How Did They Get There?

Imagine precious young women enslaved to promiscuity.  How did they get there?  Perhaps because they had bad parents.  Perhaps they weren't taught otherwise.  Perhaps one was raped.  Bullied in school?  But no one starts sleeping around early and thinks, "I am amazing and loved, and I have a purpose in life that will change other lives.  Yes, life is amazing.  And I'm not perfect, but I am precious." Remind me this when I lust.  For behind my pleasures is a deep and complex world of needs, hurts, yearnings, passions, sins.  There's always more to the person than impulses.  No woman just wants to perform oral sex, or give her virginity up.  A woman wants her needs met.  She wants acceptance, love, the arms of a trustworthy person, the chance to believe in something that doesn't make her compromise her worth.

Meditations on "The Dark Knight" Pt 2

...So with teary eyes they beg their beloved leader, "Don't go!" They weep at his cross. For anyone with a sense of tenderness, "The Dark Knight's" ending will be a shadow. He bears on his back the bad news of human nature. They couldn't handle the truth. Not the truth of Harvey Dent's guilt, nor the truth of our own. Why do we kill our saviors. Is our self-image worth it? Is Gotham's darkness ever going to go? But when it's messiah must take the guilt of the transgressors among them, what does that say about us? It says we could handle the truth we wanted to hear; we could only take what justified our existence. if it made us right. If it cleared our conscience. If it met our deepest needs. Would we relinquish all that to make ourselves saviors? What if we could only have one? Either we'd admit our human nature and receive the savior or condemn ourselves by shunning his truth. Are we good enough to save ourselves or do we need our own "dark knight"?

Just like the apostles, we beg Jesus not to die. If he does it, we must too! "Please, don't save us through your death. If you do, we must save others by dying as well. I don't want to die!" Jesus' death, though a death to us, is our only assurance for an abundant life. And we face these opposites as well. To us they translate as such:

1) Wanting to accept the love that saves me but deny the same love that witnesses to my fallen human nature;
2) Wanting the man that saves but fearing having to tread the road he walked.

Meditations on "The Dark Knight" Pt. 1

As I continue to meditate on the strong messianic themes in "The Dark Knight" series, I try to take that same sense of overwhelming emotions and existential crisis and apply it to life. Let's remember why Batman had to take the blame.  Why can't we people avoid abusing truth of Harvey's guilt?  Why do we take a mile when given an inch? Why do we insist on justifying ourselves, our existence and our actions, even when it forces someone (Batman) to suffer so we could have peace? Why do we kill our saviors and persecute our prophets? As I think about how the apostles felt, I can only imagine the crisis. As Jesus, in the latter half of his ministry began foretelling of his death, they objected. Not knowing that Jesus saves through his death, they think, "You can't die Lord. You are our savior, our restorer." Without the moral fortitude to follow him to Jerusalem's cross, they stop. They deny him. So two opposites converge in these two contexts:
1) the opposite of loving the savior against fleeing only to worsen his condition;
2) the opposite of wanting salvation and not wanting the good man to die, which alone allows for salvation...

Are We Beyond Saving?

So I open up Yahoo and find out that a Colorado man of 24 went on a shooting spree in a movie theatre that released "The Dark Knight Rises" and killed at least twelve people and injuring around fifty. I thought to myself, "Oh my God, what is going on!"  I may say nothing that hasn't already been said, but that is just terrible. He's shot a load of people...now what? I mean, what was his point? It must have not been a good one. What I'm really trying to say i that evil is just overwhelming sometimes. In "Batman Begins", Bruce is trained by a group of individuals who think Gotham City is beyond saving. They see justice as the uncompromising destruction of evil by force. Because injustice cannot be tolerated, they plan to destroy all of Gotham, a city so ravaged with crime that it's even its judges are involved with the mob. What does this shooting say? Besides evoking the Columbine massacre also in Colorado, it is a tragedy that falls right in line with the Oklahoma Bomber, the destruction of the World Trade Center, etc. What causes this? Will this ever stop? Are we really beyond saving?

A Prophecy

"'There are new men...they propose to destroy everything and begin with cannibalism.  Fools!  They didn't ask my advice!  I maintain that nothing need be destroyed, that we only need to destroy the idea of God in man, that's how we have to set to work.  It's that, that we must begin with.  Oh, blind race of man who have no understanding!  As soon as men have all denied God- periods, will come to pass- the old conception of the universe will fall of itself without cannibalism and what's more the old morality, and everything will begin anew.  Men will unite to take from life all it can give, but only for joy and happiness in the present world.  Man will be lifted up with a spirit of divine Titanic pride and the man-god will appear.  Extending his conquest of nature by his will and his science, man will feel such lofty joy from hour to hour that it will make up for all his old dreams of the joys of Heaven.  Everyone will know that he is moral and will accept death proudly and sincerely like a god.  His pride will teach him that it's useless for him to grieve at life's being a moment, and he will love his brother without need of reward.  Love will be sufficient only for a moment of life, but this very consciousness will intensify its fire, which is now dissipated in dreams of eternal love beyond the grave...


