I'm not gonna get anymore work done tonight....
So, I thought I'd post an entry!
I went to Mammoth Cave this past weekend with the Outdoor Adventure Club. It was LOADS of fun. Amazingly beautiful. We went on the 6 hour caving tour which goes off the main paths most of the time and you get to crawl around in [often] fairly tight passageways. So cool! I was always at the end of the group making sure everyone got out of the passageways before I did, so that we could always make sure that no one was lost. It was exactly where I wanted to be. As much as I yearned to be ahead of everyone, leading the way with the ranger, having conversation with her, I wanted to be in the back more. With the position, came a lot of responsiblity. The responsibility of the tracking and "followup leadership" of everyone in the group. I also got a lot of time to sit and think while everyone was wriggling through the tougher passages before I did. I got a chance to look closely for long periods of time at ancient gypsum formations, prehistoric cave dust, the occasional cave cricket, grooves where the water rushed through and smoothed out, and carved out the cave system. It was truely awe-inspiring.
Sitting, thinking, in the cave created a huge amount of juxtaposition in my mind and thought processes. Here I was, in a system of underground tunnels which are at least 387 miles long, with the possibility/thought of at least 500 miles, but probably more like 800 miles of cave system. All carved out by some mildly acidic water millions and millions of years ago. How can a person believe in God if that's the case, I wondered. Obviously, through science, we know that humans weren't around millions and millions of years ago. So, obviously, God didn't create the world in 7 days. Therefore, nothing in the bible can be taken seriously because it is all exaggerated, and meaningless. Right? I mean, the cave proves it. Right?
I only thought these things as a kind of mental stretching. It makes for a beautiful, albiet slightly boring game when you see God everywhere and don't try to prove it to yourself. The game becomes more beautiful when you can rationalize his reasons, or even just prove to yourself that God is there. In Everything. SO, most of the time I spent in the cave was thinking about God's beautiful hand. How intricately he carved out every single little nook and cranny in the cave system. How nothing in there was an accident. Then I thought of Spirit Worship at camp. "You are not here by accident" That phrase has a million different connotations depending on how you say it. "You are not here by accident" Say it 2 different ways. Say it 5 different ways. Say it 10 different ways. Each is different, each unique. Like the cave. Each thing about it is unique. It is the same rock, the same minerals, the same essence, but different in all places. Like God.
We're talking about the trinitarian arguements in my History of Christianity class, and there were some bitter arguements about how to create one God out of three beings without being polytheistic. One way was by saying that God is one thing, one Substance with three different essences. I had trouble making sense of that. How could one thing be three different things? But, now I realize, it is like the cave when we were in no-name pass which is mostly cave dust, when we were in the Snowball Dining Room, which is Limestone covered in gypsum, and when we were in Sharon's secret river, which is still being carved away with 6 inches of water slowly eating away at the rock. They are all the same thing. But they are all completely different. Each has it's own special characteristics that make it unique, but they all have the same chemical composition. God is like that. The father is different from the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and vice-versa. But, they all have the same basic composition.
I also thought about the fact that God has to exist. I know this goes against my above thoughts, but, like I said, I like to stretch my brain a little and argue the opposite side to myself sometimes, just so I can still know that there is no reason to ever have that opinion. The beauty of the rock, whether jagged or smooth, was incredible. And to be looking at it 2 inches from my face while it is glowing in the soft blue light of 3 LEDs is even more incredible. But, I think the most incredible thought I had from this is that I was an enormous distance under the surface of the earth. It was absolutely gorgeous. Even when crawling through the water, I couldn't help but think of the beauty. The color of the dirt was perfect. The color of the muddy water was perfect. That's why there's a God. Because everything in the world is perfect.
The juxtaposition came with this thought. Hell is real. Eternal damnation has to exist if God exists. How can that be?, you ask. Simple. Well, not really, but roll with it. The cave, in all it's beauty, is a wasteland. Looking at the dull side of the coin, the cave is a hell. Completely barren, devoid of life (beyond the occasional cricket [and even they go outside to eat now and again] and some eyeless fish at the water table level), and dark. No light gets in to the cave where we were at. I would sit at the back of the group and turn off my light sometimes after all the others had gone into the tiny hole. I would only do it for a second, but I would still do it, to experience absolute nothingness. That's all it was. Nothing. A void in a lifeless cavern. Which, essentially, is an enormous rock tomb. Not very pleasant to think about. So, even if Hell is firey and such, my impression of it is that it is barren, lifeless, devoid of personality and love, and lacking in forgiveness. A cave is not forgiving at all. If you get hurt, it can take hours or even days to rescue you. If you die, oh well.
