Socrates observed on many occasions that “the only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing” – perhaps this is why when we hear someone bloviating about an issue well outside of their depth, we recognize such posturing sophistry as a perfect example of the old proverb “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. No doubt, this is why in this golden age of information, where googling up things you don’t actually know, creates the illusion of instant knowledge . . . as if knowledge were nothing more than a simple accumulation of more information. Perhaps this is how an entire culture seems to have been systematically dumbed down into assuming that its existential pronouncements of reality somehow have intellectual gravitas.
There’s a conspicuous absence of the Socratic Method in the way we talk about the things we say we believe – no real scrutinizing of the substructure of our thinking . . . leaving most people susceptible to emotionally driven superficial ideas. Social media is rife with this type of banality – because, in a world where everybody can know everything, there is no end to the hubris of stupidity. Intellectual integrity has been exchanged for the herd mentality of tribal conformity – where individual identities inevitably devolve into flattened-out one-dimensional expressions of various identity groups.
So you aren’t really who you are — you’re nothing more than what your group identity tells you, you are. Not only is this a conspicuously reductive way of assessing another human being’s value, but it is also an idea that inescapably perpetuates the formation of factional schisms – ever driving us apart, culturally. And it is amid this reductive ethos that the concepts surrounding the meaning and significance of life begins to shrink into self-referencing, and thereby self-affirming assumptions, particularizing us into a small universe of our own making.
This is the inescapable entropy of the modern mind. Given that the modern project has largely jettisoned any expectation of a transcendent cosmology, all we have left is the self-delusion of self-referencing value. Which is to say – separated from God, we invariably begin to atomize, devolving into smaller and smaller versions of who we were created to be . . . given that we were all made in His image. For this is the very cosmological dynamic that animates the Christian confession of identity – to be reconciled to God . . . is to be reconciled to ourselves.
God hasn’t merely spoken the universe into existence, bringing all things into being – He is perpetually speaking meaning and significance into our existence, ever bringing purpose into our lives. In this way we are tethered to the very breath of God — like the intimacy of a love song whispered in our ear . . . we discover the immeasurable riches of what it means to be found in Him. He is not merely the source of life – He is life itself. This, of course, makes every other small pitiable identity we can think up, a sad and desperate attempt of self-existing vanity.
Some choose a simple act of faith, while others choose a long hard wait.
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