The key to most of the positive things in my life stem from my willingness to admit I made a mistake and / or need help. I learned this the hard way be constantly having to ask for forgiveness because I often offended people as a young adult by saying stupid things.
Failure was the key to my writing ability as well as I started almost 25 years ago with having failed in completing both college and my military commitment. That is what interested me in Taoism and at that time I even thought that I might be a Goth. Shortly afterwards I learned that I was mentally ill.
This is where my Christian faith becomes very useful in a practical sense. I was willing and able to admit I needed help. It is very hard for anyone to believe now that what they are experiencing may not be real or their closely held beliefs could be based on misinformation.
We often see ourselves as the lone hero against the world as a romantic view of life that we experience in movies. But we need each other and if everyone else seems to be wrong maybe we need to consider that we on the other hand are the ones with mistaken views.
Opening up this possibility also allows one to understand other people’s point of view in other areas and is something I have developed in myself in the study of philosophy for many years. There are few things in life that have to be done one way and there are few things in life we can be sure about.
The big outlier is the Bible and God. I know sometimes from the outside faith in God sounds like the things people say when they are in a cult. But the difference is that mature Christians usually have learned often the hard way that their faith should be in God and not in other Christians. I realize many people today don’t believe in God, but to understand Christians you have to accept this possibility.
You will quickly find that I approach Christianity from a wildly different point of view in someways and in other ways I must sound like every other Christian you have ever heard. One of the ways in which I am different is that I only believe in the Bible and the Christian God and in every other area outside this I am a skeptic.
What does this mean in a practical sense? Most people believe in science the way Christians believe about God including Christians. I do not believe in science in this way. I know enough about science to know that it is not supposed to be a belief system technically. But from the way many average people act they very much treat Science like magic or faith.
Part of the problem is that scientists are people too and fallible and so are not objective, at least not fully. But the idea that science and math or facts cannot be disagreed with puts it into the same position as God in our lives. God does not share power with any other group or individual and since He created everything has every right and it is entirely reasonable and natural for Him to want control over His creation.
So you cannot depend so much on science and math in your society that facts become more important than truth and still be a society that has faith in God. Why do even Christians argue about the reality of God but not the accuracy of science? It is very convenient that science can describe itself as a never ending process and continue to evolve over time. We live in the here and now and so we need some definite answer to some basic questions before we die.
Truth is too important to get right only centuries later and then realize that is wrong too. And science and scientists do not limit themselves to the minute details of how to do things. They stretch their hands into human relations with social and applied sciences and the creation and ending of reality. With the direction of advancements of technology they want to be the source of all knowledge and all power.
We are at a point that even non Christians should see that the future though far from certain to us at least is not going in a good direction. Most our major problems in society started after the Enlightenment which conveniently occurred around the same time as the Industrial Revolution and European Colonialism. So we attribute the problems to be the individual technologies and specific political powers of the time, but the problems are greater and more fundamental.
Ask yourself if you could not have America as we know it without oil or computers and that the different ideas we know that are killing us are all tied together. What if you needed to give up the modern world for God? Would you give up your belief in America or the usefulness of science for your belief in God?
So we as a society need to now evaluate the modern world and see if everyone else in the world is right about America or are we right. Is our wealth a legitimate factor to justify us before God? Are we any different than other empires? And what would Christ do in the world today? Would He lead us into battle against our political rivals or would His second coming surprise us more than His first coming?
It is hard to stand against things that have been assumed to be right for so long. But for much larger periods of history and even most people throughout the world today might have a completely different view of what is important in life and how you should express your faith. Maybe we need to understand history better before we try to understand the modern world.