THE TOTAL FAILURE OF MYTH: JOHN'S GOSPEL
Introduction
We find comfort in our myths.
When I was very young, television broadcast a flood of Westerns. Wyatt Earp, Gunsmoke. Wanted: Dead or Alive. The Rifleman. Rawhide. The Deputy. Bat Masterson. Bonanza. Dozens of others that arrived and vanished like mists. All with the myth of Western heroes who valued the life even of the villains they fought, who shot guns from hands and fought clean fist fights. I couldn't wait one Christmas morning when I knew I was getting a holster and six gun for a gift. I was awake before anyone and opened the gift and had the gun belt and holster strapped on and had practiced fast draws for a long time when my parents woke up because of the noise and "suggested" I needed to put the gun away and go back to bed because it was only 4 in the morning. I knew who the bad guys and good guys were because the good guys had values and the gun was used with restraint for protection of the innocent. As a child with an abusive parent, I hid in those myths of purposeful violence.
When I was 11, a friend talked me into going to the movie, Dr. No, at the drive in. James Bond appeared on screen, ruthlessly shot an unarmed man, fought dirty, got the girl in the iconic bathing suit and five minutes into the film, I wasn't sure who the hero was. Or if the movie had one.
I learned that a big boy adored other myths that comforted him. The macho man. The beautiful girl who worshiped him. Running roughshod over authority if he thought they were wrong or if he merely wanted his own way.
And I realized, years later, that those myths were not really all that far apart. My Western heroes went their own way when the authorities were clearly wrong to them. They rode away from marriage even as James Bond spit in its eye. They were loyal to their friends as Bond was pursuing the bad guy that maimed Bond's only long time friend, FBI agent Felix Lieter. The comparison became more obvious in the TV show The Wild Wild West, the story of a post Civil War Secret Service agent with Asian fighting skills and Bond-like gadgets designed by his pal-partner. One myth folding into another, a logical if perhaps accidental growing myth of young male fantasy.
As an adult, I watch the entertainment industry grasp one mythology after another (more on this throughout this book) and sell it for profit usually to the young or desperately longing. Our society is now riddled with those myths, comforting young women seeking empowerment, young intellectuals called nerds. The country boy in an urban world, the insecure who clings to a theology or weapon or freedom they see as a kind of salvation for all, the abused who want any form of haven, even one in the mind, the lonely who need Theodore Sturgeon's "Saucer of Loneliness" to tell them they are not the only ones who feel that pain of loneliness, the aimless who drift from one myth to the next seeking something, something, something they can grasp, an understanding of a world that never seems to have understood them.
John saw myths all around him as well. Israel was a crossroads of trade. Different religions passed through and the Roman rule brought vestiges of every conquered race's religion. John lived through the conflict of theology with the actuality of Christ and he later became the head of the Ephesian church.
In Ephesus, a major Asian trade center of the Roman Empire, noted for it's religious pluralism, John daily saw the practices around him and their aftereffects on the newly converted. Paul's letter to the Ephesians indicated gentiles were the vast majority of that church and they were having difficulty letting the Spirit transform their attitudes and morals.
I believe the Holy Spirit exposed John to these myths and I suggest a reason for this, one deeper than merely presenting his personal view of the Lord he treasured (though he accomplishes that): presenting a chance for dialogue with the Gentile races around him by emphasizing themes Paul focused on when he wrote his letter to the Colossians:
1:19 For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell,
20 and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.
21 And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled
2:15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.
16 So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths,
17 which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.
The New Moon ceremony is of particular interest since both the Jews and the pagan races around them held such ceremonies, the pagans in fact worshiping the moon even more favorably than the sun. Paul wrote his message so both Jew and Gentile would know Christ fulfilled their religious constructs. John wrote at least some of his Gospel with similar intent.
I say this because, though we will study other themes and the power of the events, Our commentary and study of the Gospel of John over the next few months will focus largely on how John wanted to explain to the pagans who Christ was and what he meant to his disciples as well as the Jews .
My reason for specific focus besides my own experiences: Last year,at the same time, "Thor: the Dark World" was the number 1 movie, "The Walking Dead" was the number 1 TV show and "Man of Steel" was the number 1 movie rental. These all express a neo-pagan view of the world and their popularity suggest many think like them. Moreover, each co-opted a particular level of Christian tradition in their plots (more on that later) so they could fit Christian truth into their thematic mythologies. Myths that have pervaded human history. We all struggle with falsehood and Christians must evangelize against that influence.
