Discovering the hidden shape of life

Can we really see into the deep framework of existence?

I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness…See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.
Ecclesiastes 7:25, 29

The contemporary, unbelieving world is confronted by a dilemma it cannot adequately explain. On the one hand, we live in a universe that harbors what appears to be a great deal of randomness. Things just happen. There’s no explanation for them, they just do, and the consequences downstream can sometimes be far-reaching.

The universe, we are assured, is, at bottom, chaotic and meaningless. Practitioners of “chaos theory” don’t seem to recognize the oxymoron in their own field. How can you have a theory – an orderly attempt to explain – for something that is utterly chaotic, random, and meaningless?

Which introduces the other aspect of the dilemma: even the most rabidly chaos-theory devotees recognize that there is a great deal of order and structure to the universe. They think they can account for this by the random elimination of everything that doesn’t look like order, but that explanation implodes the further you take it. Order ultimately seems to eliminate chaos, not the other way around, leaving us with the basic question: What is the ultimate framework of things? Is there a final scheme of all reality? And is it chaotic or orderly? What does the answer to this question imply about mankind’s place in the cosmos?

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12

Nothing to do?
One of the complaints of middle and upper class women in the Victorian period was that they had “nothing to do.” One woman, Dinah Maria Mulock (1826-1887), was particularly frustrated by the shallow demands of upper-class society and by the lack of opportunities for women like her – women who had “passion, intellect, [and] moral activity” but no place to exercise those talents. To Mulock, most of the activities which she was required to perform on a daily basis were, quite simply, a waste of time. Her novel A Woman’s Thoughts on Women (1858) offered this complaint:

And so [a woman’s] whole energies are devoted to the massacre of old Time. They prick him to death with crochet and embroidery needles; strum him deaf with piano and harp playing – not music; cut him up with morning visitors, or leave his carcass in ten-minute parcels at every “friend’s” house they can think of. Finally, they dance him defunct at all sort of unnatural hours; and then … smother him in sleep for a third of the following day.

Thus he dies, a slow, inoffensive, perfectly natural death; and they will never recognize his murder till, on the confines of this world, or from the unknown shores of the next, the question meets them: “What have you done with Time?”—Time, the only mortal gift bestowed equally on every living soul, and excepting the soul, the only mortal loss which is totally irretrievable. [1]

Most 21^st century women and men I know cannot identify with those Victorian ladies who complained that they had nothing to do. In fact, the opposite is true for members of our frenzied age. However, Mulock’s observation about the tragedy of wasting time in the pursuit of unworthy activities and pleasures still rings true.

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.
Hebrews 12:11-13

I have trigger thumb. For those who are not familiar with this clicking digit dilemma, it is trauma to the A-1 pulley tendon of the thumb. The distal joint painfully clicks when bent, then can remain locked. It can be released, but not without pain.

For weeks I laughed at my ‘ol body that clicked, but soon realized how much I needed that part. I was actually dropping dishes or unable to use the computer; all thumbs you might say! This little part of the body was affecting my sustenance-physically and mentally.

A visit to the hand specialist revealed the problem. Steroids to the ligament, brace and physical therapy were all introduced into my busy schedule. Did I have time for this? Did I have a choice? My lack of physical maintenance would undoubtedly affect others if this were not addressed.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…-- all things were created through him and for him.”
Colossians 1:15-16

One of William Blake’s most beloved poems – one that appeals to both children and adults – is “The Lamb” from Songs of Innocence. [1] Using a question-and-answer format, the poem’s speaker – a young child – first explores the question of origins (Where did we come from?) and then gives an answer that is as simple and profound as it is true (God made us).

Reading the poem, it’s easy to envision the scene: a young child hugging the neck of a newborn lamb and asking in her best Sunday school teacher’s voice, “Little Lamb, who made thee? / Dost thou know who made thee? / Gave thee life, and bid thee feed, / By the stream and o’er the mead” (ll. 1-4). She repeats the question in lines 9-10, and then answers in lines 11-16: “Little Lamb, I'll tell thee, / Little Lamb, I'll tell thee. / He is called by thy name, / For He calls Himself a Lamb. / He is meek, and He is mild; / He became a little child.”

Recently, while doing some research on Charles Darwin, I was surprised to discover that one of the purposes motivating his voyage on the USS Beagle was to promote Christianity.

The captain of the USS Beagle was a devout Christian who wanted to see Christianity spread to all parts. He used his voyages to survey foreign lands and to spread the Gospel. On his first trip to South America, he had picked up three natives from Tierra del Fuego (the very southern tip of South America) to educate in England. On this second trip, with Darwin on board, he intended to return these individuals to their native land along with a missionary. The captain’s first choice, a local pastor, declined to go, since he had just married. Darwin had been studying for the ministry, albeit half-heartedly. Captain Fitzroy must have considered that Darwin would be a suitable missionary to aid in the purposes of his voyage.

However, not only was Darwin not a missionary to spread the Gospel, but he turned this trip into the catalyst of a theory and philosophy that has proved a fertile spawning ground for a wide variety of anti-theistic sentiments and movements.

All worldviews yield poetry to those who believe them by the mere fact of being believed. And nearly all have certain poetical merits whether you believe them or not. This is what we should expect. Man is a poetical animal and touches nothing which he does not adorn.
-- C. S. Lewis

In his essay, “Is Theology Poetry?” C. S. Lewis compared theology with poetry and concluded that while theology is not technically poetry, it does have a poetic element. Indeed any worldview will have poetic elements simply because people inevitably describe their most cherished believes in poetic terms. Even the worldview of naturalistic science—what Lewis calls The Scientific Outlook—is deeply poetic. It just doesn’t happen to be true.