Cavemen Are Alive, Kicking and Need Our Help

[HKHaugan]

Cavemen Are Alive, Kicking and Need Our Help

“When the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait (for the people were distressed), then the people did hide themselves in caves and in thickets and in rocks and in high places and in pits (1 Samuel 13:6).”

Man can only think, analyze and understand so much. Man is needy from birth. He is limited in every phase of his life. Hard as he may try there is no way he can overcome his limitations by his own effort. He is limited in his mind, in his heart and in his spirit and especially in his body. His intellect is impaired, his heart is shaky and his spirit is numb and his body dies. The fact of his limitation in mind is the need to learn. In heart, it is his relational unrest he has to unlearn. In his spirit it is his lack of inspiration that has to be re-inspired. His body lasts but a short time. Just as he may acquire some development in the use of his mind, his heart and spirit it is never satisfying, complete and perfect. Even if it is a true passion in one of those areas that is highly productive, he never finds a balance in the three. One has only to scan the history of the great intellects, artists, scientists, emperors, kings and leaders in every culture and balanced perfection in mind, heart and spirit is missing. Summing it up man is fallen and he can't get up. Again, this is true from birth in every individual born into this world.

The Greek myth of Sisyphus is a legendary reminder. Sisyphus’ behavior resulted in the Olympic gods’ disfavor, therefore eternally condemned by them to roll a stone up a hill. Just as he reaches the top the stone starts rolling back down the hill and he has to go to the bottom and start all over again. Sounds like the modern day ‘rat-race.’ Wake up, get up, another day, another having to do whatever and so on. That’s the point. Greek mythology is simply an extension of man’s view of himself. Its many gods are merely personified caricatures of human emotions, desires, dreams and ideals. The gods get their kicks manipulating human beings in a kind of ‘Olympic parlor game.’

Left alone, man, like the Greeks and others from past civilizations, will invent something to satisfy what he can’t understand. Work, religion, philosophy, sports, hobbies, entertainment and the occult, anything to fill time, are man’s attempts to grapple with the invisible, reaching for the unattainable and never getting it. 'It' being satisfaction, completeness, fulfillment, inner peace, perfection and balance. His mind, his emotions and his spirit eventually run into a wall he cannot climb, penetrate or erase. If he goes to be with others and do what they do he finds that eventually even their collected efforts bring them to the same impenetrable wall. This world is the stone pushed, the stone reaching a pinnacle, the stone tumbling back down.

Mankind is fallen and he can't get up, he needs help from outside!

As the old spiritual concludes, “It’s so high you can’t get over it, so low you can’t get under it, so wide you can’t get around it. You gotta go in by the door.” This is why God revealed Himself in Jesus Christ who said “I am the gate for the sheep (John 10:9).” We need revelation from outside. We need a rebirth of mind, heart and spirit. It starts with the spirit and Jesus is the door for the mind, the heart and the spirit. He comes from spiritual reality, the dimension out of which everything in Creation comes. He offers that rebirth to recover us, the balance to renew us, the relationship to restore us, the Word to rebuild us and the Spirit to complete and perfect us.

Let’s digress for a moment. People who run an outdoor business like wilderness camping, interior fishing expeditions, mountain horseback and hiking trips, have to assure their customers of the fulfillment a trip will bring and the security they will have during the trip. But before any of these can proceed three things have to be included:

First, there has to be thorough knowledge of the area to be traveled.

Second, provisions are needed, like food, sturdy equipment, maps and emergency supplies.

Third, training in skills and safety for the leaders along with preliminary trip training for all those involved.

All of us have been launched on a journey into a spiritual wilderness since birth. This is the most treacherous of all journeys yet most people don’t realize they are on a spiritual journey, like it or not.

Let's look at that wilderness, the world into which we are born. We come into it alone and having to adjust our aloneness we all have one thing in common, all of our activities are motivated by what we can't see which immediately means we are dealing with spirituality. Everything we do starts with a mind thinking, the heart feeling and our spirit reacting with some response. The whole process is unseen, personal and eventually relational.

Unable to know anything without help we depend on others and follow their lead. We invent terms like 'luck' and 'fate' to affirm or negate the results. If it's pleasing we keep a hold. If it's unpleasant we avoid it. We find caves to place our lives in and build interior fortresses for them (the Bible calls them strongholds) to protect our hearts. We make forays into the world and retreat into our caves. They are our strongholds, our self-protective strategies for recognition and acceptability. Some of them work and some don’t.

Trial and error maneuvering methods help us to survive the caves of family, school and the social world. We arrive at some occupational cave to justify material survival. We find that none of them work, that all the time we have been in a spiritual wilderness within and without. But most of us don’t know that. We have to find that out and when we do we look for a leader, someone who knows what its like to live in an invisible wilderness. Someone who doesn’t have to live in a cave.

It is only Jesus who knows the terrain in this spiritual wilderness, provides the equipment and training and guarantees His ever-present leadership along the way. He invites us to leave our caves, take up our beds and walk with Him. Until we meet Jesus we have no eternal logic for the mind, eternal trust for the heart and no eternal life for the spirit. They are all in a cave.

What we do know is this: we are alone, we are afraid and we hide (Gen.3:10). It's a cave within a cave. We look for identity, meaning and purpose. Until we open our mind, heart and spirit to Jesus who comes from the spiritual, died like we do in the physical but rose from the dead to show us spiritual life, we are a lost tribe in a hostile secular jungle. Our task is to make Him known to the spiritually hungry wandering in their wilderness with its caves and fortresses.

Thinking Jesus we see ourselves in a totally different way. While the secular lonely mind retreats into caves which are personal strongholds to feel safe, a mind in Jesus steps out into the world and seeks others to come out of their caves and experience life in Jesus. The exciting part is this. We don't have to manufacture a method to help cave dwellers step out. We are the method, the stepping stones, for those in caves to come out. The way God has chosen to do this is through our witness, our testimony, of what God has done for us and in us. Jesus said that we are the light of the world (Mt.5:14) and every day we are in that world. Our lives in all that we say and do are light for the cave dwellers to come out and enjoy the light. That light in us is Jesus, the light of the world (Jn.8:12). Be it day or night, among friends or strangers, in trouble or safety, Jesus is our light that never fades. “This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!”