The Way of Humanity

All history is mans attempt to save himself from discomfort. If this be true then salvation for most of humanity means total comfort or mindless bliss. Throughout history their have been four primary methods humans have used to attain this salvation. 

I. Religion (god exists and we should try to find bliss in the supernatural)

Supporters: Judiams, Christianity, Islam, paganism  

II. Humanism (salvation comes through creating the "superman" who will conquer poverty, war, disease through technology and education)

Supporters: Platonism, Fascism, Communism, Utopianism  

III. Naturalism (Bliss can be found in conforming to nature, to work with and benefit that which is growing around you)

Supporters: Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Naturalism. 

IV. Nihilism  (salvation is nothing, humanity is nothing, nothing is nothing and killing my girlfriend is no different then bringing her flower…or at least you can’t prove that its not.  

Supporters: Existentialism, Postmodernism

     Western history has progressed through these phases with minor exceptions and set backs in the following order, Religion > Humanism > Naturalism > Nihilism. I view this progression as one of decline. Humanity sought to find happiness in various supernatural deities but the gods were found to demanding and unsatisfactory, so we declined to seeking salvation in ourselves. When we tried to find happiness in jumanity it proved futile. Not only couldn’t we make ourselves happy but we also couldn’t even understand why we were unhappy in the first place. Once you remove the supernatural from a worldview it is utterly impossible to give any sort of rational answer for were we came from and why we are the way we are. Hence the widespread skepticism of today. Nature could not satisfy our lust for pleasure either…it was too cruel...to unfeeling for us so we gave it up. Now, we know that we know nothing and gain a sick sense of satisfaction from knowing that we know nothing.. School teaches us that when nothing is everything, then anything is relative and the best way live is by the social norms. In the common tongue this means, “be as happy as you can by hurting as few people as you can.”

     This is where we are today, or at least where much of the world is today. It’s mindset which represents the grounds at the bottom of the coffee cup or the crust of a piece of pizza  and I cringe thinking about where humanity might digress to from here. We have  a self destructive mentality because it has ceased to believe that anything ought to be achieved or changed. The results of living a worldview like this will bring about a life much like the life of a star. Stars emit energy through nuclear fusion. They convert their own innards into energy which emits itself in light and heat. Stars bust when they have nothing left to fuse and they collapse because they have literally eaten themselves from the inside out.  A worldview that is totally self focused seeks salvation from itself and once the person has exhausted all their resources they either give up or explode. Usually this explosion really hurts everyone, not just the person exploding. Is this not where we live? Haven’t most of us suffered or been hurt by some person who has lived this way, found it impossible and exploded leaving scars, broken relationships and hurt feelings?

 

     So what is the answer? It is not in fixing the worldview; it rests in fixing the desire. Throughout history man has tried every conceivable invention to get comfort but all have failed. The problem is not in the method the problem is in the purpose. Humanity is lost and the world is spiraling into chaos because comfort is not what we were meant to pursue. Man was lost from the start and to find true anything we must go back to the Beginning. It is in the council chambers of God where creation was planned in which we find true meaning. We don’t find happiness or comfort by pursuing happiness as humanity has done throughout all of history. We find true comfort when we pursue God and only a life spent in complete slavery to Him can we ever find rest. 

 

I’ve digressed significantly from my original point. Essentially this post is meant to say that all of history has been mans attempt at happiness. Our desire for happiness has taken society as a whole further and further away from God. The common ideas of toleration, and relative truth popular today represent the furthest mainstream philosophical  step away from God history has yet seen. Comment with disagreements because this is mostly conjecture based on my understanding of history.

Nobility

I apologize very much for not blogging recently. I'm working on some posts, one about Predestination and another about the value system of a Christian, both are sitting half written on my desk upstairs and they need only an afternoon of solid work to be completed. Because I don't want to feel so guilty for not posting and because I don't want all my readers to leave, I will post just to give you something to think about. Hopefully this will produce more then simply an, "oh that's cute" which too often occurs in this bleak society. Have fun with this one. :)


True worth is in being, not seeming,—
In doing, each day that goes by,
Some little good—not in dreaming
Of great things to do by and by.
For whatever men say in their blindness,
And spite of the fancies of youth,

There's nothing so kingly as kindness,
And nothing so royal as truth.
We get back our mete as we measure—
We cannot do wrong and feel right,
Nor can we give pain and gain pleasure,
For justice avenges each slight.
The air for the wing of the sparrow,
The bush for the robin and wren,
But always the path that is narrow
And straight, for the children of men.

'Tis not in the pages of story
The heart of its ills to beguile,
Though he who makes courtship to glory
Gives all that he hath for her smile.
For when from her heights he has won her,
Alas! it is only to prove
That nothing's so sacred as honor,
And nothing so loyal as love!

