This is where we are…
By Ezra Spencer
Preface: Alright, this is how this thing works… I made this synopsis of all my thoughts basically just for me to reference and revise as I travel through my life… the version you now see is the edition that I decided to print at the end of my sophomore year. Alright, basically, when life becomes frustrating, depressing, and just plain confusing, all one can do is think, so what you are about to read is basically how I see the world at this present date. Maybe when all is said and done and I retire in a few hundred years I’ll revise and publish this thing and hope for the best.
I. Intro
There comes a time in a person’s life when all one can do is think. A time when actions and words: everything one sees, hears, does, and says, need to be made sense of and jotted down. Such is the circumstance with me. Unfortunately for you, whoever you may be, I’m not exactly a college grad, and I’m not even particularly a good writer for someone of my age. Forgive me. All my life I have been a thinker: a lover of knowledge, a seeker, but unfortunately, God in all his wisdom decided to give me an inarticulate brain. What you are reading now is a poor interpretation of whatever He has decided to reveal to me in my infinitely irrational youth. Bear with me.
II. On the Origins of Human thought
For centuries, mankind has seen it fit to ponder the intricacies of human thought and of its origins. With a lapse of such seeking came a Dark Age, never before paralleled in its repression of the freedom of man. The freedom of thought was repressed. This anti-knowledge originated from fear, apathy, and acceptance of what many thought to be basic truth. I write this paper in order to stand, alone if the need be, against what may very soon become another Dark Age of Mankind.
The problem:
Rational thought has always been a subject long debated by scholars, and I am by no means correct in thinking I can dispute any aspect of it correctly. But I describe these philosophers and scholars in a modern analogy. It is the same as a group of executives looking at a computer, which they have all been using since the humble, infant years that the business began without understanding why it works. They have only been trained how to use it and now want to know how it works and why they use it. Most men of this type would merely speculate on the instrument, relating their personal experiences with it to try to piece together an answer as to how the thing works. If I could place theologians somewhere in the picture, I would put them as the new guys, who work on the bottom floor of the building, not having been there since the start of the business. But I would say they are the ones with the advantage to looking at this strange, unexplainable computer of rational thought: they refer to the Manual.
Theologians, which are really Christian versions of philosophers, are particularly well equipped to establish themselves on human thought, so I will refer to them often. I will refer also quite often to the Bible, a manual, which is quite possibly the best source on the origins of thought.
It began with an idea. A simple thought, a few words, and now a world filled with every form of earthly life imaginable. It took a thought to bring it all down. A simple action taken in the name of finding “knowledge” and now the world was doomed to shackles. The Creation of Man is quite an interesting thing, really. Of all of the animals God made, he didn’t do much else than speak a word and they came into existence. But what of Adam and Eve? He formed the body of man out of the clay and made him in his image. (Eve, well she was a rib.) If God was at that time a Trinity, with the Creator side of him floating above the waters creating things as a spirit how then could he have created a physical being in his image? Perhaps the answer goes deeper than just the physical appearance of man. In creating them, God breathed into Adam a bit of himself. (Eve was a spinoff from Adam, so she got what he got too. In fact, all of us have it.) What I believe God gave Adam in that breath was rational thought and basic morality: the freedoms to make choices. He did this knowing full well the consequences.
When they fell, Adam and Eve established something else quite important to the origins of human thought: a sin nature, a “disease”, which all of us have. Freud called it the Id – the little devil on the shoulder. The Bible calls it Human Nature. It can’t be fully extinguished, this corrupt being that dwells inside of us, but neither does it drive us to do everything as Freud had declared. Unlike Freud, I believe that there are two sides to the coin. Although power and corruption may quite often fuel the fires of the human existence, I believe that an unteachable “Good side” exists as the product of the morality that the Creator breathed into Adam, and it’s similarly a “disease” that everyone has, or rather the cure.
So… now that I’ve confused the crap outta most people with my lame, incoherent gibberish, here’s the point I’m trying to make:
- God makes man. Man is Created, not taught God’s gift of morality: grace, kindness, etc.
- Man falls. He gets the other side of the coin: cruelty, brutality, power, corruption, etc.
Where we as Christians stand is between saint and sinner, and the advantage we have is that a) we’re gonna win, and b) we know how to win.
III. Now how about that existence idea?
Descartes, a philosopher of the Enlightenment, made an important distinction concerning existence- between the physical and the spiritual. This Cartesian Dualism, as it was called was taken a step further by C.S. Lewis, who made another distinction, concerning not just existence, but life- between the Zoe and the Bios (two different Greek words to describe two different types of life). The Bios was proposed to be the Earthly, physical life that is found in the world we now live in. It can be seen and studied with the all of the five senses, while the Zoe, which is the spiritual life, cannot be studied with any physical senses we physical beings posses. With what then, may it be observed?
Reason and the conscience are the two instruments for measuring the Zoe. They originated at the creation of man, but didn’t have too much practical use until after the fall. How so? Well, once man decided that he needed to discern between “good and evil”, the already-present choice making ability that God breathed into man suddenly became more important. Now the ability to make obedient choices had to apply to every aspect of life instead of only what tree a person shouldn’t eat from. It’s interesting really, how that knowledge of good and evil flipped things. There was only 1 damning choice that a man could make back then to get him kicked out of paradise and infinitely many good choices that he could make of no consequence. But now, there is only 1 good choice to get back into paradise and infinitely many of damnation.
The life of human nature began after the beginning of the Bios, which is physical life, but since its creation during the fall of man, human nature has placed itself as the head of this physical existence. Now the corrupt and nearly uncontrollable Bios stands against the Zoe, locked in a stalemate. The world is in darkness to the struggle and doesn’t know which way she falls.
III. Now what about that Dark Age?
Alright… I mentioned earlier that makind was headed for a Dark Age. I’m afraid that it has already been predicted. Christ, when he taught on the end times, said that the end would be upon us when the times were “like those of Noah” (Matthew 24). If you take note of the scripture… the times of Noah were not unlike those of our own. Man had given way to corruption, killing, and sacrificing “relationships that were natural for relationships that were not.” Men have become cowardly, corrupt, and most horridly self-gratifying. Just like Noah’s days. But there isn’t gonna be another flood to end this one.
This Dark Age, similar to the one of Noah and all the ones that have existed since then have one thing in common: The repression of knowledge. In the Dark Ages, it was a corrupt indoctrination that revoked the freedom of the individual. In our times, it’s the same story. Although back then it was the Church, which was established for all the right reasons (no kidding), but when it began to control people, that’s when mankind started going down the drain. With the power of control, the church went corrupt, and one side of the coin went quickly to the other. Fortunately man’s eyes were opened. Humanists and Reformers made man see that they were NOT something to be controlled, and that they had VALUE. Following the lines of value and individuality came freedom and enlightenment.
But now, the pendulum has swung too far back the other way. It is now freedom that we must save ourselves from, as it has become the corrupt institution that binds us. We are indeed free… but free to what extent? We are so concerned with chasing freedom and happiness, that we have made it impossible to attain either. We are free to kill the unborn, free to destroy what bonds civilization and marriage have brought us, free to lie, cheat, and steal to get to the top, and even free to murder if we have enough money to defend ourselves. Oh and by the way, our country isn’t helping us too much. We are being indoctrinated to believe our only option is to attain this “freedom” and defend it for our future generations. Well gee, where’s the individuality in that? They teach us that in order to be free we must tolerate the intolerable, and that whatever anyone says is right for them, must be. How blind have we become to evil? Has indifference taken away our existence? And then man’s eyes were shut by the same force that opened them.
and thats all i got so far
