Digging post holes

As I notice the culture around me and it's incessant quest to explain the world around us, I am at once encouraged and frustrated.

I am encouraged since this is what we humans do--we ask.  We wonder.  We try and fail and try again.  We fall down, we lift ourselves up and brush off our knees, and then do it harder and faster.  It is a beautiful and awesome thing to see this in us homo sapiens sapiens, to use the vernacular of science (the pinnacle of today's human ideal of questioning things).  We are truly the superior living creature on Earth and it's because we ask questions.

Lately, I am frustrated more than I am encouraged.  I am frustrated because we have become so enamored by the details--since we are so rational and modern--that we have lost the pattern itself.  We are so intensely focused on the how and why that we forget to rest and ponder what it all means.  I am not trying to say that we never do this; I just think that we as a culture have allowed little time left to do it.  I am frustrated because I know the question and the answer.  I will share it by the end of this post, but I am afraid that if you are like most people today, you only know the question; that question is: why?

I believe that we think too much.  So much, in fact, that we all intend to find rest and take some deep breaths on those vacations that we covet each and every summer.  We really are going to try to find some peace on our one, two, or if lucky, three weeks.  But then I hear of the dad who brings the computer, the Blackberry, and the work right along with him.  I hear of the mother who is so fixated on the details of the kids' behavior that she doesn't notice that it's their hearts that need nourishing.  And the kids have just said what they need to say until the age of 18 so that they can just get out and really try it all themselves--they think they know better!  

The culture has become like the family.

I also believe that America has a wounded soul.  We think we need evidence because we assume that this is how we will learn the why.  So we lean on science because it is what gives us the how.  We eagerly raise the volume on the radio or television when the announcer begins with, "Studies show that..."  In our blind spot, however, is the very target of our inquiry--it is the same why that we long to know.  

In our striving to learn how everything works, we have forgotten makes humans unique.  I mentioned earlier that we think too much, and this is true.  But, I believe that in America today we have forgotten how to think properly.  If we knew how to think in the right way, we would be quick to understand our predicament.  More education is not the key.  More knowledge will only take up more room.  If we really knew how to stop, rest, and think plainly, I am convinced that we could examine our situation and know what our biggest problem is.  We are so good at trying really hard, even when we are doing the wrong things.

Our biggest problem is that we want to know the why.  But we don't even ask the right questions.  We are studying the wrong areas of Reality.  This is not to say that science doesn't give us useful information.  We are asking why but using science.  It's like trying to dig a post hole with a spoon.  

I have news for you: science is not the ultimate answer for that question we ask.  Science done properly will never give a why.  This is not what science can give us, and yet this is what we so dearly want to know.

Unless we realize this, at the end of the day we will stand back and pat our brother on the back, unaware that we have put ourselves behind our own fence.