I believe John's Gospel gives us the blueprint for presenting the truth to those who have been exposed to religious falsehoods, a pattern we will examine along with all the other themes of that
Gospel.
But first....
WHAT IS A MYTH?
It may surprise you to know that the word "myth" can have different meanings to different scholars depending on their discipline. For instance, when it's a story, if it's content is about creation, folklorists classify it myth. But, to them, other stories are legends or folktales. Political science finds myth in ideology, in the patterns and beliefs that underpin nationalism. Psychology. aiming in the direction of Jung and Campbell, sees them as reflections of the human subconscious, racial memory. Religious studies see them as everything from the stories created to cement the power of priests and theocracies to accounts of great deeds by unknown races verbally inflated over time until their written record merged both the fact and the fiction.
But let's arrive at a definition of myth for this book (blog).
An old friend once visited a Buddhist temple, watched the worshipers for a while, then asked one of the serving priests why some behaved differently toward the idol at the center, some bowing before it, some lighting incense sticks, some merely pausing and considering the idol. The priest explained there were really three ways to look at the idol: as the god itself, as a representation of the god and as a representation of the idea behind the god. We will consider our modern myths in that triple light. The myth as a substitution for the reality of Christ. The idea that anything that takes the place of Christ or that proposes to explain the reality around us without Christ as central to the discussion is simply wrong. Let me further explain why
Another old friend once suggested to me he wanted to be the captain of the Enterprise, the Star Trek spaceship. He was a huge fan of science fiction, as I was. We shared discussions of Bradbury and Heinlein, Trek and Star Wars. We even talked of his explaining hyperspace to his aunt and her suggesting God could be living there. Years later, we met again. I was saved and sought some common grounds for presenting Christ to him. I mentioned "The Mote in God's Eye" a novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle-`and he called it "The Mote in Murcheson's Eye" technically the name of the star involved, but not the actual title. Testing waters further, I brought up "Childhood's
End", Arthur C Clarke's Hindu-Buddhist SF take on the end times, one where he suggested a race that looked like Satan would be the benevolent rulers of earth guiding into the next step in evolution. My friend said he was hopefully waiting for the Overlords to take over. Things deteriorated from there.
For me, two things came out of that conversation . 1) Let the Spirit guide me instead of trying to reason a way to testimony. 2) Relevant to this blog, while some, like me, may come out of those myths with an awareness of God, others can get pulled into them so deeply they don't get out, that their reality without the true God becomes acceptable, even their truth.
I hope this discussion may not only enlighten some Christians who brought myths into their relationship with Christ so they can get to know Him better by discarding them, but also reach those who are trapped in the myths and think they are reality or a reflection of reality.
CHAPTER ONE
In The Beginning
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
(NKJV)
Our brother John didn't mess around. The other Gospel writers began with the start of Jesus' life and his heritage or the start of his ministry. John jumped to the beginning of the world and the first mention we have to our God: "In the beginning, God..."
If you want a literary reference, we live in "the Two Towers." We only have a few comments on "The Fellowship of the Rings", of everything that went before the creation of our universe. And we have more extensive reference to the end of this world and a world yet to come with "The Return of the King." And it was what God deemed necessary for us to know.
Meanwhile, creation myths abound. Cosmogony refers to myths of creation (From kosmos literally "order" and interestingly the origin of cosmos which was Carl Sagan's title for his series on the origin of the universe now being updated on a TV series by the same name.). Since it was closest to John and part of the Roman myths as well, we'll focus on Greek mythology from the poet Hesiod which hypothesized creation from Chaos followed by Gaia (earth).Tartarus (a cosmic prison) and Eros,(erotic love). From all of these sprang everything else. Significantly, the creator of Chaos is never discussed. It has that in common with our current creation mythology.
I'm not here to challenge evolution as science. Plenty of evidence exists concerning evolution on a short term, birds changing in color to match pollution changes in their environment or crustaceans adapting to heavily corrupted sea floors and river beds. Evidence of long term evolution is so questionable, even non-Christians have proposed a theory of "sudden appearance" to explain the lack of time, even in millions of years, for evolution to have developed man. Genetic evidence from some so- called "hominids" recently showed Cro Magnon and Neanderthal were, at best, very distant from man despite their physical resemblance. These were the previous solid physical evidence of transition. Now there appears no evidence near enough to support transition without what has been termed "Sudden appearance,"the idea that the next "step" in evolution might actually be a giant jump from one less advanced being to another far more advanced.
