There is no new thing under the sun.

I've been reading Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. I don't know how many of you have heard of this book series, or of the movie they made a while back, but I heard a lot about it when it was new. A lot of people I know were interested in it, to varying degrees.

One of the things I heard about it was that in one of the books, there is a scene that seems to illustrate a Christian principal. This scene involves the protagonists in the elevator of a burning building, and on their way to the exit they are stopping at every floor to warn the others in the building of the fire. But all the people are blindfolded, and they won't take off the blindfolds because they don't believe the protagonists. One of the reasons is that the antagonist is also in the elevator, and between the time that the doors open and the time that they close again to take the characters to the next floor, the antagonist is basically yelling that the good guys are lying, and there is no fire. Do I have this right...?

Anyway, this scene seems at first to be a vague illustration of the Biblical truth that there is judgement to come, and only Christians (or people who are trusting in Jesus Christ) are going to be saved from it. Also, Christians are trying to warn with the Great Commission (as it is often called) of this danger, because unchristians are willfully blinded from it. We want others to become Christians so that they will be saved also, because we are no more deserving of salvation than unchristians.

But I gather people have asked Lemony Snicket, and he meant nothing so deep as this in this part of the story. In fact, he's not even a Christian, as I understand it.

Now, in the interest of having something interesting to talk about here, I will relay my study of Lemony Snicket's apparent worldview as I have so far perceived it through his first four or five books in the series.

Now, I really haven't gotten far enough to pronounce a final judgment on whether it sounds like he's a Christian (because we already know he isn't) from his books or not, but so far I've noticed a number of odd clues. You see, in his writing style, he often throws in a paragraph or so of semantic lecture of sorts. But in these lectures, he says things like, "Of course you and I know that it's okay to tell a lie sometimes ..." Or, "But of course nobody knows where you go when you die." These things do not sound exactly like Christian principals, particularly the last one. Also, throughout the book, he seems to give conclusively superior import on material things, while neglecting to even touch on more important moral or spiritual things. He even kind of bashes optimism in his worldly "reasonableness". None of these things sound exactly Christian. (Bearing a false testimony against your neighbor is a sin, and lying mostly means the same thing (so generally it's not okay to spotlight ridiculously rare cases where it doesn't count as bearing a false testimony against your neighbor, because then you're in danger of mistakenly giving license to bear false testimony against a neighbor), God has told us what happens to people when they die, things of the flesh will perish, but the things of God will never perish, and God has given Christians great cause to rejoice, even in our troubles.)

I gather Lemony Snicket actually believes Judaism. The trouble is, Judaism is perfectly correct, except when it comes to Jesus. The Jews were all right, right up until the New Testament. They believe in the same God we do, and God gave them all the same truths he gave Christians, except that they've rejected the New Testament bit.

So why is Lemony Snicket displaying a vaguely secular worldview? ...I gather he's a "lax" Jew. Now I can throw out right now that you're either with God, or against Him, and that He will cast away the lukewarm people, but it won't really do any good, unless by some bizarre turn of events he actually reads this blog entry. Whatever...

I have yet to finish the series (I've been going through it slowly, because I'm so busy), so I have yet to see where this goes. I just thought it would be an interesting blog topic for now...

Answers in Genesis is a sort of ministry, campaigning especially it seems against Evolution, and emphasizing the scientific accuracy in the Bible. I gather Ken Ham leads a very powerful movement in this area through Answers in Genesis, and they've recently opened the Creation Museum, about and from which Aisling blogged and posted pictures, respectively.

We bought a bunch of DVDs from the library at the Creation Museum, one of which was Genesis: the Key to Reclaiming the Culture, a lecture by Ken Ham. It was very good indeed, and the more I think about it, the more I think I realize how powerfully God is leading that man in this ministry, and how important it really is.

But at the same time, having been brought up from my youth in most of the same truths that Ken Ham proclaims, I have an interesting and humbling perspective on things, I think. In the past, Christianity has moved from culture to culture, always battling with secularism. In fact, I think this is more or less prophesied in the Bible when it says, "... there is no new thing under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9) I think this verse speaks of spiritual things, and this battle I just mentioned. When I look at history, I realize that although this American culture has been sliding away, the world in general is roughly the same percent Christian as it was 1,000 years ago, and all the time since. It's just been moving around, and recently (within the past 500 years or so) it had moved into Western and European culture. So now that it's moving out again, it seems to those of us who live in America that we're slipping into another Dark Age or something. But in reality, there've always been heathen nations and peoples somewhere in the world, lost without God. In fact, within this Western or European culture, there've always been those who don't believe, and those who live in sin. In the Bible, I think we can find a prime example of this here.

You see, only recently (within the past 100 or 200 years) has the idea of technology developed, and our world has been changing more and more rapidly ever since. I think we allow this to give us the false impression that things will be different from now on. Before, Christians as a whole may have blown it by shying away from science, and letting the Evolutionists take over, but that was because science never took hold of a country before like this, and they were caught by surprise. If we get science under our belt like Ken Ham is doing, then Christianity will prevail at last, right? No,... I can think of a couple of things that reason against this instinctive thought. One is, science is actually hundreds, maybe thousands of years old, and there was a lot going on regarding science in those small European countries like Germany (well, small in comparison to America or the former British Empire ;D) a long time ago. Also, it is foolishness to think that a great spiritual change in our world can come about by simple material things like technology. Can the puffed up hand of man move God?

So I can shrink history down into a little box on a shelf like that, and we can let God use us however He wishes to move Christianity back into whatever part of the universe we can, like Ken Ham is doing, but the truth is that we can't know what's coming. The past is a dark fog, with only a faint echo or two of things we remember about it, the present is an inconceivably massive stormy sea, our narrow vision allowing us only an anxious glimpse of how little control we actually have over the tumultuous winds and waves, and the future is a vast void, with only a weak guess or two based on what we think of the past and the present. I don't know about you, but at first this scares the heck out of me...

But then I remember that God is in control, and all fear is gone. I will testify, oh God!