Incarnation

The importance of the incarnation of Jesus cannot be understated. 

I'm taking a Western Philosophy online course through Hillsdale College. Professor Schlueter discussed Plato's Allegory of the Cave. In short, Palto presents a thought experiment of a cave with three levels. At the lowest level, prisoners are chained as the sit facing the back wall of the cave. On an upper level behind them, there is a large fire with men holding up objects, so the object's shadow is reflected on the back wall of the cave for the prisoners to see. The top level is the world above the cave with trees and the sun shining down. 

The allegorical scene then is of the top level where you see reality with light and trees. One level down, you have men determining what they think is real and projecting images of their reality to the prisoners below. All the prisoners know of their world is from the images they see.

The professor then asked what would happen if one of the prisoners were to be freed and make it to the top surface? Well, it would be a painful journey being exposed to the light of the fires and then the light of the sun after being chained in the dark or so long. He would also face the changing reality of all he knew to be true which was just images and shadows on the back wall of the cave. 

The professor then asks what would happen if that man, having discovered new realities, would go back down to the prisoners and tells them of the world above. The answer was that they would think he was crazy speaking about this unknown world. They would not hear him and maybe even try to kill him.

Then I thought, what if that man was the light? What if he was from that top level reality? What if he came down into the cave and joined the prisoners and let them see him and know him? They would not need to go to the top level to know reality and truth because the truth would have come to them.

Where would we be if Jesus had not come down to humanity? We were slaves to our nature, believing only in what we could see of the shadowed world around us. Jesus is the light and the way. He is the incarnation of the reality of God's kingdom. He spoke about the kingdom in parables to help us understand. He lived the kingdom life so we could see the kingdom of God in our midst. In the end, many did think he was crazy. They did kill him, but he still lives. Now we can know the true reality of the kingdom of God because Jesus Christ, God himself, came to dwell among us.

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