The Nature of Man

     What is the nature of man? Is man inherently good or evil, and can he bring himself to a position of being fully good or not? These are the questions that try men's souls. If man is good on his own, then by his own wit and ability to reason, he can create a society that is perfect and a utopia. Such has been the topic of many a novel and motion picture, however, none come to pass in the movies or in reality. Because there is inconsistencies with "man being good' and what the Bible has to say about it.

      In Romans it talks about man being fully depraved, since man is depraved we cannot trust the systems that are not foundation-ally built on something higher than himself. Such as a domestic system, if the idea of marriage doesn't come from God, then the covenant is said unto what? There is no higher thing you are bringing into the picture, and since we are only basing it out of ourselves, and since we can change our minds, it logically follows that man cannot be his own standard. This is the problem with culture, since we have gone out into an age..a "new age" we now believe that the only standard necessary to be measured against is what we create for ourselves.

      In a world where we cannot be held accountable to anything except ourselves, then any kind of moral justification is possible. The unborn being slain, or who is to say that a person can't logically get to the point where any person with tan skin is not experiencing the utmost pleasurable quality of life and therefore doesn't deserve to be alive.

     We don't like to believe in the most extreme examples but that is the logical implication. If I say that tan is not good, and what is say is the standard I go by, then it is ok that tan is not good. Since I am "good" then what I say is therefore good. The logical incoherency is irrelevant when you are only justifying right and wrong and what is good and bad simply by the standard you create.

     This is the post-modern world that we now live in, where according to polluck the artist everything is irrational and by chance, and a hodge podge of religions can make up my moral code. Whatever the group with the loudest voice determines what rights are for individuals, and the one with the most say so can determine what society looks like. Be warned and vigilant, this is the culture we live in.

A Day with Plato

A Day with Plato

On a day not so unlike today, giving off feelings of newness and intrigue, there was a wisp in the air that could not be described. A man approached in what would be obviously ancient garb. He walked with a kind of sophisticated step, however his shoulders were moving with little gyration, making one think of nothing but humility. The strong faced, bearded man came staring into the working gears of my mind. The fact he had accepted his invitation to council with me and discusses theological matters like those at the council of Nicaea. Sitting down, he simply stared waiting for the beginning of the Socratic journey that is before us.

            The first thing was to greet as was the tradition of almost all cultures throughout time. Being very appreciative of him coming to listen, telling him that there is some good news that may perhaps bring relief to his wandering mind. The news that was being referred to is only relevant to him because of the epoch he was born in. He came from a time that was more or less unaware of Jewish culture. He knew nothing of the age of Christ. The entire purpose for this meeting is to bring into the mind of the one of the greatest influencers of thought, the coherency and persistence of truth that can be found in Christianity. If there was a world in which Plato who brought philosophy as a newborn into this world, believed and understood the worldview concerning Christianity, this would be a different world.

            So, the bearded Plato, with a slight grin his head at a slight tilt and his right eyebrow raised, as curious as a cat in a room full of empty boxes asks me, how does this “Christianity” answer the problem of a deity? Does it say that there are a plethora of deities all governing a different thing, or perhaps that you have a monotheistic view that you must sacrifice to in order so that it remains content. The simple reply is the beginning of a potentially profound discussion. I quickly began to use his own tactic of Q: and A: dialectic, and so the discussion begins.

            Plato, do you remember when you came up with the formation of what is concrete and what is subjective philosophically? Well of course I do, he replied. So you also remember the nature of all things intelligible and knowledge and intellect are of a more concrete nature I suppose, and that also if I recall you believe that a man’s soul is perfectible of able to be made more pure if it is ambivalent toward all things emotional. You believed that things outside of intellect and knowledge, things that are simply of this world are conceptually “shadows” of the true reality correct? Again with an affirmative response, as he cocked his head again the other direction with a curious look, retorting what are you getting at, I do believe in what all that you say. I then began to elaborate on how these are things that have been tested by time and some have stood true even without revelation of Christ. In a similar way as Einstein’s theories still are accurate in this current age although he lacked the technology to verify what he believed, Plato lacked a key factor but still hit the nail on the head in a lot of areas.

