Ep19 In The Shadow Of TheMountain C.L.KNOX STORIES

The speaker reflects on their Christmas and shares two stories about their teenage years in British Columbia. They mention their involvement in the Jesus Freak movement and the challenges they faced in learning and understanding their faith. They discuss the importance of studying and researching to seek truth and avoid blindly following others. They then recount a personal story about being honest with a friend about not liking their coat, which led to being excluded on their birthday as punishment. The speaker reflects on the lesson learned and their preference for solitude. They discuss the idea of truth and highlight that although different religions teach love, they are not the same and coexistence doesn't mean sameness. They emphasize the importance of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual honesty in recognizing the differences. So episode 19, hope y'all had a good Christmas. It was a little bit low key for us this Christmas, but it was good. It was a good Christmas. Sort of, I don't want to get too heavy in my story today because of the new year coming up. Sort of want to share a little bit of a story, maybe two stories about growing up as a teenager here in British Columbia, Vancouver Island. The first part of my teenage life, I wasn't, and my preteen life, I wasn't what you would call socially integrated to the peer group that would be my same age group, you know. I spent most of my time with people older than me. So, and then if you've listened to the other podcasts that I put out, I at 13 had a, I call it supernatural, but it was also drug induced. The initial part of it was drug induced, but a supernatural experience that came out of that use of hallucinogens. And so I became a Christian after that, became part of the Jesus Freak movement that was quite popular in the late sixties and the early to mid seventies. And popular, that's not really the right word. It was a movement that happened for a few years. The Christian community that was open to it called it revival. So for those familiar with the word, it's a word that's mocked quite a bit by the unbelievers or non-believers, but there are some historical accounts of what the Christian community calls revival. So, and I mean, they go for the last 2000 years, they come and they go, they come and they go. There's been a number of revivals on American soil and they usually spread across the Atlantic and into England and Europe. So that was a revival that took place in the, in the, in the sixties and seventies. And I got caught up into it as a young person. You know, I didn't have, after I left the organization that I had been with, I didn't have a lot of, I'm not sure how to say it, directed teaching. I had a few people that became like mentors to me, but I didn't see them regularly. I would see them every few weeks, possibly, sometimes it would be months before I would see somebody. And I was left to my own devices to try and understand this faith that I had, you know, that I'd become part of. It was a difficult time, but it was also an interesting time because I had been out of school for a couple of years. The actual practice of learning, like studying and learning, had escaped me. I wasn't doing that for two years. I didn't do that. And then to be thrust back into this reality of needing to learn, to study, to learn, it was a shock to my system, maybe. I don't know. It was different. You know, it was hard. It was hard for me. I had to learn to learn. A lot of the stuff that I learned was what is commonly called the School of Hard Knocks, and that partly might be a play on my name, but that's what it is, the School of Hard Knocks. So living and learning through experience, and most of us, actually, the deeper lessons that we learn in our lives are the lessons we learn through experience. The story I'm thinking of, there's a few things that I'm thinking that have been happening just for me in the last couple of weeks. Like I've already said, I read a lot. I read regularly. I read the Bible daily. There's rarely a day when I don't read the Bible, some. But I have other books I'm reading, too, books on philosophy, theology, sociology. I'm trying to understand history, trying to understand the culture we live in, and not only the culture we live in, but the world we live in, and how we got here, how we got to where we are. It's important to me. I think it should be important to everybody. And it's part of understanding reality, and what I'm going to say is a word, truth. It's part of understanding truth. So if you want to know what's true, you need to commit yourself to studying. You need to commit yourself to research, which is, I mean, now, that word is also blacklisted. But in reality, if you're not researching it yourself, anything, every single thing, if you're not researching it yourself, if you're not investigating, then you open yourself up to become just another one of the followers, just another obedient automaton. And the thing is, for me, is as I got back into the school system, this was in seventh grade, in 71, the methods were changing then. Things were being thrown out that had been historical learning tools and methods. Now the way of learning at that point was changing to a more, I'm going to call it progressive way of teaching. The problem is, is as that progressive way progressed, we got to the place now where there was a time when our schools taught our children reading and writing and arithmetic. But not only that, we learned Latin and Greek, and we learned world history and the Bible, which is a historical book. Like anybody that's involved in archaeology historically uses the Bible as a reference point for just a ton of stuff. And it's a recognized historical document. It's more than, I've said this before too, it's more than just a book. It's 66 books that are all, some of those are letters, and it's written by 40 different authors, and it runs, there's a thread that runs through it. Now, the