We cannot make bargains for blisses,
Nor catch them like fishes in nets;
And sometimes the thing our life misses
Helps more than the thing which it gets.
For good lieth not in pursuing,
Nor gaining of great nor of small,
But just in the doing, and doing
As we would be done by, is all.


Through envy, through malice, through hating,
Against the world, ,early and late.
No jot of our courage abating
Our part is to work and to wait
And slight is the sting of his trouble
Whose winnings are less than his worth.
For he who is honest is noble
Whatever his fortunes or birth.

Flirting

"Flirting is a cheap way to make a friendship. It makes you feel closer to a person faster but the relationship is not as deep as a real friendship built upon shared experience and good conversation. So its a faster way to make friends and a quicker way to lose them. It has its purpose but its purpose is not making friends"

This is my niece and she's about the coolest niece I've ever had.

     The point of this post is not to make some sort of moral judgment on the actions which most people associate with flirting. Things such as touching, teasing and other forms of non intentional, pleasure based interaction are not what troubles me. All those things have their place and so can be used either in that place and so be “right” or out of place and so be “wrong. The actions themselves are just actions and to judge them would be impossible. I leave those decisions to God and the person to work out between themselves. What I would like to do is look past those physical actions and see inside the heart problem that leads to flirting and then further to more undesirable ends. So lets begin at the beginning, a logical place to start.  

     God desire or what God pleases is always good. Morality is subject to God’s desires and so morality, right and wrong, good and evil are as changeable as the desires of God.. Goodness is always what God likes and evil is always what God dislikes. Mathematically this means. Goodness = God’s pleasure. Evil = That which angers God

     Another fact is that we are made in God’s image that means we have many of the same traits of God. One of the most powerful traits which we have from that image is to want what pleases us. God wants what pleases Him but He is wise enough to know what is helpful to Himself and what isn’t. We have inherited this desire to please ourselves but we haven’t inherited the wisdom which is necessary to satisfy it. This is why God tells us to trust Him, so that He can orchestrate what is best for us, which is the same as what pleases Him which as the same as good. That may be hard to follow, but basically I’m saying  that humans have a natural desire to do what is best for themselves, this desire we inherited from the image of God BUT because of the fall we have forgotten that what is best for ourselves is actually to do what God says. This is the reason we have such a great disturbance in the world. We have billions of people trying to satisfy this healthy desire but they are lacking the necessary wisdom and humility which tells us to submit to God.

     With billions of people not satisfying their primary desire it is natural to assume that problematic confusion and conflict would arise. The confusion and conflict leads to people being lost, they lose track of themselves, their purpose, their origin and their destiny. Without the fundamental questions of life being answered people wander lost in a world full of danger. Now people have a desire to do what is best for themselves but without knowing who they, why they are here, or where they are going they have lost all ability to know what is actually best for them. Imagine a runner in a race who doesn’t know the start line or the end line. Imagine that then add to it the fact that the runner thinks he’s a swimmer. This person will surely not win the race. This is exactly the state of most people today and even many Christians who “know” the answers but never realized their significance are in the same quandary. So then the majority of people are merely seeking what is most pleasing to themselves. This is because we have a desire which tells us to seek what’s best for us and we inhabit a culture and a society that tells us that what is best for us is what is pleasing to us the majority of people are merely seeking what is pleasing to themselves. Hopefully you understand a bit more about current human nature. With this understanding we can now understand flirting.

 

     To flirt means to take something serious and play with it. In human relationships it means to make light of a relationship basically to play with a person.  Flirting is simply a word which people associate with certain actions, playful actions. These actions are either meant as seductive or loving depending on your motive. This is why I can not say what most people call flirting is right or wrong. Most people can’t tell the different between a friend who uses flirting to cheer someone up out of love and a person who merely wants attention or someone to touch them and uses flirting as a seductive tool. It is not right to judge action rather we must judge motive. The motives for flirting are rarely something someone else can figure out from the outside, its something internal. It’s a question of whether you would be able to look God in the eye and say I did what I did out of love for you.  

     So the point is not to say “flirting is wrong” but it‘s to understand why people flirt. If you flirt because you are the sort of person I described earlier, one who does not know himself and just wants purpose and meaning then not merely flirting but everything you are doing is wrong and damaging to yourself, as well as those around you. If you are a Christian, who knows your identity in Christ and knows himself well enough to know how to love others by loving Christ then you can flirt, just as long as it is helping the person you are doing it with.  

All things are lawful for me," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be enslaved by anything

Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.

    Application:  Let us evaluate ourselves and seek God’s mercy. Most people are so caught up in the habit of flirting or of playing with serious things that they don’t even realize what they are doing or why they do it. This is another problem which comes from not knowing ourselves and from not practicing intentional self evaluation. Comments are much appreciated. I’m new to a world where flirting is common and most of what I write is based on thinking not experience.