Friday, February 20, 2009
Tunnels of the Soul
Some people have claimed they don’t exist. Others swear they’ve been in them. People who have had access to them insist that co-workers escaped there for naps, smokes and romantic meetings. Whatever the story, there is no little mystery surrounding the tunnels beneath the town of Southbridge, MA. According to Joe Capillo’s May 4, 1998 article in the Southbridge Evening news, in the early 1900s American Optical built two utility tunnels, each about a mile long. One tunnel connected company buildings and ran under the Quinebaug River. The other, “the A.B. Wells tunnel, ran from Mr. Wells home on Main Street near Dresser Park to the main plant on Mechanic St.” (see www.dickwhitney.net/AOTunnel.htm)
I’ve driven over these tunnels for years and had no idea they existed. It reminds you of the underground cities that exist beneath downtowns like Toronto, Chicago, New York City and Boston. It makes you wonder how many things go on underground that most of us never know about. Beneath the city streets of our world are millions of miles of culverts, tunnels, pipes and conduits that allow for water, waste, electricity, gas, oil and communication signals to be dispersed or collected as needed. In many cities there are shopping malls, business centers and transportation systems teeming with activity but completely hidden from the crowds that trample them underfoot.
The same is true of individuals. Within all of us are private tunnels of the soul. Beneath our activity and our obvious interaction with others there are important pipelines that are essential to our wellbeing. It is in the recesses of our soul we may have great wells of joy (John 7:28) or deep caverns of darkness and despair. Don’t underestimate the importance of these tunnels. They have great potential for both good and evil. There is a grave tendency to ignore them or pretend they do not exist, but they are real and they are designed by God to be connections to your source of abundant life.
How tempting it is to busily engage in surface activities and menial chores, hoping that we never have to explore the depths of our feelings or the long corridors of our past. But how fascinating and rewarding it is when we allow God to probe the depths of our souls, repair our broken hearts, and speak to us in a deep and personal way. What power and strength and joy is at our disposal when we yield our minds, our memories, our wills and our emotions to a loving God who knows how we were created to live. For those who give their lives to Him, there are possibilities of internal blessings beyond description.
Have you taken inventory of your inward parts of late? Have you learned to pray in ways that allows God to minister to your deep hurts? Have you discovered how to open up to the love and forgiveness that He extends to all mankind? Have you received power since you’ve believed? (Acts 19:2) If not, you owe it to yourself to learn more. We are all spiritual beings and if we don’t manage those areas of our life that are beneath the surface, the problems that can develop will end up managing us. Maybe those unexplainable feelings that trouble you are simply messages from the depths of your soul letting you know that you have a need for something more – that’s usually the way God gets our attention so He can begin a great renovation of our soul tunnels, so that we can be empowered to live life the way he created it to be lived. Go explore!
I’ve driven over these tunnels for years and had no idea they existed. It reminds you of the underground cities that exist beneath downtowns like Toronto, Chicago, New York City and Boston. It makes you wonder how many things go on underground that most of us never know about. Beneath the city streets of our world are millions of miles of culverts, tunnels, pipes and conduits that allow for water, waste, electricity, gas, oil and communication signals to be dispersed or collected as needed. In many cities there are shopping malls, business centers and transportation systems teeming with activity but completely hidden from the crowds that trample them underfoot.
The same is true of individuals. Within all of us are private tunnels of the soul. Beneath our activity and our obvious interaction with others there are important pipelines that are essential to our wellbeing. It is in the recesses of our soul we may have great wells of joy (John 7:28) or deep caverns of darkness and despair. Don’t underestimate the importance of these tunnels. They have great potential for both good and evil. There is a grave tendency to ignore them or pretend they do not exist, but they are real and they are designed by God to be connections to your source of abundant life.
How tempting it is to busily engage in surface activities and menial chores, hoping that we never have to explore the depths of our feelings or the long corridors of our past. But how fascinating and rewarding it is when we allow God to probe the depths of our souls, repair our broken hearts, and speak to us in a deep and personal way. What power and strength and joy is at our disposal when we yield our minds, our memories, our wills and our emotions to a loving God who knows how we were created to live. For those who give their lives to Him, there are possibilities of internal blessings beyond description.
Have you taken inventory of your inward parts of late? Have you learned to pray in ways that allows God to minister to your deep hurts? Have you discovered how to open up to the love and forgiveness that He extends to all mankind? Have you received power since you’ve believed? (Acts 19:2) If not, you owe it to yourself to learn more. We are all spiritual beings and if we don’t manage those areas of our life that are beneath the surface, the problems that can develop will end up managing us. Maybe those unexplainable feelings that trouble you are simply messages from the depths of your soul letting you know that you have a need for something more – that’s usually the way God gets our attention so He can begin a great renovation of our soul tunnels, so that we can be empowered to live life the way he created it to be lived. Go explore!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
What Lines Are You Buying?
