Golden HYMNS Of The FAITH : Tell Me The Old, Old Story

If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement on a bad invention.

- H.D. Thoreau, 1817-1862.

  The OPTIMIST and the PESSIMIST were arguing the virtues of their belief-systems and the way in which their two different approaches to life could possibly best benefit mankind. But, as usual, the million-rouble question again came up: Which approach is best ... OPTIMISM or PESSIMISM?

PESSIMIST: "Look at it this way: Let's take the familiar glass-and-water analogy as a case in point. I say the glass filled only halfway (50%) with water is half-empty.Things are always worse than they seem."

OPTIMIST: "Your argument is misleading. I would prefer to describe such a glass as half-full. Anyway, if we were to take a smaller glass, say about half the size we are using now, and pour the contents of the old bigger glass into the new smaller one, people would notice that the glass is now 100% full. That's the problem with you pessimists ... you use containers that are too big (i.e. unfit for purpose) to begin with and then have the audacity to complain about the half-full glass."

PESSIMIST: "Your argument is invalid. I could, for the same price, argue that if we were to exchange the glass we are using now for a container twice its current size and pour the contents of the old glass over into the new, people would notice that the glass was only 25% full all the time. That's the problem with you optimists: You use the wrong containers (too big) to begin with to bluff the people and then have the audacity to claim the glass as (already) half-full."

THE MILLION-ROUBLE QUESTION: Which one of the two is correct? Which one of the two possible approaches should we recommend?

ANSWER: Neither one of them is correct, for while the optimist and the pessimist were bickering over the glass-and-water, the REALIST had in the meantime arrived and had drunk all the water.

REALIST: "Stop wasting time bickering ... drink the freaking water before it all evaporates. Don't procrastinate ... learn to do what you can with what you've got. before you lose it all!"

On the one hand there are some hyper-optimists who will barge in where angels fear to tread (The Bible calls them 'fools'), renounce God and spit on the Bible. They thrive on secular-humanist self-help books and meditate on their own august 'spirituality' while walking the 'labyrinth' for hours on end, playing with all kinds of coloured beads. They hire motivational speakers at exorbitant fees and listen to secular-humanist drivel invented by self-help psychologists and oriental yogis and gurus hailing all the way from India and Beverly Hills.
They believe everything that the atheist-evolutionist-scientist tells them and scoff at God and the Bible, hoping that they will attain 'Nirvana' one day by ignoring the hard realities of life and sitting at the feet of some Tibetan mystic ... somewhere in a multi-million dollar mansion in Malibu. These guys have no 'sins' and no 'guilt-complex', so they do not need a Messiah, or Salvation. For them, concepts like 'good' and 'evil' are philosophical anachronisms as it doesn't really exist."There is no such thing as 'evil': Only thinking makes it so!" These are the New Age champions of situational-ethics and moral-relativism, and usually end up in lucrative jobs where they become the watchdogs (sic) over (i) public-broadcasting norms and standards (or the lack thereof), or (ii) educational curricula in the public school system. Sheep in wolf-clothing.
They (the skull-and-bones enthusiasts) approve grants for or donate money for 'Evolution-research' and support the 'Promote The Cradle Of Humankind Campaign' in Johannesburg, South Africa. Some of them will even collect a host of unsanitary and ugly old fossils and protect it as if their lives depended on it. ... all in the name of the art, craft and science of 'palaeontology'. These hyper-optimists refuse to accept the downside of life, and often wear a sickeningly permanent, superficial smile on their countenance as plastic as toys from Hong Kong and as if life is one big Schuster-joke.
To them Life poses no problems ... only 'challenges'. This word has been so over-used by useless and corrupt politicians in South Africa that one of my 'challenges' is to get the politicians in my country to revert back to the word 'problems' ... maybe then they will get some of their projects done. Africa is high on ideas and big on indabas (discussions) but low on implementation.

PS. Fossils do not prove 'Evolution'. It only proves that (i) living things are enclined to eventually die and perish and that (ii) there once was a worldwide deluge that destroyed the whole world, affectionately known as 'Noah's Flood'. During the Wistar Symposium (USA) in 1966 some of the cream of the world's mathematicians have declared 'Evolution' mathematically unfeasible (i.e. scientifically improbable). In theory the 'Evolutionary Theory' may look good on paper but the mathematics of it doesn't work out in practice. (Someone has once said that, in theory, there should never be a difference between theory and practice, but , in practice, there often is).

On the other hand, the hyper-pessimist will tell us that the world is going to the dogs, that there is no hope for mankind at all. The pessimist-atheist will tell you that there is no God, and the materialist-evolutionists will tell you that we all have evolved from apes anyway and that there is no such a thing as 'right' or 'wrong' , or a commendable Universal Moral Code for mankind to live by: They insist ... "The Bible is myth, the Creation-story a fairy tale."
Atheist-evolutionists will teach, preach and assert that humans will eventually die and get recycled biologically back into Nature, that there is no such a thing as individual human personality and that when one dies, one will be dumped into a rubbish bin like an old, worn-out, obsolete and discarded computer hard-drive. Hardened, unrepentant criminals will tell us that there is no such a thing as a Hereafter, Divine Retribution by a Holy Creator or a Heaven and a Hell ... live it up while you can regardless of the consequences. The eat-drink-and-be-merry crowd, easy to identify ... they are the ones who slip into the office late (in the morning) by the back door with a serious hangover, still 50% inebriated from the previous night's party.
The REALIST will listen to these wisecracks with all their 'wise cracks' and know: Jesus is alive and is coming back again, and, should I die today, I will hopefully forever be with the Lord. The REALIST does not deny the condition of the world, or the hard facts of crime, war, natural disaster, racism, genocide, economic meltdown, inflation, unemployment, bankruptcy, disease, death, fraud, human-trafficking, drug-trafficking, alcoholism, drug-abuse, corruption, famine, poverty, suffering, the Holocaust, persecution, repression etc. But the REALIST knows that these things cannot measure up to the glory that is God, Jesus Christ, The Holy Spirit, the Bible, the Gospel, forgiveness of sins, Salvation and Eternal friendship with that humble Carpenter from Nazareth who died on the cross of Calvary when we were not worth dying for ... to make us worth something to die for.
Just keep telling me the Old, Old Story of Jesus and His love, and I am content. There is no way in which the scourges of poverty, war and crime are ever going to successfully compete with prosperity (in the long run and in the full history of Creation). It simply does not have the capital! As that doyen of realist-optimists, Patience Strong, once remarked: "Trouble, like bad weather, cannot last forever."
The honest poor and destitute of this world (and the honest rich alike) wlll, if they believe and follow Christ (as C.S. Lewis says) as the Ecclesia of God still outlive this magnificent Universe.

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Tell Me The Old, Old Story

(A. Catherine Hankey, 1834-1911/William H. Doane, 1832-1913)

Tell me the old, old story

Of unseen things above,

Of Jesus and His glory,

Of Jesus and His love.

Tell me the story simply,

As to a little child,

For I am weak and weary,

And helpless and defiled.

Tell me the story slowly,

That I may take it in ‒