Comparing Plato's The Cave And The Christian
The Cave and the Christian In Plato's Republic we have one of the best allegories told, the allegory of the Cave. The allegory of the cave goes basically like this: Suppose people were born in a cave and from birth they were chained up and unable to turn their heads. All they could do was to look straight ahead at a wall. Far behind them there was a fire burning and in from of that fire people would walk with object in their hands, statues and the like. All the chained prisoners could see would be these shadows on the wall, they could hear the noises and sounds that some of the people made and would think that those shadows and noises were really. Their idea of what was true, what was reality would be skewed. All they had ever known was the shadows. Now consider that one of the prisoners got free and slowly made their way up and out of the cave. At first they would be blind by the bring light of the sun outside the cave and they would be disoriented and in pain. But slowly over time they would begin to see that the reality of a tree isn't the shadow that they had seen on the cave wall but the thing that cats the shadow. Eventually they would be able to look up and see even the sun. Now imagine that
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People think the philosopher is nuts sometimes and some even become hostile (Socrates himself experienced this). I like the allegory of the cave because I think it captures the truth of Christianity in some ways. The world tells us that there is no God, that all there is, is the material. People tell us all the time in both words and acts that "what you see is what you get" and "when you die there is nothing so live for this life". But the truth of Christianity is that those are all shadows. We are being blinded by the god of this world to think that the material is all there is. If we were only able to break free from the chains that bind our minds we might see the
People think the philosopher is nuts sometimes and some even become hostile (Socrates himself experienced this). I like the allegory of the cave because I think it captures the truth of Christianity in some ways. The world tells us that there is no God, that all there is, is the material. People tell us all the time in both words and acts that "what you see is what you get" and "when you die there is nothing so live for this life". But the truth of Christianity is that those are all shadows. We are being blinded by the god of this world to think that the material is all there is. If we were only able to break free from the chains that bind our minds we might see the