HUMILITY & FLEXIBILITY: WHICH ARE BORN OF TRUE WISDOM 24 FEB 2014

HUMILITY & FLEXIBILITY: WHICH ARE BORN OF TRUE WISDOM (cf. JS 3:13). This post will provide several examples of where wisdom & humility must preside over interpretation & presumed knowledge. In the larger context, this post is actively exercising our ability for humility & flexibility…while specifically providing interesting (yet perhaps obscure) information . God’s Spirit of Truth gives us wisdom that is gentle, approachable, full of tolerant thoughts and peaceloving.(cf. JS 3) While we don’t want to be suckers for every false story, we do want to be open to learning if life presents us with new facts and ways of seeing things. It clearly demands that we have balance when we learn.

Prior to Columbus’s return from his discovery of the New World, the common belief based on the Bible was that there were only 3 continents: Asia, Africa & Europe. This was based on 2 facts: first the Bible only mentioned 3 continents, and second, the Biblical account described the 3 sons of Noah, each picking out one of the 3 continents to occupy. When Columbus returned in 1493, church leaders did not know how to handle the new discoveries. It took until 1512 before the Pope declared that the native Americans were indeed descendants of Adam & Eve, hence, fully human.

Likewise, modern views of America are being challenged by hundreds of years of New World archeology discoveries that have been suppressed. Barry Fell’s good book America B.C. documents how Europe & Africa have sent repeated settlers & explorers to the New World long before Columbus.

Even more challenging to preconceptions are the underwater cities discovered in basically two regions: the Indian Ocean (on the west coast of India running down to the Maldive Islands), and in the seas off of the Ryukyu Islands (commonly known as the Okinawa chain of islands). The various remains of submerged cities are approx. 10,000 yrs. old, are well-constructed, and appear to have been inundated when the ocean level rose after that ice age.

The Japanese (Ryukyu Is.) city structures are at four sites: Aguni, Chatan, Kerama, & Yonaguni. A Japanese friend gave me a heads up about their discovery. At Kerama one sees a no. of stone circles which match the circles that were important to the ancient Jomon Japanese culture. The sites have megaliths, monuments, steps, blocks, stone tools, & stone tablets w/ symbols.

The sites in the Indian Ocean connect to the ancient Indus-Satasvati civilization (Harappan culture). Over 2,600 sites of this culture have been discovered. My Dad looked over the main ones when he spent 5 yrs. in Pakistan. This anc. society was linked to Mesopotamia & Egypt in 3,000 B.C. It constructed well designed cities w/ plumbing, baths, toilets, grids of paved streets, & grain storage bldgs. They used a script of 450 graphemes, still not decoded. The new underwater cities appear to be linked to this Indus-Satasvati civilization, but are older. The sites incl.: the Gulf of Cambray w/ a large 4,000 B.C. city, Gulf of Bengal site, Poompuhur (near Nagepattinem), and Tamil Nadu. The site of Lothal (in Pakistan), an ancient Harappan port, yielded cowrie shells from the Maldive Islands (a chain of 1,200 islands). The Maldives are the site of an underwater city.

All these underwater cities challenge established archeology, as well as some people’s Biblical interpretations. While it is interesting to learn about these discoveries, and they illustrate how little we know of the ancient past, even more important is that we have the wisdom to live in peace & humility with one another. This is the wisdom that comes from above.