story I'm going to tell involves somebody that's quite close to me now and was at this time, I think it was between my 14th and 15th birthday. One of my first friends that I made lived in my neighborhood, and she, I'd been reading the Bible and trying to get to this place of being honest and truthful and realizing the difficulty that in the world we lived in then, and it's even probably, it is even more difficult now. It's a difficult thing to be honest and truthful all the time. I was determined to do that. I was determined to be as honest as I could. So, this individual who was asked not to be named, so anyway, this person was given a new coat by her parents, and she got to pick it out. She loved it, and it was an important thing to her. Sort of being socially, I could say stunted, I was socially different, perhaps. Well, I still am. I got to say, I still am, but whatever. Maybe I've learned to be more fluid in and out of being different and at least seeming normal. Anyway, she came up to me and she asked me, so I'm, what, 14 years old going on 15, I think, and she asked me, I might have been 13 going on 14, but I think it was 14 going on 15. She asked me what I thought of her coat. Do you like my coat? And I said, do you want the truth? And she said, yeah, and so I told her I didn't care for it. I didn't like the colors. I didn't like the fake fur. I didn't, you know, whatever. I didn't particularly like it. Now, I'm a hippie kid, and I'm used to wearing cotton and natural fibers and, you know, so I was different in that regard. All my jeans were old jeans that were patched up, which became fashionable, but I actually patched them. I actually put the beadwork on them myself. I actually put the patches on them. I was different in that regard to things that I still am, really. I really still just like natural fibers. Anyway, that hurt her feelings. So it hurt her. And in my memory, I knew immediately that I probably shouldn't have said that. I should have, I guess you could call it lie, but I should have been more diplomatic in the way that I said it. As a result of that, she managed to corral or to get the other girls in the neighborhood. So there's one, two, three, four girls in our neighborhood, in our little neighborhood in Bashwood. One, two, three, four. There was five that were part of our group. There were others. There was Diane Woodward, who we didn't hang out with. I hung out with her brother, Dave. And when it came to my birthday, which must have been near close to that, because I don't think they were hating on me for months. You know, it was a couple of weeks. My birthday's in March. So it must have been February or something when she got her coat in the middle of March is my birthday. And these girls were determined to make sure that I had no company on my birthday. So that was my punishment. I don't remember. I remember thinking, oh, that's obviously I've pushed some buttons here. So, I mean, it changed. It worked to change my perspective and the way that I relate. Although I've gotten myself in trouble still since then. I'm the kind of person that actually enjoys being alone. And I always have for a very long time. And I think a lot of that has to do with my experiences and my way of dealing with depression, which was, I've said that before, too, was part of my reality. Right. So, but after that, I was told that that was my punishment for being so honest. And live and learn, right? So why am I talking about that right before New Year's, right before we start another year? Well, the thing is, is I've been thinking a lot about truth, right? And like, I saw this meme. It wasn't sent to me directly, though I have had stuff like this sent to me before. But it was a meme. It was a picture of a representation of Muhammad. And it said, Muhammad wasn't a Muslim. And then a picture of Jesus, and it said, Jesus wasn't a Christian. And then a picture of Buddha, and it said, Buddha wasn't a Buddhist. And then below that, it said, they were all just teachers teaching love. I know that the culture we live in embraces that idea of coexist. You know, you've seen those bumper stickers. It says coexist, and there's the symbols of all different religions, belief systems. But any honest person, any person with any intellectual honesty, and actually spiritual honesty, and emotional honesty, would be able to look at that and go, that's impossible. I mean, we can coexist, but we're not the same. I mean, we can coexist, but we're not the same. Like, those three examples, they're not the same. They didn't teach the same thing. They didn't say the same thing. So as you look at those three, quote, teachers, unquote, Islam does talk about love. But if you look at the total Holy Bible of the Christians, it's a different kind of love. It's a different, I mean, and love is multifaceted, okay? So I'm not going to say it's not love, but it's a different kind of love that Allah exhibits and puts towards his people, to that of the Judeo-Christian God, so that's the God of Israel and Christianity. They're both what you would call monotheistic religions or belief systems. They believe there is one God. So it gets complicated after that, really. I mean, even there's some debate between Orthodox Jewish scholars and Orthodox Christian scholars about the nature of God. What both cultures believe is that the, as you boil down the scriptures, so for the Hebrew, for the Jew, for the Israelite, the Jew, the Old Testament Bible, the Old Testament scriptures portray the character of God and in that respect, the essence of who God is. So for Christians, it's the same thing, except that they have these New Testament scriptures which come at the time Christ was born and after he died and was resurrected, which is the Christian belief. So their whole concept of God and the love of God is different than that of Islam. And again, for Buddha, Buddha's representation or presentation of love has to do with some of the purer forms of love, except that there is no room for