Crazy Old Tubs

It is easy enough to remove the particular kinds of graft or bullying that go on under the present system: but as long as men are twisters or bullies they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new system. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity p. 73)

When I read this sentence the other day, I thought it was a perfect insight into the world we live in today. However, I don't think C.S. Lewis peered into the future of America or was making any kind of prediction; all he was doing was observing the world exactly how it was and is. All throughout history humanity has acted as if outward morality and legislation is the most important, if not the only, thing we need to think about, and as if merely telling (or screaming at) people what to do will necessarily make everything okay.

We see that in the Pharisees of Jesus' day. These men were the most pious men in all of Jewish culture. They obeyed all the laws and had Scripture memorized. Their legislation was intense and demanding, and they followed it perfectly. But all of this was fully and completely focused on the outside.

Inwardly, they were extremely prideful in their piety and very judgmental of everyone who wasn't as good as them (in their eyes, everybody). They followed the letter of the law about as well as a person could, but not the spirit of it. They thought nothing of the mercy of God; in their eyes, they didn't need it. Jesus likened them to "whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness" (Matthew 23:27 ESV). Their laws did nothing to save them, and it did nothing to make them any better, even though in their eyes it did.

Things haven't changed much.

Nowadays you see people on both sides trying to legislate morality, thinking that fixing the system will fix society as a whole. Now, I'm all for the law following what is truly right, and I fully believe that our country needs a lot of legislative repair. But is that all we need? We see people on both sides screaming and spewing hatred and insults towards the other side for not being good, upstanding people like them, revealing the ugliness within themselves by doing so. We see people trying to make the law right, apparently believing that once the law is right, everyone will fall into place, obey it, and live with it.

It seems to me like the most important thing hasn't been addressed in the public square: the changing of hearts. As Lewis said, if people's hearts aren't changed, they will find ways to commit the same evils under a new system that they committed under the old. But if their hearts are changed, they will work towards this good system and eventually try to put it in place.

The only way to create true, lasting change is not to fix or replace the system. I agree our system needs to be fixed. But it will not be fixed in a lasting way unless the hearts of those living under that system are fixed first.

Learnings in America

Not too long ago I saw a political ad from someone whose name will not be mentioned here. That's not because I don't want to discredit him or her. It's because I honestly don't remember who it was or what position he or she was running for. All I know is that this person was running for a Washington position of some kind (I think). Apparently identity wasn't very important to me at the time, because I don't even remember what his or her gender or political affiliation were.

What I do remember, and what I'll be talking about in this post, is one promise relating to education in the future. This person promised to ensure that education would emphasize science, mathematics, and technology because that's the way of the future.

Now, I can agree with that much. I do believe that our children will need knowledge of science, mathematics, and technology because technology in particular will only increase in the future, barring some catastrophe that destroys it all and sends us back into Biblical times. However, I would agree with it more if I believed it wouldn't result in other things being less emphasized - or worse, excluded altogether - from our children's education.

I'm talking in particular about language, writing, and logic. These are the classes that teach people how to comprehend, how to think, and how to communicate.

What am I doing right now? I'm writing about an issue I believe in. I'm definitely not perfect at it, but still. Without the English classes I took in high school and college, I wouldn't be able to. If my parents and grandparents hadn't taught me how to read, I wouldn't be typing this up right now. And without logic and reason, how can we truly know and understand anything?

Sadly though, these are things that already seem to be getting phased out in education, at least in my opinion. According to this data, 14% of American adults (that's 32 million) can't read. 19% of high school graduates can't read either. These are students coming out of an institution claiming to teach our children what they need to know to go out into the world. Apparently they're not actually doing their jobs.

Then there is college. Colleges used to be about getting an education. Colleges today still claim to teach people how to think. Unfortunately, they leave out the part where they actually teach people how to think like them. Most of them are nothing more than indoctrination schools and job training nowadays (job training isn't so bad though).

Then there is grad school. So many people are in grad school that shouldn't be. I read an article earlier this year written by a guy named Ed Dante. He's a writer who many students - college and grad school students - have paid to write their papers for them. He quoted some correspondence between him and a grad school business student in this article: "You did me business ethics propsal for me I need propsal got approved pls can you will write me paper?" "where u are can you get my messages? Please I pay a lot and dont have ao to faile I strated to get very worry." "thanx so much for uhelp ican going to graduate to now". With golden quotes like those coming from graduate school students, it's no wonder our society is heading down the can.

But are reading and writing skills really that important? They have been in virtually every job I've ever had, and those jobs had nothing to do with essays. From reading and comprehending instructions in e-mail to knowing how to find information and connections buried in paperwork and even acting as a scribe for a man who couldn't type due to a disability, I've had to know how to read, understand, comprehend, and write to survive and not get fired.

