C.J. Sears's Blog, page 24

Horror, Halloween, and the Fall

What is it about horror that fascinates us? Why do we (at least some of us) choose to be scared? Why not dive into the deep-end of sappy and cheerful things instead? We’ve even dedicated a holiday towards what frightens us. Tonight, all manner of children (and some who are too old) will travel door-to-door seeking candy while dressed as this or that monster or fantastical thing. They will be paraded up and down suburbia like they’re little more than piglets with mouths to feed.

But what’s the point? Ignoring the historical (pagan) roots of the day, let’s think psychologically about why Halloween is an event. Serial killers and Frankenstein creatures, ghosts and witches, etc.–these are the creatures that lurk in the night. These are the reflections of us. What do I mean by that? I’m saying that monsters are the madness within, the evil that all men and women are capable of because they are fallen. They are the darkest depths of the soul.

(Appropriately, Halloween occurs in a season of the year we typically title as “fall” which is food for thought in my view.)*

The pitfalls of our lives manifest themselves in the things we fear (and, in some respects, enjoy) most. We’ve all felt the urge to hurt or maim someone in our days. The killer simply takes the necessary leaps into the unholy, basking in the evils of unloving humanity. The Frankenstein monster (or similar creatures) is the innate rebellion in humanity, the desire to play God. Ghosts are what we leave behind, memories of the forgotten as we trudge toward the unknown of death. Witches show our capacity to follow falsehoods, to worship idols and malevolent beings.

Another part of us, the creative part, wants to conquer these things. So we make up stories. We direct films. We fashion costumes. It could be said that horror fiction and Halloween in the modern era represent a need for us to confront ourselves. Instead of shying from our evils, we embrace them in a safer format. We teach our minds to combat the known and unknown, the psychotic and sociopath alike. If we can fight against death and decay, we can persevere.

That’s the theory, anyway. The Truth, as it may be phrased, is still out there. We struggle with our mortality and our sinful natures. So we, in our infinite foolishness, believe we can win all on our own. But we can’t. It lurks in the shadows, building up a wall around that which is good in us, obfuscating the best of our natures. We can stave it off. We can put it to the side. But we cannot defeat it. Not without help, His help.

“Can the blind guide the blind? Won’t they both fall into a pit?” (Luke 6:39 HCSB)

Truly, we are blind without Him, blind in our selfish quests to conquer our sinful selves. So tonight, whether you’re trick-or-treating, hosting a party, or simply enjoying a good slasher flick, remember that you can cast out superstition, you can laugh in the face of monsters, and you can cuddle up next to a warm fire with popcorn in hand. But evil persists in spite of our efforts. We are fallen and to rise up against death and the horrors we commit there is only One who can help us.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” (Revelation 22:13 HCSB)

Our journey for understanding, our appreciation of life, and the victory against death begins and ends with Him.

With all that being said, I hope everyone has a safe night tonight, free from the demons (inside or out) that we deal with on a daily basis. God bless.

 

*Obviously, I know that it’s called that because of the falling leaves. Don’t be cheeky.

The Eternal Battle

Compromise. It’s what we do when we come face to face with other people with differing views or actions. We compromise with our family. We compromise with our coworkers and bosses. We even compromise with strangers at a door when we cede to let them enter a building ahead of us! Some, throughout history, have said that no compromise is the best solution for ending conflict. This includes men and women of all walks, but is perhaps most pertinent amongst the military. Much strategy in warfare is about beating your opponent down or outfoxing them until surrender is forced.

Of course, some war mongrels will take this to its furthest end, pursuing no submission of any kind. For most, even in militarized conflict, there is always a compromise at the end of the road. Major wars, wherein there is a decisive victor, end in treaties that became talking points in history books. But what if there is no bodily war? What if the conflict is purely ideological, a battle of wits, hearts, and minds? What if the battle is for the soul?

This is the conflict forged by the dispute between theists and atheists. To the atheist, nothing matters. We are byproducts of chemicals and atoms that, through an inconsequential and unnecessary process lasting eons of time, became absurdly self-centered creatures capable of contemplating about our own existence, contrary to all other animals. We are bags of meat floating on a rock hurtling in space incapable of doing anything not programmed by our own chemicals and possessing no free will. We have no choice but to await the heat death of the universe.

Sounds depressing, doesn’t it? It’s also philosophically and scientifically unsound. The atheist is beholden to the self-defeating beliefs of materialism and evolution. They cannot allow a “divine foot in the door” because it would upset their naturalistic just-so stories (Richard Lewontin, geneticist, Marxist, and defender of evolutionary biology). In their system, molecules-to-man is the only acceptable answer and they must say so because “in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs…we have a prior commitment to materialism.”

But if we’re nothing but processes standing on processes in the midst of processes, why bother trying to persuade anyone of anything? The atheist concludes that he has no free will, yet it is his assumption that he can persuade others to agree with his beliefs. But according to materialism, there are no beliefs, just the end results of biological mechanisms. A person has no choice but the choice they make. The idea is ridiculous, ludicrously dim, and historically a millennia(s)-old undependable ideology. By its own nature, it has no defense.

The theist (and in particular the Christian) can point to reasons for their beliefs. Why is the universe something rather than nothing? God created it as an expression of His will, to house His subjects. Why do we think and make choices about our daily lives? Because He has given us Free Will, so that we may come to Him through our own reasons rather than because He forces us to love or worship Him. Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world? Because we have sinned, besmirched His name, and are fallen. We brought death into this world. We are responsible for the verifiable entropy seen in all living and nonliving things.

Why? Because we trusted the adversary (Satan) instead of Him Who Is and Always Has Been. We chose false gods, just as the atheists do now in their love of fanciful just-so stories and images about “mother earth” and “ape ancestors.” They paint pictures of head-scratching transformations unsubstantiated by the fossil record, recording unbelievable paleoartist depictions as fact. To this day (at least as far as I attended school only a few years ago), known hoaxes and grand claims are brandied about in science classrooms as proof of evolution (Haeckal’s embryos, peppered moths, skull lineups). Indoctrination begins and ends in the secular classroom.

This battle of ideologies, I would say, is a war for the very soul of mankind. It is blatantly a facet of the devil’s plans, to corrupt the minds of youth. If he can convince you that God does not exist, then, naturally, he does not either. Even with the foreknowledge of his own defeat, the fallen angel seeks to take many with him, to make them spurn God. These are the actions of a desperate, deplorable, despicable being who is aided by his witless servants.

Though they do not know it, “[they] are of [their] father the Devil, and [they] want to carry out [their] father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and has not stood in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of liars.” (John 8:44, words in brackets added by me for correct grammar, HCSB) Though Jesus was speaking to the Jews who did not believe in Him on this matter, it is readily applicable to the atheists and their actions in the world.

But there is hope still yet. The Good News is eternal and everlasting. “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in Me, even if he dies, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.” (John 11:25-26 HCSB)

For your soul, there can be no compromise.