Also, while thinking about this juxtaposition, I was trying to rationalize Hell from other ways as well. Everything has an opposite. Light versus Dark. Good versus Bad. Red versus Green. Sweet versus Salty. Magnet polarity. Sleep versus Awake. Natural versus Synthetic. God versus Devil. Christ versus Sin. Heaven versus Hell. That way, it makes logical sense that a Hell should exist. If it didn't, all known laws of the universe would be thrown off, and they are all pretty accurate. Because science doesn't disprove God, or religion, or faith, or whatever. In fact, it does the opposite. Science, in a very very basic sense, proves God every single day. Another juxtaposition. Interesting, I'm starting to sense a theme here.
I had similar thoughts on the hike to our campsite, as well as on the drive to the park. Hopefully I'll put them up, but I have to go to bed now. I'll continue this discussion tomorrow.
More illustrations on the same point of justaposition of things. On the hike in to our campsite, one side of the trail had been burnt, and the other was a giant jumble of green. The fire was a prescribed burn, so it was something that was done professionally. When we were driving into the park, a deer was just standing in the middle of the road. It was the perfect opposition of nature and human interference in nature. Here is a deer, standing on a slab of asphalt. A material that is utterly synthetic, and has started to take over the world. We have the parks to enjoy, but they're full of unnatural things, so that we CAN experience nature at it's rawest form. Funny.
"So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him." The writer of Jeremiah thought of juxtaposition when creating this analogy. A potter creates vessles. They're used for carrying stuff. But the one he was working on failed. Instead of giving up, the potter started over again, and made a new pot out of the same clay. We are that clay. Not perfect, but constantly being shaped and reshaped to look better than we were before we were ruined. But, we still work. The clay vessel would have still held water, still done its job. But it had a blemish. The pitting of perfection against useablility. We're not perfect, but that doesn't deminish our capacity to do the work of Christ. WE have no less ability to be compassionate. NO less ability to love. No less ability to be completely alturistic. No less ability to serve Him.
I think that's pretty cool.
"Look, and be utterly amazed, for he will do something in your days that you wouldn't believe, even if you tried." Habakkuk 1:5
Peace
I went to Mammoth Cave this past weekend with the Outdoor Adventure Club. It was LOADS of fun. Amazingly beautiful. We went on the 6 hour caving tour which goes off the main paths most of the time and you get to crawl around in [often] fairly tight passageways. So cool! I was always at the end of the group making sure everyone got out of the passageways before I did, so that we could always make sure that no one was lost. It was exactly where I wanted to be. As much as I yearned to be ahead of everyone, leading the way with the ranger, having conversation with her, I wanted to be in the back more. With the position, came a lot of responsiblity. The responsibility of the tracking and "followup leadership" of everyone in the group. I also got a lot of time to sit and think while everyone was wriggling through the tougher passages before I did. I got a chance to look closely for long periods of time at ancient gypsum formations, prehistoric cave dust, the occasional cave cricket, grooves where the water rushed through and smoothed out, and carved out the cave system. It was truely awe-inspiring.
Sitting, thinking, in the cave created a huge amount of juxtaposition in my mind and thought processes. Here I was, in a system of underground tunnels which are at least 387 miles long, with the possibility/thought of at least 500 miles, but probably more like 800 miles of cave system. All carved out by some mildly acidic water millions and millions of years ago. How can a person believe in God if that's the case, I wondered. Obviously, through science, we know that humans weren't around millions and millions of years ago. So, obviously, God didn't create the world in 7 days. Therefore, nothing in the bible can be taken seriously because it is all exaggerated, and meaningless. Right? I mean, the cave proves it. Right?
I only thought these things as a kind of mental stretching. It makes for a beautiful, albiet slightly boring game when you see God everywhere and don't try to prove it to yourself. The game becomes more beautiful when you can rationalize his reasons, or even just prove to yourself that God is there. In Everything. SO, most of the time I spent in the cave was thinking about God's beautiful hand. How intricately he carved out every single little nook and cranny in the cave system. How nothing in there was an accident. Then I thought of Spirit Worship at camp. "You are not here by accident" That phrase has a million different connotations depending on how you say it. "You are not here by accident" Say it 2 different ways. Say it 5 different ways. Say it 10 different ways. Each is different, each unique. Like the cave. Each thing about it is unique. It is the same rock, the same minerals, the same essence, but different in all places. Like God.
