A different example of this would be from lifting weights. You know that you cannot lift an infinite amount of weight, but you have to believe that you can lift more than you can right now, and that through good habits and consistent discipline, your max will increase.
Another example of this comes from parenting. Children are by default selfish little monsters who demand various tributes be made to them on a daily basis, and when they don't get their way, they are upset. You have to teach them to stop doing this, but its a lesson that isn't learned and then applied the first time it happens, especially when their brains are still having trouble connecting things like action and consequence, cause and effect.
A third example would comes from war. It is considerably easier to just lay down and die than to pick up a weapon and fight.
In each case, you have a choice to make, and that's either to push harder or to give up, and rarely ever is there a third option. The binary feels false, but that's largely due to postmodern conditioning, and that can be demonstrated with a fourth example.
2+2=4.
There are an infinite number of wrong answers to 2+2, and only a single correct answer to 2+2. There is a binary, even if the set of one "side" is a single value and the set for the other "side" has an essentially infinite number of values, from negative infinity to positive infinity, lacking only the number 4.
Postmodernism sought to create a variation of false piety where declaring agnosticism was viewed as demonstration of moral or intellectual superiority, even if there are means by which a correct answer could be determined. Subjective truths were to supplant objective truths, because humans could apparently never be perfectly objective, so while 2+2=4 for one person, if another person exists on a different plane of reality, then perhaps for them 2+2=3, and another person 2+2=5, because the "rules" which demand that 2+2=4 are not objectively true, and so truth becomes entirely subjective.
The movement didn't start out quite as explicitly obtuse, but the dynamics are identical. Instead of maths, postmodernists went after another objective truth: the presence of sin in humanity.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. - 1 John 1:8 (NKJV)Much more than a century ago, a philosophical movement began which, lacking self-awareness, decided that logic and reason and the scientific method could replace God. The root of the paradox, which has only become apparent in the past few decades, is that without God, logic and reason and the scientific methods have no reason to exist or have any influence over the thoughts and behaviors of humans in the first place, evidenced in how secular cultures deposed God, and then when science proved incapable of putting them on the throne they had secretly lusted for all along, they have thrown science aside for alternative means of growing in understanding and knowledge.
Sin exists in a binary relationship with Holiness. Holiness is "perfection in goodness and righteousness", and sin is simply everything short of that.
Pursuing Holiness then was deemed unnecessary, because within a lifetime, no human being would ever actually achieve perfection. Even struggling one's entire life, there will still be ways in which we fall short.
So when Christians drank deep of postmodern philosophy, no longer was an adherence to the process of sanctification of significant importance anymore. Trying to eliminate evil was deemed pointless because it would never ultimately be successful, and so Christians stopped trying.
It'd be like me refusing to lift weights anymore because I won't ever bench 300lbs.
Or just buying my kids whatever they want because trying to teach them how to be less selfish won't ever eliminate the root of their selfishness.
Or refusing to fight in a war because it won't be the war to end all wars.
What is missed by folks with these mentalities is that the byproducts of trying to fight "wrong answers", to hold onto the single correct one, has intrinsic merit and value, regardless of what ends may come of them. Teaching that 2+2=4 doesn't eliminate all the wrong answers.
But it's not pointless to teach it, to explain why it is correct, why only that answer is correct, and so on.
It's the same with children, in teaching them. You won't make them perfect, but you will help them regardless.
It's the same in lifting, you won't always grow your max, but the process improves your overall health and benefits you regardless.
Folks who "get this", who are willing to take on what is difficult and not what is easy, will naturally be placed at better odds when uninvited difficulties show up. When problems arise, folks who have practiced pursuing truth, focusing on truth, not being distracted from truth, will already have been practicing the perseverance required to not just survive, but thrive despite challenges they may face.
Others will simply be victims of fate, tossed about like a boat in a storm, at the mercy of whatever happens to them. They'll whine and complain, and they may even happen upon a time of peace, but at no point is it because of any choice that they have made, because they're refusing to make a choice at all.
In the coming years, when circumstances get more and more difficult, there will be little time for pity or charity. There won't be any sympathy for those who gave up on themselves, let alone assistance. When people are busy trying to keep them and their families alive, they won't care about a stranger that can't be summoned to care for even themselves.
When even animals have a stronger survival instinct, an understanding that they must exert some effort to continue their own existence, the humans that deny even this also surrender any claims to humanity, in that humanity has instincts and so much more.
If that "so much more" leads only to suicidal behavior?
The gene pool is better of without that variation of it still floating around.
Humanity will face a winnowing, and the people that survive will be the ones who, at the very minimum, want to in the first place. People who recognize that, even though they will eventually fail, that is not a reason for not trying in the first place. That even though we will return to dust, there is still meaning and value in the choices we make.
Your future, both temporally and eternally, will be better for it.
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