Are we there yet?
Jan 21, 2017 0:03:41 GMT -6
Post by Todd on Jan 21, 2017 0:03:41 GMT -6
I came across an idea in a work entitled Dreamweaver (and posted it on the Web Site) that seems to suggest that all the cultural answers, philosophical, ethical, and religious lie in the past, not in the future, that our idea of progress takes us further away from the ability to understand and commune with God. And after all, that is what is implied in the question posed at the top of our Forum: “Having begun with such great promise, how did we end up here?" The story is that of the fall, the fall that has been repeated numerous times through the centuries. We do not work our way into the better, we work our way away from it.
Adam and Eve, when they were expelled from the Garden of Eden realized that what they lacked was in their past and that the future could only take them further away from their origins.
When Noah’s Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, a new beginning was at hand. But how long did it take for sin to ruin it and disperse mankind? Clearly, their best days were behind the families of the post-diluvial world.
Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt and into the wilderness. A new beginning. How long was it before the great Apostasy that resulted in forty years of wandering? And when did things ever get better? Clearly, the Jews looked back to their beginnings, to their being led by the Hand by the God who had chosen them, not to some human progress into the future.
How about the early Church? How long had Jesus been resurrected before evil entered the Church? A new beginning quickly tainted with heresies and factions.
And Constantine, and the supposed “Victory of the Church"? What Church was that? The Church that quickly crawled into bed with politics and the Caesars, who soon wielded political power and muddied the Church shamelessly for over a millennium.
The Reformation? The same sort of political means marked the “progress” of the ever-growing number of Protestant denominations literally at war with one another.
And America? The land where Christians could worship God without fear of political reprisal? Granted that in some respects America was flawed from her beginning, the wheels started working themselves loose in the 1890s and finally fell off in the 1960s. Clearly, America’s political answer lies clear back at the time of the Pilgrims, not in some mindless, Socialist Utopia in the future.
If time carries man away from God in a semblance of the fall, and our trajectory is always downward, when will we hit rock bottom? Are we there yet? And if the answer to our needs lies back at the beginning, how might we get there? Perhaps we cannot get there from here. Or perhaps we can only get there by turning around and going back a little at a time. Or perhaps we should not focus on the past at all, but simply try, in every way possible, to purify the present by ridding it, one piece at a time, of the cultural accretions and secular, or worldly, evils that now characterize our culture. Your thoughts?
To read Dreamweaver, go to the Navigation Menu above, and click on "Bible Research Web Site. Then > For those who like to read > Essays and Short Works > Untimely Dialogues.
I will bring up a few things I feel have slipped into our thinking unexamined.
Adam and Eve, when they were expelled from the Garden of Eden realized that what they lacked was in their past and that the future could only take them further away from their origins.
When Noah’s Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, a new beginning was at hand. But how long did it take for sin to ruin it and disperse mankind? Clearly, their best days were behind the families of the post-diluvial world.
Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt and into the wilderness. A new beginning. How long was it before the great Apostasy that resulted in forty years of wandering? And when did things ever get better? Clearly, the Jews looked back to their beginnings, to their being led by the Hand by the God who had chosen them, not to some human progress into the future.
How about the early Church? How long had Jesus been resurrected before evil entered the Church? A new beginning quickly tainted with heresies and factions.
And Constantine, and the supposed “Victory of the Church"? What Church was that? The Church that quickly crawled into bed with politics and the Caesars, who soon wielded political power and muddied the Church shamelessly for over a millennium.
The Reformation? The same sort of political means marked the “progress” of the ever-growing number of Protestant denominations literally at war with one another.
And America? The land where Christians could worship God without fear of political reprisal? Granted that in some respects America was flawed from her beginning, the wheels started working themselves loose in the 1890s and finally fell off in the 1960s. Clearly, America’s political answer lies clear back at the time of the Pilgrims, not in some mindless, Socialist Utopia in the future.
If time carries man away from God in a semblance of the fall, and our trajectory is always downward, when will we hit rock bottom? Are we there yet? And if the answer to our needs lies back at the beginning, how might we get there? Perhaps we cannot get there from here. Or perhaps we can only get there by turning around and going back a little at a time. Or perhaps we should not focus on the past at all, but simply try, in every way possible, to purify the present by ridding it, one piece at a time, of the cultural accretions and secular, or worldly, evils that now characterize our culture. Your thoughts?
To read Dreamweaver, go to the Navigation Menu above, and click on "Bible Research Web Site. Then > For those who like to read > Essays and Short Works > Untimely Dialogues.
I will bring up a few things I feel have slipped into our thinking unexamined.
