6/8/2022 • Desk of Dennis Piller
Did evil exist before Adam and Eve ate the apple?
David Foster Wallace told a humorous parable about perspective called.
“This is Water: :
There are two young fish swimming along who happen to meet an older fish. The older fish nods at them and says:
‘Morning boys, how’s the water?’
The two young fish swim on for a bit and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and asks:
‘What the heck is water?’
The message of the fish story is that the most obvious and important realities are the hardest to see. Often, this is because our natural setting is to be self-centered and to interpret everything through this lens of self.
But what makes the older fish so much wiser? We must infer that it is his experience. That is, the older fish only knows about water because he’s been outside the fishbowl and somehow managed to get back into… Water.
In truth, we must come out of the world to see the spirit world of God. The Holy Spirit is the only one who can set us free from the lies and half-truths of the world. That requires a true relationship with God. Being born again! “Not… now I lay me down to sleep”. May I ask… Have you asked? And then stepped out in faith believing he will meet you?
I know that during times in my life it seemed I couldn’t see past what I was living in until I got just far enough away to get a different perspective. It was like, wow, I can see the water in which I had been living, or I could see the situation I was living in from a different viewpoint, a different filter.
How often have we learned common sense or knowledge a little too late in life? A young man thought the national anthem began with, “Jose can you see” It took 30 years for him to figure that out. Doesn’t everyone know the obvious?
Does a fish have to go to school to learn what water is? Think about that. He was born in it. He doesn’t even see it. It is not obvious to him at all. It just seems to be a part of who he is… requiring no conscious thought at all. It just seems right. Everyone is doing it!
Is it so different for each of us? We were born into this world. We don’t even really see it – it’s ways – modernism – existentialism -. the only essence of truth is what we create. They say our thinking is set by the time we are 7 or 8. WOW. What they/we do see is normal. All the craziness, lunacy, provocativeness, promiscuity, self-centeredness, racial divides, anger,
and my way or the highway mentality is all the norm.
We often don’t like it, but it's amazing what we get used to.
Especially our children.
The Holy Spirit turns on the light for each of us at different times and our eyes are opened to often see the cesspool we're living in is not healthy. Not free. Not pure, holy, joyous, grateful, or peaceful. We SEE things differently and he changes our hearts to want to live in the water of his word. Not the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Colossians 2:13 "When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions",
He made us to SEE the truth!
I'm not sure if there was any evil in the garden before the tree. Evil had not been introduced until they accepted the deception of the deceiver…and the world. The water, that we live in…that we were born into – changed forever.
My journey in Christ has shown me the water. It has also shown me the two different pools of water. The worlds – the knowledge of the tree of good and evil and God's redemptive path to freedom. What does your pool of water look like right now? God can change that – He said, "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Sam. 15:22). Choose you this day who you will serve!
Carrie Underwood. There must have been something in the water
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH9kYn4L8TI
