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By Nick P.
















Do you like to run? I always have for some reason. I have never been athletically inclined but I've always had good endurance. I am a fairly good runner. I can move fast when I want to.

 

There was also a time in my life when I could not run. When I had Scoleosis surgery and was placed in a hospital where I had a steel rod placed on my spine. I was told it'd be a year before I'd gain my full mobility again.

 

When the time had passed, I ran.

 

I ran some yesterday at the grocery store I work at. I heard a co-worker making a snide remark. For some reason that's happened often. Whenever I run, people tend to laugh. Perchance you've seen or heard it or even done it yourself where automatically, if there is a crowd you can assume one of them will say, "Run Forrest! Run!"

 

I pondered this when it happened yesterday. What is so amusing about running? What makes a perfectly natural bodily function as such so humorous? Not something that is just laughed at but is rather mocked?

 

Yet is this mockery not the perfect word? And what is being mocked? The outwork of the creation is being mocked. When the unbeliever sees that which is godly he is often reduced to mockery. And let us consider the line of "Run Forrest! Run!"

 

Everyone knows this clearly comes from the movie, Forrest Gump. But what happens the first time this line is given? A miracle takes place. The boy who is said would never be able to run suddenly has his legs heal as a miracle and is able to run for the rest of his life.

 

What happens the second time? The same boy years later is told that he is going nowhere in life and starts running and runs through a football field where his speed ultimately gets him going to college. This is just a great a miracle as a life that many thought would lead nowhere eventually leads somewhere. In fact, that is the point of the rest of the movie. Forrest's life matters.

 

Both of these are miracles and both of these are mocked. Is this not the way it is in our ungodly world? Holiness is mocked and unholiness is glamourized. Could this be why running is such a mockery and a line given to miracles is given to insult?

 

Do we not see this mockery everyday? Comedian George Carlin who is an atheist and I use comedian in the very loosest sense, makes a mockery of a worship service. One point is by saying that God needs your money. Another is by saying if you don't love him you go to Hell but he loves you. One can't help but wonder if Carlin would survive an instant with even an amateur apologist.

 

But what does the audience do? They laugh. This is glamourized. That which mocks the holy is a cause for applause. That which is holy is a cause to boo. The Scriptures tell us that God's light shines on man but man chose to live in darkness and did not want his deeds to be revealed. This is the point of mockery.

 

And this also assumes that the running is a holy act. I would ask why not? Is it not holy to see the outworking of God's creation as he intended it to be? When things are the way things were meant to be we can be sure that things are holy. Rush Limbaugh titled his first book, "The Way Things Ought To Be." If things truly were the way they ought to be, then things would always be holy.

 

Thus, the mockery is actually going against the natural order. We are seeing a mockery of order and if order is mocked the only option left is chaos. Chaos has become the god of modern man. The man who thinks this world is an accident has attributed the power of creation to chaos. There is no other alternative. If creation is caused by chaos then why does the atheist not wish to live out life by chaos?

 

The reason is that the atheist knows that this is not the way things ought to be. (Although some atheists have lived lives ruled by chaos but this is certainly not the norm. We do have to concede that most atheists are not cold-blooded immoral monsters.) No atheist claims to be living in Utopia. Utopia is a state of perfection but the atheist knows we are not in perfection.

 

But as C.S. Lewis has said, as soon as he states that there is an ought, he has said there is a standard and the atheist will not go for that. Thus, any atheist who is trying to reach Utopia is going against his own doctrine. If this is a world of chaos, then Utopia would not be a place of perfect order but a true state of anarchy where all did what they wanted.

 

If life is meaningless, then the best thing to do is to end it. Chesterton said that if life doesn't matter and we all believed that the world would stand on its head. Murderers would be the true heroes. Firemen would be called in to start fires to people. Doctors would be called in when people were well. Those who did humanitarian deeds would be the most evil of all. The best thing would not be to give a hungry man a meal but to give him a dose of arsenic.

 

But life is not meaningless. We are not in Utopia though we will be in one someday. This is an age when we should uphold holiness and live life the way things ought to be.

 

Now take this....

And run with it!
















Email the author at ApologiaNick@yahoo.com