The Divergent book series by Veronica Roth is one of my favorite book series because it presents an interesting thought about human nature. For those who haven’t read it, the series is about a dystopian society that wants to be a utopian society so badly that they attempt to correct people's genes and make perfect people.
"But when the genetic manipulations began to take effect, the alterations had disastrous consequences. As it turns out, the attempt had resulted not in corrected genes, but in damaged ones. Take away someone's fear, or low intelligence, or dishonesty...and you take away their compassion. Take away someone's aggression and you take away their motivation, or their ability to assert themselves. Take away their selfishness and you take away their sense of self-preservation."
So what does this have to do with God and our lives? Let's go back to the beginning...
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (John 1:1-5 NIV)
This verse is another version of the creation story. It all begins with God lighting up the darkness and then everything else stemmed from that light. Darkness is defined as the absence of light so darkness can't exist without light. Similarly, as the quote above mentions, fear, dishonesty, aggression, and selfishness can't exist without compassion, motivation, and self-preservation. When humanity fell to temptation in the garden, the tree wasn’t just the knowledge of evil in the world, but of good and evil. Evil couldn’t exist without also the knowledge of good. God’s plan didn’t leave us hopeless.
2 Corinthians 4:6 says “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.”
God is the light in our lives that combats the knowledge of evil that is inside us and out in the world and helps us shine His light into the world so that everyone may see the good of the world.
So I’m going to get a little grammatically technical now, but I really like how the John verse ends: "...and the darkness has not overcome it." The rest of the verse is written in past tense until that last sentence. Then it is in the present-perfect tense which means it started in the past and hasn't ended yet. It's reassuring to know that even when we stumble and let the darkness get to us, God's light will be there.
John 8:12: When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
We are sinful people and all have "damaged" genes/characteristics/feelings that we have to deal with sometimes, but without them we wouldn't know the good side of life either. We wouldn't understand the feelings of joy, happiness, contentment, compassion, motivation, or love. We can’t get rid of the knowledge of evil in this world, but as long as we keep our eyes and hearts on Jesus and strive for perfection, the darkness won’t overcome us.
- Raye H.
Aggie Methodist Student Blog
Friday, February 14, 2014
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Student Blog - Hot Chocolate Story
Today, I have a story for you.
It was June of 2013. I was going through my training at MugWalls, a local coffee shop that I just started working at, and we were learning how to clean everything. When the manager went to show both of us trainees the back storage room, however, we were greeted with a foul smell from two large containers that, as I was informed, could keep a beverage hot for 18 hours and served 100 people each. Amazing! How useful these things were, especially when catering to a huge group. They could do something entirely necessary by design, bringing a wonderful warm drink to many people at a time. However, there was the unfortunate matter of the terrible smell.
As it turned out, these fantastic containers had been used to take hot chocolate to an event in the neighboring town known as “First Friday,” a sort of art festival that takes place in the streets, back in April. But when the event had ended and it was time to bring them back to the store, whomever was in charge neglected to empty and clean them, instead throwing them into the storage room to hold the hot chocolate. Time went on, Texas weather did exactly what you would expect, and it got hot. Like, really hot. Hot chocolate, as you know, has milk in it, which does not take well to being left in a warm room for two months, leaving us to find that awful smell during our training.
This isn’t a story that’s just about cleaning at a coffee shop, though. When I was a kid, I had a responsibility, a task. I was supposed to spread love to the world around me, showing everyone who was broken that they had been given the wonderful gift of life and salvation, but instead I kept it locked away, viewing it as my secret. I was full of hot chocolate, but I allowed myself to reside in a warm storage room and sour instead. But do you know what we did after we found those containers? We took them into the kitchen and scrubbed them for the better part of two hours, painstakingly getting every bit of mold and grime out of them. They still had a bit of a smell, but nothing nearly as bad as before, so we let them air out. In much the same way, I spent the latter part of high school trying to break down my cynicism, scraping out the love that had turned to hate over time. For a while, the cynicism and lonesomeness stayed as a ghost, whispering its old message even when I tried to send it away, but as time went on the ghost grew quieter and quieter until I could hardly hear it anymore.
We all have the great potential to love one another and do such fantastic things. Don’t let that love sit inside and spoil, because it’s the best thing a person can offer.
- Zac L.
It was June of 2013. I was going through my training at MugWalls, a local coffee shop that I just started working at, and we were learning how to clean everything. When the manager went to show both of us trainees the back storage room, however, we were greeted with a foul smell from two large containers that, as I was informed, could keep a beverage hot for 18 hours and served 100 people each. Amazing! How useful these things were, especially when catering to a huge group. They could do something entirely necessary by design, bringing a wonderful warm drink to many people at a time. However, there was the unfortunate matter of the terrible smell.
As it turned out, these fantastic containers had been used to take hot chocolate to an event in the neighboring town known as “First Friday,” a sort of art festival that takes place in the streets, back in April. But when the event had ended and it was time to bring them back to the store, whomever was in charge neglected to empty and clean them, instead throwing them into the storage room to hold the hot chocolate. Time went on, Texas weather did exactly what you would expect, and it got hot. Like, really hot. Hot chocolate, as you know, has milk in it, which does not take well to being left in a warm room for two months, leaving us to find that awful smell during our training.
This isn’t a story that’s just about cleaning at a coffee shop, though. When I was a kid, I had a responsibility, a task. I was supposed to spread love to the world around me, showing everyone who was broken that they had been given the wonderful gift of life and salvation, but instead I kept it locked away, viewing it as my secret. I was full of hot chocolate, but I allowed myself to reside in a warm storage room and sour instead. But do you know what we did after we found those containers? We took them into the kitchen and scrubbed them for the better part of two hours, painstakingly getting every bit of mold and grime out of them. They still had a bit of a smell, but nothing nearly as bad as before, so we let them air out. In much the same way, I spent the latter part of high school trying to break down my cynicism, scraping out the love that had turned to hate over time. For a while, the cynicism and lonesomeness stayed as a ghost, whispering its old message even when I tried to send it away, but as time went on the ghost grew quieter and quieter until I could hardly hear it anymore.
We all have the great potential to love one another and do such fantastic things. Don’t let that love sit inside and spoil, because it’s the best thing a person can offer.
- Zac L.
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