The problem with evolution: it has become a religion with high priests located as teachers in mass education institutions. Those who suggest sudden appearance are ostracized, their careers burned at the stake and their books rejected. True believers have become the old Catholic church, stubbornly clinging to Darwin as the priests clung to Aristotle and imprisoned Galileo when he suggested the sun was the center of the soar system. Anyone who suggests something other than an impersonal "force", "nature" or "chance" might be occurring, or that change even by something or someone they can't understand occurs suddenly is the new heretic. The Big Bang becomes God (as the theme song from the situation comedy "The Big Bang Theory"goes , it "all started with the Big Bang") and an imagined particle that ignited it becomes "the God particle." And believers never beg the question: even if this is right, who created the particle?
The myth of evolution is not that there is a process going on, but that "we don't know what caused it but it sure wasn't God," because he is, to them, a myth. If you read articles or books on evolution, you most often find "nature" given the power of God. Following Thoreau's statement:"Nature is full of genius, full of divinity,so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand." It is sometimes subtle, sometimes overt and often one suspects the science writer doesn't even realize he has been trained to worship Gaia, albeit a depersonalized Gaia,
A myth to comfort the atheist, a religion which would never dare say it is.
Let me state plainly, I know Christians who believe in evolution, and in it taking a long time, pointing
out:
2Peter 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day [is] with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
and that the word "day" is often used to designate an era. A scientific process cannot preclude a creator nor disprove him nor prove him, for that matter. It can only define certain facts we can currently grasp. Thus some scientists who are saved have even pointed out how, due to the nature of time, six days could have passed in God's view (from which the creation story is told in Genesis) while millions could have passed from our perspective. Personally, I think holding God's creation schedule to our limited idea of a 24-hour day may be our egos saying God wouldn't reveal something to others that we couldn't immediately understand. I also think God's power could easily accomplish that creation in an instant, something implied by the verses:
Genesis 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
(ASV)
No mention of passage of time between that morning and evening (Judaism divides a day into multiple parts which Moses would certainly have noted in his recording of the event), just that they were. Am I to demand God put in 24 hours so I can understand that "day"?
I don't write this to affirm an "old Earth" or to decry the "24-hour" day. I offer it only to help moderate the conflict between Christians which has led to rejection of one brother by another because he isn't "correct" about creation.
Both sides are correct about what John cites as the most important part: God is the creator, no matter the method, And John adds a new fact: Jesus is the architect. He shaped a perfect world, made inherent in that shape patterns that would lead inevitably to his perfect service to his Father. It means we were i the design from the beginning, each one of us imagined, shaped and created BY him and FOR him. Paul affirms this in Colossians:
Col 1:16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
(KJV)
The separation of light and dark exists as a spiritual fact as well as a physical one. We exist in a spiritual darkness, created beings disconnected from our creator by original sin, an act that somehow came down spiritually genetically. (Say that three times real fast.)
John 11:10 But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him. (KJV)
We also make jokes to whistle as we flee passed that dark graveyard. Because death lies in that darkness.
I've met lost men, ones who bore bullet scars and refused to say how they got them. Men who laugh at someone who attends church until he shows them his biker colors, tattooed on his shoulder. Women who mocked a man who offered them church flyers, pamphlets. Smokers who rejected church because they would have to quit smoking. Drinkers who told me the roof would cave in if they ever went to a service. My own time has been devoted to work over church too often to mention. WE are so comfortable in the dark, we put on that old dead man so easily even after salvation. Our darkness comprehends him not, apprehends him not. Struggles against the light even when it indwells us. Perhaps that calls us to our arguments over creation processes when we should be nodding an okay to brothers on both sides getting others saved, getting them home with Old and Young Earths. Since the only thing that truly matters is living forever with the one who created those processes, with the one who created them and us.
Perhaps we miss points of agreement?
