Because they are missing out. They are settling for less than the greatest good. If anything we do is a sin, we are at that point settling for less than the greater good. Please note something also. The greater good is not necessarily to us the immediate greater good. It is the long-term greater good.

I am a single man and as such, I am to remain chaste until I marry. This means that in the area of sexuality, I am to remain pure and that doesn’t just mean not sleeping with women. It means keeping my thoughts and actions in the area of sexuality pure. It is a battle and a struggle.

So the question is, do I abstain from sexual immorality because I like to abstain? In a number of ways, no. I don’t like the idea of being a virgin. I don’t value chastity simply for the sake of chastity. If some want to be chaste in service to God, that’s fine, but I don’t see the point in being chaste for the sake of being chaste.

So why am I to do it? Because of the greater good. God would have me to enjoy sexuality with a woman that I will marry someday. Any desire I have to do otherwise is settling for something less. It seems like such a good idea at the time, but really, I know that it isn’t for my good. I know God has the best.

We’ve all been in such situations with our own struggles. We know that that desire seems so real and powerful to us and it’s just a simple little thing and no big deal. God will forgive us and we will go on our way. We can control whatever happens. It’s like the smoker who says he’ll just smoke one more cigarette and then quit. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

At these times, we don’t want God to love us. We would that he would take his watchful eyes off of us and allow us to indulge in our sinful desires. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, he does no such thing. He keeps with us. The love of God can seem hard at some points in that it calls us to resist what we don’t want to resist or do what we don’t want to do.

Naturally, this means that if we are to approach God, we are to approach this love and this love will not let us stay as we are. It will change us. It will transform us. It will be painful. We have to ask if we really want that or not. I believe there are many who want no part in that love for they think their good is greater than the good God has for them. This is especially true in the area of sexuality, and yes, I think many more people would be Christians were it not for the biblical view of sexuality.

This is then another reason why we fail to approach God. The antidote I believe is simply to realize the truth. God really does want our good and we gain when we allow him to shape us. Consider the example of when you see a stray cat. Now I am a guy who likes cats and I always think of this when approaching one.

I got out of my car at my apartment tonight and on a fence was a cat. The cat seemed scared of me and I could hear a little mew several times. I went up to pet it speaking gently, to which it jumped behind the fence and while I couldn’t see it, I could still hear it. It was quite saddening. If only the cat had let me approach. What was uncomfortable and frightening to it would have been a great comfort. I simply wanted to give it some love.

May we be willing to let God come to us and love us rather than run and hide from him.

Recently I’ve been writing about the afterlife and what it would mean to draw near to God. I believe a great fear which I saw spoken of it today is the fear that as Greg Koukl has put it, what if we’re right about God’s justice but wrong about his mercy? What if we cross the river and there is no grace for us?

This is a common concern for many people and I believe there are a number of non-Christians today who deconverted simply because they were living out of fear. There isn’t really any way to look into the book of life and see if your name is in there this side of eternity. I doubt few of us have miraculous events happen at conversion that say we are his.

How many people will wonder about it? Did I say the prayer the right way? Did I really know what I was doing? Was my heart really in the right place? Did I truly repent? Maybe your objections are something different. What if I’m living in sin now? What if I’ve committed the unforgivable sin? What if I’m just fooling myself?

Now something is to be noticed about those objections. All of them can be phrased in the style of “What if?” Unfortunately, such questions usually get us on the roller coaster of emotion and when we get on that roller coaster, it keeps going up and down and we can be sure that it will be a very bumpy ride.

So what is the answer?

One thing worth noting first off. For those worried about it, have you noticed that worrying about it hasn’t seemed to make the problem go away? If anything, it makes it worse. Consider it like it’s poison ivy. You think that if you scratch it that one time, that the itch will go away. Instead, you just make the itch worse. If this is emotional also, it is not a problem to be solved. It is a feeling to be dealt with and it’s not done by giving it an argument.

If only we could learn to ask one question of each feeling. “Is it true?” Don’t accept any “Well, it might be.” Just ask “Is it true?”

