"Chapter 1: Fiction is about Truth"
Today I was talking with a coworker who shall remain nameless (Casey). It's hard to track the thread of a conversation, let alone any of the ones I'm involved with. It started with an earlier topic about what makes a hero: skills, character, or a combination of both? Friction revealed that a hero must possess both skills and character...a third component of destiny was also added as a skilled good man can still be hit by a stray arrow leaving a "lesser" character to carry on with the heroing.
It was from this last thought that a new question arose. What does it mean to be the best at anything? Is there even a best? One view said that there was always a best. Another view said that there was no best, only best in a certain time and place set to a specific task. If that hero was hit by an arrow than for the task of victory, the "lesser" character is in fact the best. It's similar to the illusion of risk. Not to draw this out, but it begs the question doesn't best rely most heavily then on destiny? After all, the "best" man gets killed then what does it matter that he was best?
Anyone who has known me long, knows that I have a philosophy that says "All things are like all other things." By that I mean that patterns repeat. The physical mirrors the spiritual, and the each mirrors themselves. Combine this with how desire always leads to God, and you come to a stark realization. What makes a good story, mirrors God's story. Why do we long for one guy to come and save us? Because God's plan of redemption is about one man coming down to save us. Why do we want our heroes to struggle? Because our lives are struggle in the spiritual.
Why do we love stories at all? Because a story means there is meaning! There is something worth remembering and retelling! We are each created in the image of a God, can God do anything that has no meaning? Likewise, we crave for our own actions to have meaning! To be remembered!
"Chapter 2: Destiny or Triumph?"
This was the essence of the real question behind the questions. The question is not about whether a hero in a story is one by destiny or personal triumph, the question is: is my place in God's story merely one of destiny or merely personal triumph?
Each has it's consequence. If it is destiny then anyone could "do my job" and my personal choices seem of no meaning. If is of triumph, then what of the man cut down in his prime who never had a chance to hero despite his best efforts? The short answer is that destiny cannot be denied. No matter how much we would like to think it personal triumph the fact is our triumphing only can last as long as God permits it. Your triumph is limited by the pleasure of God. Try to deny it and then follow that by saying "Even God can't stop me."
That leaves us with destiny and the despair that our actions are without meaning. After all, can God's purposes be thwarted? But still we are in the image of God, if our Father's actions have meaning then so must his sons and daughters. What meaning can there be in person who does only what they are meant to do?
Suppose the question is wrong. I have come to believe in paradoxes. They are the best descriptions we have for things we cannot describe, but are still true. We assume that the purpose of choice is outcome...what if choice is its own end? Suppose a bear attacks a child, his mother sees and goes to intervene. Does she have a reasonable hope of changing the outcome? She might "scare" the bear off. More likely she'll get torn limb from limb, but even if the bear changes course it wasn't because of her choice it was because of the bear's choice. Was her choice then meaningless?
Tomorrow, Chapter 3...
You wrote: “Why do we long for one guy to come and save us? Because God's plan of redemption is about one man coming down to save us.”
ReplyDeleteI want to comment about atonement.
(le-havdil) How to live in order to enable the Creator in His loving kindness to provide His kipur –atonement- is outlined in Tan’’kh ; and was also taught by the first century Ribi Yehoshua from Nazareth (the Mashiakh; the Messiah).
Read it here: http://www.netzarim.co.il
Anders Branderud
I believe we are in agreement. Though, I do find the website a bit confusing in format. Though I would argue that while the NT may have been hellenized in the english, with diligence the hebrew mindset within can be uncovered. Thought many christians hold to the idea that much of it is anti-Torah and anti-Jew, it is in fact not when studied from the proper and intended perspective.
ReplyDelete"Chapter 3: GLADOS"
ReplyDeleteWhat snapped to mind as I was having this conversation was the other character in Portal. An AI that guides you through a series of tests. If you played the game it is easier to understant without explaination. To distill it down, you wake up in a facility and are run through a series of increasingly difficult and increasingly deadly puzzles. As you go along, you are given little clues that lead you to believe that the facility is empty of other people and that the AI is malfunctioning psychotically all while promising you 'cake' at the end.
Your final puzzle leaves you on a platform going one way to certain death in a pit of flame while GLADOS tells you that nothing is wrong and that cake is waiting for you. You have no choice but to think fast as you escape from this. GLADOS then trys to explain that it was a ruse, she WAS NOT really trying to murder you, but by now you are certain of her malicious intent. You end up fighting GLADOS and killing her. I get the last two things mixed up, but it doesn't really matter. What happens next is a cut scene where you see parts that look very much like GLADOS lighting up in a basement and in the center is a cake. The credits then roll with a song sung by the computer called "Still Alive." The words tell you that she considers the experiment a success even though you killed her...but rest assured, she tells us she "is still alive."
What's that have to do with God? Though we were told the cake was a lie, it wasn't a lie. Though we thought we killed GLADOS, she was still alive. What does that imply about all the tests and your "escape" from certain doom? In each test you learned a new skill that you then had to use in the next test to survive it. The skills you gained allowed you to fight and beat the AI in the end, but the reason you had those skills was BECAUSE of the AI.
I think that's God (minus any lies). You are taken through a series of trials with a certain set of base skills. We could argue "well I brought those skills, God didn't put them there." Even if that was true, who do you think built the world that those skills are useful in? But as you progress through each struggle YOU gain new skills, YOUR thinking changes, and YOUR potential grows. At the end you triumph over all tests including the destruction of the AI, your greatest threat.
But it was all part of the plan.
GLADOS was always in control.
Concluded (?) tomorrow...