James,
I agree with you!
Funny experiment I just heard about, which echos your sentiments. I will share it with you because I enjoyed it so much.
Six apes in a cage. Someone sticks stairs in the cage and hangs bananas from the ceiling of the cage. The only way an ape can get a banana is to climb to the top of the stairs and grab one. First ape goes up the stairs to the top and trys to grab one. At the same time the ape is sprayed with a stream of water from a firehose, and the force of the water actually knocks him off the stairs. At the same time, the water gets all the other apes in the cage wet as well. Well, as you would expect, after many attempts of the apes trying to go up the stairs, only to get sprayed with water, and getting all the other apes wet, they stopped! Well, now one of the apes that was in the cage is replaced with another ape. The new ape, as soon as he gets in the cage, naturally goes right up the stairs to get a banana. But now the other apes knowing the new ape will get sprayed, and they will get wet as well, beat up the new ape until the new ape will not go up the stairs because he does not want to get pummeled. Now they take out another original ape, and replace it with a new one, and that ape naturally tries to go up the stairs to get a banana. Now the four original apes that remained pummel the newest ape, along with the other new ape. You see the first four apes remember the water spraying and beat up the new ape because they don't want to get sprayed. But the other new ape just knows if he went up the stairs, he gets pummelled. So he joins the original four in the beating, but for another reason. He just knows you go up the stairs and everyone pummels you. So the experiment goes on, with each of the original apes being removed, one by one. And as they remove every one of them, the same thing happens. The new one goes up the stairs, and all the other apes beat him. When all the originals were removed, none were left who went through the water experiment. But yet if you replaced one with a new one, all the apes would beat the new one up, but not one knew the original reason why they were doing it!
You see, thats how we are. We follow without ever questioning the reason why. We just know someone before us did it this way, so we will too. I mean, my ancestors they couldn't have been wrong, right? I was born a conservative Jew. And this was one of my tremendous hurdles before coming to faith in Christ. I mean, my poor old, sweat, grandmother, she couldn't have been wrong about Christ, right? My mother and my father, my sisters, my whole family, they all can't be wrong? All those Jews before us, they can't ALL be wrong? Well, guess what. The were all WRONG!!!!!!
It's a big problem, that people must get by. Don't follow the footsteps of those before you. Seek God's truth on your own so you are just not another ape, beating on another ape, and not knowing any reason why you are doing it.....
God Bless,
Steve |
