If No One Knows the Answer, Does Anyone Know the Way?

As a corollary to my posting yesterday, the world will get better when we get better.  With all the progress we've made since the Enlightenment, we've got to be honest with ourselves and admit that we're not getting better, and if anything, we're only getting worse.  This is the primary reason we are quickly losing our confidence in science to save us.  There was a time when science held out the promise of a better world.  We thought we could outgrow our primal instincts.  This was in large part the hope of the Enlightenment, that we could educate and elevate ourselves out of the cycle of violence.

We thought we were the masters of progress and that one day we would no longer hate each other, abuse the powerless, instigate wars or be in any way inhumane.  Such was promise of science's progress.  We had essentially outgrown our need for God.  We no longer needed Him to make us good.  We could not only be good without God, but through the achievements of science, we could actually perpetually make ourselves better.

Then came the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Even if we in United States found ourselves on the winning side, something in our souls told us that we were all losers in this.  Science was not creating for us a better world, only a more dangerous one.  It seems as if we can improve on everything except ourselves.  So if science and God are enemies, then why do we tend to blame God for what science corrupts?  Hmmm.

Even Einstein acknowledged the problem was within us:  "The release of the atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking.  The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind.  If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."  Probably no more damning words were ever spoken.  He said basically it is better for us to remain stupid if we cannot become good.  The less technology we have, the less damage we can do.

So now it has been 65 plus years since we learned that all the technology in the world would not create for us the paradise that has been lost.  Maybe it was right to conclude that we cannot trust religion or philosophy or history or government or institutions, but one thing we know for sure is that we cannot trust science [this coming from a vocational applied scientist], and for all the same reasons.  They are all connected to people, which ultimately brings us to the inseparable relationship between truth and trust.

I remember back to my senior year in high school, in Mrs. McDougal's Honors English class when I first learned of the French existentialists Jean-Paul Sarte and Albert Camus as well as the Dutch Christian existentialist Soren Kirkegaard and devoured each of their writings.  For the first time in my life I was found myself seriously questioning my beliefs for both accuracy as well as for why I believed them.  Suddenly everything I believed to be true in my life was scrupulously challenged.  I was struck by how each writer [and their peers] and each belief system had something within in that was strangely compelling.

But eventually it also became clear that each system of thought had gaping holes and shortcomings.  During these days I became quite the Socratic [and my posse had running jokes about both the Socratic way of life as well as the Aristotlean way ... the life of questioning v. the life of balance and which was superior] but even then I could see at the end it all comes down to faith.  I found myself moving from one belief system to another and then to another.  And I had all the passion of youth to back it up.  Yet after a while I began to see these different beliefs as fluid, interchangeable and thus disposable.  I couldn't help but wonder if John Locke or David Hume or Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Rene Descartes before them really knew any better than I did.  No doubt they were all smarter than me, but I wondered if behind closed doors they were just as uncertain.  Perhaps we were all wanderers in the same forest trying to find a fresh trail to truth.

Some believed God was just down the road.  Others were convinced that it was just a dead end.  Still others thought we had nothing in common except that we were all lost and trying to find our way.  It is hard to be a guide when we don't know where we're going.  So in the midst of all the uncertainty we made a shift from looking for the answers to looking at the questions ... which is the primary reason I liked Socrates so much [never mind that he was willing to die for his convictions].

Even when we don't know what is ultimately true, most of us would follow someone whom we absolutely trust.  There seems to be an inseparable relationship between truth and trust, and God, it seems, is lost in between the two.  Accuracy seems to be less important than authenticity.  So if no one knows the answer, does anyone know the way?

It was in those days that I started to look for truth in an entirely new way.  I stopped being so interested in finding the best idea but more the best life.  Whatever I would come to believe in, it had to change more than just my mind; it had to change my life.  Was any truth out there not simply worth believing in but worth becoming?  What does an idea look like when it is "fleshed out" so to speak?  And that is where Jesus came into the picture.  His words were straight to the point.  His was more than a claim to know the truth; He claimed that He WAS the truth!  There really is no way to overemphasize the potential implications of this point.  Could it be possible that truth is more than just an idea and that it is found only in God?  What Jesus was telling us is that truth exists in God and comes only from God.

When we search for truth, we search for God.  Our souls crave the One who is true.