Worth Mimicking

A long time ago, long before you or I were either born, before our families were around, even before any of the countries our families came from were around, God created a masterpiece. But this wasn’t one of those masterpieces that was just set out there for generations to appreciate, one of those creations that people are like, “Oh, wow, that guy was really something, wasn’t he? Wish he were still around: there are a few questions I’d ask him if he were.”

No, this is a masterpiece that continues to, well, continue. It grows, adapting to the times, forming itself around new cultural phenomena, integrating itself into any environment, responding to any need that should arise. It’s like a book that writes its own sequels, film adaptations, soundtracks… And it can do this because it’s not just one story, but many; it’s not only about one person, or even about several. It’s about everybody: every individual who has ever lived, every culture those individuals have lived in, every civilization in which those cultures have been present, every history those civilizations have helped to form.

You see, in the beginning, God did what no one else can do: He had original thought. And what He came up with was, indeed, miraculous. Because He invented something that was like Himself, but was still different. Made in His image, yet still its own individual. What kind of genius must He be, to come up with the creature who has come up with all of the so-called “progress” we see today? I would like to propose that the greatest asset of mankind, the thing that truly lends us God’s image—because it can’t be appearance or personality except in a very general sense, because God has created each and every person individually, and none of us are exactly the same—is our ability to create.

God gave us His own aptitude for dreaming, for designing, for building, for repairing, for improving. That is built into us in the same way that our hair colour or our height or our intelligence is built into us. I have it, you have it, our friends, our families, each and every person has that divine spark of genius, captured inside a physical frame. We can create! And that is beautiful.

If that is true, though, why can’t I go out one day and design a skyscraper? Why can’t you sit down for a few hours and type up a novel? Did the Master Creator build a flaw into our hardware? The answer is both yes and no. Of course, God didn’t make us wrong, because He’s perfect, and so His creation was perfect at the time of its completion. But when God set out to design a creature to rule over the earth He was building, He didn’t just want robotic caretakers to herd sheep for Him. No, God wanted something, someone who would please Him through its very life. And so He added just a little bit of spice to the plans: a tiny tweak in the design, hardly a huge change at all. And yet free will made us who we are today.

Now, don’t panic—I’m not going to cover such a heavy and controversial topic today. If theologians have wrestled with the subject of free will versus predestination for centuries, probably millennia, who am I to tackle it when I’m not even out of high school? But I do want you to understand that the course of human history has proceeded the way it has because, in some capacity, God instilled in us the ability, and desire, to make choices. We were not created to totally run our own lives, for we still need a Sovereign in our lives, but we were built to be somewhat independent. Every parent can understand this: who wants to watch his kid every moment of every day to make sure they do everything right? No one! And that’s why you train and instruct, preparing your children for the day when they can have more independence. God gave us the ability to make our own decisions because He genuinely wants to have a relationship with us, and that doesn’t mean pulling puppet strings all the time. When I was younger, I gave each of my stuffed animals different personalities. I’d talk to them, and they’d reply; but the only problem was that I was the one replying. True, I could imagine that they were answering, but the words that came out of their mouths were my words, and not theirs. And that’s why, as I got older, the toys went into the box and I sought out real people, who would give me real answers: original ones that they actually thought up.

And so God made the fateful decision to give us free will, knowing full well, I believe, the consequences of that decision. Looking forward and seeing the pain that our choices would cause Him, He still chose to give us free will, why? Because He already knew who every one of us would be, and He loved us and wanted to be in a relationship with us.

So here was this masterpiece called man, living in the garden with this masterpiece called woman. Both of them were perfect, flawless, able to talk with God and with each other, able to invent names for these funny, wacky things God had made: things like the platypus, the giraffe, the bumblebee. And God saw that they were very good. He was proud of His creations! And I believe He was glad to have that time in the garden with them. He saw what was going to happen, but I’m sure He enjoyed the time with the man and the woman while He had it.

