There is something very tempting about completely adopting a completely logical frame of mind that only relates to that which can be proven scientifically. For several hundred years the scientific method has served us well; with it we have unsecreted knowledge and built modernity. Our cars, our planes, our homes, our medical care, our computers, our phones, our weather forecasts are a product of an ongoing quest to learn more and more about our world. Science serves us well; thus the allure to think it is the end all. But when all is said and done, there remains an emptiness in the human soul that science cannot satisfy. It is no accident that existentialism is the prevailing philosophy of the twentieth and so far the twenty-first centuries. Prior to WWI it was rare for people to ask “who am I” or “why am I here” or “where am I going.”
There is the temptation to assume that people have always thought as we; not so. The world had a blanket of comforting mythologies that soothed all such inquiries. However, modernity and science have stripped away much of what was, even though mistaken, reassuring. The problem for us is we can throw away the baby with the bathwater. Amidst what we no longer regard as relevant truth was relevant truth. Paul’s incredible letters to the Romans, Ephesians and Galatians are eternally true. We are the children of God. We are here to be redeemed and bear witness to His love. And we are going to grow more and more with Him forever becoming what Paul said, “something far more than we could ever think or dream.” Science has served us well but it is not, and I repeat, it is not the satisfier of the angst of the human soul.
Written by Roger Bothwell on March 7, 2012
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org