Also, consider in the Bible that often times, God says he forgives us for his name’s sake. God is shown as holy and glorious in forgiving us. When he does so, it is a direct attack on evil each time and a reminder to the forces of darkness that they have lost. The goal of the evil one is to use sin to create a barrier between us and God. Forgiveness destroys that barrier.

If you think your salvation is important to you, rest assured, your salvation is not as important to you as it is to God. The simple question again then becomes if we will trust him or not with it. Let us dare not think that we will decide to see if we are saved based on our own works! Our own works will fall short every single time. Now I’m not against doing good works, but we sure can’t base eternity on them.

Also, consider that you only worry about one thing. You worry about what is important to you. What you think about is what matters to you. I do not think about what is going to happen in the next episode of Heroes. Why? Because I’m one of few that doesn’t watch. I don’t watch 24 either so I don’t think about that. I think about what’s going to happen in the next Smallville though. Why? Because that matters to me.

Now if you are thinking about salvation and the things of God, then you can be sure of one thing then. It matters to you. For those who don’t think you care about such things, look and see. If you truly didn’t care about such things, you wouldn’t care to worry if you didn’t care.

The only ultimate answer is to live each life more and more trusting God and not relying on our own emotions. They will easily mislead us. We need to return to the promises of Scripture that have been given to us about salvation and not look so much at who we are but rather at who he is.

Yesterday, I wrote on our fear of the afterlife. A quote had been in my mind that I neglected to put in and so I figured I’d state it tonight and write more on the topic. C.S Lewis said that in his days as an atheist, he did not understand the idea of “Man’s search for God.” It made as much sense to talk about the mouse’s search for the cat.

In Hebrews 12, God is presented as a consuming fire. The old Mt. Sinai is safe compared to this place. In coming to the new Zion, you are not approaching a flaming mountain, but rather an entire assembly of angels waiting and the one on the throne is said to be a consuming fire. He is the one who will shake the world so that all that contradicts him will be removed. God is the consuming fire indeed. He is by no means safe.

This can make us ponder on religious expression in the past. Were a lot of the ancients really seeking God? When Abraham is called out, he’s not called out among a righteous group. He is called out as one among the pagans. It is indeed not man seeking God. It is God seeking man.

Had God not made the initiative, would there have been a Jewish nation? Doubtful. Even the philosophers missed much with their reasoning. Aristotle’s God is the type that seems to only be able to think of himself and he simply moves the world by being the object of the world’s desire. (One wonders though if man knew that that was what God was like why man would desire him.) Plato’s God is a mystery, though some think his idea of the good might have been his God. He does have an idea of a demiurge in the Timaeus.

I find this quite a powerful evidence of Christianity in fact. It seems if we were creating a god, we would not create the God of Christianity. As a single guy, for instance, I do not like the idea of a God who has me control my sexual urges and tell me that I have to wait til marriage, especially considering how much guys, and yes, that includes Christian guys, think about sex. If I was choosing a religion based on what I like, it would not be Christianity.

Why would the Jews create such a God who made demands of them? Other religions had frequent fertility festivals for instance. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob condemned them and the holy books of the Jewish people actually record their failures before this God. One wonders why a people would count a collection of books as holy if it presented them as anything but.

We find this God has revealed himself in Christ. Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost, but we are still afraid of the concept of God. Why? Because of two reasons I think. The first is that what we know of who God is. God is absolutely holy and perfect and pure and add in to that all-powerful and can do what he wants.

Secondly though is that we know who we are. We are fallen creatures. If we were totally pure and holy, we would most likely not be afraid of God. We would still hold him in awe, but would we have terror at him? I do not think so. I think terror and awe are quite different things.

When I look at myself, I see that fallenness. When I am tempted with a sin for instance, it really is a battle. I know that there is something I want or want to do but ought not to do because I am a servant of a holy God. It is nothing pleasant to go through as there are two sides looking. One seeks to please God and the other to please self. (Those two aren’t always mutually exclusive.)

When I think about God then, I realize that coming into contact with him would mean that that fallen nature will die. Unfortunately, I still have some of me, and rest assured, you do too, that wants to hold on to that. I think that if I come into contact with God, that this valuable part of me will die. I will not be able to be me without it.

