Book thoughts

I finished reading "Dracula" over the weekend... It was very interesting, but throughout the whole thing I kept thanking God that the world is not really like that. It's not the evil in the book that bothered me. I know there is evil in this world, ever bit as evil as Count Dracula, though perhaps in rather a different form. What bothered me more was the portrayal of the good, especially God. In the book Mina, a truly amazing and "good" woman, is bitten by Dracula, and then also forced to drink his blood. As a result, though completely innocent in her own actions, she is tainted, unholy, and beginning to become the thing she most detests -- a vampire. Because of this, she is apparently rejected by the "God" of the book, and is likely to end up damned to hell. I do not at all like the idea of a God who would reject a holy person (as the book portrayed her to be) because they were the victim of an evil creature. I think that is pretty much opposite of the Biblical God, for which I am eternally grateful. In the reality of the Biblical God, none of us are holy, and we all deserved to be damned for our own sins. I suppose in the book analogy you could say that all of us would choose to be vampires, and God would be truly just to damn all the murderous vampires. Yet, amazingly, God forgives us, rescues us, and shows us another way. Instead of judging us based on the wickedness of the being that takes our blood, He judges us based on the righteousness of the Being Who gave us His blood.


The other book I was working on this weekend was the "Mathematics" book of a previous post. It is really interesting reading through the brief survey of the history of math and philosophy that it gives. One thing that kind of struck me is how one generation can have ideas which in the next generation can be twisted, misinterpreted, or, alternately, followed to their logical conclusions, with the end result being the separation of math from a Biblical world view. Let me try to explain. I'll take Descartes as an example. Now, I don't actually know that much about him, so if what I say is completely wrong, I'm sorry, but I think the basic idea I'm trying to get across holds true with other people, even if it doesn't actually work with him, so bear with me.

Descartes, as most people know, was a philosopher and a mathematician, famous for the statement "I think, therefore I am" and for the Cartesian coordinate system named after him. He was also, at least nominally, a Christian. I, of course, don't know his heart, and its possible that he didn't know it either, as we know from Jeremiah that our hearts are terribly deceitful. At any rate, I think it is very likely that he thought he was writing and thinking and developing the theories and philosophies that he developed for the glory of God. He was probably attempting to help the cause of Christ. Yet, as a result of his work, the door was opened to throw the God of the Bible out of philosophy and mathematics. Descartes' thoughts were followed to their logical conclusion, and man happily declared himself autonomous.

What a tragedy. And from it I draw two applications for my own life. First, I want to always be careful to base what I believe on the Bible, the word of God, knowing that no matter how wise and intelligent I am (or think myself) my reasoning will always be flawed to some extent. Second, I want to be very careful to speak precisely and use words well. It is very easy to misunderstand or misinterpret people, which I have seen often in teaching. Somehow, the thoughts in my mind don't always make it to my student's minds intact. Some misunderstanding is unavoidable, but I want to do the best that I can so that poor language on my part will not contribute to the dishonor of God.