I remember a class I took in college, it was a prerequisite class on philosophy. The professor who taught the class focused on this topic – What does it mean to be a person? More specifically, this professor was working on a theory trying to better define “what is a person”. Needless to say, this was the subject of our class study for the semester. The interesting thing about this professor’s theory was that he was trying to define a person in a whole new way. Now, brace yourself for this central question that this professor was trying to answer; here it is. “Is a chair a person?” He was not talking about a chair-person serving on a committee or a company board; he was talking about the object that we all sit our butts on. I am talking about a simple wooden object, with four legs, a back rest, and a seat; we all call a chair.
Let this soak in for a minute and then we can all wonder why our tax dollars help fund our public universities when they study things like this. It’s like the bridge to nowhere, right?
I once heard a sermon or maybe I read it in a book, I can’t remember how this next thought came to light, but it did, and I want to share it with you. What I want to share with you is not as crazy as the theory of a chair being a person, even if you are not yet a believer in Jesus Christ; I think this next fact will be much easier to wrap your head around. Yes, I called it a fact, not a theory. Isn’t it interesting how we all learned at an early age in elementary school what the difference between a theory and a scientific fact are, yet we are constantly bombarded with a bunch of theories presented as facts. This is a topic of another writing, but you know how our schools teach “evolution” as the way we all came to be who we are today. It is pretty much presented as a scientific fact, yet it is just a theory.
I am going to present this factual information, and I will illustrate this fact using the old wooden chair from my philosophy class back in the day. So, if you will, picture an older wooden chair; the kind you see around a dining room table. This chair is sitting in the corner of your room, any room you want to picture. This is your chair in your room. Now, you make the decision or your body tells you that you are tired, and you have been standing for a long time, your feet ache. And you know that if you walked over to that chair, you could turn around so your back is to the front seat of the chair, and you can bend your knees – without any concern what so ever – and you can begin to fall backwards and down, knowing for a fact that at some time very soon your butt will make contact with the chair seat and you know it will support your body. We all know when we do this that the chair will support our weight. We know for a fact that when we begin the sitting process that that chair will keep us from continuing our fall to the ground. If we continued to fall to the ground, we could get hurt, Right? Just to be clear, this chair is in good condition, so it is not going to break under your butt. Can we all agree that this is a factual event? The fact that we can sit in a chair and it will support our bodies so that we do not hit the ground is not just a theory because we do it every day and we have actual proof that this is true. It can be observed.
Have you ever cut fire wood and left it on the ground outside, in the elements? If you have, then you also know that at some point in the future that wood will begin to get softer, it already began deteriorating the moment it was cut down. That wood will eventually rot and with the help of fungus, and the elements, it will eventually decompose back into the ground. At some point in the future, you could go back to where that wood was and you wouldn’t see a trace of it as a piece of wood.
We know that wood will not last forever. Can you imagine if you could sit in a chair long enough, that someday, you would eventually be sitting on the ground? That would be the slowest fall to the ground in history.
Now I want you to begin to wrap your mind around something. We know from history that our earth is always changing. The plants, the trees on the earth have a life cycle. Even our man-made structures have a live cycle. Nothing on the earth is permanent. Rock and steel will break down over time. Things that we create will eventually fade, rot, or decompose away, given enough time. These things we create are temporary. They will never last forever. This is a fact I think we can all agree on. This includes the chair you are sitting on right now. That chair is temporary; it will decompose and be gone someday.
Let me stretch this thought line to our human condition. We live one life, each of us. We are born and some day we will die. During our lives we build real memories out of real events. Some of us record those events for future generations so that a record can be made to keep that real event in the history of the human time line. If it were never recorded, it would certainly be unknown by future generations. Can we all agree on that? History can be forgotten if not recorded. If not taught, it would be just the same as if it were not recorded. One great thing about recorded history is that future generations can learn from it. For example, you can read history and know that some event occurred that could have been prevented or altered, simply by knowing what happened before and after that specific event. In other words, history is a record that can teach us what “not” to do again; because if we do those things the result will be if not the same as in the past, a very close resemblance of it.
