Elections in the United States are seldom sedate affairs. There’s always plenty of rough and tumble in our politics. And so it has been from the beginning. While our founding fathers stated from the outset that they despised party politics, they very quickly formed political parties. And those factions could be every bit as vicious toward one another as they are today.
Still, 2016 does seem to be a particularly venomous time, as such times go. There is a lot that’s wrong just now in our country, and in the world. And many of us are fed up about it! I wish I could say that I am an island of calm in a sea of uncertainty. I wish. But to be honest I have been as passionate as anyone with all that’s going on.
So, I’ve been asking myself, “What do I need to remember in these messed up times?” And, as I’ve taken inventory it turns out that there are a lot of things.
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It has been well said that “Science takes things apart to see how they work. But religion puts things together to see what they mean.” The drive to understand ourselves and our world is something fundamentally human. It sets us apart from the animals. We want to know…and to know that we know.
At the Greek temple of Apollo at Delphi, over the doorway, was an inscription, “Know yourself.” And subsequent Western philosophy has sought to do just that. But two and a half thousand years later philosophers have more questions than answers. We remain a mystery to ourselves. In fact, as Nietzsche said, we knowers are farthest from knowing ourselves. And philosophers have been completely unable to find any absolute foundation for belief about reality which is immune to doubt. Philosophy has not put things together.
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It’s hard to believe, but 112 years ago Orville and Wilbur Wright did what people had always dreamed of but had never accomplished. They flew. They took a strange, winged contraption powered with the newfangled fuel called gasoline and got the thing off the ground. It flew 852 feet in 59 seconds. When they were done they went to the nearest Telegraph office and send a telegram to their sister, Catherine. “We flew 852 feet today. We’ll be home for Christmas.” When she got the telegram she took it to the editor of the local newspaper office and showed it to him. The editor smiled and condescendingly said, “How nice. The boys will be home for Christmas.”
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Most of the time, we live our lives dealing with immediate things. It is rare for us to step back, to revisit the big questions and to ask, “Why?” “Why am I here?” “And what on earth am I here for?” I think a lot of people never really ask these questions; they simply step into the various roles that they find themselves in, and find whatever satisfaction there is to be found. This can certainly be true if you lead a thoroughly secular lifestyle. However, it’s not just a problem of unbelievers. Even religious people can be shallow. We can find ourselves going through the motions in this way. We can find ourselves with trite answers to give to the world… answers that are unconvincing even to ourselves. That is why, again and again we need to go back and ask the fundamental questions, because out of the depths comes a fulfilling life.
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In Malachi 3:10 the prophet says, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it”.
Throughout scripture we are told it is a sin to put God to the test. Only here does God invite us, indeed dare us, to “test Him.” “Try to out give me,” He says. You won’t be able to.
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