Friday, May 8th, 2009
I have been noticing that most of the world doesn’t like the law of sowing and reaping. The world hates that what they do has consequences. What is abortion but a way of running from consequences? Why is AIDS such a horrific disease? Why are humanists so mad at even the idea of God? I have been reading about Atheism and one of their major arguments is that evil exists in this world and God shouldn’t allow it. But I can’t help but think about the game RUNESCAPE; Runescape is a mmo-rpg. Basically you walk around a huge world with thousands of people and you do stuff. When you start the game, you end up the city of Lumbridge. Once, there you can basically do anything! You can adventure however you want. One of the biggest quests you can play for free is to kill an evil dragon that has destroyed an island.
If the dragon kills you, it is no big deal. When you die, you’ll come right back. Sure you might loose a little loot and you’ll have to walk from Lumbridge back to the dragon’s cave. But someday, you will beat it. Someday, you will win. You know that if the dragon kills you that you will get it in the end.
But when you do kill the dragon, it comes right back. When you stop the black knight, he comes right back. When you save the man turned into a chicken, he gets right into trouble again. NOTHING ever turns out bad or good forever because every decision you make doesn’t matter. You can threaten to kill a man one second and the next he will politely give you directions. The thing is that every decision you make is fake. It doesn’t have any real consequences.
Runescape is fun for a while, but it gets boring really quickly because really nothing matters. What if God had allowed the atheists to have their way; no consequences for actions–no tragedy follows choices no matter how foolish, sinful, or selfish. Hitler kills Jews, but they come right back. Fathers are drunks and abandon their kids, but there families have no ill effects. People fornicate whenever, where ever with whoever or whatever–no pregnancy or STDS. Wouldn’t it be great?
But what about good choices? The single mother that works two jobs to send her son to Christian school or college–Her sacrifice doesn’t matter. He turns out the same if she works or not. The Father that loves his family, the soldier that fights bravely, the shrewd investor, the inventive entrepreneur, the honest politician–none of their choices for right matters one bit. Everything ends up the same no matter what–Life on earth becomes like Runescape.
This would apply across the whole spectrum of human relationships. Imagine if dating resulted the same way if a man was a gentlemen or a sexist pig; a woman a lady of virtue or a harlot. It didn’t matter if you loved, hated, cared, or cried. Nothing matters-That is the wonderland that Atheist want so badly to believe is the reality. But to me that is like wishing you could go to the fair to watch others ride the rides and eat the funnel cakes. No, it’s worse than that. It’s like wishing away all that makes human life worth living. The only thing you could ever satisfy is bass instincts–you would be an uncontrolled and useless animal. All the wonder of life, the real love, care, etc. would be gone. There would be no consequences in life because their would be no life. All that makes us worth while would be gone, replace with nothing but useless, empty, tepid entertainment that would merely distract for a few moments before we again revel in our empty, pointless existence.
I thank God that He is so much smarter than us and so much kinder too. He could have had automaton that would not mess up, but He knew that giving mankind choices, REAL choices, was so much better. Yes, we have tragedy, but we have triumph. We have suffering but we have love. What we do, each of us, every moment does matter–It really matters. So Dawkins and his crowd can complain, but I am glad God choose to make our reality real and our will real too. I don’t blame God when wicked people choose evil and sin. I rejoice that I can effect reality just as much by choosing righteousness and love.
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008
Yesterday, I started school meetings. This school year is off and running. However, a bizarre circumstance happened. I was reading in Ruth today about how Ruth “happed” to Boaz’s field. I guess I am in the same boat because yesterday, I happed to an interesting coffee shop. I was exploring the area around the school. It’s on the other side of town and I was very early for the school meetings. So I found a coffee shop-after I found a Sonic and a Sunflower supermarket. Right next to this coffee shop was a place called Dahn Yoga and Tai-Chi. They had brochures right outside so I grabbed one.
It is interesting to me that so many students at Victory Christian School are heavily interested in Manga, those backwards printed Japanese comic books. So what does a yoga brochure and Japanese comic books have in common–Chakra. Apparently, the idea of the Chakra came from India and is believed throughout the orient. From what I could gather in the little digging I did, Chakra is the 6-8 circles of consciousness that can exist in a person. They claim each of these circles affect a person’s health spiritually, physically, and mentally.
The weirdness continues; this yoga place claims that yoga and the other assorted mystical beliefs can “develop inner peace, develop growth of your true self, control your inner power [called Ki], learn to use your healing powers on yourself and others.” Okay, I admit this stuff is plain creepy, but why would some new age yoga school bother me? Again we go back to those Manga, one of the most popular is one called Naruto. It’s about a boy ninja named Naruto, all of his super-human powers; in fact every ninja’s super-human powers come from controlling this bizarre energy source called Chakra-The 6 to 8 circles of consciousness of eastern mysticism.
At this point, some of my students would accuse me of saying that Naruto is evil or watching Naruto is sin. I love my kids; they are so funny sometimes. I am not making this into some kind of attack on Manga, but there is a danger here. The students like coffee and Naruto. Suppose they “hap” upon the Yoga place. They already have interest towards this place. Students have told me how cool they think these Chakra ninja’s are. Would they buy into all this mysticism? I hope not. But the brochure has testimonies of people that think this mystical exercise program has cured depression and controlled diabetes. Not that exercise can’t do those things, but they aren’t blaming normal exercise. They blame this chakra-ki eastern mysticism. They blame this institute that says focusing your chakra and ki will help you heal yourself and others.
I know the allure of entertainment and I can see how these simple comic books are full to the brim with eastern Mysticism and spiritism. That can be dangerous; we tend to get more involved in things that we are interested in. It is important to warn these students that they might be trapped by the devices of Satan. After all, Satan wants to destroy them; and getting them involved in the New Age movement and Eastern Mysticism will definitely do that.
But what is really demonic about this whole Chakra thing is that it has an element of truth to it. It’s description in Naruto and in the research I did both have the endocrine system in mind. Each Chakra or state of consciousness has a corresponding gland. Even in Naruto the Chakra points are closely associated with lymph nodes. Can exercise of the body affect the endocrine system? Of course it can. If a chocolate bar can produce endorphins and a roller-coaster ride can cause an adrenaline spike then a regimen of exercise can affect your emotions. Remember Satan always offers his best apples first. Here I think it’s these stretching exercises called yoga. A person will try it and find out it does affect their mood; they do feel more at peace, etc. etc. But that doesn’t prove the mysticism; although it is presented so that it looks like it does. Then Satan comes along with this whole bizarre philosophy of Chakra and energy healings and Ki power until a person is totally duped by the New Age movement. It’s sublte and deadly.
Anything that comes along needs to be looked at carefully and hard questions need to be asked. Is this right? What does this mean? What is the point? What should I do about it? Is this wrong? To many times we just let new issues come at us and don’t even do enough digging into them. It takes effort but finding the truth is worth the work.