In this fallen world the Evil One is still Prince and under his rule humanity stumbles around in the dark, accumulating sins against God and suffering the consequences, most mistaking this life for all there is.
Some even
revel in it. Carl Sagan introduced his
1980 TV series “Cosmos”with this famous line: “The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will
be. Our feeblest contemplations of the
Cosmos stir us . . . . We know we are approaching the greatest of
mysteries.“
To which I
say a hearty “Bah! Humbug!”
And then there
was Darwin who said “There is grandeur
in this view of life . . . [that] from so simple a beginning endless forms most
beautiful and wonderful have been and
are being evolved.” He does suggest a
possible origin by a Creator but since that wouldn’t be the biblical Creator and today it’s all
nothing but chemistry anyway I give it the same Bah-humbug.
There
are clues in life that we were made for something better than a meaningless existence
in a vast cold universe of burning rocks, no matter how prettily they twinkle
in the night sky. I’m thinking of the human soul that is deeply
affected by, say, Pavarotti singing “Nessun Dorma” as you can see from quite a
number of You Tube “First Time Reaction” videos, that I mention in a previous
post. Many things other than music
also provoke deep feelings -- yes even the grandeur of the Cosmos and
biological life -- but in my own
experience it was music that brought this home to me years ago. I would cry hearing a Mozart symphony, or
especially Handel’s Messiah, because it seemed to me that there is nothing in
this life that deserves such glorious expression. How
can there be such music when there is no reality to which it corresponds? How can we be capable of such exalted
feelings without anything in reality worthy of them?
That
was before I believed in God of course. The
thing is, once you know that there is nothing in this life that deserves such
grand celebrations, that is, if the
Cosmos is all there is and we evolved from fish, it feels like a cheat. It IS a cheat. Because if this IS all there is then it is a
huge cheat, a sick joke on the human race.
When we are given these pathetic counterfeits of greatness and grandeur as
worthy of our deepest feelings it’s like trying to make a silk purse out of a
sow’s ear as the Proverb puts it.
Then
too, how do we talk ourselves into this common idea that we, these complex creatures
what are way overqualified for mere existence in the physical universe, live that
empty existence and then just go out like a light? I don’t know for sure what Dylan Thomas had
in mind when he wrote “Do not go gentle into that good night; rage, rage
against the dying of the light,” but it’s always hit me as a protest against
the cheat, the abysmal insult, of the idea of such a meaning-maker being
extinguished at death. Since he calls it
a “good” night I’m unsure if he meant that but in my opinion he should have
meant it.
Shakespeare
as usual nailed it:
Life's
but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That
struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And
then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told
by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying
nothing.
Absurdly
we tell ourselves it’s honest, courageous, grown-up of us to accept this fate
as reality itself. Or we rationalize our complex meaning-making minds
as sufficient unto themselves, though merely accidentally coughed up out of the
chemical soup of the universe. Some of us are just weak, it’s understandable
if we have to invent a fantasy, manage
to find a meaning in what is only our own solipsistic invention that corresponds
to no external reality. But that’s OK,
we’re good at doing that and we should be content with it. Or something like that. The
great cheat of it can be denied by such rationalizations. Religion is a crutch and all that. Where’s the evidence? they demand.
Oh
to pry even one person loose from these tawdry imitations at life so many of us
have taken for granted as our lot.
NO,
we are worth far far more than that. We
are an extravagantly over-designed being if the only point of it all is
physical and chemical, and our experience of it can be cynically summed up as “Life
is hard and then you die.” We have plenty of pleasures, happiness, fun in
this life, and plenty of worthwhile things to do, but we were made for more
than the best that is possible here, if the Cosmos is all there is and ever was.
But
the biblical God says otherwise:
What
is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest
him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned
him with glory and honour.
Man
that is in honour, and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish
Whoso
sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God
made he man. (Genesis 9:6)
And
from the hymn “O Holy Night” -- “Then He
appeared and the soul knew its worth.”
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