            Plato, There has been a great new understanding of a human incarnate deity that had come to the Jews. In him, and through the overarching creator that has become spread across the world, truth has been revealed. As you believed in a reality that of which is far more true than ours is, in the teachings of this religion, it is explained that there is a place called heaven (similar to your Elysium retrospectively) that of which God has created that exists in which everything follows down logically from the supernatural to the natural. In the explaining of this, elaborating on the fact we are made in the created image of a monotheistic deity being as some philosophers have said “The greatest conceivable being”. The characteristics of this deity are the virtues that you found to be so highly supreme in regard to all things, however his super intendancy is not restricted to simply those things, although he is those things, he is also the creative genius and the emotions that man feels but in a perfect stat. Let me ask you, can you truly do away with emotion? The answer was an abrupt “well, frankly I’m not entirely sure”. Then let us look at this critically. An emotion we will define as a particular feeling that of which you are experiencing relevant to your relationships or environment or concepts outside of the “environment”. By this definition, seeing as though we cannot truly remove environment or relationships, it seems as though we cannot remove them. Perhaps I am being daft, correct me if I am wrong? Plato nodded his head in agreement. So then if we cannot truly remove relationships because the relationship we will always have is with our self and the dialogue in our mind. The environment is not something we can earnestly speaking, completely destruct or do away with, for even if you are alone in a cave, you will still be afflicted with the emotion that of which you will have about being in said place all alone with [the relationship of] yourself. Would you agree then that we cannot do away with emotions since we cannot remove them? With a slightly noticeable tightening of muscles in the right corner of his mouth he nods with signs of contempt. I would like to suggest to you then that emotions and such other things of neither good of bad pejorative connotation that all men have and cannot be done away with were just passed down from God and his pure state which is Holy and Righteous. In this religion there is neither supremacy in the intellect nor the supremacy intuitive.

            Considering man has these things along with an inevitable ability to do evil, man is contingent would you agree? He answered; of course man must be contingent especially in light of the reality of “ ’ouk oude” in Greek, or more commonly known as “ex nihilo” in Latin. Plato conversed with me for a while on the necessity of man to have come from somewhere; this is partially why he came to the conclusion that there must be a higher truer reality than this one.

            Out of this I began to have discernment about it being opportune time to intellectually offer Christ as a means of salvation to a man in such a desperate need of not simply truth, but of The Truth. Plato I asked, have you ever noticed that there is perhaps a daunting feeling of emptiness that has plagued you and so many of those who were your cohorts in life? Plato responded distraughtly replied, that he believes all men are at times subjected to such a folly of the mind. That it should not be allowed to cause you to think or act differently, just something that the mind must arduously work away from. So I then asked do you thing purpose it is because there is a creator out there, so unlike the Greek anthropomorphized gods, that simply wants to be in relation to you. He who is not contingent has made he who is contingent simply to bring His own glory down and to be in relationship, not to bully or to make a man to abuse him, but to love him. Love truly is the embodiment of your highest virtues and nobilities. The creator is referred to in this religion as love itself, a never wavering or abandoning love that of which is constantly calling out to us. This is the hope which is what I believe is necessary to fill that empty void in the hearts of man. Not that any amount emotional indulgence, or as you would say, artisanal or fleshly indulgence, or intellectual arrival at truth, but an acceptance in a Creator that of which is above all things. Plato broke out into tears expressing himself as one who has been spending his entire life learning and seeking after an intellectual answer to the problems of life that of which could not fully be understood. Morality, ethics, such things needed a base that is outside of this reality to be true, but he could not find such a base except a more true place then here. He told me that this has given him a new ideological perspective on how to view purpose. That he has a long way to go but an eternity to think about. Shortly after this, Plato begins to hear his name be called out but a familiar voice. In a brief eclipse of the present, he found himself lying down in a meadow being called by a young Aristotle to talk with. Plato now has something to think about, that is, if he remembers his dream.

