Tuesday, June 7, 2011

The Most Popular Mystery


Sin is the greatest mystery. Everyone loves mysteries but sin is particularly unique. Sin is the only mystery which nobody has ever resolved. Nobody has gone into sin and come back again satisfied. This makes the pursuit of sin all the more tempting. Sin is easy and promises satisfaction so people assume you can find satisfaction here if you just do it properly. It doesn't make sense, it isn't rational but because nobody has even done it people are ever willing to hrl themselves into the dark abyss simply because In our society mysterious always have some form of end to them, they are never entirely meaningless. They may not end happily but they are resolved somehow. Sin however is never resolved, Christians know that sin is meaninglessness. Sin is the antithesis of God so to the degree that God is purposeful and does what he does with an intent so sin, as God's opposite, is entirely purposeless and never comes to a conclusion. This makes it all the more mysterious and all the more tempting for humans who are born with a good desire to not settle for the mundane.


I think more people act in sin then in righteousness because righteousness has already been lived and found satisfying. People are not interested in doing what has already been done, the want something easy that will allow them to look and feel great without the help of anyone else. Sin happens to be easy but it is also new and individual for each person. It is "comfortable" for a time and gives a brief sense meaning which nothing else can give. You become your own master and live "free". Sin loves to promise things it can't provide. It knows exactly what each human wants and extends the mystery to that specific part of each individual. So the mystery of sin is extremely tempting because it is like no other mystery on earth. For someone to embrace the mystery they must be willing to live a double life. Which is what most people do. They can live mostly rational in what they physically do and yet they allow their minds to wander far beyond reality into realms beyond healthy curiosity, realms in which anything is possible. Where they can be good and bad, where ends justify the means, where God can create a stone he can not lift, where love is cheap and can be disregarded like clothing. Such thoughts are indeed mysterious and tempting as well yet they go beyond the realm of reality and rational into a world where God does not exist and "every man does as is right in his own eyes"


For someone to try to resolve the mystery they must bid farewell to reason and live life based on experience. Their sin will allow them to experience an adrenaline rush and for a moment they rise above the clouds and feel their soul pricked with something resembling meaning. Our culture pushes us in the direction of sin by allowing the majority of the mass media to only ever talk about the brief moment of meaning. They do not talk about the heart wrenching crunch as that meaning is torn from every sinner as they plunge back to earth left with only a vain memory of what was. The mass mediea does not talk about the broken men and woman who spend their lives regretting decisions they have made or even worse the people who live sad and depressed without ever realizing that their current feelings are the result of past decisions. We never hear the screams or cries of pain when reality hits the people who chose to pursue a promise of happiness rather then what makes sense and for those who pursue what makes sense there may not be an individual world where you get to choose what is right, but rather you will find beauty in the perfect symmetry of the world which exists.

Friday, June 3, 2011

"Truth>feeling" or "Feeling Alone"


Something I find very sad is peoples who base too much on their feelings. This is sad because it is very silly and makes people suffer a great deal. The trouble is, feelings don’t last and the person who acts mostly or solely on their feelings will never be able to live consistently. in accordance with any sort of absolute standard. They will never have any sure to believe or trust in. They will live in a continual state of angst even if they don't know why. Acting on feelings is the more lazy approach to life which is why its so popular. People just act on how they feel which leads to relativism and increased license.

Lets compare that to truth and we’ll find that truth is far better. If truth exists then it rises above feelings.Truth is something outside of a person a standard to which the person must live or suffer the consequences of being a liar. If there is such a thing as an absolute truth which is true for everyone at all times in all circumstances then everyone must either conform to that truth or be willing to call themselves a liar and relativist and they must cease to judge anyone for any action which they simply feel is wrong. I believe an absolute truth does exist If an absolute truth outside of my own personal morality did not exist then life would cease to make sense.If an absolute truth did not exist I could just as easily hit an old lady as I could help her across the street and you could no more condemn a man for telling a lie then you could praise a man for being honest. Without an absolute truth everything would be like our feelings, relative, illogical, contradictory and unrealistic. You might as well try to imagine a world in which 2+2=5.