So, we have history books. We can read about history that happened in the past long before we were here. We can go to these places or locations that are written about and they look nothing like they did at the time that historical event took place. New buildings may be there now, old buildings gone, or maybe even the earth’s vegetation has reclaimed it. Given enough time, some people will begin to create doubt that any event in history actually took place. Why? It is simply because we were not there, and maybe somebody didn’t get something right. Or maybe in our time we can’t ever imagine that event ever happening, it would not have been possible. For whatever reason, human-kind does not have the ability to hold onto real events in history for very long, even some history books will be lost to time and the elements. What happens is that future generations actually begin to doubt the history books that were written during or shortly after the recorded event happened, even though those writings still exist. People begin to think that the event recorded in that book must not have been completely accurate….That could have never happened that way, or maybe the history writers actually meant something else when they wrote what they did. We are translating it incorrectly, right? The US has only been around for just under 250 years, yet most Americans can’t believe that this country was founded in prayer by people who believed that prayer was integral to everyday life. As I mentioned a moment ago, many history books that were written long ago are lost and forgotten or marginalized.
I theorize that there is a reason why parts of society, or the whole, turns from a known history to believe something else. There is something about the human condition that when society/culture decides to lean toward an idea or desire, or moves away from one, that it begins to create ways of justifying the reasoning that is moving it. Or “we” create ways of justifying the reasoning or desires that are moving “us”.
With this in mind, it has only been 2,000 years since Christ Jesus walked the earth sharing the good news. Did that ever happen? What is real and what isn’t real? Would you agree that if something can last forever, it is more real than something that is temporary? If something will only last a hundred years is compared to something that will last forever, what would be more trustworthy? In a hundred and one years from now, the thing that only lasted a hundred years will be gone….Did it ever exist? You could argue that it never existed.
Here is my conclusion to all this about history. First the facts as we can observe them. A chair is only temporary. If given enough time, all man made things will fade away. History can be and is often forgotten or molded differently in order to fit the desires or ideas of the current society, apart from its original purpose. Finally, something that is only temporary is less real than something that is permanent. After all, something that is permanent can be witnessed by anyone, at any time in history, with one or more of our senses. We may see it, smell it, taste it, touch it, and or hear it…. It is real. We cannot deny that it is indeed real. Unless…wait, unless we deny our very senses. Now I have to start over with this whole line of thinking. I realize that people can actually deny their very own senses. That makes no sense to me. Why would anyone deny their own senses?
Let me say this. If we can trust a chair that is only temporary, to hold us up when we fall backwards, why can it be so hard for us to put our trust in a very real, everlasting, and sacrificial love of Jesus Christ? None of us were here two thousand years ago when Jesus walked this earth. In Jerusalem Jesus taught what it means to be a follower of Christ. These events are recorded in history, written by more than one person, and available for anyone on earth to read in a multitude of languages; yet so many of us deny this very real historical timeline, this truth. The truth is that Jesus did come into this world, He did many miracles including raising people from the dead. There were over five hundred witnesses who saw Jesus after His death and resurrection. These are events that truly happened and are recorded in history.
Jesus taught that He is the cornerstone in whom the Jewish leaders cast aside. Jesus was repeating what was written about Him over 600 years prior in other written history (Isaiah). Jesus is the cornerstone of a new beginning for anyone who will believe what He says, in who Jesus Christ is. Jesus came and lived a sinless life, because He was God in the flesh. Jesus became the perfect Passover lamb sacrifice for anyone who will put their faith in Him. You see, Jesus Christ died for all our sins past, present, and future, so that we who put our faith in Him can be redeemed and restored in our relationship with God. There will come a day when God must make things right and that includes putting sin in its place in hell. Because Adam was made in God’s image, then sinned, Genesis records that all mankind is made in the image of Adam. We are born into sin. All of us have sinned and anyone who is not restored into Christ’s kingdom will not be with Christ in heaven.
I urge you to think about it. We can put our trust in a chair to hold us up, and have such difficulty putting our trust in God who created everything and loves everyone so much that he sent His Son to die in place of sinners, because there is a price for sin and it is death. Take this time in your life to think about your future. None of us know when the day we are living in now will be our last. All it takes is your belief in Jesus Christ. Find someone you know or someone you can talk to about this and know that once you put your faith in Christ, you become a new person on the inside. And God puts His Holy Spirit in you forever. You begin a new life no matter what you have done in the past. This is how awesome, how real, and how everlasting our God is. God is full of grace that is stronger than sin.
Jesus Christ will hold you up, even better than any chair. Jesus is the cornerstone in your new life with Him and it will last for eternity. This is all recorded history…. It is preserved in the Bible. Pick up a copy, it is available everywhere and in many languages. You don’t want to miss it.
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