I don’t know how long that first chapter of humanity lasted, when everything in the design was working perfectly: the Bible gives no indicator of time, it just launches straight into the tragedy. At this point in the story, a new character is introduced. Universally viewed as the villain of the story (and rightfully so), the serpent was more crafty than any other. But we mustn’t say, “Oh no, poor Adam and Eve! They were deceived!” That is not what happened. The man and the woman were aware of the rule, aware of the requirements set before them. And what easy requirements! Don’t eat this fruit. I mean, come on! But God had put that free will in them, and they decided they wanted that fruit anyway. Notice I said that they decided to want the fruit; they didn’t just want the fruit, they chose to want it. Genesis 3:6 says, “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” The woman looked at the fruit and decided that it was something she wanted. Certainly, the serpent’s speech was the impetus for that decision, but the choice was still on her shoulders. She took the fruit and ate it. And what of the man? For him, the blame is doubled. First, he was with her when she took the fruit, and decided to say nothing. That’s choice number one. Second, she gave the fruit to him, and he decided to eat it. That’s choice number two. Together, they made three wrong decisions in a span of about one minute, maybe a bit longer.

Well, you know the rest of that chapter of our history: God comes, there’s lots of finger-pointing (again, poor decisions), and they face the consequences for their decisions. But there were a few things that happened in the background, even before the close of Part One. With free will came the capacity to choose evil. When they chose to eat the fruit, they chose evil for the first time, and immediately that capacity to choose evil shot up about seventeen thousand points, which is why we feel the effects of sin today: we were born with an incredibly high capacity for wrong decisions. That’s the first thing that happened.

The second thing that happened—and this is the one I want to focus on—is that the creative capabilities of the human being were broken. This is a result of the fruit’s effects. Before we possessed the knowledge of good and evil, there was just life. When the only evil we could commit was to learn the difference between good and evil, we could not sin, and so we lived in complete innocence. Everything we created was pure and holy, blameless in God’s eyes, and thus perfect. But once we learned the difference between good and evil, those days were over. When you know about evil, it is impossible to create something that does not reflect that, if only in a miniscule way. And that, God cannot abide.

But knowledge of evil is not the only way in which our creative capabilities were broken. The innocence of what we created was lost, but so was the originality. If you look out there, at the world around us, what is it we have created? Shades and echoes, moving mirrors, reflections of things that are not ours. Our entire world is plagiarized! We have vehicles that are our attempts to create something that can travel, but none of them can move half as well as any of the creatures God crafted. We have buildings that are our attempts to create homes, but can even one of them compete with the garden God made for our original home? We have artificial lights and artificial plants, artificial turf, artificial animals, even artificial bodies, and not one of them can compare with the real thing.

Even our entertainment is pitiful. Look at any book, any play, any movie. What are the common themes? Hmm… Sacrifice? God’s plan for our salvation. Maybe love? The reason, painted all over God’s book, that He created us in the first place. How about hate? God states flatly that He hates unrighteousness. All of our visual art is, once again, a reflection of things we see in real life. Music is, perhaps, the only art form mostly free from sin’s corrupting influence. I’m not talking about songs with words, those are all about love, longing, despair, or living life for fun. I mean purely instrumental music: classical, innovative, score. But even those reek of sorrow.

I find it so tragic that, through our own stupidity, we spoiled what is possibly God’s greatest gift to us after Himself. Could you imagine if we lived in a world where every book was a celebration of beauty? What about a world where Hollywood's output included something other than sex, drugs, and violence? Where every songwriter's work didn't praise the depravity of sin?

Now, please do not think that I am so pessimistic as to be unable to see the good in our artwork. I believe that there is very real beauty and joy to be seen, very real pleasure to be had, from art of every kind. But I wanted to first highlight the negative sides of what passes for creativity so that the positive sides can shine out a bit brighter.

Yes, there are delightful times to be had from reading books; I love watching movies just as much as the next person. Music is extraordinarily moving to listen to. We as a general populace have done an incredible job of overcoming some of our own natural destructiveness in order to instead create, or at least mimic. The purpose of this paper is not to applaud humanity, though; neither is it to bash us in some way. I only wish to point out how unbelievable is the grace our God has given us.

