Tag: reality

Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”

Published on by lindseybiggs1 Comment
The following excerpts by Christie Hanzlik, C.S.  are from Let Your Light Shine on UNREALITY to Reveal Reality! (a Christian Science Bible Lesson study guide) 

Plato, a Greek philosopher, created his “Allegory of the Cave” roughly 400 years before Jesus’s ministry, but, in many ways, we can see it as an early glimpse of Christ’s promise to all mankind that we can be free from material bondage.   In fact, we can use the allegory to understand Jesus’s necessary role in revealing and demonstrating reality to mankind.
 
Whereas Plato may have left the story with the prisoners unable to understand the true nature of reality, Jesus proved that people could understand it.  Without Christ Jesus’s amazing demonstration of spiritual vision and communication, the “world outside the cave” would remain a garbled confusion to those feeling imprisoned by matter.   Christ Jesus was necessary to bring the Divine revelation to humanity.
 
Jesus understood God’s love for us so well that he could, unlike the freed prisoner in Plato’s allegory, communicate and demonstrate the truth about the “world outside the cave.”  His role was to show us the way out of the cave so we could see and prove for ourselves that we are not prisoners. He was the way shower.  And true Christianity, as Jesus taught it, is the movement and spread of the absolute truth that we are not prisoners chained in a cave of matter.
 
Jesus saw clearly that the “shadow wall”-matter-is not the true picture of reality even if it may seem to present mesmerizing sights and sounds and smells. He understood the “world outside the cave”-spiritual reality-and his purpose was to reveal this truth to all mankind.  Jesus asked us to let our light shine and to continue sharing his message of salvation-freedom from the chains of matter. Once we know about the “world outside the cave,” we cannot go back to not knowing it; and it’s natural for us to want to share it with others. 

The first and the last

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Sometimes problems we are faced with seem so big: unemployment, disease, and relationship issues; Or the problems in the world: violence in Syria, Iranian nuclear power agreements, political focus more on problems than on solutions.

However, we can always pray in these situations and prayer has wonderful benefits and results.

“Prayer cannot change the Science of being, but it tends to bring us into harmony with it.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Eddy, p. 2)

So let’s talk about that prayer…

In first chapter of Genesis, the picture is painted of spiritual perfection, harmony, peace, and love. God created us spiritually in His/Her image and likeness. There is no sickness, no sin and no death. This is the original creation – the true, spiritual view of creation.

So whatever trouble we are facing: difficulties with a spouse or friend, a bodily dysfunction or a lack of supply to pay our bills, we can find comfort in knowing that it doesn’t belong to the original. God never created it nor included it in His creation.

In the book of Revelation, God says that He is Alpha and Omega – the first and the last – 4 different times. Here are two examples:

“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” Rev 1:8

“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.” Rev 21:6

So not only did God create perfection, harmony, spiritual reality; He didn’t create whatever problem it is you are going through today. And since God is the first and the last – whatever circumstance we seem to be in has no lasting power or influence.

If it’s not in the beginning and not in the end, what is there to sustain it? Nothing. You can be totally and completely free right now.