“He's a feral child. No mother, no father, no one to care for him or raise him or teach him how to be human. So he's existed much like an animal, without language. He thinks in images, not word."My wife and I have been watching old episodes of the television drama "E.R." The series was written and created by Michael Crichton, who also wrote "Jurassic Park", a book that was turned into a movie franchise. Michael Crichton himself was a Harvard trained Medical Doctor, but never actually practiced medicine. That may be one reason why the "E.R" franchise was so successful, and lasted so long even after the big-name actors (George Clooney, Juliana Margulies) left the cast.
"How strange," Lanaya, sounding amazed.
Ryter shakes his head sadly. "Not strange, I'm afraid. His condition is all too common in the latches. And becoming more common every day.”
― Rodman Philbrick, The Last Book in the Universe
One particular episode speaks to our culture today, I think. Season 13, episode 8, "Reason to Believe", first aired November 16, 2006. In it, a group of homeless children bring their friend to the ER. The child has a mysterious illness that brings him to the brink of death, but the kids have faith in Neela (played by Parminder Nagra). They call her "The Lady in Blue", and they seem to have boundless faith in her supernatural ability to heal, until one of them discovers she is "just a doctor."
The children in this episode are living in an underground shelter, and doing whatever it takes to survive. They appear to have made up a mythical back-story in lieu of their actual history, in order to explain dangers "beyond the river". Their search for the goddess or saint they called "the Lady in Blue" led them to Neela, who was seen wearing blue scrubs.
Feral children are a major theme in dystopian literature. Left without adult supervision, they let their imaginations run wild in ways that are intended to explain their universe in ways they can understand and control.
In much the same way, modern anthropologists explain the origins of religion as myths and legends meant to explain naturally occurring phenomena in imaginative ways, and the gods and goddesses their minds created were used in ways to control the masses and empower shamans and priests. Out of that system of belief, they surmise, evolved the Judeo-Christian concept of God.
I believe they have it backward.
I believe that God pre-existed Man, and that Man's concept of God originally came from the tangible, corporeal experience of Adam. After the Fall, the first-hand experiences of Adam standing face-to-face with God, walking hand-in-hand with Him, were told to his children, who had no first-hand experience with God. Over time, the message degraded, and rival myths and legends popped up to compete with the truth. I believe that Satan, the father of lies, put the thought of rival deities into the minds of men to confuse them, and to lead them away from the truth. The Bible speaks to this in 2 Timothy 4:3-5, "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths."
Let's look at it logically. Suppose for a moment that there is no God, no Satan, no spiritual beings whatsoever. Like feral children, men are left to explain their universe in ways that are limited to their own experiences. They observe and adapt. They hunt, they gather, they learn to domesticate animals and control the edible plants and herbs that they eat. They discover medicinal remedies for diseases. They live, they die, and the world of knowledge expands slightly with what they have left behind. This is the evolution of our species.
Without God, there would be no need for a deity. No one would even come up with the idea.
I challenge you to find one person alive today whose concept of God was not based on a teaching, a philosophy, a theology that he was told or that he read about. You can't. Everything we know or think we know about God was told to us by someone else. If you follow that teaching back to its original source, it was God Himself. Satan may have come and misstated the truth, misdirected the narrative, but without the intervention of the Creator Himself, we do not have the capacity to know about Him.
2 Corinthians 4:3-4 says, "And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." Christ came to refocus theological thought to the beginning, to the true and original God with whom he had first-hand knowledge. Like Adam, Jesus had a first-hand account of God's word and work. People who heard Jesus and believed in him had faith that he was the only way to God. Others could not hear the Word because of the noise of false teachings and false religions around them. 2 Corinthians 3:14 says, "But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away." Colossians 1:15 says, "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation."
Matthew 13:15 says, "For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them." Men are sick and dying without God. We must tell them the truth, "To open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me." (Acts 26:18)
This, then, is our mission: to implore all men to call on the Name of the Lord for their salvation. Not to rely upon themselves, not to follow a demigod with human limitations and foibles, not to listen to false religions or sects. All must call on the Name of the Lord to be saved.
Romans 10:14-15a says, "How then will they call on him whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?" Jesus said, "As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you." (John 20:21)
Go. And as you go, take Jesus with you. The world is full of feral children in need of guidance, truth, peace, and healing.