Just think about this: how many people exist who have created beautiful artistic expressions, yet are not Christian? In this, God does not discriminate between His children and those who are His enemies. He allows even those who most spitefully defy Him to be blessed with the gifts of creativity and imagination. That is beyond belief: how many of us would choose to give those who most hate us one of our most precious possessions? No one.

If you think you don't owe God anything, think again. Even if you don't choose to follow Him, offer up a quick prayer of thanks, right now, for the incredible capacity He has given you to bring beauty into this world. And now do not feel anymore pressure to perform. You will never measure up to a standard of perfection, so relax and enjoy the experience of mimicking your Creator's passion: creation.

Spontaneity? Rather Not...

I just got the urge to blog.  It just sorta hit me out of nowhere.  The only problem with this urge is that I have absolutely no idea what it is I want to blog about.  It seems very silly--a writer who doesn't know what to write--but then again, there is no central theme involved in this blog.  It's not like I've said, "Alright, I'm going to be a blogger on industrial developments in third-world countries."  It isn't even like I've said, "I love flowers, so I'm going to make every blog post focus on a different type of flower."  No, instead I had to go ahead and say, "Hey, let's write about whatever pops into my head!"

Sometimes spontaneity is the enemy of productivity--a lesson I have finally begun to learn from my fiction writing.  In terms of accomplishing something through writing, it never happens without planning.  I can get pretty far just running off spontaneous inspiration, but I dry up after about fifty pages of single-spaced writing.  That isn't a good trait for a writer.  I'm slowly learning to plot and outline before I actually begin writing a project, so that I can prevail to the end of the story.

Here's the thing: life doesn't work if we don't think about it before we live it.  Think of it as a marathon: there are lots of people who can do a sprint, no problem, or even a 5-K, but there's no way on earth any of them could go out and run a marathon without some serious preparation.  It's the same thing with life, because life is a marathon.

In the Bible, God used Paul to make the same point (1 Corinthians 9).  A lot of people use this passage, and other parallel ones, to talk about prevailing and persevering when the going gets tough.  I think that is a wonderful application of this passage, and it has gotten me through a lot of really tough emotional and spiritual situations for me.  I think the error comes when that is the only way people use it, because there are always multiple applications for a verse in the Bible.

God is telling us not just to persevere in life, but also to prepare for life.  I guarantee that you will never regret any actions so much as ones you take without forethought.  That's not to say that spontaneity won't sometimes pay off, even in significant and beautiful ways that change our lives, but those times are the exception rather than the rule.  It is essential to recognize that we should prepare for life in the same way we would prepare for an essential work or school project, for life is the biggest project we've been entrusted with completing.  Think and pray before you make a significant decision about friendships, careers, or education.  In taking the time for this sort of preparation, you'll find yourself with a lot less stress in your day-to-day life.

Conclusion

There are those who believe it is impossible to know the truth.  The irony of such a statement is that they believe that it is true.  Everyone believes in something, and everyone ought to believe that their beliefs are true.  How, then, can we know the truth?  If I disagree with a Marxist but we both think our beliefs are true, who is right?  We cannot know that.  That is not to say that we cannot know the truth: the truth is knowable, it is simply impossible to know which belief system is true.

I believe that one day I will die and will stand before the God Who created me and give an account for all of my actions.  A friend of mine who is an atheist believes that one day he will die and will be dead.  We cannot know which of us is right until we die.  That is the life of faith.  A worldview is nothing more than looking at the world and choosing what makes sense, analyzing the evidence and honestly choosing what seems true, then living your life with the assumption that what you believe is true, is true.

I believe that my beliefs are true.  Do you?

History

There are two different general perspectives in terms of history.  One is a cyclical perspective, in which the same events happen time and again, using new players on a new stage each time around.  Such a perspective is displayed in the Matrix series of movies by the Wachowski brothers.  This view, even as it looks at the past as a repetition, offers no hope for the future, for it simply means that all the same death, destruction, and despair will be repeated infinitely in a great circle that can never be escaped.