More to life than this

 The more I see how culture in America has been shaped and formed in the United States, it truly begins to make me sick how much Christians are backing down. I don't mean Christ isn't still working, or that Christians aren't still doing what they can and helping others "come to Christ" but that's where we tend to stop.

     I think our culture as a whole has forgotten what the meaning of the cross truly is. It isn't simply a tool to a one-time occurrence of living knowing we are going to heaven. The cross was the entirety of the promise of God to the human race, in the old testament. Mankind as a whole has been given more than just a ticket to heaven, but a  season pass to healing, restoration and renewal.
 
    The most incredible aspect to it all isn't that you have accepted Christ and now don't have to worry about working for a spot in the afterlife, but that you accept the reality that God is providentially and relentlessly pursuing your life. It is the same as having the person you look up to the most in life, or even a famous person coming to you and saying, I want to live life with you. You are my greatest joy, and I have laid my life down for you, now walk with me.

     I don't suppose using a celebrity of human figure is quite appropriate, but it gives us the idea of how significant it really is. Truly the more I think I have things figured out, God allows another layer, or wall to come down and let me grow through that. Almost like molting as an insect, You see yourself only as your flesh, as you allow it to come off, although it is a struggle it is freeing and you have grown through it. The great thing is though, is that we will always have another layer that will eventually be ready to come off, because we never stop growing.

     Every moment we surrender over our wills to His, our life becomes something more than living day to day paying bills purposeless. Life isn't about just making it until Christ returns, but a perpetual conflict filled tool God uses to grow and shape us for His will and Glory. The world isn't secular and Christian it is all God's whether it is not filled with His light or not. That is our purpose here though, To reclaim any territory in the enemies clutches, as Kuyper says.


"there is not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over, does not cry, Mine!"

     Let us not get lost in the mentality that our lives are our own for there is nothing in this world we truly can govern and control that our Christ has not already owned and seen. Healing, and restoration is God's desire for our lives and our hearts. He does not send troubles our way to test us, He is like a father watching their child suffer. His greatest desire is to see us want Him, above all things, and admit we need him.

     Why fight what is for our own good, I pray we do not.

Salvation in Christ

We as man have spent most of our days seeking and pursuing truth and life. Everyone wants to be accepted, everyone wants to be loved. These are universal truths among all peoples and among all cultures.

Humanity has spent so much time seeking truth, especially regarding religion, that it is easy to forget why we began to look in the first place. When it comes down to it, all men feel that there is something missing, an emptiness that cannot be filled no matter what we try to fill it with. I think it is safe to say that when we attempt to fill it, it may feel good for a while but brings us right back to where we started, and that is seeking to fill that hole.

Truly I think Christ is the only thing that can fill such a whole that has been laid inside of us. It only makes sense that man is incapable of filling it himself since he is created and not complete in himself. It takes a soft heart and an open mind to be able to accept it, but Christ in Christianity is the only example of self-sacrifice in an act of service to bring all of man to a position of holiness so that he may be close to his creator. No other religion in the world teaches that man is fallen and can’t do anything to save himself, but simply has to rely on a just, loving God.

Romans 3:23

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”

 It seems indefinitely difficult to wrap our minds around becoming in touch with God once we realize that we have a sin barrier between us but there is hope.

John 14:6 says

“For I am the way the truth and the life and none come to the Father except through me”

If we choose to accept the one who has accepted all the suffering and pain of the world so that we know God which truly is life, then there is salvation in that. It is not difficult and requires no works or acts for us to be saved. It simply requires a hint of faith.

Romans 10:9

“If anyone believes in their heart that Jesus is Lord and confesses with their mouth that He rose from the dead, they will be saved”

If you believe and confess the verse above, you are a child of the living God and a part of the kingdom of Christ. If you have any desire to know more or learn more about this, leave a comment.

Selflessness or Love?

