The Rabbit Hole

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Archive for the tag “apologetics”

07 Apr 2016

Time in a Bottle

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My story begins sometime when I was about 12 years old.  I had my own space in our new house, and lots of it.  A hidden door in my closet opened to an attic I had claimed as my secret room. I covered the walls with song lyrics and would bury myself in blankets in the winter, and sweat to death in the summer, while I spent hours upon hours in my little bunker, writing poems, painting, and listening to music. The occasional spider or spooky shadow sometimes sent me bolting out into the closet like the kids from Narnia trying to find their way home.

On a clear summer night, I would sit outside my window on the roof, and stare at the stars.  I had it in my head that I was in love with some boy from school. I never talked to him, and didn’t really know much about him, but I had this idea about love. It was self-sacrificing and deep. I didn’t care if he ever talked to me again, but I would daydream about him growing up, getting married and being happy. I would sit on my little roof and wish to the stars,  and whisper, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” Something about threes was important. Say it three times, I am not sure why. I think I had some sense of triunity, I knew that the threes held everything together.

Behind my parents house, there was a heavily treed creek, and further back, a small pond. I loved it back there. After school, I would lay and read on this huge fallen tree that made a bridge across the creek. My dad was sure I had taken all the kitchen spoons somewhere in those woods. Some days, I hiked back to the pond, through the thick brush. I distinctly remember, on many a brisk fall evening, realizing I had missed the straight path and was caught in the middle of the thorn trees, and nettles, and spider webs, right when dusk was setting in. Panic crept up as the wind carved through my clothes. There was never a good way out, I would wish I could teleport myself. Trying not to think about what was stirring in the waist-high grass, I would just starting running like a maniac in full panic mode. I generally emerged with a few bloody scratches and the cursed nettles stinging like hell. My mom’s voice in my heading saying, “I am NOT buying you any more shoes!” But as I climbed up to the bank to the pond, the sun scattered all over the surface of the water, blinking like diamonds, and the sky a million shades of pink and purple, my recent trauma would melt away, forgotten, and I would say,”I love you, I love you, I love you.”

I loved that pond so much, I used to tell people I wanted my ashes scattered there when I died. Well, a third of them, I wanted a third in the ocean, and a third in the mountains somewhere. You know, threes. I used to think about death a lot, not in a morbid way, just in a matter of fact kind of way.  I never really felt like I was part of this world. I never pictured myself growing up and doing all the traditional things people do. I would tell people, I was going to grow up and live on the beach in a VW bus, yep, I was going to be a bag lady and sell sea shells by the sea-shore. Until I was 19 of course, after that, I would most likely be dead.  Just couldn’t picture living past 20. I would also plan that for some reason I was living past 20, I would just live vicariously through my best friend’s life, I would be her nanny and help raise her children, and love them as my own. Strange how things turn out.

I thought this through high school, so it didn’t bother me at all when I left my sophomore year and took my equivalency test to start classes at the community college.  I didn’t mind missing prom and graduation, or the college experience, I just never expected to do those things anyway.

When I did eventually grow older than 19, my thinking did not really change. I got married about a month after my 22 birthday.  I didn’t think about it ahead of time, we had known each other only a few months and decided to elope one weekend without telling anyone. I never thought I would get married.  I got pregnant within a few months after that, and I just kept moving forward. I never thought I would have kids. Of course I was happy though, I loved my family, and I was grateful for my life.  I just never expected it to happen that way.

For the next several years I was just busy just living, and I didn’t have a chance to think too much. Always in the back of my mind, though, I would still look at the stars and think, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” Somewhere along my path, all the questions that I had been pushing down over the years, came popping up, like that little squirrel in Ice Age trying to plug all the holes. Maybe the cliché’ questions like, “Why am I here?” were a bit of a stretch, but I knew there was so much more than I could see. I had always felt like a vessel passing through, my soul watching out the window, trees and people whizzing by. Buildings and landscape until it just fades into a blur. Time and space ticking along, suppressing the eternity trapped inside.

You see, that’s what it is, God put eternity in all our hearts, and we go through life pushing it down, or trying to turn it into something else. We have eternity in our hearts because we are made in Gods image.  Because he is eternal, we have a sense of eternity, an internal understanding. Yet we toil away in time, trying to hold on to what is already passing away.

We all know God. Not just an idea of a god, something that connects us all,  or some sort of cosmic designer.  We know HIM. Personally.

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what is made, so that we are without excuse. Romans 1:20

Obviously, we are born and begin at a given time, but God is eternal and has known us throughout eternity. He has always known outside time everything He would ever carry out inside time. He is in control of every aspect of time and space. We sometimes like to think of the universe as eternal. The universe cannot be eternal because it was created by God, and if it were not, there could be no purpose to anything. Something that’s eternal could not be designed because it would precede any designer, so that would make the universe and everything in it, right down to every subatomic quark, completely random and without purpose. So either you have random eternal matter, or an eternal designer , and that would, therefore, give everything in the universe purpose.

God tells us that the day will come when nothing we see will exist. He will put an end to time and space as we know it. Even death itself. Up to this point we have a choice, it’s simple really. Do we want life or death? There is only one source of life. God offers us eternity, as a free gift. Yet, sadly, we often choose darkness over light. We choose death.