Also, and this is especially true for you Christians who read my blog, how can we expect our children to be able to comprehend their Bibles, to truly know Jesus, without the ability to read? Of course they learn from us, but eventually they'll be out on their own. We can teach them for about twenty years, but the remaining sixty or so they'll be out in the world, making their own choices. Without an ability to read the Bible, how can they discern truth from lies? What's preventing them from falling into deep and dark heresy, or some place that claims to be, but is not actually, a church?

In fact (and I'm back to including non-Christian folk in the discussion), without an ability to read, think, and comprehend truth, how can we expect the next generation to be any better than us? It's this blogger's opinion that the general inability to think in our society is at least part of the cause of most of the problems we face in society today. Rather than engage in rational discussion, people just angrily yell at one another, trying to be louder than the other guy. How can anything get done in a lasting way with that "method"?

So, yes, I agree that we need to teach our children science, math, and technology because that is the way of the future. We are surrounded by the kind of technology that Leonardo da Vinci (who was also an engineer as well as a painter and pretty much everything else that everyone else has ever been) could have only dreamed of. However, we also need to teach our children how to read and how to think as well rather than lessen or eliminate those essential abilities. We cannot expect the next generation to be any better than ours unless they can think, reason, and understand truth. So much of our culture is enveloped in ideas that make no logical sense whatsoever (i.e. relativism, the idea that truth can be true for one person but false for another at the same time) because people don't think them through. That lack of thinking can only lead to worse things in the future.

Some Thoughts on the End Times

Being that it is 2012, someone may wonder if this post is about the whole December 21, 2012 doomsday prophecy. I assure you that is not the case. That is based on pagan prophecies that have no basis in Scripture, so I don't buy it. Then again, maybe Christ will return that day. But as the Bible is silent on the issue, we shouldn't buy into sensationalistic prophecies. However, I will say this post is a bit of a ramble and rant. You have been warned.

Anyway, I've been thinking and studying a bit on the end times (which Sarrah once corrected me by saying "It's not the end, it's the beginning). Mainly, I've been looking into the differing viewpoints on how it will happen. I've come to the realization that how you look at eschatology (the study of the end) affects how you interpret the Bible as a whole, so I feel like its important, if for no other reason than to see the rest of Scripture correctly.

I think most people know of the most popular view: the church will be raptured off the earth, the world will undergo a seven-year tribulation period, then Jesus will return and establish his kingdom on earth. I'm not entirely certain how this became the most popular view, because it's fairly recent compared to other views.

Similar to that one is the view that the rapture will occur after the seven-year tribulation, or perhaps in the middle of it.

A different view, one that I've found to be pretty convincing, is a view called preterism. Preterists believe that most of the prophecies of Revelation have already taken place. Rather than taking place thousands of years after they were written, they happened soon after. In this view, these visions aren't about a seven-year tribulation that ushers in the end of our world and the beginning of a new one. They are about the judgment that came with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and, later, the fall of the Roman Empire. This view hinges on the belief that Revelation, rather than being written in the late 90s as is the popular belief, was written shortly before AD 70.

Someone who holds that point of view could have one of two different ideas of what the millennium of Revelation represents. Some people believe it to be a symbol of the time between Jesus' first and second comings. Others see it as a future era of peace after the church has successfully spread the gospel through the world and, essentially, made it a Christian world.

But this post isn't about arguing for or against a particular viewpoint. It's really just me thinking about them.

I don't know how often I read people saying "The end is nigh" on the Internet because of bad things happening around the world. Now, if the seven-year tribulation idea is true, I could see this as being possible given the current state of the world. The only problem with that, however, is that bad things have always happened around the world.

In that general vein, I hear the main argument against preterism being that the world doesn't seem to be getting any better. If anything, it looks worse and worse for the Christian cause every day. But does it have to be that our generation has to get better? Couldn't a few more generations go by while the world changes before it starts to get better? Doesn't the world change all the time? In my opinion, in order for the preterist view with the future era of peace to be true, a long time would have to pass between now and then. Why isn't that possible? Does our generation have to be the last one?

I guess that's the problem. Every generation since Jesus' ascension has thought the end was coming in its lifetime. So far, every generation has either been wrong or unproved yet. Who's to say it will be ours? It could be our children's. Or our grandchildren's. It could be several centuries from now. On the other hand, we don't know when Jesus will return. He very well could return tomorrow.