It is strange the lines we swallow sometimes. Or, maybe I should say, it is amazing the lines today’s social engineers try to get us to swallow. I’ve noticed that we are most likely to fall for the concepts that are cleverly inserted into movies, books and newscasts. For some reason ideas presented in some formal media format, or by some well-known personality, are automatically given more credibility. With our knowledge of the great propaganda schemes of world history, you would think we would be a bit more discriminating, but, I guess human nature doesn’t change much; the same old tricks keep catching us by surprise.
Permit me to share one example of how a very easily proven lie can be carefully inserted into a movie script only to have many people unthinkingly accept it as truth. In 1998 a very politically-biased movie was released. The movie was emotionally powerful and well-made. The directing and acting was good enough that the film won the ASCAP Award and was nominated for six other awards including an Academy Award. At one point in the movie, the main character, a well-known actor who has won an Oscar as well as 43 other awards, made this statement: “In all God’s creation, only human beings kill their own species.”
Obviously the writer of that movie skipped their eighth-grade life science classes. Few statements can be more easily disproven. Anyone who has ever raised hamsters knows to remove the male from a cage with newborns, because, if he can get past the mother, he will often eat his own children. Books like Call of the Wild have accurately demonstrated why the phrase “dog eat dog” exists. Many of us have seen cats kill cats. We don’t even have to leave home to see that such a statement is foolish.
Furthermore, just a few minutes of research will reveal that animal life is often just as violent if not more violent than mankind. Some animals, such as chimpanzees and ring-tailed lemurs engage in the systematic extermination of another group of the same species. Leopards and killer whales have been observed hunting for amusement and then abandoning their prey. Herons, boobies, egrets, many eagles and falcons, hammerhead sharks and hyenas sometimes kill their own siblings. Many species, including rabbits, kill their own species in order to protect or enlarge their territory.
The truth is, someone connected with that movie was attempting to exalt animal life and diminish the dignity of human life, so they made up a “new truth.” They told a bold face lie, but they did it so blatantly that some people bought it. A quick online search of that statement will reveal that many people have picked up on that thought and repeated it as if it were true. The moral of the story: Don’t believe everything you hear in movies!
Now, it is true that humans are the only species that set up clinics to perform abortions. You will want to research that statement just to be sure, since you’re reading this in a formal media format. But, even if that statement is scientifically provable, I’m pretty sure you’ll never hear it repeated in a mainstream movie, because it doesn’t fit with the “new truths” that are being peddled nowadays.
A word to the wise: entire groups of people often buy into lies, because the lie fits their preferred view. Be careful as to what sources you trust. The more bad information I am exposed to, the more I appreciate time-proven, rock-solid, life-changing books like the Bible. Now, that is a Book full of lines that you can buy into – lines upon which you can bet your life!
Permit me to share one example of how a very easily proven lie can be carefully inserted into a movie script only to have many people unthinkingly accept it as truth. In 1998 a very politically-biased movie was released. The movie was emotionally powerful and well-made. The directing and acting was good enough that the film won the ASCAP Award and was nominated for six other awards including an Academy Award. At one point in the movie, the main character, a well-known actor who has won an Oscar as well as 43 other awards, made this statement: “In all God’s creation, only human beings kill their own species.”
Obviously the writer of that movie skipped their eighth-grade life science classes. Few statements can be more easily disproven. Anyone who has ever raised hamsters knows to remove the male from a cage with newborns, because, if he can get past the mother, he will often eat his own children. Books like Call of the Wild have accurately demonstrated why the phrase “dog eat dog” exists. Many of us have seen cats kill cats. We don’t even have to leave home to see that such a statement is foolish.
Furthermore, just a few minutes of research will reveal that animal life is often just as violent if not more violent than mankind. Some animals, such as chimpanzees and ring-tailed lemurs engage in the systematic extermination of another group of the same species. Leopards and killer whales have been observed hunting for amusement and then abandoning their prey. Herons, boobies, egrets, many eagles and falcons, hammerhead sharks and hyenas sometimes kill their own siblings. Many species, including rabbits, kill their own species in order to protect or enlarge their territory.
The truth is, someone connected with that movie was attempting to exalt animal life and diminish the dignity of human life, so they made up a “new truth.” They told a bold face lie, but they did it so blatantly that some people bought it. A quick online search of that statement will reveal that many people have picked up on that thought and repeated it as if it were true. The moral of the story: Don’t believe everything you hear in movies!
Now, it is true that humans are the only species that set up clinics to perform abortions. You will want to research that statement just to be sure, since you’re reading this in a formal media format. But, even if that statement is scientifically provable, I’m pretty sure you’ll never hear it repeated in a mainstream movie, because it doesn’t fit with the “new truths” that are being peddled nowadays.
A word to the wise: entire groups of people often buy into lies, because the lie fits their preferred view. Be careful as to what sources you trust. The more bad information I am exposed to, the more I appreciate time-proven, rock-solid, life-changing books like the Bible. Now, that is a Book full of lines that you can buy into – lines upon which you can bet your life!
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