The truth is the opposite, and please note I think that in my fallenness. Rationally and theologically, I know otherwise. I know that if I truly do approach God, God will not destroy me. He will destroy that which is not me.  I will not cease to be myself when I approach God. I will, in fact, become myself.

That is why I think we have a paradox in fact. We fear approaching God because we don’t in fact know as much about him as we think we do. We also fear approaching him because we don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do.  It is he who wants to make us into ourselves. We wish to pull away and become actually less than ourselves. We are constantly practicing theological suicide.

Our attempts at defining ourselves end up destroying ourselves. The only place we will find our identity is in the mind of God. It is when we are what we were created to be. Unfortunately, none of us knows what that is. It is knowledge hidden in the mind of God and so we must trust him with our sanctification. We must step off the throne and let God be God.

This means going against those sinful desires. This means letting God be God and realizing that we are not. It means surrendering control and stepping off of the throne. Our #1 desire is still the desire of Satan. We wish to be God and sit on the throne. Satan said “You shall be as God” and we are still trying to meet that desire.

In fact, it is only when we cease to become God, that we do, in essence, begin to be gods. Not in the sense that we are deity, but that we are reflections of him. The early church referred to this as perichoresis. We become that which reflects God and we become ourselves as well.

Now as I write this, there is an excitement to it, but I will also admit that there is a fear. We fear the hands of the surgeon. We know he cuts to heal, but we fear the cut anyway. We are like the patient that goes to the doctor and has to have the shot. We know that it will be temporary and we will be the better for it, but none of us really relish the thought of the needle going in us.

What do we do? Serve anyway. The Christian life involves learning to get past those desires and learn self-control. (This is mentioned as the last fruit of the Spirit, but this one seems to be abundantly lacking today.) When I am tempted with a sin and the struggle seems great, I must think of self-control. Normally a few minutes later without sinning, the temptation is gone, but for the time being, a temptation can seem too intense to resist. It is though, and we must do so.

The more we do so, the more we will become ourselves and reflect him. Draw near to God. It is not for your hurt that he wants you to draw near but your blessing.

I know someone who recently wrote something about a fear of the afterlife. It wasn’t a fear of dying so much as it was just the unknown of the afterlife. I cannot tell why exactly this person was afraid of it. I can relate to it and I can understand it. I’m not putting down the fear or anything. I’ve thought about it though and I’ve decided to write on it more with some of my own fears I’ve had about the afterlife.

The first is simply that it is the unknown. I think that is helped by learning who we trust. Consider for me my fear of water. I think one thing that makes it easier to face is that my roommate is great in the water and the recognition that when I learn to swim, I do not learn alone. I have someone with me that I can trust.

So when we are walking into the afterlife, we do not walk alone. Christ is with us every step of the way. The question might be just how much we really trust him. Do I give my roommate perfect trust now for instance  in the water? No. If I did, I’d already be learning. I have to accept that and it is one thing that motivates me to learn. He’s a great friend and I want it to be clear that I do trust him. I think of what the man said in Mark 9. “I do believe. Help me overcome my unbelief.”

We could also fear the afterlife is boring. Now to be honest, most of the descriptions I’d heard of Heaven growing up sounded boring. You sit around on clouds all day playing harps and singing. I’m sorry, but I’m not really a musical guy and that kind of thought just didn’t really get me excited about Heaven at all.

Here’s something that does get me going though! Consider taking a course on systematic theology under the apostle Paul for the rest of the afterlife! God is an infinite topic and we will always be learning new things about him so we can keep exploring that forever. I think of all the books I won’t have time to read here and realize I can spend forever in the ultimate heavenly library.

Now knowledge might not be your thing. That’s alright. Consider what you do love and think “Will I find that in Heaven?” For this, I definitely recommend Peter Kreeft’s book “Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing.”

However, we Christians have to be honest. It could be that we fear the afterlife at times because we fear coming in contact with God. That could be because we are aware of our own fallenness more and more. When we approach God in the afterlife, we cannot have any sin on us. God spends our time here sanctifying us.

