Beyond Childish Things: Faith and Truth
1 Corinthians 13:11 “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
It is interesting to me how often, in today’s culture, the putting away of “childish ways” does not occur. I have been focusing on the idea of the infantilization of young people by mothers, fathers, and our culture. We create environments that not only hinder maturation but actively prevent it. Today, we have also created chemicals that will physically prevent children from becoming adults. But the focus of my thoughts today is more in the realm of ideas and how often today we see people young and old who never put away childish thoughts. I recently found myself thinking about this as I thought about how often I’ve heard people use the term” ignorance is bliss,” but I also wondered how many people truly feel this way. How many people today would rather believe the comfortable lie than face the harsh truth of reality?
Many years ago now, I was forced to put away my childish beliefs; I was forced to honestly reckon with the reality of “Is God real?” I was forced to face the fact that my parents, despite being loving and having honestly believed what they taught me, could have been wrong. This question took me on a journey of reading dozens of books and questioning everything I had previously believed. It was in this season of life that I had to reckon with the facts that I had been taught growing up. I had grown up believing that science was something I should avoid less; it deter me from my faith and caused me to doubt what I believe. It was through this wrestling that I came to learn of Christian Apologetics, where I learned that this cultural idea of “science” being the death of God I instead learned that it is built on and demands the existence of God. This revelation shifted my mindset to learning to question everything, and through this questioning, I began to read more than I had at any other point in my life. Thus, through all my reading, I found I needed an outlet to verbalize my own thoughts on the ideas I learned. This is how this Substack was born, in addition to the simple fact that I have loved to write since I was a child. My prayer is that I will continue to learn to put away all childish things in my life, including childish actions and childish ideas.
The Price Of A Soul
What is the soul? What does it mean to have a human soul? We have historically believed this is something that is exclusively a feature of the human being. The soul is defined by Merriam-Webster Dictonary is as follows.
“The meaning of SOUL is the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life.”
I found myself thinking about this recently as I was talking to a co-worker about the old trope often shown in Hollywood movies and TV shows of someone selling their soul to the devil. I remember as a child watching shows like Tom and Jerry, and there is a scene in one episode where Tom is confronted by the “Devil” shown as the Dog (Spike), and he has an offer for Tom, so Tom reluctantly signs his name on the dotted line. As I was thinking through this idea of someone selling their soul, I had to ask myself what it means for someone to sell their soul. As it is depicted by Hollywood, it is this fateful moment when someone puts their name to the contract and so forfeits their soul.
As I thought through this idea, I imagined something a little different. I feel that the selling of one’s soul is often more gradual. It’s the small compromise, it’s the gradual surrender of ones moral convictions for earthly pursuits. As I see it, there are literal instances of people who knowingly choose to surrender their morals for the sake of money and power. I do think there are people who knowingly choose to ally themselves with “The Prince of this World.” In our Westernized culture, we are so disconnected from the spiritual, metaphysical realm that many seemingly don’t believe it exists.
Preface - “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves (the devils) are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”
Chapter 7 - My dear Wormwood… I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance about your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course, this has not always been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When human beings disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us we cannot make them materialists and sceptics - at least not yet. I have great hopes that we shall learn in due course how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us, (though not under that name), will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The ‘Life Force’, the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work – the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping what he vaguely calls ‘Forces’ while denying the existence of ‘spirits’ – then the end of the war will be in sight. In the meantime we must obey our orders. I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping your patient in the dark. The fact that ‘devils’ are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you. C.S Lewis - The Screwtape Letters
Our modern culture has very much taken the materialist perspective, with many believing that if something can not be proven through the scientific method of empiric verifiability, then it does not exist. Here, as I thought through this idea of someone selling their soul, I could not help but feel pity for those who do so unwittingly. Though they have not gone under contract with him, this prince of the world, they instead surrender their soul, one piece at a time. I recall once upon a time when I was in a relationship. I had violated my personal and religious convictions. I had abandoned boundaries, and I knew it in my heart; I sought to justify my actions, and so I did. I justified that I had at least not done X. Yet when the opportunity came again, I failed once more, and bit by bit, those boundaries changed. I did not sell my soul in this, but I instead surrendered it. I gave it up for a false promise of fulfillment.
I feel a great deal of pity for the young of today’s culture, especially for the women. I have watched as they are seduced by the promise of easy money. They sell themselves on the internet for dollars; they chop up their bodies in some cases literally, and in others, they chop themselves up one image at a time. Through this action, they surrender their soul, they surrender their human dignity, and they make of themselves what “they will” rather than conform to God’s design.
