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| Cover Art from Dream Theater's Black Clouds and Silver Linings record |
The Beginning of Wisdom.....
There's a verse of scripture that says, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and knowledge" & "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight." Proverbs 1:7 & Proverbs 9:10.
Most people think of themselves as fairly smart, a decent head on their shoulders to understand how the world works. Most of them don't feel they need a religion to tell them how to be a good person, and as such they really don't need to do religious things like go to church, talk about Jesus, sins, Hell or even worse, some notion of a devil occasionally making us all do bad things. Most people would say they believe in God or that God exists or some form of higher power. Some people even view believing in God as a way to kind of covering the base in case, (to borrow a baseball metaphor) in case there really is a God. I mean, most of us are pretty good people. Yeah there are crappy people out there Karma will take care of them anyway, right?!
So, why do we need to hear about Jesus, and all this talk about getting into heaven, a personal relationship with Jesus, burning in some lake of fire, most of which were stories made up back hundreds of years ago to control the populace by scaring them into giving their money to the church. Look I'm a good person and I do my best, yeah I'm not perfect, but no one is so why would God--who is supposed to love everyone, we're all his children right--why would he send me to Hell? It doesn't make sense?
Ever thought any of these thoughts. Maybe you have more questions than that, and this by no means is a exhaustive list of skeptics' questions, or the thoughts of everyone who believes or doesn't believe. These were actually some of the questions and some of the concerns I held years ago. There's so much more, so many more inconsistencies I saw, so many other things that I needed to clear up. The problem was; I was so sure of my conclusions, that I wasn't even looking for answers. Nor are many people in life. It was in this state that it attacked me like a lion on its prey. That is why I described the title of this Blog page as I do. Even when I thought I had life figured out, would my intellectual integrity be able to withstand the pressure of the truth, no matter how much it divided me from the reality that I was comfortable with.
It was a chance hearing of a sermon that caught my attention. I had been drug to a church, I'll spare you the details of that, but suffice it to say that what I heard launched me onto the path I was not prepared for. It sparked the fire in my mind to burn for the answer until I was satisfied I had answered the question or questions. But I was not prepared for the answers I encountered once I got there. If you've seen, "The Matrix," I realized I was Neo and already swallowed the red pill. And like Neo, it was too late for me, I had started down the rabbit hole.
The top of this article shows a picture of the artwork from the Progressive Rock/ Metal band Dream Theater--still a personal favorite of mine, always will be (Not Christian if you're wondering)-- from their "Black Clouds and Silver Linings" record. The artwork captured perfectly the dilemma I faced and highlighted the crisis I titled this Blog. The Illumination Theory, a song title from the same band, perfectly describes the journey. What if, you were faced with a truth you uncovered, and all of a sudden you felt like Alice, except this was real. The consequences extremely high. Would you have the intellectual integrity and honesty to walk through the door. The actual album cover shows a child standing in the doorway. Could you step through? Could I? Friends and I used to make jokes about people who believed this kind of stuff. I don't know how else to describe it, but I can tell you the feeling I had when it dawned on me the reality and magnitude of it all, I sorely wished I hadn't read any of it. I didn't want to become a Christian. It was not a happy discovery at first. There was now one question in my mind that I hadn't answered, and now was front and center over every issue in my life............What now? DO I just go back to my life like I never read any of it, because I knew what the alternative was...... Now, do I become a Christian? You've got to be kidding me......and yet there was an overwhelming wave that crashed in my mind that brought me to the shores of the truth. The veil was lifted..... Anothen, a word in the Greek you will see me use many times throughout these pages, that means "from above."
That's what this blog is: not only discovering the answers in coming blog posts' to some of these very concerns and a lot more, but also addressing the issue of "Now what?!" Follow along as we address questions, and the many concerns that crop up there ugly heads in God's church
It's been a long time since that afternoon in my life in 2003. As the scripture says, "the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom," and there's so much to talk about.........