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. Rev 20:13-15 Then I saw a new heaven and new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. Rev. 21:1

 

Last summer I was visiting my parents, and I again hiked back to the pond. My son and I braved the nettles and thorn trees with panic at dusk.  The sunlight greeted us as we climbed the bank. Of course, time had moved on, the water was covered in moss and the overgrowth was so thick we could not get too close to the water. That’s the trouble with time, it keeps going. We look to the future with hope and faith, and to the past with judgement and regret. Trying to make our way to the things we want to find, but hold on to the things we lost, but we only grasp at dust.

In eternity, there will be no judgement, no hope or faith, for all is realized and we will see as we are meant to see. No more glimpses of what is to come, no more regret for things past. But, what remains forever will be the most important thing, LOVE.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:12-13

I know that this is what I want to cling to, that is why I am here on this planet. I know as I pass through in my vessel, those sparkles on the pond’s surface, and far up in the night sky, those people I meet along the way, my family, and my babies I hold tight, these are  glimpses into eternity. This is where my heart lives. I cannot hold on to anything in this world, but I will listen to Him as He calls me from eternity, as I have heard Him since I was young, and I will answer Him back from time, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

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09 Dec 2015

Circular Reasoning and the Beauty of Balance

Isn’t funny how our brains can migrate from a glimpse of absolute clarity to complete vacancy in what seems like a nano second?  How does that happen?  Thoughts go from conceptualizations to vapors before they are made into actual thoughts, much less words.  I really hate that.  It is sort of my version of circular reasoning, of the unintelligent kind.  I go from nothing back to nothing.  Of course it is hard work getting there too!  It reminds me of Vizzini from the Princess Bride trying to rationalize which cup has the poison.

I believe these glimpses or fragments are finite versions of some sort of whole.  We spend our lives trying to replicate this whole in one way or another. We often reason ourselves from one side of an issue to another, trying to find it’s truth, trying to find it’s purpose.  It is an endless quest of futility. We search to find balance or unity through the many paradoxes we encounter everyday.  Sometimes, we even try to understand the greater why that fuels them all. We try, but we are just finite beings, we are just grasping at fragments. There can never be purpose or understanding if all we have is a part of a whole. We may try to figure out the whole, the “one” that unites all these parts. Perhaps with the proper logic or experience we can fill in the blanks.

What was the whole again? What were we talking about?

Oh, right, there I go again.

We assume the whole is just everyone’s fragments. Naturally, right?  All the bits and pieces of everything, the ideas and experiences, matter and energy all rolled into one.

I don’t think so. I mean, I am sure they make up some sort of whole. I just don’t think they are the whole we are looking for. They are our counterfeit whole. In their grand sum they are still just fragments, just parts.  There is nothing to tie them together and give them unity. So if that is true, then there is no purpose to anything.  We can find only temporary meaning or purpose, but no real truth, nothing eternal.

What if all that energy and matter and bits and pieces, all those rabbit trails of fragmented reasoning are really a reflection of something bigger? A reflection of the real whole? Something outside of all of those things. Something where each of those fragments represent an entire whole? What if all of those parts are actually given purpose by the whole, the “One” that creates union and balance? If that is true, if things can have balance and purpose, and they must have been designed that way. If not, we go back to our random parts, back to our meaningless fragments.

Many attribute this design to some unseen force or power in the universe.  They think that somehow all the molecular structure of everything is connected and works together to guide and unify.  I suppose that makes sense in a way. Everything consists of the same elements, things do connect in many ways.  There is something missing though.  The universe may be a natural leap because it is seemingly infinite and the largest thing we can attempt to fathom.  While the universe is indeed large, it cannot compare to the intricate vast depth of a conscious being.  It is not capable of logic or reasoning, it has no nature or personality.  So it becomes impossible to connect the randomness of a universe of matter, space and energy with the abstract world of a conscientious personality.  Even if you could somehow combine both realms into one reality, you would still be left with an incomplete whole.  There is nothing to connect the physical and spiritual world together to give it meaning.  We can only wonder from one side to the other as the emptiness of one side fuels the other.

So one can either bounce along this path indefinitely, or reach the end of their existential rope.  Either way, they are powerless and left with vapors.

So maybe those fleeting moments of clarity are just electromagnetic impulses in our brains.  Or perhaps they are a glimpse of something more.  I believe they are both, I believe both have purpose.  However, the only possible way for both to exist with purpose is if what unifies them is eternal.  Eternal in all ways.  Eternal in space, omnipresent. Eternal in consciousness, omniscient.  Infinite, or outside time, and sovereign in all ways.  There is nothing like that in our universe or even in the depths of our imagination, nothing at all for comparison.  Anything we use to try to represent this, no matter how large, is temporal.

Yet somehow we all innately know the only thing to describe this is God.  He must contain all of these attributes, and what we see both within the physical universe and within our abstract minds are finite versions of His infinite attributes.  They all reveal Him, and Him as their creator.  This is why He can be the only answer, the meaning to all things.  The beginning and end to all reasoning.  The difference between endless circular reasoning, and a beautiful balance and unity in all things.

