Is Anything Real?

I heard two discussions yesterday that caught my interest.  The first was about global warming.  Now before you click to a new page, hear me out.  This one is interesting.  Apparently, the polar ice melt statistics they are using to formulate much of their opinion about global warming started in 1979.  This happened to be one of the wettest and coldest seasons in a very long time and the ice caps were huge.  So the question arises, “were they larger than normal and now we are seeing them get back to normal?”  Also, the temperature gauges around the world they are using since 1979 have been discovered to be giving higher than normal readings because more cement and development has grown up around them and the readings have had to be “adjusted,” whatever that means.  All of this adds questions to the process and conclusions.  Then when you consider that we are looking at a very small slice of world history, who knows how ordinary and typical this kind of fluctuation might be?  We do know we have had four major periods of “ice age” development before we were even around to put on our winter coats.

The second discussion I heard was about whether the Satan is real.  Unknown to me, apparently the Methodist Church doctrinal position is it’s up to you whether Satan (as a fallen angel) is a metaphor or a real being.  Heck, I’m not the one to prove this, but it seems the Bible certainly implies he is real and Jesus himself said he saw Satan fall like lightning (Luke 10.18.)  Now was he speaking metaphorically about human evil.  I can’t buy it.  I think the passage makes more sense as a comment about a real being who was vying for power with other beings against God as is stated (Revelation 12.9)  We are told angels visited the shepherds in the fields at Jesus’ birth.  I just can’t see how the concept is a metaphor for human evil.  You've gotta throw an awful lot of the Bible out if you accept that line of reasoning. He’s no pointy tailed guy in a red suit, but my take is he is real.

I guess we’ll always have these controversies, whether it’s global warming or textual interpretation of whether Satan or even God real.  We take a lot on faith. The nature of our limited perspective on reality is one tiny speck in the continuum of time. 

I look forward someday to knowing the answers because I’ve got a lot of questions for God.