One of the most precious sayings of America is that we believe "all men are created equal." I know the reverence we hold this saying in, but I think (As C. S. Lewis has kindly informed me) that it is a legal fiction, useful only for the courts.

When we think about it, do we really believe all men are created equal? Is everybody capable of being a star quarterback? Can everbody swim like Michael Phelps? Can we all dance? Sing? Are all of us just as good looking as the actors we watch on the big screen? No.

But then again, wouldn't life be very, very boring if we all were superbly good looking, amazingly athletic and had the brain of Einstein? Yes! I think God was wise enough to create a world in which everybody was different. Our personalities and skills make for an interesting world where we can meet people similar and different from us. Just imagine, if everybook had the same characters, same plot line, same setting, and same resolution, we'd be bored out of our minds! Same with people, since we are different, we don't get bored.

Aren't we all grateful to the wisdom of the One who created us different?

I was reading a great C. S. Lewis book the other day. The title of which is God in the Dock. This book is a collection of essays by "Jack" Lewis and is divided into three parts. I recently made it to the third part and am struck at the brilliancy of the essays.

The essay that really grabbed my attention was on "First and Second Things" and discussed the paradox that if you pursue something secondary for its own sake, you end up losing the secondary "thing" you were pursuing. He used the example of the literature and the arts. He said it wasn't until the Romantics that art and literature were pursued for their own sake. Before then, the great music of Mozart, the works of Shakespeare, and the art of Da Vinci were pursued for a patron, for God, or to entertain the common man.

But "it was only in the nineteenth century that we became aware of the full dignity of art. We began to 'take it seriously'....But the result seems to have beena dislocation of the aesthetic life in which little is left for us but high-minded works which fewer and fewer people want to read or hear or see, and 'popular' works of which bothe those who make them and those who enjoy them are half ashamed....by valuing too highly a real, but subordinate good, we have come near to losing that good itself." (God In The Dock, p.280)

This isn't just for the arts though, a man who makes his girlfriend his entire universe, what happens when he has nothing to do but contemplate her? He (not only) loses his human dignity but also loses the joy he has in her. A "significant other" is a good thing to have, but when it becomes the sole center of our lives, we come too near to losing that good thing.

You can't get secondary things by placing them first, you can only get them by putting first things first. But this raises the question, what are all these goods secondary to?

Infinity

Today, I was mock debating myself on the origin of the universe, and I came upon the question "how can time not have a beginning?"

The main point of this argument was to show time cannot progress if there is no beginning, but then I thought about the closest infinite parallel, numbers. We can progress from 1 to 2 to 3 and so on, so why can't we progress in time?

At this time my brain began to smart.

Then my question changed to, in our reality do we have anything actually infinite? For the sake of the argument, we'll say no. We don't have an infinite number of atoms, we just have a very large number of atoms. So if numbers (of things) in our physical reality aren't infinite, than can time (which is part of our reality) be infinite? You may say "but numbers are infinite, you can keep counting forever!" And I say that it is all hypothetical. Numbers to infinity are a concept, not a reality, in the same way a straight line or a perfect circle are concepts. In our reality they don't actually exist. So, in physical time-space reality, infinity doesn't exist, so there had to be a beginning, and then what started it all? Who was the first cause? At this time, we must look beyond this silly little argument and to religion...(hint: Christianity)

Knowledge

I was thinking the other day about how many different types of knowledge there were.

1. Common Sense. This is knowledge gained from experience, observation, or instinct. "Don't touch hot things" and "don't insult someone bigger than you" are prime examples. This isn't things you necessarily need to be taught, and they don't teach it in school.

2. Book learning. This is knowledge learned in school. 2+2=4, Ethiopia is an African country. Knowledge that may or may not do you good. Basically, knowledge that helps you score high on standardized tests and get into college.

3. Wisdom, or application of knowledge. This is separate from common sense because people with common sense may not always have wisdom. This is "smarts" that aid you in discernment and in difficult choices.

4. Observation. This aspect of smartness can be hard to teach. This is body language, tonal reasponse etc. that helps you determine or know more about people or things without being told.

I don't know if these are all the forms, but 4 was all I could come up with.

Let it Go

Sometimes I wonder how much we Christians hold onto the world and how little we hold on to Christ. We seem to sit on the fence and try to have one foot on either side. Elijah told the Israelites "How long will you go limping between two different opinions? I the LORD is God, follow Him but if Baal, then follow him."

How can we follow God if we are continually holding on to the world? We can't, and Elijah said it's better if you are fully in the world than if you are continually putting one foot on the worlds side, then one foot on Christianity's side.

Think on that for a moment, and how scary that thought is. Do you really want to sit on the fence?

I was reading a book recently called Walking on Water. It is written by a Christian author who was trying to help Christian artists, musicians etc. to find creativity. Unfortunately, the book was filled with hermeneutical misconceptions. Too many, that it made me seriously question her point.

She compares the Christian with Mary, the mother of Jesus. Her comparison makes several major errors. 1) It spiritualizes the text. Mary's virgin pregnancy was a one time event in history. Not written as an allegory, but as a narrative. Nothing in the passage indicates we are to respond to creative ideas in the same way that Mary responded to carrying Christ. There is no comparison between Christ and our puny little creative works. 2) It draws application where no application is hinted or desired. As I said before, this is a narration of an event in history. Only once was there a virgin birth, only once was the child the Lord of all Creation.

Several other errors also were found, though many would disagree. God doesn't speak creative works into our hearts, we draw them out of ourselves. God communicates no longer through speaking to one's heart, he communicates through his eternal word, the Bible.

The times in the Bible God audibly speaks are rare, to say the least, also, if we get creative juices from God, then how come many (or most) secular creators better acknowledged as great than Christian creators?

Anyways, I'll probably end up posting more thoughts like these as I read through this book. Tata for now!

Opposites

This is an interesting blog post partly because it confuses me.

I'm preparing to see if I can have laser eye surgery, and in order to do that I need to go off of the contacts I had been wearing. For a couple days everything was blurry, then when I put on contacts yesterday, everything was super clear.

Then I got to thinking, would we know what blurry is if we didn't know what clear was?

To make this bigger, can we say that there would be no good if there were no evil? How can we believe that there is good, if we believe that there is no evil?

I don't even know, so I'll have to do research.