The Terracotta army

I meet with a group of friends every Tuesday night provided work doesn’t interfere for Bible Study. Our first Tuesday of each month though is usually just fellowship and takes place at a local coffeeshop. The organizer of our group had just come back from China and was showing us pictures of his vacation. At one point, he got to the Terracotta army.

I was amazed looking at this picture of soldiers made out of clay. He told us about how an emperor had these built to be his army in the afterlife. The peasants apparently didn’t put a lot into making them though as some of them had their heads missing, to which I told the ladies at our table they could make whatever jokes they wished.

My friend said that the heads were made but they weren’t firmly attached to the soldiers. He also told me that their chests were hollow. The only real support was their legs. Their legs are solid and strong. As I looked at that, I realized that while I had made a joke, I had also seen the condition of the human race in our culture.

First off, let’s start with the head. The head is the point of thinking of course. In our society, our heads are not really attached either, and I plan to blog further on this at another time. Maybe I might even do so tomorrow. We have reached a point where thinking is optional. If anything, other people will think for us. We too often just digest thoughts and regurgitate them.

Keep in mind I have nothing against reading the thoughts of other people. If I did, I wouldn’t even be blogging. After all, you are reading my thoughts. I think there is much wisdom to learn from those who have gone before us. However, I do think we should examine all that we read or hear and check it for truth content.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen in our school system. I consider myself an intellectual and it didn’t happen with me. I was way too passive in school and while I knew the answers, I wasn’t really trained on how to think. It wasn’t until apologetics and philosophy that I learned how to do so.

How much more our children today? Our machines are doing everything for us. Middle Schoolers no longer learn mathematics. They learn how to use a calculator. A calculator is a good tool, but you should know how to get the answer on your own apart from the calculator. This is why the McDonald’s guy is so often stumped when you give him an extra penny.

However, that is again more for another day. Let’s move on to the chest. I think of C.S. Lewis’s chapter in his book “The Abolition of Man” where he talks about men without chests. As Ravi Zacharias says, he’s not talking about guys like myself that have nowhere near that Atlas build and don’t win awe at the beach or pool.

He speaks of it in the context of knowing right and wrong and how we have reduced everything to chemical reactions. Saving that child that is drowning is not really a good act. It’s just that when you do so, some glands start secreting juices that give you a feeling of goodness and you interpret the act as good even though it is not good in itself.

Has it had an effect? Yes. We live in a society where right and wrong have been reduced to feeling. I have seen people look at teenagers who murder another in an experiment and say there is nothing wrong with it. I have seen people look at the VTech shootings and say they cannot see any absolute wrong.

This gets us to the legs. I was surprised my friends took awhile to figure out what implications I wanted them to draw from strong legs. It’s not so much legs as simply lower parts. We are solid there for in our society, sex is our god and we have become quite proficient at ways of sex.

In our day and age, abortion, pre-marital sex and cohabitation, divorce, homosexuality, and contraception are all becoming commonplace and accepted. While it used to be the norm that you recognized these generally as wrong (I realize some might disagree with me on contraception), today, it is the ones who are against them that are seen as the oddballs of society.

Sex has become our god. If we spoke of an action that ended in the murder of children, then we would condemn it. However, that act is abortion and since it’s about sex, we do nothing. If we spoke of an act that tended to result in broken marriages down the line and suffering for children left behind, we would condemn it. However, those are pre-marital sex and cohabitation. Since they’re about sex, they’re allowed.

If we spoke of an action that cut a vow between two people that was supposed to last for life and instead made them break that vow and how that vow would leave their children with hideous emotional scars and turn them into pawns to be used against each parent, we would condemn it. It’s divorce though, and it’s about sex so it’s allowed.

If we spoke of an action that resulted in an early death of people who did it and an easy spread of disease as well as destroying the family unit, we would condemn it. However, this action is homosexuality and again, because the action is about sex, society looks the other way.

If we spoke of an action that separated the final cause of something and removed its main purpose and instead took the secondary results, I would hope most of us would condemn it. If we found out that it works to prevent life from taking place in the world, we might be stronger. That’s contraception, and we allow it. While I am a strong Protestant, by and large, I don’t support contraception. (Yes future wife, I hope for a lot of kids.)

All of these things are allowed because they’re about sex. It has left a society of confused people. A former president (I think we all know who) was allowed to do deplorable things in his office and it was excused because it was about sex. Even feminists like Gloria Steinem defended what he did. (Yeah guys. You can fondle a girl and if she doesn’t like it, it’s not sexual harrassment apparently! Who knew?!)

There’s also one other trait the Terracotta have that I hope we can prevent.

They all have no life in them.

I only hope we can stop the slide before we reach that point as well.