Shadows

A friend of mine shared Plato’s Allegory of the Cave with me recently. He was writing a leadership workshop that uses ideas from the allegory to drive home new perspectives for students who are stuck in a system of thinking. I had no idea what Plato’s Allegory of the Cave was, so he gave me a short synopsis which I will share with you.  If you would like to read the version that I found on a history web site, check the following link…  http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html  You might have to cut and paste it into your browser window. It’s about 3 pages.

The allegory is a short story with a very specific and almost odd set of circumstances. Plato writes that there is a group of people who are being held in a dark cave. They are all chained together and facing a wall on which they only see the shadows that are cast from themselves, and the other people or animals what walk between the blazing fire behind them and the cavern wall. They are unable to move their heads in order to see the fire, and therefore their entire reality is the shadows. Plato continues with a “what if”. What if one of the prisoners was cut free, imagine their change of reality when they turn around for the first time and learn that the world is not shadows? What if they learn that fire, other people, and a world outside of the cave all exist? There would be physical pain as their eyes adjusted to the  first direct glimpse of the fire’s blazing light. And what if, after experiencing the world beyond the shadows, they returned to the cave to inform and free the others, and were unable to see in the darkness because their eyes had trouble adjusting back to the darkness and the others thought that the world away from the shadows took your sight? What then? Would they choose to stay in shackles, deceived by their limited experience and fear?

My friend was so excited about the idea of recreating the cave situation with a group of troubled teens so that they could draw the parallels between their narrow focus of the world and the world that really exists beyond their experience. It’s a great parallel to draw, and just as he was seeing it played out in that light, I was seeing the spiritual parallels.There is enormous depth to Plato’s Allegory and I openly admit that I may be interpreting certain parts incorrectly, but when my friend was telling me about this story I instantly replied, ” That is exactly how I feel about my faith”. He looked at me, not sharing the same belief, nodded, looked up, and continued on with his leadership workshop ideas.

I can’t help myself but feel as though we are all of the chained people, stuck seeing the world through a perspective that we don’t even remember choosing. As much as Plato saw the freedom from the chains as the “enlightenment of knowledge”, I see it as the awakening of our physical and spiritual potential. The “humanity” if you will, that we were originally supposed to live in.  It’s a freedom from the things that we were predisposed to from birth. I see Jesus as the one who came and cut the chains free, and he is telling us about a life which is beyond our experience. It is a vibrant life that is better than what we can see or imagine here in the shadows. But we have to have faith that what he has seen is better than our experience. There is an element of faith; that we can handle turning around and facing into the brilliant burning flame. We have to believe that the walk out of the cave into the unknown will be worth it. In Plato’s allegory, he says that the person’s eyes ” burned” as they saw the light. It implies that it hurt. I don’t think the movement is supposed to be easy and pain free. But leaving what we have known is worth the glorious brilliance of the life that we are created to live.

I appreciate that Plato writes about the people in the cave being bound in chains to the point that they are unable to even turn their heads around. It sounds so harsh. We are “in bondage to our sin” the Bible says. It is a reality of our lives. Here in bondage, we have become comfortable. We fear the freedom because it causes “blindness” and we don’t know what to do with that unknown.

Jesus came to remove the chains that held us in the shadows that were my reality. I took him up on the offer. I got up, and turned around. It was difficult. In fact, it still hurts years later. But the world is brilliant and vibrant. It’s hard to convince others that it’s better. But I can only tell them. They have to choose to leave the shadows. I’m embracing the life I was meant to live.