This is something we don’t like. A guy does not like being made aware that he has to give up internet pornography. A girl does not like to be told that she needs to get her spending habits under control and manage money properly. A husband does not like being told that he has to put his wife before himself. A wife does not like being told that she has to submit to her husband.

We can think of any sins in our lives and if they’re a habit, one reason we do them is that we honestly enjoy them. The reason a guy watches pornography on the internet is because he enjoys pornography. Maybe in his rational side that is more in tune with Scripture, he will realize he shouldn’t enjoy it and maybe after he watches he realizes he doesn’t, but the reason he returns is that he enjoys it and he wants to.

Consider the case of people who want to give up smoking for instance. They say they want to, but they show up in the check-out line week after week buying cigarettes. Why? Ultimately, it’s because they want to. We do not sin out of necessity. We sin out of choice and we are the only ones ultimately responsible.

In our fallenness, it is natural to avoid God. We might say that we love him, but do we really? Think of the man who treats women like sex objects. Now he is not just wronging one woman. He is wronging all women. If I do something to one woman that has nothing to do with her femininity, I have insulted her. If I do something though to her that exploits her in a way because of her femininity, I have exploited femininity. I have not just wronged one woman by committing lust. I have wronged all women.

If I wrong someone else for their humanity, I have not just wronged one person. I have wronged all of humanity. Consider this then. How can a man who is exploiting women say that he is a great lover of beauty when he is wronging the image of beauty itself? He does not love beauty so much as he loves his own pleasure and is using beauty to get that. He is exploiting beauty and doing such is really a wrong against God himself. It is quite proper to say that God is beauty.

All the things we might want to avoid, God is. We should not think of properties being abstract things God has as if they existed separately from him. He is those qualities. He is holiness. He is justice. He is beauty. He is truth. He is love. Of course, he is also personal and tri-personal at that. We dare not leave that part out lest we end up with a notion of God that is not God at all.

That could be a strong reason though for fearing the afterlife. We all still cling to our little claims of deity in some way. If we didn’t, we’d never sin. We need to examine ourselves and see how we need to be more like Christ. What do we need to remove? What do we need to add?

It’s also about relinquishing control and submitting to God. I’m not talking about decision making and the will of God in the sense usually talked about. (Individual choices that are not violations of the moral law.) I am talking about the moral law itself. What do I need to do to be in accordance with it? What do I need to not do to be in accordance with it?

Rest assured of one thing also. I am saying this to myself as well. I am fallen just as you all are. Pray for me then in that as I pray for you. There are times I fear the afterlife for I know how fallen I am and the thought of coming into contact with God is frightening. The operation for removing that fallenness is never said to be painless, but the end product is guaranteed to be excellent!

Christian. I believe the fear of the afterlife is common. Be assured though that you do not enter it alone. He is with you and will be with you as you enter and forevermore after.

I was up quite late last night. I was in a voice chat dealing with a Christ-myther. Fun fun fun. For those who aren’t familiar with the position, it is not saying that Jesus didn’t do miracles or rise from the dead or even claim deity for himself, it’s saying that Jesus the man never even existed.

Folks. This is just an insane option to hold. If we deny the existence of Jesus, then we can deny pretty much all of ancient history. Of course, the burden switches quickly to the things that he did and the claims that he made and why isn’t that talked about by more people? The truth is that Jesus is really one of the most talked about figures in ancient history.

Ironically, one reason the miracle claims aren’t everywhere is because the ancient people were not gullible. When word began to spread about a Jewish rabbi who had risen from the dead and performed miracles, the average person would not fall down immediately and repent. They’d think exactly what we would think today. “Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.”

However, as I dialogued with this person, I became more and more convinced of the main problem. He was not familiar with ancient history or the way it is studied. I asked the question of which ancient works had he read. The only one I remember hearing about was the Iliad. Most of us can read that in High School. It’s good to read that, but it hardly counts as serious study making one have knowledge of ancient history.

Here are some other names to consider. Tacitus, Josephus, Plutarch, etc. Go and read the ECF to see what was being said about Jesus. Go read Pliny the Younger. Now I’ll grant I haven’t read all of these people, but I have read some of them. The point is that I took it upon myself to familiarize myself with them.