And I realized, years later, that those myths were not really all that far apart. My Western heroes went their own way when the authorities were clearly wrong to them. They rode away from marriage even as James Bond spit in its eye. They were loyal to their friends as Bond was pursuing the bad guy that maimed Bond's only long time friend, FBI agent Felix Lieter. The comparison became more obvious in the TV show The Wild Wild West, the story of a post Civil War Secret Service agent with Asian fighting skills and Bond-like gadgets designed by his pal-partner. One myth folding into another, a logical if perhaps accidental growing myth of young male fantasy.
As an adult, I watch the entertainment industry grasp one mythology after another (more on this throughout this book) and sell it for profit usually to the young or desperately longing. Our society is now riddled with those myths, comforting young women seeking empowerment, young intellectuals called nerds. The country boy in an urban world, the insecure who clings to a theology or weapon or freedom they see as a kind of salvation for all, the abused who want any form of haven, even one in the mind, the lonely who need Theodore Sturgeon's "Saucer of Loneliness" to tell them they are not the only ones who feel that pain of loneliness, the aimless who drift from one myth to the next seeking something, something, something they can grasp, an understanding of a world that never seems to have understood them.
John saw myths all around him as well. Israel was a crossroads of trade. Different religions passed through and the Roman rule brought vestiges of every conquered race's religion. John lived through the conflict of theology with the actuality of Christ and he later became the head of the Ephesian church.
In Ephesus, a major Asian trade center of the Roman Empire, noted for it's religious pluralism, John daily saw the practices around him and their aftereffects on the newly converted. Paul's letter to the Ephesians indicated gentiles were the vast majority of that church and they were having difficulty letting the Spirit transform their attitudes and morals.
I believe the Holy Spirit exposed John to these myths and I suggest a reason for this, one deeper than merely presenting his personal view of the Lord he treasured (though he accomplishes that): presenting a chance for dialogue with the Gentile races around him by emphasizing themes Paul focused on when he wrote his letter to the Colossians:
1:19 For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell,
20 and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.
21 And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled
2:15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.
16 So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths,
17 which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.
The New Moon ceremony is of particular interest since both the Jews and the pagan races around them held such ceremonies, the pagans in fact worshiping the moon even more favorably than the sun. Paul wrote his message so both Jew and Gentile would know Christ fulfilled their religious constructs. John wrote at least some of his Gospel with similar intent.
I say this because, though we will study other themes and the power of the events, Our commentary and study of the Gospel of John over the next few months will focus largely on how John wanted to explain to the pagans who Christ was and what he meant to his disciples as well as the Jews .
My reason for specific focus besides my own experiences: Last year,at the same time, "Thor: the Dark World" was the number 1 movie, "The Walking Dead" was the number 1 TV show and "Man of Steel" was the number 1 movie rental. These all express a neo-pagan view of the world and their popularity suggest many think like them. Moreover, each co-opted a particular level of Christian tradition in their plots (more on that later) so they could fit Christian truth into their thematic mythologies. Myths that have pervaded human history. We all struggle with falsehood and Christians must evangelize against that influence.
I believe John's Gospel gives us the blueprint for presenting the truth to those who have been exposed to religious falsehoods, a pattern we will examine along with all the other themes of that
Gospel.
But first....
WHAT IS A MYTH?
It may surprise you to know that the word "myth" can have different meanings to different scholars depending on their discipline. For instance, when it's a story, if it's content is about creation, folklorists classify it myth. But, to them, other stories are legends or folktales. Political science finds myth in ideology, in the patterns and beliefs that underpin nationalism. Psychology. aiming in the direction of Jung and Campbell, sees them as reflections of the human subconscious, racial memory. Religious studies see them as everything from the stories created to cement the power of priests and theocracies to accounts of great deeds by unknown races verbally inflated over time until their written record merged both the fact and the fiction.
But let's arrive at a definition of myth for this book (blog).
