The reason I haven't been in for a while is because my computer had a cold and had to go to the computer doctor. But my baby's back now and everything is okay.
That's an interesting poem, Penelope, but I'm not sure what it means. Is it advocating the "just give me Jesus" view of Christianity? That's a dangerous way to look at things, because although the entire Bible is focused around Jesus, if we took out everything but just the gospels, well, you do the math. That's four books out of sixty-six. That leaves a lot out of the Christian walk.
I see things as black and white because I believe in logic, and logic tells us that if there is a good then there must be an evil. This story helped me a lot when I was struggling with the idea that there were no grey areas:
Two students were always arguing in class. They disagreed on everything. One day the teacher grew fed up with it and brought the two children and brought them up to the front of the classroom. She stood one child on the right side of her desk, and the other on the left side. Then she placed a square object in the center of the desk.
"What color is this object?" The teacher asked.
"White." "Black." The two students said at the same time. They stared at each other in disbelief. "Are you crazy?" the one on the right side said. "It's white!"
"No it isn't. Anyone who isn't blind could see it's black."
Before this disagreement could escalate into the usual name-calling shouting match, the teacher had the children come to the front of the desk. Once there, they could see that the object was black on one side and white on the other.
"So you see, children, you were both right." The teacher said.
Another student who had been watching quietly from his desk raised his hand and said, "Excuse me, ma'am, but they were actually both wrong. One said it was black and the other said it was white. The cube is actually black-and-white."
So the moral of this little illustration is that there is one truth. It wasn't that the children were both telling the truth, although they thought they were. How could they both be telling the truth when they were saying exactly opposite things?
I know it is hard for us humans to see things as black and white. Most things do seem gray. I like how you used the word "obscure."
But to God these things are not obscure. He is in front of the desk. He can see both sides of the cube, and he knows the truth. The one truth. He also made the cube, so He has control of what the cube looks like. That's another reason to believe in absolutes. without absolutes, God seems less magnificent than he really is.
Maybe the "just give me Jesus" thing draws more people in with its message of an easy ticket into heaven, but real Christianity is a love and awe of God, and that is accomplished when we realize how inferior we are to him, how low and mean and disgusting compared to Him, and yet God loves us anyway. We are black and God is white.
But then there's the upside to this discouraging thought. God wants to give us a chance to be like Him! If we take Jesus as more than just a bridge to walk across to get to Heaven, and instead live every day reading about him, getting to know him, and trying to be like him, we can truly become his friends and even brothers and sisters! That's the magic of Christianity. It's hard, and you have to give up a lot of illusions, like the fond hope that you are the center of the universe and the belief that you are "basically a good person." I wish I could believe these things, so I lie to myself a lot and tell myself that I'm doing better than other people and that it's obscure whether I'm actually doing wrong, because aren't my motives good? But the absolute truth is that I am nowhere near pleasing to God, and only Jesus blood can wash away the past and future sins I commit, and only the Spirit can truly make me do good.
(That's where Calvinists disagree with most other denominations, I think. If I do anything good, it was nothing I did of my own free will, but God ordained it from the first and it could never have happened any other way. I believe this also because any other view makes God a weak bystander, and I believe the Bible when it says that God is the same yesterday, today and forever, which means that things he wrote into the story of the universe don't change depending on what decisions we make. It's only logical.)
Whew! I did it again. I'm really sorry I get so long-winded on these subjects. I hope I've given you some food for thought, though.
Wow, I was so into it I didn't even add any smilies to the text, and if you've noticed I love love love smilies
![Laughing :lol:](https://www.booktalk.org/images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)