Say first, of God above, or man belowWhat can we reason, but from what we know?Of man, what see we but his station here,From which to reason, or to which refer?Through worlds unnumbered though the God be known,’Tis ours to trace Him only in our own.
-- from Alexander Pope’s Essay on ManPeter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved [John] following them …. When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?” Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” – John 21:20-22
Not to say there is anything wrong with wondering or
speculating. If there is, I am certainly
guilty. As noted, though, on One Cosmos,
reason is a tool that must have something on which to operate. We reason from what we know. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, we
know quite a bit about this world we inhabit, a little about the sun and the
moon, something of Mars, and really very little about any other world.
We get the impression sometimes that we know a great deal
more than someone living three or four hundred years ago – and we do. It is just that, relative to the vastness of
the cosmos, our knowledge base is almost unchanged. As time goes on, as instruments are refined,
as we are able to explore more effectively further and further out, we will
find that much we thought we knew was wrong.
I come not to bury science but to praise it. It is a feature. At least we know all the rules of physics,
right? Again, we know a lot more than we
did. I would be surprised, if, somewhere
down the line, there is not more to learn.
Someday we might come to a better understanding of what gravity really is
and how it works. We may find that space
is not as difficult to traverse as we now envision. Who knows?
We can wonder, but we are who we are and where we are
now. How should I live today? Right now?
“You follow me!”
This does not appear to be optional or open to
discussion. How the creatures on other
worlds relate to God, we may never know in this life. I don’t wonder why aliens haven’t shown up
here. If you were God would you let your
other kids hang out with us?
Jesus had just explained to Peter what direction he was
going to go and how he was going to be asked to surrender his life for the sake
of the kingdom. One would think that
would be enough to consider for at least a couple of minutes, but, like many of
us, Peter could not help wanting to know more, so he asked about John. “What
is that to you?”
We are to love, look out for, and support each other. We are to be good witnesses to those whose
path intersects our own. We should point
those who don’t know Christ in the right direction. Meanwhile we also have to understand that our paths
are ours. The trajectory of a person’s
life is between that person and God.
Christianity is life.
The Strait Way is strait enough without excessive religious regimentation. I have no problem with ritual or ceremony in
worship, and I know that discipline is necessary for all of us. Nevertheless, our call is not to follow the path of another, it is to follow Christ.
2 comments:
What is that year or that man they say was the last man who could know everything that was known at that time? It's almost like a parable in disguise.
Interesting problem to have reached capacity. With our finite brains and finite life spans. Maybe it was always true and no less true now than it ever was that man knows all he knows and nothing more and that this is both a gift and a warning to make certain that it is not how much one knows that is important but rather what he knows.
Maybe it was always true and no less true now than it ever was that man knows all he knows and nothing more ...
It's true that there is nothing new under the sun. A clay tablet is not the same as an iPad, but there is nothing new in the human holding it.
Post a Comment