Lent Day 37

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Begin 

Silence, Stillness, and Centering before God (2 minutes)  


Scripture Reading

“Who can know the LORD’s thoughts? Who knows enough to teach him?” But we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ.”      1 Corinthians 2:16 (NLT)


Devotional     

Is There  More than One Way to Know something?  Part 2
Thursday, March 26, 2015

There is more than one way to know something! 

On Tuesday I wrote about reason, history, science, love, suffering and beauty as ways to know the truth about the world.   One is not more valid than another, I argued, yet science and reason have been elevated in the 21^st century to King and Queen of all the different ways of knowing.  Personally I find this to be incredibly limiting and to be one of the reasons that Christianity is harder and harder to fathom for modern Americans.  NASA scientist and self-proclaimed agnostic, Robert Jastrow, founding director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in, made what I find to be an incredibly important statement,  

“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries"  

This implies that human beings will come close to a “theory of everything”, but will end up with just that, a theory.  We, like the builders of Babel, seek to make humans the creators and sustainers of life, replacing God.   Yet there will always be the image of God in us always beckoning us to God who can’t be found by looking at how things work and seeking to manipulate them to our preferred ends.  We may gain power as the decades and centuries pass and the transhumanists may find great “successes” in material terms, but at the height of human capacity to learn and create, we will still stare over the peak and not have discovered why we are here.    

While all means of knowing have their limitations.  I would like to suggest a way to know what is true and real and eternal that has worked for me.   It’s a way of knowing, an epistemology, that has reaped incredible dividends for me personally, and for believers for millennia.   That will be the topic of tomorrow’s blog.

Question to Consider

In what ways do you see human beings rebuilding the tower of babel (Genesis 11) and in doing so, attempting to make a name for themselves (Gen 11:4).   Have you allowed yourself to be co-opted into building this tower?

Prayer

“Lord, it seems to me to be simple wisdom that to know anything, the starting point is to know You, the creator and sustainer of all things, and Jesus Christ, Lord of Heaven and Earth.  Give me the will to spend the kind of time with You that leads me in the life everlasting.  Amen."

Conclude with Silence   (2 minutes)

 
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