![]() Every 28 days we get completely new skin. 90% of the dust in our homes is made up of the dead skin we shed. We lose 50-150 strands of hair a day (which is worse news for some of us than others). The universe, the stars, the earth everything is constantly moving and changing and expanding. We know the Earth is moving around the sun at roughly sixty-six thousand miles per hour and does so while rotating at the equator at a little over a thousand miles per hour. And we know all of the galaxies in the universe are moving away from all the other galaxies in the universe at the same time. We know what those ignorant fishermen in the Gospels do not. It happened so slowly we’re not even aware of how shaped we are by it. From “The chief end of man is to love God and enjoy him forever,” as the catechism begins, to “the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.” With Descartes, we became the center of the world and the starting point of all knowledge and ever since Descartes what it means for something to be “true” is that it’s true to us. Not God.Īnd when we became the center of the world, the goal of life shifted too. With Descartes, we became the center of the world. I think therefore, I exist, Descartes concluded. ![]() Where the ancient starting point for all knowledge had been God, Descartes’ starting point was himself, his own interior life. Descartes wanted to arrive at what can be known apart from revelation. Descartes locked himself away and set out to strip away all his received certainties - even 1+1 = 2. Descartes was plagued by the anxiety that everything he’d been taught to believe to be true might be false. In 1637, Rene Descartes, a philosopher and mathematician, helped give birth to the modern world in which we all live. It reminds us that we live in a different age.īut we didn’t get here overnight. Maybe that’s the reason we ignore the Ascension. Where the disciples lived in an age where everyone believed in a God up there and disbelief was inconceivable, we live in an age where no one believes in a Man Upstairs and disbelief in God altogether isn’t just a possibility it’s the fastest growing faith in America. And if that God doesn’t exist, who’s to say God exists at all? And isn’t that the problem the Ascension makes unavoidable for us? We know God’s not up there, not above the clouds, not beyond the firmament.Īscension calls BS on our unspoken secret: we know that the God portrayed in scripture doesn’t exist. They believed that between heaven and earth was more water, water that could inundate the Earth at any moment were it not for the firmament, seriously the “firmament,’ a sky-colored bowl that sits over the earth and holds back the oceans of universe.Īnd they believed in a Being who lived “up there” above the Earth. ![]() Not only that, they believed the Earth floated on water, with the underworld below and heaven above just beyond the clouds. Those disciples, and the ones that came after them, the ones who wrote the creeds and compiled the canon, they believed God was “up there.” They believed the Earth was a flat, disk-shaped place around which the sun and the stars revolved. But why wouldn’t they be looking up to the sky? Isn’t that the whole problem with the Ascension? With believing in God in general? “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” the two angels ask the eleven remaining disciples. It’s the perfect example of why it’s so hard for modern people to take the Bible seriously. Why wouldn’t we ignore such a ridiculous image in the twenty-first century? It’s fantastical. Jesus, the first astronaut, going up, up, up and away, exit stage heaven. Jesus is lifted up into the air like he’s drunk too much fizzy lifting drink. It’s a primitive, superstitious picture in a rational, scientific world. The Ascension is the perfect example of everything that is wrong with Christianity in the modern world. But surely one reason we ignore the Ascension is the embarrassing, unbelievable imagery of it. Maybe that’s why we ignore the Ascension. ![]() As Woody Allen jokes, “If God exists, he’s basically an underachiever.” What about the horrific war being waged against Ukraine? Or the shortage of baby formula? Yet another violent massacre inspired by racism? Perhaps going from carpenter to King was too big a promotion for Jesus. For one thing, if Christ has been given dominion over the Earth, then Jesus doesn’t appear to be doing a very good job. It’s not hard to see why Ascension is largely ignored. What was once the high holy day when Christians rejoiced that God has made Jesus King over all the nations of the Earth is now just a Thursday. Don’t feel guilty if you didn’t have it marked on your calendars. Eastertide wraps to a close on Thursday with the Feast of the Ascension. ![]()
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