Touching the void
You ever seen "Touching the Void?"
It's a fairly hectic movie about two mountain climbers that have the most disastrous time climbing a face in the Andes. There you are watching the movie, seriously wondering if these people made it out alive. On the way down, the one guy broke his leg, and the other guy then had to lower him down with a rope, down from this enormous icy moutain. Then the lower person get's caught just below an overhang. There he is dangling there suspended on the rope with nowhere to go. The top man waits, for hours, not knowing what happened - the top stays taut. Not knowint what else to do, he cuts the rope letting his friend fall spiraling downwards, the friend falls into a crevasse and totally shatters the other leg...
So you can see why there is not a small amount of uncertainty as to whether they made it out or not.
But...
Interspersed between shots of the men on the mountain are the real people involved, talking to you and telling you what it was like. So you're left with no uncertainty about the irrefutable, undeniable fact that they did in fact make it back. You can doubt all you want, you can question all you want, but you can't argue against the fact.
Once you accept that the existence, death and most importantly, resurrection of Jesus is exactly what it is, an undeniable, irrefutable fact, then that becomes for you what seeing those two climbers in the flesh means in the movie. There it is. Yes, you doubt, yes sometimes it's not easy, but just as in the movie, you might have doubted, you might have questioned, you might have felt like they didn't make it, but you had to come back every time to the fact that they did - the only way to come out of that movie with a different view would be to irrationally and illogically deny the evidence and choose not to believe it.
I think one of the things that differentiates the real Christian from the temporary Christian is that the real Christian has seen and knows the facts. It's like they've seen the movie with the scenes of the surviving climbers included. So though they may doubt and want to throw in the towel, ultimately, they cannot because they know the final outcome. I'm not sure if every Christian has "seen the surviving climbers". I think some still need to, they could have had a sheltered existence and haven't yet questioned (they're the kind that grew up in Christian homes) or maybe they've tentatively accepted but still need to bed things down. I do believe that every Christian "sees the surviving climbers" eventually. I actually think it's a necessary part of being a Christian.
It's a fairly hectic movie about two mountain climbers that have the most disastrous time climbing a face in the Andes. There you are watching the movie, seriously wondering if these people made it out alive. On the way down, the one guy broke his leg, and the other guy then had to lower him down with a rope, down from this enormous icy moutain. Then the lower person get's caught just below an overhang. There he is dangling there suspended on the rope with nowhere to go. The top man waits, for hours, not knowing what happened - the top stays taut. Not knowint what else to do, he cuts the rope letting his friend fall spiraling downwards, the friend falls into a crevasse and totally shatters the other leg...
So you can see why there is not a small amount of uncertainty as to whether they made it out or not.
But...
Interspersed between shots of the men on the mountain are the real people involved, talking to you and telling you what it was like. So you're left with no uncertainty about the irrefutable, undeniable fact that they did in fact make it back. You can doubt all you want, you can question all you want, but you can't argue against the fact.
Once you accept that the existence, death and most importantly, resurrection of Jesus is exactly what it is, an undeniable, irrefutable fact, then that becomes for you what seeing those two climbers in the flesh means in the movie. There it is. Yes, you doubt, yes sometimes it's not easy, but just as in the movie, you might have doubted, you might have questioned, you might have felt like they didn't make it, but you had to come back every time to the fact that they did - the only way to come out of that movie with a different view would be to irrationally and illogically deny the evidence and choose not to believe it.
I think one of the things that differentiates the real Christian from the temporary Christian is that the real Christian has seen and knows the facts. It's like they've seen the movie with the scenes of the surviving climbers included. So though they may doubt and want to throw in the towel, ultimately, they cannot because they know the final outcome. I'm not sure if every Christian has "seen the surviving climbers". I think some still need to, they could have had a sheltered existence and haven't yet questioned (they're the kind that grew up in Christian homes) or maybe they've tentatively accepted but still need to bed things down. I do believe that every Christian "sees the surviving climbers" eventually. I actually think it's a necessary part of being a Christian.
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posted by Michael Wiles at 6:35 am
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