There are in the world today many ideologies and philosophies which seem plausible enough to the modern mind, uninstructed as it is in any serious religious knowledge, but which really just come from the spiritually undisciplined speculations of the human brain. There are elaborate scenarios constructed by earnest academics to justify these intellectual imaginings but they all face the same problem. Every one of them is built on a false foundation which is the denial of God and the fact that this world is a creation not an arbitrary concoction built up by the interaction of impersonal forces. If you don't get first principles right then everything that follows will be wrong, and the reality of God and creation is the bedrock on which depends everything else. Anything that does not have this root fact as the fundamental position on which it stands is going to be wrong and most probably destructively so.
What is destroyed is our actual humanity because if we deny God we are denying the reality of ourselves. Imagine a philosophy which rejected the reality of emotion and did its best to enforce a human environment, educational, political, artistic, social, in which feelings were non-existent and if they arose then were stamped down on. Then imagine another situation in which freedom of thought was banned and you were only allowed to think in the centrally agreed upon way. Actually, you may not have to imagine that one for much longer. The point is it is easy to see how barbaric and inhuman those societies would be so why can we not see the inhumanity of our current denial of spirit?
The fact that God exists, and is existence itself, means that anything that denies God denies the meaning of existence. The fact that God is life means that anything that denies God upholds death and will eventually die. And then there is the fact that God's name is I AM. This means that the root of life is personal. The I even comes before the AM which tells us that in a certain sense person precedes being. For there to be being there must be a being who is.
Our world lives in a state of complete delusion. Ever since we severed our connection to the spiritual world simply because we could not prove it by material means, an obvious absurdity when you think about it, we have dug ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole of black ignorance, only able to stave off existential despair by the ever-increasing stimulation, both mental and sensory, offered by modern technology. But this is like a drug addict constantly needing a bigger fix to get his high or even to feel in any way normal. The day is coming when the shallow emptiness of a life without God must be faced because God is real and anything that does not accept reality is condemning itself to death.
A comment from Colin Mace:
ReplyDelete“The fact that this world is a creation not an arbitrary concoction built up by the interaction of impersonal forces.”
Recognising that the world is a creation changes everything about everything.
The falling apart of the taken for granted ‘root fact’ of scientific materialism cannot even be imagined. Till it happens. And the curtains blow open to a whole new living. Of unfolding cooperation with creation and the creator. Always new and alive. Where the laws of science are not even relevant.
Since very few people are prepared even to consider the possibility that this world is a creation - perhaps the best that can be hoped-for is that someone would agree that IF, after death, he was to discover that the world *was* a creation, then he would reconsider the meaning and purpose of life on that basis.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, we might persuade someone to be open to the possibility of creation, and not to rule it out by-assumption, in situation when we cannot get that person actually to believe it is true.
This might even be regarded as a first line evangelical strategy.
A creation means a creator and modern man has an inbuilt resistance to the idea that he owes his existence to anyone. But actually it is the most liberating thing to know that you are loved and guided and destined for glory if you will only accept there is divine purpose behind life.
ReplyDeleteYes a creation must have a creator and creating involves purpose. Which is very humbling and doesn’t sit well with modern man who convinces himself he is doing an excellent job running his life all on his own. And as you say William also liberating. As we notice more and more that the purpose of the creator is benign and we are loved and guided. What a relief.
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