attachment. So in that there is no attachment, you are almost forceful. Buddha himself left his family. He abandoned his child. His child grew up fatherless because of Siddhartha's push or drive to not be attached. So this is not love. You can say it's loving, it's loving to Buddha for his own beliefs, but it wasn't a loving act to forsake your family and your child and let your son grow up without his father because his father is on a quest to not be attached. He was attached. He was attached to not being attached. So that's my opinion. So let's look at what Jesus taught. Jesus never said he was a teacher. He didn't come saying he was a teacher. So if you believe that Jesus was anything, I've said this before, you either believe he's the son of God or a lunatic. Okay? He's either a liar, a lunatic, or he's God. He's who he said he was. So when people portray Jesus as a teacher teaching love, that's not. He was God showing love. He was God showing grace. So I mean there is this scripture, like when I tell people about the Bible and they ask where they should start reading, I usually say read the Gospel of John first. And the very first part of Gospel of John, the very first chapter, is one of my favorites. I'm going to read it. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and he was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was nothing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of man, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. Or another translation is, does not comprehend it. It's the same word, and it's translated both ways. Comprehend or understand, or overcome or overtake. And both work. And that's one of the beauties of this John, is he writes very, that seems maybe a little convoluted, but if you actually read it, it's not convoluted. The Word, it's logos, that's a Greek concept of wisdom. Our logic comes from that. Reality, truth, logos, the Word, the truth, it's what is, right? And so Jesus comes, he says the Word was God, he comes as God, so he came into the world as God. Later on in that same scripture, it talks about, there's a whole, all of it, all of that first part is good, I just don't want to read it all right now. There's a point I want to get in, that's about truth, okay? Because that's what I started here, talking about truth. And in 14 it says, oh I missed it, I passed a good chunk of chapters or verses there, but in chapter 14 it says, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the Son of the Father, so the Father is God. He's full of grace and truth. And John, that is, I passed that part, but that's John the Baptist, he was just a man, he happened to be Jesus' cousin. Let's see, and John bore witness about him and cried out and said, this is the one of whom I said, he who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me, and from his fullness, that's the Son of Man, the Word, that's Jesus, from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace, for the law was given through Moses, so the law is the Old Testament, that's the stuff that was given so that we could see the character of God. I've talked about that before too, the law is more of a revealing of the character of God than it is a thou shalt not do this, like it's not a don't do this, it's a this is who I am and when you do this you offend me, you hurt yourself, because you weren't made for that, right? So it's actually a learning, a truth, it's the reality of it, it's not as blunt as those who don't believe it or may say it would make it, but it is blunt, because it's unchanging, it's unchanging, God is unchanging, he was from the beginning, and he is. Anyway, so grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, and no one has ever seen God, the only God, who is the Father, at the Father's side, but he has made him known. So it's saying that Jesus was made known as the Son of God, which means he is God. That gets complicated maybe, but the thing that I want to talk about is the truth part. So what is truth? I mean, there's a couple of ways of describing what truth is. In the world we live in today, there's a lot of talk about my truth, your truth, my truth. So there's a lot of different, I'm going to call them, interpretations of what truth is, and, you know, culture changes the word, like changes the word love. It changes just a ton of different words, and it becomes difficult. Fine, culture changes words, that's a natural occurrence. It's when the changed words are forced on you that it's not a natural occurrence. It's when it doesn't happen organically, it happens politically and forcefully, right? So anyway, the definition of truth that I'm thinking about, I think, is called the correspondence theory of truth, and that is this, that that which is true or which is in accordance with fact or reality, that is truth. So that that exists in accordance with fact or reality is truth. So to understand that, you come back to this thing like nobody has seen God, right? We all can attest to that, nobody has seen God, that God is invisible. There's different belief systems that would say God is in everything, so pantheism. Most people would say they'd never seen God, and that's part of the reasoning they use for not believing in God. It's a false understanding. There was a word I'm looking for, I can't find it right now. Sometimes that happens when I'm talking to the camera. The fact that God is invisible or has been invisible can't be lost on us. Reality, in that statement, reality is invisible because God is reality. This God of the Old Testament, this God of Christianity, has been invisible, and no one could look upon him, and that's where sin comes in. We are not in a position where we can look upon him because it would kill us, it would destroy us. He's pure light, pure light. It says that in that little scripture, that he is light and light, and the light was life. The life was the light of men, and men didn't comprehend it. What is light? Light is pureness and power and holiness. Darkness can't overcome