An old friend once visited a Buddhist temple, watched the worshipers for a while, then asked one of the serving priests why some behaved differently toward the idol at the center, some bowing before it, some lighting incense sticks, some merely pausing and considering the idol. The priest explained there were really three ways to look at the idol: as the god itself, as a representation of the god and as a representation of the idea behind the god. We will consider our modern myths in that triple light. The myth as a substitution for the reality of Christ. The idea that anything that takes the place of Christ or that proposes to explain the reality around us without Christ as central to the discussion is simply wrong. Let me further explain why
Another old friend once suggested to me he wanted to be the captain of the Enterprise, the Star Trek spaceship. He was a huge fan of science fiction, as I was. We shared discussions of Bradbury and Heinlein, Trek and Star Wars. We even talked of his explaining hyperspace to his aunt and her suggesting God could be living there. Years later, we met again. I was saved and sought some common grounds for presenting Christ to him. I mentioned "The Mote in God's Eye" a novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle-`and he called it "The Mote in Murcheson's Eye" technically the name of the star involved, but not the actual title. Testing waters further, I brought up "Childhood's
End", Arthur C Clarke's Hindu-Buddhist SF take on the end times, one where he suggested a race that looked like Satan would be the benevolent rulers of earth guiding into the next step in evolution. My friend said he was hopefully waiting for the Overlords to take over. Things deteriorated from there.
For me, two things came out of that conversation . 1) Let the Spirit guide me instead of trying to reason a way to testimony. 2) Relevant to this blog, while some, like me, may come out of those myths with an awareness of God, others can get pulled into them so deeply they don't get out, that their reality without the true God becomes acceptable, even their truth.
I hope this discussion may not only enlighten some Christians who brought myths into their relationship with Christ so they can get to know Him better by discarding them, but also reach those who are trapped in the myths and think they are reality or a reflection of reality.
CHAPTER ONE
In The Beginning
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
(NKJV)
Our brother John didn't mess around. The other Gospel writers began with the start of Jesus' life and his heritage or the start of his ministry. John jumped to the beginning of the world and the first mention we have to our God: "In the beginning, God..."
If you want a literary reference, we live in "the Two Towers." We only have a few comments on "The Fellowship of the Rings", of everything that went before the creation of our universe. And we have more extensive reference to the end of this world and a world yet to come with "The Return of the King." And it was what God deemed necessary for us to know.
Meanwhile, creation myths abound. Cosmogony refers to myths of creation (From kosmos literally "order" and interestingly the origin of cosmos which was Carl Sagan's title for his series on the origin of the universe now being updated on a TV series by the same name.). Since it was closest to John and part of the Roman myths as well, we'll focus on Greek mythology from the poet Hesiod which hypothesized creation from Chaos followed by Gaia (earth).Tartarus (a cosmic prison) and Eros,(erotic love). From all of these sprang everything else. Significantly, the creator of Chaos is never discussed. It has that in common with our current creation mythology.
I'm not here to challenge evolution as science. Plenty of evidence exists concerning evolution on a short term, birds changing in color to match pollution changes in their environment or crustaceans adapting to heavily corrupted sea floors and river beds. Evidence of long term evolution is so questionable, even non-Christians have proposed a theory of "sudden appearance" to explain the lack of time, even in millions of years, for evolution to have developed man. Genetic evidence from some so- called "hominids" recently showed Cro Magnon and Neanderthal were, at best, very distant from man despite their physical resemblance. These were the previous solid physical evidence of transition. Now there appears no evidence near enough to support transition without what has been termed "Sudden appearance,"the idea that the next "step" in evolution might actually be a giant jump from one less advanced being to another far more advanced.
The problem with evolution: it has become a religion with high priests located as teachers in mass education institutions. Those who suggest sudden appearance are ostracized, their careers burned at the stake and their books rejected. True believers have become the old Catholic church, stubbornly clinging to Darwin as the priests clung to Aristotle and imprisoned Galileo when he suggested the sun was the center of the soar system. Anyone who suggests something other than an impersonal "force", "nature" or "chance" might be occurring, or that change even by something or someone they can't understand occurs suddenly is the new heretic. The Big Bang becomes God (as the theme song from the situation comedy "The Big Bang Theory"goes , it "all started with the Big Bang") and an imagined particle that ignited it becomes "the God particle." And believers never beg the question: even if this is right, who created the particle?
The myth of evolution is not that there is a process going on, but that "we don't know what caused it but it sure wasn't God," because he is, to them, a myth. If you read articles or books on evolution, you most often find "nature" given the power of God. Following Thoreau's statement:"Nature is full of genius, full of divinity,so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand." It is sometimes subtle, sometimes overt and often one suspects the science writer doesn't even realize he has been trained to worship Gaia, albeit a depersonalized Gaia,
A myth to comfort the atheist, a religion which would never dare say it is.
