When It Can’t Get Any Darker

                It was my mother’s ambition to give my two brothers and I as many opportunities to see the world as she possibly could.  Though we were dirt poor, mom saved every year so we could go on vacation in the summer.  One of these summer excursions led us into Mammoth Cave of western Kentucky.  As a small child I was amazed that a hole in the ground could stretch so far, nearly 400 miles.  I fantasized about being the one to explore parts of the cave where no man had yet been.

                This summer I provided my eight year old son, Kameron, with the Mammoth Cave experience.  He trembled with excitement as he took each of 300 steps downward into the cave.  He enjoyed the coolness of the cave as it held its temperature steady at 54 degrees.  He loved the stalagmites and the stalactites.  “A stalactite holds tight to the ceiling and a stalagmite stands mighty on the ground,” his mother taught him to distinguish between the two.

                Half-way through the tour our guide gave us opportunities to ask questions.  My son immediately raised his hand as if he were sitting in Ms. Merritt’s second grade class room.  I quickly pulled his arm down, fearful that he was going to ask where the nearest bathroom might be.  I asked him, “What were you going to ask?”  He replied, “Oh, I was just going to ask him to turn out the lights.” A few minutes later Kam got his wish.   They turned out all the lights for only a brief moment.  It was Kam’s favorite part of the adventure.

                The darkness of a cave is like no other darkness you have ever experienced.  It is a total blackness that can generate panic in your breast.  It is a darkness that seems to have weight, an oppressive darkness.  Something you wouldn’t want to experience alone.  This kind of utter darkness, the kind that prevents you from seeing your hand in front of your face, can be very disorienting.

                In 1914, British explorer Ernest Shackleton set out to explore Antarctica with a crew of adventurous men.  Shackleton’s plan was to land his ship, the Endurance, and walk across the South Pole.  His mission had to be aborted because the Endurance was unable to endure the polar ice.   Shackleton’s crew was stranded for months.  Later, the survivors were asked to reveal the most horrendous difficulty they experienced in Antarctica.  They answered that it was not starvation.  It was not the bitter cold or the pain of frost bite.  The most horrible difficulty they faced was the darkness.  The sun doesn’t rise from mid-May to late June at the South Pole making total darkness an unwelcome companion.

                This deep darkness causes one to lose their sense of direction.  You can’t see where you are going nor can you see where you have been.  It removes the natural time piece that helps us to measure our days.  It will steal away one’s rhythm of life.  It can bring about depression and loneliness and cause one to lose their sense of who they are.  It has been known to cause some men to go mad.

                The sun is the source of all biological life.  Without its rays of light we would all perish.    The Bible often compares God to the sun.  “For the Lord God is a sun…” (Psalm 84:11)  Just as the sun is the source of all biological life, God is the source of all spiritual life.   As long as the earth stays in its orbit around the sun there will be life.  As long as our lives orbit around God we will have spiritual life.  He dispels the darkness that seeks to invade our workspace, our marriages, our families, our finances.  When God is centered in our lives we experience order and understanding.  When God is no longer the center of our lives we get disoriented in the darkness that pervades.  Order is replaced by chaos and peace is replaced by turmoil. 

                We practice idolatry when we try to replace God as the true source of light in our lives. We may feel a temporary satisfaction even though we ignore God in our pursuit of a career, or in our thirst for acceptance and popularity.  Forbidden love and unbridled lust will certainly bring a temporary satisfaction but eventually we will discover that those things are not big enough to fill the God-shaped hole in our hearts.

                Spiritual darkness can cause us to lose a proper perspective of who we are.  You can’t see yourself when the light is turned off.  You find yourself doing things you never dreamed you would do when you dwell in the dark.  The darkness provides a false sense of security.  Under the cover of darkness you tend to believe that no one sees and no one knows and no one cares.  Loneliness becomes a companion to darkness as you become more and more isolated.  Prolonged isolation will lead to depression and finally to disintegration. 

                A cave-like, polar darkness descended upon Israel the day Christ died.  But the darkness was finally lifted and Christ was resurrected.  His resurrection demonstrates to us his power to save.  He is the Light who chases away spiritual darkness in the souls of men.  He brings order out of chaos, he brings peace out of turmoil, he brings satisfaction out of frustration, clear direction out of disorientation, love out of hatred and hope out of despair. 