Therefore, cyclical historicism must be rejected in favor of a linear view, a view in which history has a definite starting point, from which it moves to a definite ending.  This linear perspective is in line with a biblical worldview, for the Bible itself repeatedly uses phrases such as “in the beginning” and “the end is near.”  Such phrases would not be used did God not desire us to believe in a single story arc that begins with creation and concludes with heaven.  Even within the linear camp, however, there are many different beliefs about man’s purpose and history’s ultimate meaning.  Which one is correct?

Man’s purpose is to be a reflection of God’s nature and a bearer of His glory throughout the world.  It was for this reason that God created us and it is for this reason that we should live our entire lives in a manner that is pleasing to God.  This story of humanity obviously has a past, however.  In a sense, there is a definite elephant in the room: if God intends humanity to display His glory, why do humans do evil?  The answer is that history is not summed up as a straight line connecting creation and heaven.  There were several major events that have occurred and will occur between those two.  Rather than as a single parabola, history should be viewed as moving along the way a stone does when skipped across a pond.  This paper will look at each of the points where the stone that is history touches the water.

History began at the point of creation.  The Bible tells us that God spoke and the earth came into being.  Everything that was and is, spoken from His mouth.  Significantly, the one exception to this is man.  When God created man, He did not speak him into being.  Instead, He shaped him with His hands and breathed life into his lungs.  God was intimately involved in the creation of mankind, which means that He has a special plan for us, one which He reveals in the first chapter of Genesis when He says: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.  Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Something went wrong along the way, however.  History flew for a time before it touched the water again, at what is known as the fall.  Humanity was deceived by God’s enemy, the Devil, into rebelling against God and seeking to set themselves in His place.  Because of their rebellion, God banished them from paradise and cursed them to pain, hardship, and death.

From this time forward, humanity was at war with God.  Millennia passed as man constantly fought against God’s rule and sought to overthrow Him in every way imaginable.  God called for Himself a people to represent Him on earth, but like Adam and Eve, they rebelled against Him time and again, serving other gods and violating His commandments.  This went on until the stone once more touched the water, at the most significant moment in human history.  A man, named Jesus Christ, was born to a virgin, named Mary.  But this was no ordinary man, as His miraculous birth testifies.  He was God in human flesh, come to bear for humanity their punishment of death.  He allowed His creation to beat Him, humiliate Him, and publicly execute Him while He took their sins on Himself in order to save them.

This Jesus is not an imaginary figure.  There is not a historian alive, even among those who are not Christians, who truly believe He did not live.  The historical evidence for His life and His death go far beyond Christian teaching into the writings of a number of non-Christian historians of the day.  As for His resurrection from the dead, His followers were willing to die rather than deny their testimony of its truth.  A group of nobodies from nowhere were willing to defy the greatest power of the day—the Roman Empire—rather than turn aside from their claims.  Would fishermen and tax collectors have been willing to die for something they knew was not true?  Absolutely not.  No liar is willing to lay down his life to preserve the life of his lie.  Lies are by their very nature self-serving, and it is not in the nature of a liar to sacrifice for his lie.  Logically, the resurrection of Jesus Christ must be true, or none of his followers would have been willing to die for it.

Because of Jesus’ sacrificial death, human beings was able to be in communion with God for the first time since their fall.  God called to Himself a new people, purified from evil and wholly set apart from the rest of humanity.  In essence, He created an entirely new sort of human to serve and follow Him.

At this point, history is moving toward its fourth and final encounter with the pond’s surface: the return of Jesus Christ and the final judgement of all mankind.  It is at this moment that all evil will be wiped away, that all pain and sorrow ill be erased, and that all happiness will be made everlasting.  Christianity gives history true purpose in acknowledging that yes, there is evil in the world, but that God will destroy it and bring about an everlasting utopia.  This historical perspective is not irrational and unfounded, but is instead based upon historical evidence and logic.  Jesus Christ lived and died.  He was resurrected from the dead.  And the Bible, which is the most historically reliable ancient text in existence, teaches that He will one day return to save the world.  This is the only true view of history.