      C.S. Lewis brings up a remarkable point in one of his daily devotionals. He brings to light the realization that if we ask someone what is the greatest action or character trait we can show or portray to other people, people would answer selflessness. What's the problem with that right? Well it seems that it does truly show that our culture has become so narcissistic that even when we are talking about how to be "pious" we are still absorbed in the idea of self. The answer really implies that by my neglecting of self I am showing everyone else nobility and Christ. The reality is that we should be showing love that is the answer, not SELFlessness, which is making it about others instead of making it all revolve around self. 

     I think this shows a level of feeling inadequate, we desire sometimes to be so Christlike we in our own minds make it about how we can keep from granting our own desires or ambitions. We fear being selfish to a point where in the attempt to love others, the motive is to be the opposite of selfless instead of love itself. This is all very revelational especially to me because I am one of those people who feels the need to see my actions as selfless or selfish, trying to judge myself and every action and motive. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but my phrasing and mindset is wrong, I should be trying to show love in every action and thought. Christ doesn't call us to be selfless toward others and toward God, he calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves and to love God with all our heart and soul and mind. We can't get lost in the notion that it is about us even when making it about others. This is something I felt needed to be shared on a more widespread note. 

      No need to rant on about this idea, be blessed hope you enjoyed it!

My Testimony

Childhood

     When I was a child my life was pretty simple. I went to a private school and attended a small Lutheran church with my mom and dad. What made it interesting was being part of one of the very few Hispanic/Caucasian families in town. Oh and my dad was 50+ years older then my mom. From the start people would always give us terrible looks and that definitely began to stir up a sense that I am not  accepted. Some people of course would be kind but you could always hear others snickering in the background about how wrong and messed up our family is because of the age and racial difference in my parents. They were good parents but also fought a lot and there was a lot of racism in my dad's side of the family as well. Most of my dad's siblings would sneer and make immigration remarks toward my mom inadvertently. Between that and the feuding my parents had at home, mom crying and screaming wishing that she could go back to Costa Rica, and dad getting frustrated with her, left me in quite a confused state of belonging and what life should look like. I did become a Christian in the midst of all this though at some youth convention I ended up at. No big deal though really, or so it seemed, because my life stayed the same. Don't get me wrong, my life wasn't that bad, perhaps incredibly awkward at times but nothing like a lot of people go through and have to tolerate at home.

A New Season

     Halfway through my sixth grade year of school my dad had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, after switching from a doctor who told him that it was simply his age that had been making his body hurt and feel different. Although his symptoms were not normal and he refused to run any sort of test. We went to Costa Rica for a month or two visiting my mom's family that summer and he was absolutely miserable reading up on how to deal with this form of cancer and what life was going to look like for him from here on out. When we returned home he was taken in for more testing and was diagnosed with multiple myloma. This is an incurable bone cancer. My dad was going to die. From that appointment in mid-summer he was given until Christmas or so to live. The stage four cancer was already brutally destroying his bones and infecting all of his bodily tissue. As we began to even then mourn his death expecting the worst wondering how mom and I would make it, Christmas rolled by and he was still here and going strong. He was then put on a new kind of chemo that was in testing. Being on that for over a year, I got to see the very worst a persons immune system can look. Understanding that someone who's normal healthy weight was around 170 was down to 129 for a while looks like death walking. As time went on mom and I become brokenhearted and running out of faith. God wasn't answering our prayers in healing him so it looked as if we were on our own.

What's next?