                The hope of every Christian is rooted in His resurrection.  His resurrection rends the veil in two so we may enter the holy of holies.  His resurrection brings assurance to the Christian that death is only temporary and eternal life awaits those who call upon the name of the Lord. His resurrection clears a path for us to find our way to heaven where we will no longer need the light of the sun.  Instead, we will bask eternally in the light of his glory.

Kevin Probst - Teaches New Testament, Apologetics and Epistles at Lafayette Christian School in LaGrange, Georgia.

Who Am I? Why Am I Here? Where Am I Going?

The basic philosophical questions of life are three:  “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” and “Where am I going?”  You can tell one’s worldview by the way they answer these questions.  Up until about 150 years ago the answers to these questions were mostly based on man’s understanding of God as the Creator of all things.  Then, like a slow moving locomotive the age of enlightenment appeared. Slowly but ever so surely it was declared that truth might be known by following the rails of reason.  The concept of God was placed on the back burner while men searched for truth through their own methods of logic. 

Having evicted God from the train, men began to develop atheistic ideas that were vacuous in content.  The result was a carving of hopelessness in their hearts.  God had affirmed to man that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”. (Proverbs 9:10)   The depraved state of men’s minds was made vulnerable by the absence of the fear of God.  Men began to develop absurd arguments that the complex and beautiful world in which we live was all a “mysterious accident”.  They propped up these arguments with nonsensical statements such as, “Something came from nothing”.

One NASA scientist seems to have recognized the folly of trying to reason our way to truth without the help of a Supreme.  Robert Jastrow said, ‎"For the scientist who has lived by faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Though these three questions are life’s most important, Americans in general are very apathetic about finding answers to them.  The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) reveals that the number who claim to have no religious affiliation increased from 8% in 1990 to 15% in 2008.  When asked about having purpose in life,  28% told a Lifeway survey that “It’s not a priority in my life to find my deeper purpose”.  The collective reply of many younger Americans regarding the discovery of the wisdom of God is a resounding “whatever”!

Who Am I?

None will question the great value of humanity.  The atheist doesn’t deny the value of humans but he refuses to believe that the source of our value is God.  The Atheist makes the absurd declaration that the ultimate source of the universe was an accidental collision of atoms.  Somehow, the souls and consciousness of men was spawned by a once in a trillion coincidental event that formed a primordial soup that cradled first life.  They believe that we are here merely by chance and that we have no ultimate purpose. Our lives are merely a quick flash in the pan and then we will merge into everlasting darkness never to be remembered again.  This worldview leads to nothing but deep meaningless and despair.

The Christian believes that man has great value because God created him.  “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”  (Gen. 1:1)  We are the crown jewel of his creation.  If one wants to study atheism, go to the philosopher, not the physician.  Those who study the complex intricacies of the human body, its heart, its eye, its hearing mechanism have too little faith to declare it all happened by accident.  They believe there must be intelligence behind such complexity.

Why Am I Here?

The atheist who rejects the existence of God and gabbles that the universe was an accident and mankind has no purpose looks into a bleak, black future.  If there is no intelligence behind the existence of man, if we are simply here by chance, then we have no more purpose than a housefly or a cockroach.  The atheist philosopher, Bertrand Russell, lamented the meaningless life:  “…all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and…the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins…”  For the atheist, life is meaningless, the universe will eventually slip into extinction and all men will be swallowed up by a dark hole of nothingness.

The preacher in Ecclesiastes felt this same despair when he mourned the emptiness of life without God:  “"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Everything is meaningless!" (Ecc. 12:8)  Job, at the height of his suffering groaned about the aimless life, “I despise my life…my days have no meaning”.  (Job 7:16)

The Christian finds fulfillment in life by accepting the provisions of God through the Son.  Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life”.  Christ’s followers soon come to realize that a search for meaning is meaningless apart from the Messenger. Jesus declared that he had come to replace the empty void in our lives with a rich and satisfying life.” (John 10:10)

Where am I going?

The atheist believes that the universe will eventually drift further and further apart until the energy and heat and gravity will no longer affect the heavenly bodies.  Just as the universe will cease to exist, man will also cease to exist.  Death is simply an eternal sleep.  From nothing we came and to nothing we shall return. 

The Christian strongly disagrees with the atheist.  The Christian doesn’t believe we came from nothing nor does he believe we are on the road to nowhere.  Solomon makes a solemn comparison when he says, “Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both:  As one dies so dies the other…All go to the same place; all come from dust and to dust all return.” (Ecc. 3:18)

Christians understand that Christ is coming back again.  He has not promised us emptiness, he has promised us restoration.  He will renew his creation and establish a new kingdom.  He will rule that kingdom with perfect justice which will result in everlasting peace.

