A IS A

Written by Chris Bloom, posted by Lora Bloom

A while back I was a big fan of Ayn Rand. Not of her personally -- by all accounts she was a remarkably unpleasant person -- but of her books. I couldn't fully get on board with her philosophy, because of its virulently anti-Christian stance, but she had a big influence on my libertarianism.

She was too polemical to be a good novelist; even her fiction read like nonfiction. One of her central ideas has always stuck with me, though: a = a.

My mother-in-law has always said it a different way: "It is what it is." Another old saying is that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.

All these are just ways of saying that a thing is itself. That also means that a thing is not something different. A is not not-a. It ain't what it ain't. If it doesn't look like a duck or quack like a duck there's a good chance it's not a duck.

Even in the Bible, a is a. Jesus Christ may have lived as a man, but when it comes down to it, God isn't like us. He says as much in Psalm 50. God is different from man. A is not not-A,

Man is not God. He won't become God at some point in the future. He's an amazing creation, and because he was made in the likeness of his creator he's done some things that beggar belief. He's not God, though. If you don't remember anything else, remember that. Man is not God. Not-A is not A.

The worst thing a person can do is to is to put himself in God's place. The place God made for and reserved for himself is on the pedestal of the human heart. He was and is the only worthy object of worship. People have never been. They aren't big enough.

If a thing is true, its opposite can't be true as well. If man is in charge, then he can't not be in charge at the same time. That's just insane.

Jesus said no man can serve two masters. The same is true of our beliefs. If we believe A, we cannot behave as if we believe not-A. If we do, there's no point in claiming to believe A. That's just dishonest, and though we might fool ourselves, we're not fooling anyone else,

Saying one thing and doing another is hypocrisy. It's a lie, and has probably made more atheists both inside and outside the Church than anything else. As hard as we might try, we can't make A equal anything other then A.

[LC Bloom doesn't equal anything other than LC Bloom. He's from Birmingham, Alabama and can be reached at lechroom.com. He also writes for Built for Glory and has written for COBRASAURUS!!!!!]