How Modern Are We?

(Thoughts on culture past and present)

 

 

I don't know why it is that some tend to believe that everything in the past is bad while everything in the present is good.  There were good tribes and evil tribes in primitive times, just as there are good and evil tribes today.  The definition of tribe can be a family, a clan, or a group of like-minded people.  In my family, we might say, "the whole tribe is getting together".  So we are simply talking about a group of people somehow related through blood, interests, or values.   

 

As for medicine in the past, some of the medical technologies of ancient times surpassed anything in modern times.  It is interesting that I have an old book in my library written in the early 1900s.  The title says something about "Modern" techniques.  This tells me that every succeeding generation tends to think of itself as more educated or "smarter" than the last generation in most cases.  However, this is not always true. 

 

Modern plastic surgery began in the 1700s.  A Hindu surgeon who lived about 100 B.C. had techniques that they still have found nothing better than what he was doing.  Cataract surgeries were done in ancient India and were nearly routine operations in Rome. Trephining, a kind of brain surgery, was the first known surgical procedure that was done in ancient times as far back as 3,000 B.C.  Skulls have been found showing that healing had taken place so those who had the surgery had lived for some time after the surgery.

 

As for Christianity, one can make up their mind to believe or not to believe.  That is a choice that each person must make for himself or herself. 

 

When I read "For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" and Jesus' words, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes unto the Father but by Me." I trusted in what He said to be true.  I believed in God's provision for my sin by Christ's atonement on the cross and His resurrection.  When I did I experienced a complete change in my life, like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly.  I have chosen to trust in God who sent his Son and have found Him to be everything that He claims to be in the Holy Bible. 

 

Christianity is not a religion as I see it, but a relationship with God Himself.  I have been disappointed in mankind many times but I have never been disappointed in Christ.  As the old TV slogan says, "Try it, you'll like it". 

 

Many scientists want to see for themselves and have an answer for everything but our mental capacities are not capable of knowing everything.  God told us as much when he said, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55: 8-9)

 

Perhaps many scientists are like Thomas, who said "“Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.”  However, after the resurrection, we saw a different Thomas:

"Eight days later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood among them, and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” John 20:19-29

There is an excerpt from a well-known author, C.S. Lewis that says much about Christianity and Science:

“I was taught at school, when I had done a sum, to "prove my answer." The proof or verification of my Christian answer to the cosmic sum is this. When I accept Theology I may find difficulties, at this point or that, in harmonizing it with some particular truths which are embedded in the mythical cosmology derived from science. But I can get in, or allow for, science as a whole. Granted that Reason is prior to matter and that the light of that primal Reason illuminates finite minds, I can understand how men should come, by observation and inference, to know a lot about the universe they live in. If, on the other hand, I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, then not only can I not fit in Christianity, but I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees. And this is to me the final test. This is how I distinguish dreaming and waking. When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream. The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world. I know that there are such things as dreams: I know that I had eaten an indigestible dinner: I know that a man of my reading might be expected to dream of dragons. But while in the nightmare I could not have fitted in my waking experience. The waking world is judged more real because it can thus contain the dreaming world: the dreaming world is judged less real because it cannot contain the waking one. For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific point of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.”