light. Darkness is the absence of light. If there is light, it will vanquish darkness. This makes sense. In reality, if I light a match in a dark room, it's not dark anymore. But in reality, spiritually, in the mind of the Creator, in the reality of the Creator, that's the truth I'm talking about. The reality is not what we see and feel and touch. It's not bound by time. Real existence lives outside of this dimension, outside of multi-dimensions. It lives outside of dimensionality. It is something other than. Now, this is all, like I said last time, it's heady or lofty stuff, but these are the philosophical... I think that's where that word logos came from, from the Greeks trying to find truth. What is reality? Is there a God? What is God? Who is God? Socrates. For Socrates, his perception of God was different than the historical Greek perceptions of God. There are many gods. He believed in one God, or he was moving in that way. That's a lot of the stuff we believe in. Philosophical terms in the West now come from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. When Jesus came and became flesh, when he took on the flesh, this was a way for a number of things to happen. But one of those things was for man, for humanity, to see God. Because he never stopped being God. He became God because he saw God. He became God in the flesh, which was a miracle. But God made flesh, he could put himself in flesh, and then he could die in the flesh. And then he could raise himself from the dead in the flesh. It makes so much sense. Like it sounds simple and unbelievable, but it makes so much sense to me. People that don't buy into what the teacher actually taught will deceive themselves. It makes them feel better. We live in this world, and I've said it before, we live in this world where we have a supermarket of ideas. And it's like you walk down the aisle and you pick and choose what you want. Well, that's not truth, right? Truth is true. Truth is what is real, what is reality. That's truth. So as I walk down an aisle and go, well, I like this, it makes me feel good. I like this thought that all these teachers taught the same thing. They didn't. Look for, I mean, it doesn't take but a few minutes to look at what these teachers taught and see that they did not teach the same things. There was some overlap. There are universal truths. There are certain things that are true and cannot be disputed. And those things were possibly taught by the teachers, the great teachers. But none of them ever said they were God until Jesus came along. I mean, so believe what you want to believe. That's the fact. Anyway, as we're going into a new year, I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, you know, I'm still learning. I mentioned it last time about sanctification. That's another thing is like this whole process. That's a big word. The whole process is about us becoming more like Christ. It's us becoming more like God. He came as an example. So in that way, he is a teacher and he did teach. But that wasn't who he was. That wasn't what he was. He was God. He was here to make us free. And that was grace. And in that little passage I read, that's what it said. Grace upon grace, grace and truth. This is why he came, for grace and truth. The grace is that we are able to get out of our sin, even though we still do it. Because of what he did, we're able to come out of sin. And because we're out of sin, we're covered by the blood of Christ. And these things sound morbid to some people. But what it is, is it goes all the way back to the animal sacrifice. The very first one takes place in Genesis when Adam and Eve sinned. And an animal was killed to give them clothing. So it was to hide their nakedness. To hide their sin. To hide what they were embarrassed about in themselves. It was their pride. To hide their pride. To cover their pride. It required death. So that, I mean, all the way through, it's shown over and over and over that the blood of goats and sheep and lambs and cows, that's never going to sufficiently... It cannot clean what's dirty. It cannot cover the sin. What separates us from God. And in your life, if you sinned once... Once. One little lie. Right? Like this story I just told you. You're in a hard position. What's right? What's the right thing to do? Right? One little lie. And that's a sin. But telling the truth, I hurt her. Is that a sin? You know, I... Yeah. So we don't have the capacity to fully grasp it. So that is what I'm viewing sanctification as. This process of becoming more and more like God. The Creator God. The only God. The true God. The triune God. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And we have the capacity to do that. And to grow. To grow from there. And learn. And be hurt. And be wounded. And fall down. And get back up. And be comforted. And go. And be alone. And be sad. And to lose loved ones. And to lose things that are valuable to you. People. Love. But we are sustained. We are undergirded by the Creator of the universe. And that is great joy. And that great joy, that is grace. That's the grace that we are given to live in this life. Like in Romans, it says that the whole, all of creation groans. All of creation groans. Romans 8. And you look. I mean, that's one of the big things that humanity is looking at. Creation groans. The earth groans. Individuals groan. The animals groan. We all groan that the Lord of creation would return and put things right. I do what I can. To prolong that fire. Because it will be fire. It's a purification that's going to take place. That's kind of where I'm at. I don't know what song I'm going to do. A lot of love going out to you people as we start a new year. And who knows what's going to happen. We'll stand up and fight for freedom. We'll stand up and fight for liberty. We'll do what we can to maintain those God-given rights. As an individual. As a human. Anyway, peace, love. Have a great new year. And catch you next year. 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