Let me state plainly, I know Christians who believe in evolution, and in it taking a long time, pointing
out:
2Peter 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day [is] with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
and that the word "day" is often used to designate an era. A scientific process cannot preclude a creator nor disprove him nor prove him, for that matter. It can only define certain facts we can currently grasp. Thus some scientists who are saved have even pointed out how, due to the nature of time, six days could have passed in God's view (from which the creation story is told in Genesis) while millions could have passed from our perspective. Personally, I think holding God's creation schedule to our limited idea of a 24-hour day may be our egos saying God wouldn't reveal something to others that we couldn't immediately understand. I also think God's power could easily accomplish that creation in an instant, something implied by the verses:
Genesis 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
(ASV)
No mention of passage of time between that morning and evening (Judaism divides a day into multiple parts which Moses would certainly have noted in his recording of the event), just that they were. Am I to demand God put in 24 hours so I can understand that "day"?
I don't write this to affirm an "old Earth" or to decry the "24-hour" day. I offer it only to help moderate the conflict between Christians which has led to rejection of one brother by another because he isn't "correct" about creation.
Both sides are correct about what John cites as the most important part: God is the creator, no matter the method, And John adds a new fact: Jesus is the architect. He shaped a perfect world, made inherent in that shape patterns that would lead inevitably to his perfect service to his Father. It means we were i the design from the beginning, each one of us imagined, shaped and created BY him and FOR him. Paul affirms this in Colossians:
Col 1:16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
(KJV)
The separation of light and dark exists as a spiritual fact as well as a physical one. We exist in a spiritual darkness, created beings disconnected from our creator by original sin, an act that somehow came down spiritually genetically. (Say that three times real fast.)
John 11:10 But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him. (KJV)
We also make jokes to whistle as we flee passed that dark graveyard. Because death lies in that darkness.
I've met lost men, ones who bore bullet scars and refused to say how they got them. Men who laugh at someone who attends church until he shows them his biker colors, tattooed on his shoulder. Women who mocked a man who offered them church flyers, pamphlets. Smokers who rejected church because they would have to quit smoking. Drinkers who told me the roof would cave in if they ever went to a service. My own time has been devoted to work over church too often to mention. WE are so comfortable in the dark, we put on that old dead man so easily even after salvation. Our darkness comprehends him not, apprehends him not. Struggles against the light even when it indwells us. Perhaps that calls us to our arguments over creation processes when we should be nodding an okay to brothers on both sides getting others saved, getting them home with Old and Young Earths. Since the only thing that truly matters is living forever with the one who created those processes, with the one who created them and us.
Perhaps we miss points of agreement?
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Think of science's first ball of "everything that composes all that became the universe" before the Big Bang. The darkness was observed outside on the "depths" sometimes translated as "waters" the liquid-looking flowing energy-mater-becoming-matter-but-not-quite-making-it. God created the unified field which held that ball of super-heated mass in a highly condensed mass. The unified field was composed of all the forces we now understand as existing, the four main ones being, gravity (which may or may not have been an independent force acting with the others), the weak atomic force (think the electron being held in orbit around the nucleus and atomic bombs when they get ripped away), the strong atomic force (the proton and neutron bound together in the nucleus and the power of the sun) and the electromagnetic field, electricity, magnetism and...light. God created light which ripped the unified field apart, creating the universe, the first "day" and the shell which binds the universe into being a universe: the speed of light, Nothing going slower than light can leave the universe and everything faster (or massively heavier)goes outside it. God giving us the clues to know HE was the Big Bang, if there was one when he created the universe.
The cogent point in discussion of united views, one which can never be related to evolution: the creation of man. The Bible states the humanity was created from whole cloth, an independent creation.
Gen 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
(NKJV)
Evolution continually argues for man from the line of creation before him. The evolution argument was struck a huge blow when biologists intent on proving man descended from the Cro Magnon, performed genetic testing and then discovered humanity couldn't be much genetically FURTHER from either Neaderthal or Cro Magnon. So, with no fossil evidence they then declared their theory must be severely off and agreed there was a sudden appearance of man...Okay, I'm kidding, They said that men and apes must have branched off of the primate line sooner than they thought. If they carry the branching off far enough they will not be able to test for DNA and will have no way to disprove themselves.
Simply put, all evidence we have from the chemical make up of man to the fact of no clear descent from a lesser animal, suggests the Bible to be true in saying man was created independently.