Now if you want to still have some questions, that’s fine, but learn the historical method. Unfortunately, we have too many people that are making decisions out of ignorance. This was what I was thinking last night. This person is making a foolish decision for eternity and he is making it out of ignorance.

Some of you might be thinking that that sounds like work. You’d have to go to the library or order the books and spend long hours reading them.

Yeah. And?

Folks. This is truth. If truth matters, do the research. If it doesn’t, well, you’ll have to face the consequences whatever they may be.

At least though make an informed decision. Familiarize yourself with the sources.

I’d like to talk to you all tonight about a famous passage in Plato’s work “The Republic.” That is, no doubt, his most famous work, and this is, no doubt, the most famous part of that work. I highly encourage readers to read Plato. I’m not asking you to agree with him, though I agree with many of his ideas, but I do think you can’t really consider yourself educated without engaging the great ideas of the past.

In this passage, Socrates, the main speaker, asks us to consider a cave. In this cave are prisoners who have never seen the outer world. They are chained up so that they are facing a wall. Behind them are fires and people pass by carrying different objects. The shadows of those objects are seen on the wall by the prisoners and any sounds they hear they think are coming from those objects.

One day, one prisoner is freed somehow. He turns and sees the things as they are, but is blinded by the light. He goes to the outer world and sees the world as it really is. He doesn’t want to return, but he does so anyway. Now his eyes have to get used to the shadows again, but they do. When he tries to tell his fellow prisoners about the real world, they mock him. If they could get free, they would kill him.

What is Plato’s point?

Plato would tell you that you are that prisoner. The shadows on the wall that you see are not the things themselves, which he would call the forms. The forms are the eternal things that you only see representations of here on Earth. You could have a perfect horse, table, computer, etc. However, he also spoke of justice, beauty, equality, and the good.

How is it that you know what good is or equality is? Plato would say it does not come through your senses. For him, these eternal forms exist and when you die, you see them and then you come back later on with a faint memory of the forms. Now it’s not likely that Plato believed in reincarnation, but this is just a likely story for the time being. He would simply be saying he has no better answer at the present.

One could also argue that the prisoner is Socrates. Socrates was the one who came to tell Athenians the truth about Plato’s forms and they chose to kill him and instead stick to sense-experience. If you want to know about this, read the dialogues of Plato which are the apology, Crito, and Phaedo.

By the way, Augustine took the forms and said they were eternal ideas in the mind of God and that the way we know them is that we bear the image of God and they are implicit and innate in us.

Platonism had a shaping in Christian thought for several centuries in the church fathers. Though he was a pagan, that doesn’t mean all Plato taught was false. We as Christians should engage with the ideas of him and the other great philosophers and take the truth that is in there and throw out the rest. God gave men wisdom, and it would be a shame for us to think it only dwells in Christians.

Yesterday, I wrote on living now. There is a wonder in our modern age, but that wonder sometimes makes us take what we have for granted. Today, I went to the grocery store after I got off of work. Thank God for them. Have you ever considered though how amazing it is that we have grocery stores?

I’d like you to consider what it would be like to live in the Ancient Near East. (ANE) When the Bible was being written, what was the culture like? I’m going to be focusing on food, family, and forgiveness. (Actually, the last one is sacrifices, but hey, I had two f’s so I wanted a third one.)

First off, food. Food had to be earned. Now you could buy from some marketplaces, but there wasn’t much preservation and it usually involved hunting rather than a factory making something. There was also gardening whereby you would eat the fruits of the Earth and whatever you could grow.

Jesus used many parables about farming which his audience would be familiar with. All of the people of the time knew about living from day to day with this. This is also why Jesus prayed for our daily bread. It was that kind of living for most people. Today, we can store food for weeks. Not so for them.

Family. How did that relate? Consider what an extra son was around the house. That was the muscle of the family. The son would be the heir of the household eventually and would make the decisions, but meanwhile, he’d be an extra hand around the house in order to bring about the enhancement of the family.