"Is is possible that such a period will ever come?  If it does, everything is determined and man is settled forever.  But since, owing to man's stupidity, this cannot come about for at least a thousand years, everyone who recognizes truth now may legitimately order his life as he pleases, on the new principles.  In that sense, 'all things are lawful' for him.

-Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Brothers Karamazov

The Line Where We Break

I saw a woman walking on the train today (or was it the bus?).  She pulled down her shirt as her stomach was showing.  I imagine this duality existing in most humans: wanting to do almost anything to receive some kind of love and acceptance, and the limits shame impose on what we'd do to receive that acceptance.  Some have forgotten all shame, and others all love.  But most of us deal with the middle sort.  We yearn for real love, rushing to send ourselves into the hands of irresponsible people, all in the name of love.  I must admit.  I am guilty of this.  I find myself thinking about how Ill make up for God's failures.  I'll expect to fail or fall, so that if God won't come through, I'll expect it.  It'll be tucked away somewhere, not too far down my mind.  But it's You who makes up for my weakness.  You welcome me with open arms, telling me all I have to do is come.  There's no need to be in shame, no need to degrade my self.  ("You are reaching something that is beating.  I can't believe I never noticed my heart before." - Mute Math).

Purpose-> God Is: What God Is Not

God is not a meerkat. Now, though most would think such a commonsense statement deserves little attention, let's not be so presumptuous. For some not only think God created the meerkat, or that a meerkat is a god, but that all is god, including meerkats. There are so many conceptions of God, though reasonably much fewer concerning meerkats; but all these conceptions are so different in crucial respects, it simply cannot be so that all are correct.

Similarly, such claims of 'God the meerkat' are far less farfetched to the worshiper of created things. Such a one might tell me, "No, you have got it all wrong. God is a Sun- or Moon, or some zodiac constellation." I'd respond as such, "I joke my friend. For God is none of those things!"

What I am doing here is presenting the Christian conception of God, and it's deep-rooted contrasts with other belief systems.

Any worshiper of created things, what I'll call a pagan, has fallen far from the Christian marker. By created things I mean things thought to be created by God and things certainly created by humans. I mean the physical universe just as much as I mean Zeus, or countless other gods of ancient mythology. It seems strange that the air around me or the voiceless star beyond would rule me. But I could believe in something that is both around me and beyond. For nothing pagan is like this. Mythology is purely of things beyond, and creation-worship is purely of things around. Who could you call on when the god of agriculture wanted your son for breakfast? Some people even gave into those demands, though who made them is unclear. What is clear is that it was not God. It is not God who sends out solar flares from 93 million miles away nor who pulls in the tides. Christ's words reiterate this: "The Lord your God is one Lord." And equally powerful, "God is spirit."

And to just swiftly make the assertion and keep on walking, God is not dead. He is not dead in the ontological sense (meaning He actually died, and was previously alive), nor in the evolutionary sense (namely that the evolution of man has discovered that God is incompatible with reality). A wise psalmist, calling God the living, even sought an appointment with Him, saying, "My soul thirsts for God, the living God. When can I go meet with Him?" All that we know about ourselves and the world, all the most common questions that men's minds tremble to answer, are answered when we meet God.

Deep in the herculean heart of Asia are witnesses to different things, all of which I only discuss for the sake of their differences with Christianity, not with each other. However, to be a Hindu is often to not be a Buddhist or Jain. For Hinduism has so many concepts of God. Christians certainly disagree on certain details, but to denounce a universally believed doctrine would certainly cause you to denounce Christianity as a whole. Some Hindus believe that all is God, others that there is no God. No such distinction can be made in Christianity while retaining the label; if you believe that God doesn't exist, you cannot be a Christian. To conclude, any conception of God that allows the possibility of His nonexistence is at odds with the Christian conception of God.

Buddhists are essentially in the group called 'God Is Dead.' Buddha saw all questions concerning God or creation as worthless. Therefore, since Christians do not believe such questions are worthless, but because God exists, are of ultimate worth, these two world views are incompatible. Jainism as well denies a divine creator.

I must point out here that my purpose here is not firstly apologetic, meaning I'm not here t make a case for Christianity, but to discover the purposes of God's most important choices.