One may argue that the birth cycle of a human uterus, sometimes claimed as an example of evolution and the existence of the human triune brain which contains parts similar to the fish, reptile and ape are merely the sign of a creator using similar parts to create a being suited to this planet's environment.
Genesis is not a science book and it explained as simply and directly as possible THAT God did something, not necessarily HOW he did it. Shepherds, nomads, farmers would not have had PhD's in astrophysics or even a few stories by James Blish or Dean Koontz or Philip K. Dick to offer explanations. A merging of the little bit more we now understand with the tracery God left for everyone to know arrives at the one true thing: he is Creator. Jesus' plan is ongoing, occurring right now, still unwinding from that first instant of creation, the beginning of our time, our continuum, going into the final Big Collapse when a new heaven and new earth arrive.
"The Two Towers" plot unfolds, the Personship Of Christ marches on with the Holy Spirit proceeding with them. I pray they can stay together in their quest, not keep dividing and rushing into ancient forests to seek talking trees or chasing off to melt imaginary rings. Knowing that we agree on the most important thing: God writes the book.
And the Darkness "comprehends it not."
But let me emphasize the First Failure of Myth: It doesn't begin with a true picture of God so it fails from the start. This becomes apparent when we examine the Gnostic view of god in Chapter Two.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Think of science's first ball of "everything that composes all that became the universe" before the Big Bang. The darkness was observed outside on the "depths" sometimes translated as "waters" the liquid-looking flowing energy-mater-becoming-matter-but-not-quite-making-it. God created the unified field which held that ball of super-heated mass in a highly condensed mass. The unified field was composed of all the forces we now understand as existing, the four main ones being, gravity (which may or may not have been an independent force acting with the others), the weak atomic force (think the electron being held in orbit around the nucleus and atomic bombs when they get ripped away), the strong atomic force (the proton and neutron bound together in the nucleus and the power of the sun) and the electromagnetic field, electricity, magnetism and...light. God created light which ripped the unified field apart, creating the universe, the first "day" and the shell which binds the universe into being a universe: the speed of light, Nothing going slower than light can leave the universe and everything faster (or massively heavier)goes outside it. God giving us the clues to know HE was the Big Bang, if there was one when he created the universe.
The cogent point in discussion of united views, one which can never be related to evolution: the creation of man. The Bible states the humanity was created from whole cloth, an independent creation.
Gen 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
(NKJV)
Evolution continually argues for man from the line of creation before him. The evolution argument was struck a huge blow when biologists intent on proving man descended from the Cro Magnon, performed genetic testing and then discovered humanity couldn't be much genetically FURTHER from either Neaderthal or Cro Magnon. So, with no fossil evidence they then declared their theory must be severely off and agreed there was a sudden appearance of man...Okay, I'm kidding, They said that men and apes must have branched off of the primate line sooner than they thought. If they carry the branching off far enough they will not be able to test for DNA and will have no way to disprove themselves.
Simply put, all evidence we have from the chemical make up of man to the fact of no clear descent from a lesser animal, suggests the Bible to be true in saying man was created independently.
One may argue that the birth cycle of a human uterus, sometimes claimed as an example of evolution and the existence of the human triune brain which contains parts similar to the fish, reptile and ape are merely the sign of a creator using similar parts to create a being suited to this planet's environment.
Genesis is not a science book and it explained as simply and directly as possible THAT God did something, not necessarily HOW he did it. Shepherds, nomads, farmers would not have had PhD's in astrophysics or even a few stories by James Blish or Dean Koontz or Philip K. Dick to offer explanations. A merging of the little bit more we now understand with the tracery God left for everyone to know arrives at the one true thing: he is Creator. Jesus' plan is ongoing, occurring right now, still unwinding from that first instant of creation, the beginning of our time, our continuum, going into the final Big Collapse when a new heaven and new earth arrive.
"The Two Towers" plot unfolds, the Personship Of Christ marches on with the Holy Spirit proceeding with them. I pray they can stay together in their quest, not keep dividing and rushing into ancient forests to seek talking trees or chasing off to melt imaginary rings. Knowing that we agree on the most important thing: God writes the book.
And the Darkness "comprehends it not."
But let me emphasize the First Failure of Myth: It doesn't begin with a true picture of God so it fails from the start. This becomes apparent when we examine the Gnostic view of god in Chapter Two.
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