     Those was the big question for mom and I, "how much longer can this last?" or "Are we ever going to make it through this?". You see, as time went further down the road of this digression, he began to lose who he was. His mind going from being a manufacturing engineer for Boeing, to being someone who forgets where he is and whether he had taken a pill already or not. This being said, unless you have lived with someone who has bone cancer very long it's hard to understand the kind of agony that goes with it. To wake up at four in the morning to the sound of a man with a high pain tolerance screaming in writhing pain was normal. Mom had forgotten to change his fetonal pain patches of high dosage one night and so the pain was out of control. He ingested 9 loritab painkiller pills before even getting a handle on it if that puts it in perspective. To have to sit on the floor hiding food to eat while watching him because his throat had gotten so weak that he couldn't eat most solid food because he would choke, and if he saw the food he would want it. In the midst of agony and progression toward death, I had happened upon someone who had also lost their father to cancer and experienced what I was experiencing. She was murdered by car crash, being in the hospital while suffering internal trauma, I got to talk to her all week because I was home sick with walking pneumonia and quarantined to my room. I was able to talk to her until the moment she passed away. This 19 year old death was the first of many events that would transpire that year for me. Following it was a car accident where someone hit mom and I and put our car out of commission. Our roof was leaking, the washer and dryer broke down. Our refrigerator had a blown a fuse, water was leaking into and rotting the wood in the garage. This all was leading up to potentially the worst event of it all to me.

Christmas Cheer

      The Christmas of my 9th grade year, He had been sleeping through the usual practice of opening presents. This was the Christmas of a large snow storm and my mom and I were essentially trapped in the house. He woke up at about 10 in the morning hallucinating as he often did and was talking to his mom who was deceased and crying. In all of his wailing he wasn't able to get up by himself, because the cancer had made him to weak. Mom and I actually had to help him up to take him to a porta-pot he had to use. Anyway, he hated life so much at this point he was trying to get us to give him the bottles of pills so he could kill himself. He wanted to call all of his family to tell them goodbye before he said this, and so we let him. As he told all of his family I'm dying and i'll be gone soon my heart completely broke. As he was continuing to ask for the pills, he then reached the conclusion that without any pills he would also die more quickly and so he refused to take any. Mom and I knew that this would just leave him in indescribable agony, along with, extreme constipation, anxiety attacks and the like. It took several hours of trying to convince him that I was his son and that he shouldn't leave yet so that he would take the medicine which eventually he did. This raised the greatest uproar in my own mind, questioning whether my own quality of life was worth it.

Where is my God

     To be quite frank, after all the things I had to see and the daily picture of death I had to become ok with, I truly began to question what the nature of God is. I had no question that he was real because I had experienced him myself. Going to church by myself for four years, I learned to worship God because I really didn't have anything to lose. I started asking all the hard deep questions when I was still young and in the middle of this trauma. What is the purpose of life, what is faith, what is the point of prayer, is everything predestined, what IS God's will. These questions plagued my mind, and so I spent hours upon hours fighting God and trying to understand him. Trying to understand why this happened to me and my family. Trying to answer if God is just making me have to check if my dad is breathing every time I walk in his room and he is asleep on his hospital bed in our house. I found that there truly was no hope or peace, or joy without God. Because there came points where I just didn't know if I could make it, feeling so alone and completely dead inside. I felt like a ghost that people could see through. Sick of putting up a mask for everyone around me, at school, church, and any sort of public event. There came moments crying out to God asking him to just take my life. I had a 40 day period that I was severely depressed upon arriving home. Contemplating walking down my gravel driveway and never coming home was common. I had no peace until I came to a point where I was completely broken and crying and on my knees asking God to give me a moment of peace in all the chaos. He would. He had never left me, regardless of how much I fought him and yelled and wished he would do something, this was something I had to walk to walk through. When I called on him, He was always there. Sitting on the ground looking at a dying man who used to take care of me, whose flesh was bruised and torn from merely picking him up off of the floor when he fell, listening to him wheeze as he could barely breathe, I was ok. I had peace in Christ. His love for me was enough, and because I understood what it meant to see pain even in my misery God gave me the opportunity to minister to others and love them. This truly meant something for them, knowing that I was going through something like this and could still be ok and worshiping God, then they felt that they could make it to with God's help.

