1804 Life Lived In Comfortable Contradictions
Easter arrived this year on April fool’s day. For much of contemporary America, that fact probably suggests a certain appropriateness. Easter is, after all, a high holiday in religious circles. That in itself suggests a questionable intellect, if not irrationality, to a wide swath of millennials (18 to 35-year-olds) and others who understand life as being divided between all things secular and all things spiritual or sacred if sacredness and spirit are even reasonable ideas at all.
Because divorcing spirituals from life in the flesh puts religiosity “over there” and everything else “here” in the now, it has become normal to do life in comfortable contradictions. Comfortable contradictions now indoctrinate America from public elementary students to Supreme Court justices who interpret the exercise of the civil liberties.
When it comes to the issues of the day, it is a wonder that the secular half of the splintered universe maintains any rational system of standards at all. Starting points are everything and in the secular belief system, existence begins with absolutely nothing, nothing at all. Suddenly there is something; a THING. That thing, surrounded by the rest of nothingness, births all material and physics that will build the cosmos. From infinite random chances, our galaxy is formed. From all the suns of the galaxy, our sun becomes perfect for our earth. From that lump, etc. etc.
Our proud, disoriented culture unquestionably exercises astronomically deep, apathetically blind faith. Everything treasured in humanness, the value of anyone, rests in nothing more than an infinitely lucky ooze and electricity. In the end, we are all supposedly lumps of stuff and nothing more. Out of that, one lump or group of lumps decide what is “right” and what is “wrong”, sometimes based on nothing more than force of will, the power of majority, or just raw power. The ridiculousness of spirit or religiosity in this system (taught for generations to every child) is obvious and unchallenged but tolerated.
The damage done by fracturing the western world has been inestimable. One of the worst cultural effects is in the irrational value systems regarding life, both being alive and the living of that life. How we live is every bit as important as having life in the first place. The worth of the power of life within a person drives how they live or, sadly, in too many cases, whether existing is worth the struggle at all.
Over 60 million children have been killed since 1973( http://www.numberofabortions.com/ ). In 2015 in the United States, a violent crime was committed every 26.3 seconds (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/resource-pages/crime-clock ). Frankly, in the secular telling of the story, there is no reason for anything but a collective “so what” from Americans.
Ponder this. If babies alive at any spot of the calendar, pre or post-birth, are just flesh and neural impulses as are their mothers, what give either one the right to survive over the other? They are after all both nothing but dirt and worm food.
Victims of violent crime? What make the wishes of the attacker less important than the victim/ One could say that a victim’s pain and suffering are wrong, but that is not enough. Everyone suffers and experiences pain at some point. It just boils down to temporary sensations anyway. If there is nothing to look forward to but the grave, surely everyone has a right to make a better life for themselves on their own terms regardless of laws and the oppressive standards of others.
The alternative to secular confusion is a much simpler and more rational faith. There was no universe in the beginning but there was and always has been Someone. That rational, moral, principled Person authored a rational, physically law-driven, universe. Then, as His crowning work, He made physical, rational, moral, spiritual persons. In this reality, the stamp of God is woven into the fiber of every individual. Life in and of itself is lived out physically and spiritually and is supremely precious because we are creatures precious to the Creator.
Jesus taught without apology, that the power of His win over darkness was to be realized both in a body of souls of individuals and equally in the establishment of His kingdom “not of this world”. Both of those realities are to be part and parcel of every single aspect of real life on this planet. Children in any stage of life are precious in and of themselves as are their parents. Victims deserve justice because their suffering grieves the heart of God and He requires righteousness.
Easter is not over. The victory over death at the hands of Jesus was finished in history but its life-giving power did not end there. It permeates every sector of our unified universe and answers every moral dilemma. The destiny of every human being and the unimaginable preciousness of life is so treasured by God that Jesus’ resurrection life still lives in those who would dare to love Christ in return.