We're talking about the trinitarian arguements in my History of Christianity class, and there were some bitter arguements about how to create one God out of three beings without being polytheistic. One way was by saying that God is one thing, one Substance with three different essences. I had trouble making sense of that. How could one thing be three different things? But, now I realize, it is like the cave when we were in no-name pass which is mostly cave dust, when we were in the Snowball Dining Room, which is Limestone covered in gypsum, and when we were in Sharon's secret river, which is still being carved away with 6 inches of water slowly eating away at the rock. They are all the same thing. But they are all completely different. Each has it's own special characteristics that make it unique, but they all have the same chemical composition. God is like that. The father is different from the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and vice-versa. But, they all have the same basic composition.
I also thought about the fact that God has to exist. I know this goes against my above thoughts, but, like I said, I like to stretch my brain a little and argue the opposite side to myself sometimes, just so I can still know that there is no reason to ever have that opinion. The beauty of the rock, whether jagged or smooth, was incredible. And to be looking at it 2 inches from my face while it is glowing in the soft blue light of 3 LEDs is even more incredible. But, I think the most incredible thought I had from this is that I was an enormous distance under the surface of the earth. It was absolutely gorgeous. Even when crawling through the water, I couldn't help but think of the beauty. The color of the dirt was perfect. The color of the muddy water was perfect. That's why there's a God. Because everything in the world is perfect.
The juxtaposition came with this thought. Hell is real. Eternal damnation has to exist if God exists. How can that be?, you ask. Simple. Well, not really, but roll with it. The cave, in all it's beauty, is a wasteland. Looking at the dull side of the coin, the cave is a hell. Completely barren, devoid of life (beyond the occasional cricket [and even they go outside to eat now and again] and some eyeless fish at the water table level), and dark. No light gets in to the cave where we were at. I would sit at the back of the group and turn off my light sometimes after all the others had gone into the tiny hole. I would only do it for a second, but I would still do it, to experience absolute nothingness. That's all it was. Nothing. A void in a lifeless cavern. Which, essentially, is an enormous rock tomb. Not very pleasant to think about. So, even if Hell is firey and such, my impression of it is that it is barren, lifeless, devoid of personality and love, and lacking in forgiveness. A cave is not forgiving at all. If you get hurt, it can take hours or even days to rescue you. If you die, oh well.
Also, while thinking about this juxtaposition, I was trying to rationalize Hell from other ways as well. Everything has an opposite. Light versus Dark. Good versus Bad. Red versus Green. Sweet versus Salty. Magnet polarity. Sleep versus Awake. Natural versus Synthetic. God versus Devil. Christ versus Sin. Heaven versus Hell. That way, it makes logical sense that a Hell should exist. If it didn't, all known laws of the universe would be thrown off, and they are all pretty accurate. Because science doesn't disprove God, or religion, or faith, or whatever. In fact, it does the opposite. Science, in a very very basic sense, proves God every single day. Another juxtaposition. Interesting, I'm starting to sense a theme here.
I had similar thoughts on the hike to our campsite, as well as on the drive to the park. Hopefully I'll put them up, but I have to go to bed now. I'll continue this discussion tomorrow.
More illustrations on the same point of justaposition of things. On the hike in to our campsite, one side of the trail had been burnt, and the other was a giant jumble of green. The fire was a prescribed burn, so it was something that was done professionally. When we were driving into the park, a deer was just standing in the middle of the road. It was the perfect opposition of nature and human interference in nature. Here is a deer, standing on a slab of asphalt. A material that is utterly synthetic, and has started to take over the world. We have the parks to enjoy, but they're full of unnatural things, so that we CAN experience nature at it's rawest form. Funny.
"So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him." The writer of Jeremiah thought of juxtaposition when creating this analogy. A potter creates vessles. They're used for carrying stuff. But the one he was working on failed. Instead of giving up, the potter started over again, and made a new pot out of the same clay. We are that clay. Not perfect, but constantly being shaped and reshaped to look better than we were before we were ruined. But, we still work. The clay vessel would have still held water, still done its job. But it had a blemish. The pitting of perfection against useablility. We're not perfect, but that doesn't deminish our capacity to do the work of Christ. WE have no less ability to be compassionate. NO less ability to love. No less ability to be completely alturistic. No less ability to serve Him.
I think that's pretty cool.
"Look, and be utterly amazed, for he will do something in your days that you wouldn't believe, even if you tried." Habakkuk 1:5
Peace