In Plato’s Republic, he tells the Allegory of the Cave. In it, we are to imagine an underground world, where people are chained in a cave for their entire lives. They can only see shadows on the wall cast by a distant fire. In the lesson, Plato has Socrates ask his student Glaucon if the people who have been living all their lives chained in the cave would think the shadows are reality. The student replies ‘Yes.’ But then the wise teacher says: “Now imagine what would happen naturally if the prisoners were released from their shackles and cured of their ignorance. Right after they are released and suddenly forced to stand up, turn their necks around, walk, and look towards the light, these activities will cause them pain; because of the bright glare they would be unable to see those things which they previously had seen only as shadows. Now what do you think they would say if one were to tell them that what they saw before was fooling them, but that now, when they are closer to what really exists and when they face that which more truly exists, they see more clearly, in a straightforward manner? What if that person pointed to the objects as they passed and asked the former prisoners to tell him what they were? Don’t you think they would be baffled and think that the shadows they formerly saw were truer than the objects that are now being pointed out to them?” The allegory goes on to discuss more deeply the path to discovering wisdom and virtue but I think it is a powerful picture of life as a Christian. The Christian, once they have been given spiritual eyes to see, can no longer pretend that the shadow world of living for sin and pleasure and riches is actually life. Conversion is a radical discovery that what you thought was life was only the shadows. True life is found only when you are living in the reality of Christ and the heavenly world of gospel grace.
In our study of the Wisdom Psalms, this week we are going to continue in Psalm 119:33-40. The sermon is entitled “Give Me Life!” Twice in this passage, the psalmist says “Give me life.” It is clear in the Bible that what often purports to be life is actually death and what actually seems like death to many is life. How many people live their whole lives unaware that they no nothing of real life? How tempting is it for us to live in the old familiar shadows of a dark world that only casts reflections of the real life of God’s Word. Wisdom is a God-given determination to live in the Real World… anything less is death.
Come as we listen to the Psalmist prayer asking to be lead forward into all that is Life. Let’s learn together how to no longer live as we once did in the darkness of a world of sin and death. Let’s seek real Life together in Christ.
