The Combining of Two Realms

Pagan philosophers have long admitted to the existence of body and soul (mind, will and emotions). What they most often deny and refute—sometimes violently—is the existence of spirit (because they have no personal evidence of such). Claiming to make scientific observations, they live in the world of speculation. Without the ability to perceive God, people decide truth for themselves (based on observations made exclusively by the fallen, thus warped, body and soul). They argue that no two people see anything exactly the same way. Therefore, all is relative to one’s own standpoint. Each person is the highest authority in his own, small world; he is the center of his individual universe.

I have a friend who believes the secular idea that man is just body and soul…nothing more. He has come to this conclusion, much in the way Charles Bradlaugh came to his ideas: he witnessed people (so-called Christians) touting irrational theories and displaying unstable emotions which they insisted were spiritual…claiming the source of their ideas was God. My friend left the island of mythological madness for the more placid waters of philosophy. False representations of Christianity did not kindle the fire of doubt in him, but they did fan the flames.

My friend does not realize his erratic philosophy is merely another side of the same coin. Pagan mythology and pagan philosophy, though not identical, are nonetheless twins. Cultural and ethical differences are all that separate them. Varied opinions are equal if they are all wrong; a dead rat is just as dead as a deceased mouse. Philosophy and mythology are in the same proverbial boat.

What my friend experienced was more akin to pagan mysticism than Christianity. Claiming to be “faith,” it was a system of unbelief, fostered by the negation of creation and the insistence on fantasy. It was like the toy, plastic food offered by children playing house. There is nothing wrong with imagination, per se, but when one insists his imagination is reality, the game ceases to be innocuous.

When Christian educators teach science, math, and other wholesome subjects, the student at the natural level sees the goodness of God. This establishes and strengthens his faith. It is important to establish in the hearts of students that God is just as much God in the ordinary as He is in the extraordinary. There is a type of reverse secularism, which Christian educators should be mindful of—the defiance of common, ordinary, everyday life; the disdain of practicality. God was just as much God in the carpenter shop as He was on the mount of transfiguration. He was just as holy in the stable, among the cows, as He is in Heaven…and just as spiritual.

That God came down to earth is not the negation of spirit, nor the negation of earth, but the combining, once again, of two realms. Adam was made to be spiritual and physical. Jesus, being the Last Adam, is Son of God and Son of Man. The first Adam lost the function of his spirit, and became a creature of mere earth (soul and body alone). The Last Adam is not only the Lord of Heaven, but Lord of earth as well (1 Corinthians 15:44).

My unbelieving friend had many experiences with believers who might as well have sung Bibbety Bobbety Boo, or When You Wish Upon a Star in their worship services. To them, the Bible was treated as a book of spells; people were always trying to coax the “genie” out of the bottle to make him grant their wishes.

There is no harm in imaginary places like Neverland or C.S. Lewis’ Narnia. They metaphorically represent real places. Christ Himself was the Master of Parables. Stories can aid in getting people to see beyond the natural world. However, in my friend’s experience, it was the imaginary that was proclaimed—not as something pretend, allegorical or even metaphorical—but as reality!

Religion and philosophy outside of Christ is merely mythology and folly. The call of Christian education is to preach and teach Christ. The putting forward of cultures and creeds as absolute, unless they are rooted and grounded in Christ, is the kind of irrational idolatry that fuels the flames of unbelief. When systems of self-righteousness are built out of fragmented truth, they often look so much like Christianity that the average person cannot tell them apart. Like counterfeit currency, it takes close examination to discern sham religion from true Christianity.

Reason and Mythology

My wife recently received an email from an old friend who is currently studying philosophy at a state university in Illinois. She writes:

“It's interesting…in secular universities how strong the bias is against God, particularly against Christianity. In one of my philosophy of religion classes, one of the girls got up in front of the class and said, ‘I was born and raised a Christian. But this class has torn me up. I don't know what to think anymore.’ I was at a low point spiritually when I first started studying philosophy. I'd had a lot of weirdness in my church and in my own spiritual life that became very confusing. It's a long crazy story, but part of it, I think, is that my church was so ‘spiritual’ that there was no room for rational thought. The ‘rational mind’ was preached against from the pulpit; my own spiritual experiences were almost always anti-rational. I always felt pushed and pulled in strange directions, compelled to do things that didn't quite make sense, and yet they were ‘spiritual’ enough for me to think God was talking to me. Anyway, my church and my life fell apart. I tried to hold myself together. I went back to school. I took anti-depressants. And this pragmatic rationalism that I was being offered was an enticing contrast to the messed-up spirituality I had come from and had bought into. My faith became quite precarious. There was no answer to any of my questions; all the answers were shallow, trite, and banal.”

To many, Plato’s reason makes more sense than Homer’s mythology. I have had experiences similar to my wife’s friend regarding church and secular education. When Christians leave off the very important ideas in nature, and solely stress the "spiritual" aspects (often more accurately identified as emotional aspects) of faith, they come to a rather impractical way of life. They are in danger of losing touch with reality when they lose touch with the whole.

For the gentile, the first lesson toward faith is creation (nature reveals God’s character). The Jews had an even further step—the oracles of God—in the Law of Moses. Nature is for the Gentiles what the Law is for the Jews.

Christian education does not abandon the natural side of life. The Christian life alone is truly holistic. Wholeness in Christ includes nourishment for the spirit, as well as the body and soul. To section off one or two parts from the complete person is to cease to be practical. One could even say it is to cease being a complete human (spirit, soul and body).

Perhaps Abraham was faithful to see God’s goodness in nature before he believed. God did, after all, show him the stars as symbols of His goodness. Guileless Nathanael had a moment of truth under a tree, and Jesus called him a “true son of Israel.” As a young man, I exercised my natural faculty of sight, and turned my eyes to the stars in honest wonder. God answered me in a fashion so undeniable that I would sooner doubt the sun than the heavenly Light revealed to me.

To negate nature—to lessen its importance—is to miss the first step in seeing God; it is to try to read without learning the alphabet. It has been the strategy of Satan to infuse the study of nature—science—with the pagan philosophy of unbelief. Not only pagan philosophy, but also pagan science is being crammed down the throats of students in secular schools everywhere. Like the Socratic poison, it is killing our nation.

The basic lessons of God’s goodness are fundamentally seen in the created world. The testimony of the natural world is being discredited, not by science, but by the connection of science to pagan philosophy. What is seen in nature is seen, not objectively, but according to the bent of self. If we discredit the alphabet, then how can we read? If philosophy begins when one doubts that a tree is a tree, then one can truly, like “humble” Socrates, "know nothing." How much less can one know the invisible God if one can’t even know if a stone is a stone?

God is seen through the heavens, and under the tree; He is seen in the stable and the carpenter’s shop. As learning the alphabet precedes writing, addition comes before calculus: line upon line, precept upon precept. The manger preceded the Ascension; a flower grows from a seed; a building is built on a foundation, and a foundation is built from a cornerstone. One can begin to know an artist by the art he creates; one can surmise there is a builder by seeing the building.