The atheist finds no significance in his life.  The Christian realizes that he has unfathomable significance because he was created in the image of God.

The atheist finds no meaning in life.  The Christian agrees with Solomon’s proclamation that life is indeed meaningless apart from God.  “…here is the conclusion of the matter, fear God…”  (Ecc. 12:13) 

The atheist has no hope for his future.  The Christian revels in the truth of Christ’s resurrection.  He has brought us “into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”  (1 Peter 1:3)  He has gone to prepare a place for us. (John 14:3) and he promises he will return for us. 

Life overflows with meaning, purpose, and hope for those who will believe.

Kevin Probst - Teaches History, Government and Apologetics at the high school level in Columbus Georgia.

When Your Dream Dies

Don McLean wrote a song called "American Pie" in 1971. The song seems to be a parallel of the loss of innocence in Don's own life and the changes America was going through as she left the "Happy Days" of the fifties and plunged into the turmoil of the sixties. Protestors emerged questioning U.S. policies regarding war and civil rights. The dream of a near utopian society was dying and the reality that replaced it was troubling and difficult to accept.

McLean expresses exasperation when he writes:
"Oh, and there we were all in one place,
A generation lost in space
With no time left to start again."
It seems nearly blasphemous when he describes the failure of the church to rescue a society that was plunging into a darker period of its history:
"The church bells all were broken.
And the three men I admire most:
The father, son and the holy ghost,
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died."
He also expresses frustration as he copes with his own delusions about life:
"I was a lonely teenage broncin' buck
With a pink carnation and a pickup truck,
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the music died."

The death of a dream is a hard pill to swallow. Young adults are sometimes floored by the reality of what the real world is like as they make the transition from the innocence of childhood to the stark reality of a "dog-eat-dog" world. The spilt blood of slain dreams may drain the life from them and some never recover from the wounds. Another onslaught of reality comes much later in life. This is often referred to as the "mid-life crisis".

For many at this stage in life, the loss of a dream causes severe pain which often leads to acts of desperation to reclaim the dream or create another dream. Divorcees will often claim that their spouse made them an expendable commodity as they tried to cope with the depression of facing the reality that they weren't going to be able to experience all they wanted in life. Those in mid-life are often overwhelmed by insurmountable debt or the unexpected dependency of their children. The promotion they always thought they would get isn't going to happen. The harsh reminder of their own mortality by the death of parents is difficult to handle. The loneliness of an empty nest can be depressing. The futility of investing decades in the life of a wayward child can be maddening.

The music died on the day they finally realized they would never write that book. Someone dreamed they would start a company or become independently wealthy. Someone somehow thought age would fail to steal their beauty or sap their strength. A younger woman dreamed she would have children until the doctor told her she must undergo the hysterectomy. The princess he married is no longer so charming and the knight she married has tarnished armor.

So what do you do when the music no longer plays, when the dream is dead? You should mourn your dreams. Your dream was worth crying over. It's okay to feel the pain of loss. It was something you loved, something you dedicated yourself to, something you sacrificed greatly for. Grieve the loss of your dream. Express the despair you feel.

But some bury the dream and sink into hopelessness. That hole is dark and ominous. They seek temporary relief through drugs, alcohol or sex. Many never recover and some become suicidal.

Some employ an escape strategy to find relief from their grief. They seem to relate to the idea that "It's always darkest right before the dawn." There is a light at the end of the tunnel. It comes this way but usually not nearly as fast as we would like it to.

Truly successful people move beyond the attempt to just find relief or escape. They are not willing to live with no music in their lives. They insist on learning from their failures and they begin to create new music to live by. When the dream dies it's time to try something else. There can be no new beginning unless it is preceded by an ending.

For the Christian, the source of hope that follows a lost dream is in Christ Jesus. He is really good at doing resurrections, just ask Lazarus. He sometimes chooses to resurrect dead dreams. He sometimes allows our dreams to die because they have become our idols. He sometimes tests us to see if he is more important to us than our dreams and then he replaces them with a reality beyond anything we could have ever hoped for. Christians never say, "I am too old for a new dream" because we understand that our lives are eternal in Christ.



Kevin Probst - Is a teacher of Apologetics and History at Calvary Christian School and Associate Pastor of Crosspointe Nazarene Church church in Columbus, Georgia.