Now consider a daughter. A daughter would be married into another family to produce children mainly. To be a female and to be barren was a curse. This would also be “Another mouth to feed” and those mouths were indeed costly! (This is one reason I don’t believe the wars in Canaan would be able to take all survivors. Starvation would settle in.)

How about forgiveness? It’s here that we see why the sacrificial system was so relevant. We think it’s something when we give 10% of our income. Let’s see how it would be to sacrifice an animal that cost money to begin with and it had to be an animal in the best of conditions and often the firstborn.

A sheep:

Wool for the family clothing.

Food for the family.

Breeding.

Sheep were the perfect animal in fact. Everything could be used. To lose a sheep was a great loss.

How about a bull?

You lose the breeding first off.

Then, that’s also a good supply of food.

Notice these are always males. Males can impregnate multiple females so that makes them immensely valuable. One can supply a whole group of females with children.

A sacrifice was just that always. It was a sacrifice. When we read Leviticus and the other books of the OT, we should take this into account. We should realize this was the system the people lived with and they were giving up economic capital for their family that could be used by them easily for God.

Next time you’re at the grocery store, consider how blessed you are. You don’t have to hunt it, you don’t have to work the ground, you can store it long-term, it doesn’t cost that much, and you don’t have to sacrifice it on an altar.

(Btw, I’d also say that capitalist spirit comes from Christianity. It’s because of Christianity that such mass production exists today.)

I was driving the interstates of my state today and just got caught by surprise pondering what I saw. There’s an airport nearby so I see a plane flying in the air still fairly low so that I can see it slowly turning. I’m driving on an interstate but also driving under one. I see cars driving by ahead of me on these huge metal structures. All the while, I’m driving a big piece of metal. (Alright. Some plastic. I drive a Saturn.) I’m a very lightweight guy, but here I’m controlling this much weight.

There are some times that if I didn’t live in the present, I’d think I lived in the future.

I simply find it amazing what we have in our day and age. I’m taking a brief look around this area now. I am on my computer first off. It contains so much information that I cannot even fathom it. I am not a scientist or a techie. I have no clue how this stuff works, but I am amazed.

When I get done with this blog, I will move this little mouse thing and click one button and before long, people all over the world will be able to read what I have written. When in a voice chat, my voice is carried all across the world and people on the other end of a computer can hear what I have to say.

Makes you wonder what the apostle Paul would have done in evangelism with our technology today.

I see next to me a TV. Now we speak of the evils of TV, but I think there’s a wonder there. We can have images sent all over the world through that screen. Hooked up to it are my video game systems. I can push buttons on a controller and what is on the screen will correspond to what I am pushing.

As a Smallville fan, I also have a DVD player. I was just watching Monk awhile ago. I find it amazing that those little disks can contain all those images and sounds and I can put them in and I can watch something whenever I want to. The same with music CDs when putting them in a CD player.

Meanwhile, there are lights all around me. In the past, we had to light candles and any number of things to get light. Today, we no longer have to do that. I just have to turn on a switch and I can see all that is around me. There is no rubbing sticks together and having to make a fire to light up the house or even to provide heat.

How much farther I could go! I could explain what is in the kitchen. I could talk about central heat and air. I could talk about indoor plumbing in the bathroom and the ability to take a shower. I can have bookcases filled with books that are easily printed. I have my cell phone nearby also to talk to those far away.

There are times I wonder why I wasn’t born in biblical times. I think of some advantages. People seemed more dedicated then. Being a guy, I would have been married many years ago and would probably have a few kids. There was much more discussion I think on religious matters.

Yet I have to look and think that God put me in this time and place for a reason and made me who I am for a reason. He didn’t make a mistake and say, “Ah. He should have existed 2,000 years ago.” I exist now for a reason. The question really is not “What would Paul do in our day and age.” That can motivate us, but the real question is “What are we going to do with it?”

We’ve been given a goldmine chance. We know more about things than anyone else ever has. We live in the best time thus far I think to spread the gospel. Not only that, we are discovering more and more wonder in being able to see distant galaxies and see inside the cell.

Enjoy it, but use it wisely. You’re here now for a reason.