Because a truth does exist humans can grasp that truth and so find a logical motivation for living well even when their feelings tell them to quit. Everyone has days, weeks, months and sometimes years when their feelings tell them to give up, to live selfishly and just be lazy. People in those circumstances can do one of three things. 1.They can choose to be controlled by their feelings and live illogical selfish lives. These are the sorts of people who we see all around us, who do not know what they believe and lack motivation to figure out what they believe. 2. They can form an illogical worldview which motivates them to not be lazy but at some point it fails to explain reality. These sorts of people are the ones who stand very strongly for something but hardly know why they stand for it. or 3, They can seek and embrace a logical view of the world which will give them motivation to live well regardless of what their feelings say and in addition will allow them to have intellectual integrity, which means their intellect will be consistent with reality. These people are the truth seeking Christians who have realized that there is something more important then themselves, Christians who have realized the their own feelings are irrelevant not only to their purpose but also to how they live their lives. God never called anyone to feel a certain way he calls people to live a certain way. So the point is not that feelings are wrong or bad but only that feelings are unhelpful when it comes to deciding how we live our lives. I'm not saying we should try to kill every feeling but we must base our decisions on truth which is not subject to change. If we don't do this and choose to live based on our feelings or really anything else which is subject to change then we fall into the trap of relativism. Feelings ought to be either an energy boost which helps us along in our lives or a barrier to impede us from our goal they MUST NOT dictate our goals for us. That is in essence the problem people allow their feelings to tell them who they are and how to act. We must use our God given intellect to rise above our feelings and use them as the tool they were designed to be.


I'm not entirely sure how to end this. I think the point is clear, if its not then comment and tell me please. One thing before you go, please, please please do not misunderstand this post. I am not saying that feelings are bad. If you think I said that reread the post and realize I did not say that. Oh and the pictures do not relate to anything. They are just cool pictures that I've taken of my yard this summer.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Can An All Powerful God Create A Stone He Can Not Lift?

I wrote this essay today about this question and why I find it so frustrating.


The question above and others like it are very troubling to me for two reasons, not because it is difficult to answer but because fewer and fewer people seem capable of answering and secondly that this question exists at all as a serious question. This question ought to be in elementary logic courses not in the council chambers and debating halls of universities. The fact that this question exists at all speaks of a deeper intellectual problem festering in the heart and mind of our present culture. In this essay I hope to do two things. First I will answer the question above. Second I shall try to explain the heart issue which has led to this question being asked.

To address the first issue. How to answer above question? The question itself has no answer, at least not as far as a yes/no answer is concerned. The question can not be answered with a yes or no simply because the question itself is nonsensical. Consider yourself as a parents with a sweet innocent six year old girl and she comes up to you and asks if it is possible for Jasmine to have married Jafar? Or Belle to have married Gaston? Or any other of the Disney princesses to have married the villains in their various stories? In one sense you could say yes because the princesses do have a will and so technically it is possible to imagine such movies in which princesses are never rescued and fall in love with their tormentors.

However, this answer would entirely ruin your child's innocence because such a movie would destroy what a Disney movie is. It would destroy the reality which makes Disney movies so popular. Our imaginations are very powerful and so they can conceive of such a hypothetical situation but the moment we think it actually possible we have lost the Disney movie and find ourselves in a movie where nothing is certain and the ideas of good and bad, happy ending and sad ending are entirely out of proportion without any foundation to rest on.

In the same way we could imagine a world in which God would create a stone he can not lift but to believe so would go beyond the realm of the thinkable into the realm of imaginary. "What!" you say, "can't God do anything?" The answer is “no”. God is God and so by definition he can not be not God. He can not do anything. He is limited to Himself who is infinite but He is also real. He can only act within the infiniteness of reality. He can not make 2+2=7 because he can not go beyond the laws of reality which He is. He is not governed by them but is them himself and these laws encompass and exceed the real things of our world.

The problem is actually not a problem with God it is a problem with language. The primary question takes advantage of a non perfect language and uses it to create a nonsensical scenario in which God is subject to the word “all powerful”. We think all-powerful and think it means capable of doing all things when in reality all powerful means having power of all real things. Just because God is all powerful does not mean he can do anythin. God is limited to the realms of truth, reality and goodness. So He is all powerful over anything existent, anything that is real. He can not be boxed into a hypothetical situation which uses finite words trying to describe an infinite God and be expected to perform within a fake situation according to real rules.

So the original question is a bad question because to answer it one must go beyond the realm of reality in which God does not exist where only darkness and vain imagining are. The question assumes a false premise. It assumes all powerful means capable of doing anything our fallen mind can conceive of doing rather then what, “all powerful” really means, “which is to have supreme authority over all reality.” It is like trying to ask the worlds most renowned surgeon if he could perform a complicated brain surgery on a person who has a brain in his foot. Such a question is absurd. Does the doctor have the skill to do such a surgery? Yes, in theory but to take him outside of the realm of reality and still force him to follow the real rules of surgery is inconceivable. Since God is truth and reality itself you can not try to have God act in accordance to Himself in a situation where reality doesn’t apply. God can not create something greater then himself because then he would cease to be God. This does not mean God is not “all powerful” it simply means that God functions inside the realms of truth, reality and goodness.


Since this is already way too long I'll save the other half of the essay for some time later. Hope this helped clear up something. Comments are much appreciated.