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07 Feb 2014

Whooo Arrre Youu???

dsc00872.jpg    Being willing to question is good.  It is often thought that going against foundations is a rebellion to be avoided, that straying from what you have been taught is a path that     leads to danger.  Christians often associate the fall of man with questioning God and eating the forbidden fruit.  It is a misconception to believe that God doesn’t want you to ask why.  Why is a good thing.  It is usually what proceeds it or what accompanies the why that is the problem.  As humans we are limited in our perspectives but we are also fallen and clouded in our every viewpoint.  Our questions are often equipped with so much baggage, the answer is already predetermined in our minds.   We are simply looking for a way to justify our position.
In fact God loves to disrupt our preconceived notions.  It is only when our positions are shaken that we are able to hear His revelations of truth.  We feel guilty questioning what comes natural to us, it goes contrary to all our instincts.  This is exactly what He wants, for we can never trust in Him if we are trusting in ourselves.  Sometimes this can be very confusing, because sometimes it is easy to confuse asking why with not trusting God.  It is actually the opposite, trusting God to guide you and to reaffirm viewpoints helps us learn and grow closer to knowing God.  Without repentance we are unable to believe.  I am not  referring to repentance as remorse or contrition, but as in changing one’s mind.  If we are set in our views and trusting in what we see, we are willingly blocking what God reveals.  We are unwittingly choosing not to believe.

There is actually only one sin that is unforgivable, and it is unbelief, or rejecting that Christ was the son of God, whose death and resurrection paid the full penalty for our sins so they we may have eternal life.  Of course it is easy to see how a person that rejects God because of the shame of exposure makes bad decisions where the consequences lead to a spiraling effect that condemnation.  It is more difficult to see how a person can be trapped in unfolding effects of good decisions.  This person is walking by sight and not by faith exactly the same as the person who falls in the stereotypical lost category.  Satan is the Prince of this world, and his realm is the temporal.  When we walk by sight, all of our actions are building a sequence that solidifies unbelief, and firmly plants us in this world under his rule.

God’s most distinct quality is His holiness, this means He is unequal to anything else, He is set apart in every way.  He would also like us to manifest this quality by setting ourselves apart from the temporal world.  This doesn’t mean living in an arrogant bubble, but rather to avoid trusting in what we see.  As we have said this is difficult because it our nature and our instinct, so to do this we must deny ourselves, and put our trust completely in Him.  Walking by faith is a constant effort.  We may attempt to use this faith as a foundation and settle back into our own perspectives.  We need to be disrupted constantly so we are able to look to Him and not fall back on ourselves.  This is why people hate to hear the truth, it convicts us.  This why the controversial parts cannot be left out, we need to be convicted.  God knows we will never see our need for Him if we are not knocked off of our foundation first.  We will fail many, many times, but it is that initial trust, that first time we let go of our foundation and let Him replace it with His truth that changed our fate from the temporal to the eternal, from death to life, from the bonds of time to the freedom of eternity.

It is strange how much that Satan loves to mimic God.  Dialectic thought that is so prevalent in this world is an imitation of Gods way of leading people to truth.  I suppose that is why it is so brilliant and seemingly effective.  Deriving order out of chaos makes use of a destabilized situation and uproots old ideas leaving a space for new ideas to be  molded.  The Marxist mentality is a cheap copy of Gods providence throughout history.  Again we go back to the foundation of the idea.  It is not change itself that is good any more than asking questions is bad.  Faith is only as good as the object it is placed in, it really is what you believe in that is important not just the act of believing   It happens that Gods attributes are absolute and eternal, and the changes promoted through the ideas in this world, the things seen, are only temporal.  So simply put, putting our faith in this world, or ourselves, or anything in this universe, is something that will eventually fail no matter what, so it’s only hope is finding purpose in change itself.  This is sold to us as growth or progress, and it’s ugliness is called duality.caterpillar

I used to believe in balance. Duality made sense to me.   I grew up fond of Alice in Wonderland, the absurd logic that also seemed very practical was attractive.  I loved the questions it proposed, my favorite was when the caterpillar asked, “who are you?”  To me this question spoke volumes, it was inevitably unanswerable and dismissed as irrelevant, but it pulled me to the bigger question of, “What is the purpose for anything? ”  It seemed to call attention to the contradictions in all thought.  This spiral effect of circular reasoning was very intriguing.  It was this, “what’s the point?” that eventually opened the door to finding the true purpose in all things, which cannot exist without God.  See all unbelief contradicts itself, it is dualism by nature.  I now have learned that Alice in Wonderland is just a glorification of that dualism, and probably a lot of other esoteric things and should probably be avoided.  However, I still like the way it gives itself away.  I go back to the beginning and say, it is good to ask why.  It is not bad to be curious. It goes both ways, asking why is the only way to find truth, but you have to be willing to believe a new perspective and one that probably is not the same as your own, but most importantly, you must consider your source.  When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit they did not fall because they dared to ask a question, Man fell because his heart filled with unbelief and instead of asking God why, He trusted in himself.

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