For some time, we have been living in the shadow of the Enlightenment, occupied by its peculiar presuppositions and organizing our lives by its shallow forecast: We can know all things. We can conquer nature. We are progressing toward the better.
Sure, there have been rumblings by philosophers who have pointed out huge blind spots in the telescopes and microscopes of scientism, materialism, and so-called empiricism. How can we say we can observe anything, when we can only see parts from our partly broken vantage point of being. Every proposed universal system comes from a little ole me’s and a collection of examples that add up to a few grains of sand on the Sleeping Bear dunes. And every universal paradigm loses steam and power as It trips over too many exceptions and mysterious black holes.
We are no closer to understanding or changing things than when we first began. It doesn’t mean one shouldn’t change a dire circumstance for one’s neighbor, but do we really lift the rock up the hill any further? History tells us no.
We believe our iPhones and rocket ships prove progress, but we still cried at our grandmother’s funeral, and we still wonder how our marriage fell apart. We thought America was the pinnacle of centuries of organized political evolution, yet here we are, nearly at the brink of civil war.
Maybe our recent evolution paradigm is all wrong. We are chutes and ladders on a chessboard. Perhaps we can find peace not in man’s progress but in God’s still unmoving voice. Imagine the relief of pressure to improve and instead just be. Imagine living in the moment, not worried about becoming, but remaining…
On the vine.
Paul tells us that we were predestined in Christ before the foundations of the world, before the fall, before any movement forward or backward. Christ died and rose before the world began. This is not a clever answer to a problem. It is His identity—the dying and rising God for sinners. The Alpha and Omega is not a long time of change from one point to the next but a constant singularity, a bright white hole.
You were chosen. You are a child of God, a forgiven sinner, an eternal living being. That’s all that matters as you think you are making something great…again. Created by God. Redeemed by God. There is no movement but God’s. He moves toward you.
We’ve been digging for the wrong treasure with the wrong tools in the wrong place. When it’s been standing right in front of us all this time, let God move the earth. You have been given the treasure, the unveiling of the mystery, God’s love for sinners.