I guess my opinion is this: just because the world seems bad now doesn't mean the end is happening. Since Jesus' ascension, humanity has survived the Roman Empire, the dark ages, the corruption of the Roman Catholic church, the Crusades, two World Wars, political upheavals, and the fall of kingdoms and empires, and we're still here. Every generation in those times thought theirs was the last generation due to bad things happening. They were wrong. Nowadays, it seems like the main "evidence" most people present is that we have a socialist president, our economy sucks, our country is at war, we give abortions, and Islam is spreading. Three are purely focused on America (which, contrary to popular belief, is not the whole world). The other two have been going on for centuries. Times have been worse. Right now, the world is nowhere close to how bad it would have to be to honestly be called the worst tribulation in history.

Then there are the people who seem to think that if America ends, the world is coming to an end and Jesus will return any second. But in reality, if America ends, it does not necessarily mean the end is nigh. America is not the world. It is one country with a finite lifespan like every other great nation that has ever existed before now. That lifespan could be millennia. It could be a few years. Unless Jesus does return first, America will eventually fall. I hate to say that, but it's the natural course of life for human governments.

I don't know. I guess I've just been somewhat annoyed by a lot of weird end times "prophecies" and people being so sure that our generation will be the end. The point is that we don't know. We can't really know for sure when it will happen. Anything we can know about the end must be based on true, Biblical information and real, historical context.

The Treasury Had a Fake Coin

Yesterday I discovered (well, really more like witnessed) how someone, even when only using the Bible, can make some rather interesting mistakes. I also learned not to rely too heavily on man, although there are many very reliable men we can learn from. I also (re)learned the importance of context.

I've been going through The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, a giant book of about 500,000 cross references. I found myself in Genesis 1:2 (it's been slow going, but Lord willing I have the rest of my life to finish). That verse is as follows: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters" (ESV). Alongside the word "Spirit," there was a reference to Job 26:14:

Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways,
and how small a whisper do we hear of him!
But the thunder of his power who can understand?

Do you see any reference to the Spirit in there? I didn't. I looked up a few words in the Srong's Concordance I had handy and found nothing in the original Hebrew. I finally wrote down that I had no idea why there was a reference to this verse here and speculated that maybe the reference to "whisper" had something to do with the Spirit, or how the Spirit has thundering power or something.

Knowing that The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge was based off of a commentary, I decided to find out which one. It turned out to be the Rev. Thomas Scott's Commentary on the Whole Bible. Surprisingly, however, I couldn't find it anywhere, at least not the Old Testament portion of it. I kept finding Matthew Henry's commentary though, and I finally decided to check it out. I skimmed through it to find the verse references in the section about Genesis 1:2-3 and I found a reference to this verse:

By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent. (Job 26:13 KJV)

One verse earlier. One verse earlier. Had I only looked one verse earlier I probably would have caught it. The Treasury referred to Job 26:14. The real reference was probably supposed to be Job 26:13. I looked up the ESV version, which replaces the word "wind" for "spirit," but the Bible regularly refers to the Spirit as a wind, so I probably would have caught that reference too.

This is supposed to be a corrected version of this. But I can't really blame them. When you're trying to sell a product, do you really have time to go through 500,000 cross references?

Note to self: next time, if I find a discrepancy like this, look around. It may be a mistake.

Despair

There aren't many behaviors and actions that people in the world engage in that really shock me anymore. I'm only 23, so I'm sure I'll eventually eat those words, but right now I, like all early-mid-twenty-somethings, feel like I've seen the idea of there being nothing new under the sun thoroughly enough, even in just the past few years alone.

I think what does surprise me, however, is just what people are willing to accept and believe if it keeps them away from the God of Scripture.

There are, and have been, various philosophical systems throughout history. I believe the current, overarching system in America right now is post-modernism, which denies any kind of real truth and says that multiple contradictory things can be true at the same time. Philosophically, it's completely illogical, but that's not the point of this post.

Some of these systems lack God completely, which doesn't surprise me at all. Some of these systems' only logical conclusion is that there is no ultimate meaning to life. This is what is called a "philosophy of despair." That fact also doesn't surprise me.

What does surprise me is that adherents of those systems openly and honestly admit, and even embrace, that fact. They are perfectly content with the idea that, once they die, their existence ultimately means absolutely nothing. There is no ultimate meaning to it all. Everything is pointless.

But people are happy to embrace that idea so long as it means the God of Scripture doesn't exist. People would rather live like nothing matters than face the possibility of judgment from God. This being, of course, despite the fact that God has provided a substitute, a covenant of grace. They'd rather believe that nothing matters rather than live like everything matters.

Sometimes it baffles me just how far people are willing to run from God. But then again, since I'm a Calvinist, I probably shouldn't be surprised or baffled at all. It's just proof of total depravity, isn't it? It's proof that mankind is morally incapable of turning to God rather than from him. It's not that mankind physically can't. It's that "everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed" (John 3:20).

Sometimes people do crazy things.