God is Good

To go through something lasting, painful, and significant doesn't mean God has abandoned you. It just means that his world is filled with sin and crap is gonna hit the fan sometimes. God never leaves or abandons you when you call. It may feel like it, but he doesn't. I wasn't saved in the middle of my time of trial, but I learned who God was and found answers to those hard questions I asked. This is a very summarized version of my testimony in an attempt to have brevity, but through everything I saw and experienced, in the midst of it, I could see God was there. In hindsight, life never really was so overwhelming I couldn't handle it. In my weakness I needed God, and when I realized that I really couldn't do it on my own, that my mind will and emotions really wasn't enough to get me through this God truly shined. My testimony is one of hope. That although over 4 years of watching death is enough to break any man's countenance God is bigger then it, and it really won't last forever. God is good, praise him in all things, because without the hope of His love everything is lost. I am praying for anyone who reads this and needs encouragement. Be blessed.

The Design Argument

The Premise

  The design argument is rather simple in nature if you allow it to be. It just assumes the premise we can tell if things have or not been designed. For example, we can see a coat, and without questioning ourselves for a moment as to whether it is designed or not, know that it is. This is proof that there is a recognizable level of design that is undeniable in the real world specifically for that coat. The argument itself is completely valid, only someone that is out of there mind would argue that a house, coat, or anything of this nature may or may not have evolved instead of being intentionally designed. The question comes to the matter as to whether sentient and non-sentient objects can have the same level of design which is undeniable when examined as said objects.

Counter Arguments

Some of the counter-arguments I imagine that would be predominantly recurring are:

1.Hume's argument that biological specimens are not machine-like and therefore should not be compared to the complexity or internationalism of a man made machine.

2.Darwinian evolution as an explanation of the sentient beings on the planet

Defense 

 Hume's argument cannot really stand to what modern science, engineering and biochemistry have found out to be true about organs and other structures in bodies of organisms. Directly below is essentially the flagella system of a single celled organism. I hate to say it but, it seems to me to be quite machine like in almost every sense of the term. Those who differ to Hume's argument or attempt to derive anything other then remarkable complexity from extremely "simple" beings are quite mistaken. Now, for a single celled organism to go from being one without a flagellum to having one by evolution is quite a leap of faith even for an atheist. The Darwinian line of logic which is renown for observing Occams's razor (Things go from the simple to the more complex), would logically conclude that since a single celled organism without a flagellum is more simple then a single celled organism that has one, so by the process of going through "evolution" single celled organisms without flagellum come to acquire them and do not begin with them. That is a lot of jargon to say that an evolutionist cannot believe that this is how it just started, that evolution caused this. The problem with this is that if you take away any of these parts or proteins (which are not found for the most part usable by any means or even present in a flagellum-less organism for the use in a flagellum) the irreducibly complex system(1) fails. Michael Behe is one of those leading the fight for the microscopic creatures for creation and is the one who made the diagram below.

Quaternary Code

"In River Out of Eden, Dawkins describes the intricate functioning of genetic coding in the living cell:After Watson and Crick we know that genes themselves ... are living strings of pure digital information. What is more they are truly digital, in the full and strong sense of computers and compact discs, not in the weak sense of the nervous system. The genetic code is not a binary code as in computers ... but a quaternary code, with four symbols. The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like. Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer engineering journal. Our genetic system, which is the universal system for all life on the planet is digital to the core ... DNA characters are copied with an accuracy that rivals anything modern engineers can do ... DNA messages ... are ... pure digital code.8" -Moshe Averick. Christian's have another main way to combat evolutionist's..well, evolutionary process at least. The passage above is Dawkins’ own description of the nature of DNA. What this essentially means is that DNA is what lays the groundwork for all life on the planet. Well that doesn't sound like a ground breaking truth, but it is, since it is far more complex then any kind of software man has ever come close to engineering, using quarternary code, Evolution itself could only work with the already super complex DNA found in the most "simple" of life forms. Evolutionist's aware of this cannot deny that there is no reasonable explanation as to why there is such a intricate "pure digital" information complex already placed in organisms. This is really where more Christians should be focused if they are in the fight of upper level apologetics, and blow this wide open to the masses. Evolution has only been given a model to work  from and that essentially is, even in the most ideal scenario, DNA.

(1) Irreducibly complex: a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. -Behe