December 22, 2009
Sole Survivor
The 19th season of Survivor just ended and one contestant was consumed with the game. Russell H. dubbed himself the greatest player ever to play the game. He lied, cheated and manipulated…and came in second place. Obviously the jury, consisting of players previously eliminated from the game, didn’t share Russell’s opinion of his greatness. So distraught at loosing the title of Sole Survivor, Russell even offered winner Natalie $10,000 if she would sell him her title. Sort of reminds me Simon the Sorcerer who boasted that he was someone great. He become a believer, was baptized and then tried to buy the power of the Holy Spirit from Peter and John. After being chastised for his wickedness, Simon came to his senses…I think he realized the need for becoming a Soul Survivor.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Simon realized he had stepped outside of the rules. But did he actually know the rules, or had he only become aware of them? Peter rebuked him for offering to buy the power of the Spirit saying, “Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord.” But Simon’s response was, “Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.” (Acts 8:22&24) Although it is somewhat a split hair, Simon seemed to demonstrate an inability to pray for himself. Of course, he might have been feeling the need for Peter’s prayer to join his own, but would he not have then possibly responded to Peter, “Pray for me as well...”
Luke records that Simon heard Phillip’s preaching and believed, but he followed Phillip because he was astonished at the signs and wonders being performed. Having been a magician by trade, his curiosity is understandable, but was it actually the “magic” that had attracted him? And having been so good at magic that the people of Samaria called him “The Great Power” and having boasted himself about being something great, it is doubtful that Phillip, or at least someone in his following, did not expound to him the principles of humility. Maybe his pride was simply a difficult match for him to wrestle, but his offer to buy the power shows both the desire to possess more power instead of a desire to be possessed by the Lord and a general lack of understanding about the basics of what he had come to believe.
Justin Martyr reflected upon this Simon as being a heretical imposter. Irenaeus declares that Cerdon developed his heresy from Simon’s followers, a heresy that proclaimed the God of the Old Testament was a flawed and in many ways evil God who was the lesser to a Greatest and Holy God. Marcion further developed this heresy to its final, Gnostic stages by 145AD. The historical references of the early church are uniform about this Simon being the originator of the pagan ideas and practices and the Gnostic overtones of the errors addressed by Paul to the Colossians, to Timothy and Titus, and by II Peter, I&II John, Jude, and in the seven letters of Revelation. And it is easy to see how that perverted view of Jehovah could be brewed from of a Samaritan outlook having experienced in its time the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70AD, and then the utter expelling of the Jews from Judea in 137AD, and the spiteful renaming of Judea to Palestine (Roman play on Philistine, Judah’s longtime rivals.) And of course, Simon was a Samaritan.
But history is only the thought of historians and both God and what actually happened are only real. And as you have taken away from these two stories, Russell H. and Simon showed how dangerous it is to split or bend the rules through the prism of your own desires. The rules are meant to be the prism splitting or bending your desires. But in as much as we all have some strong desires, some rule will be at least bent by our own prisms. This is why the confession of I John 1:9 is so important to do continually. It not only cleanses us from our sin, but until the desire’s prism is removed, confession constantly reminds us that a rule is being bent by our own desire and is a reflection upon the need to not build the bent rule into further thought.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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