Information

Intellectually we are both aided and crippled by the advances of this information age.  There has never been so much information revealing truth useful for effective knowledge and management as we have in current conditions.  The matter is so extensive that it is commonly referred to as information overload.  There is an old saying that there is a straw that breaks the camel’s back.  The camel is loaded with material to be transported, so heavily that another straw will break his back, and all will be lost for current transport, and the life of the camel.  Present developments in research and the mass of student/scholars at work in seeking something new to advance learnings in various fields have become so great that we can’t be sure we have all we need to form conclusions.  (I was asked by my doctorate committee what I had gained in my research that was not known before my dissertation was written.)  So conclusions are made with what we have, some based on factors having little to do with the evidence – such as presuppositions, unknown material, prejudice, and the various limitations related to human finiteness and incapacity to know enough information for all truth.  (At this writing I have just completed an extensive article related to the French Revolution that included various ideas about the causes of the revolution.  There were arguments related to the Christian causes, and arguments that there were no religious causes.  One writer allegedly proved there was no such cause because most citizens turned to a secular society during and after revolution.)  A cause in history may not lead to an expected conclusion for the story.  The variety of interpretations makes one wonder what was reality related to the event.  This statement may be made for thousands of events, major and minor, in history.  Christians are rightly appalled at all the interpretations and stories about Jesus Christ.  An important reason for revelation, contended for in Scripture is this seeming effort on the part of the student/scholar to find something new, even if it has to be conjured.  Christian scholars are often as enticed by the invitation to uncover the true but unknown, or presumably unknown, as the secular researcher.  Eagerness of the public to learn something new is so great that a writer goes for that bait in the hope that his or her work will be recognized as seminal both advancing the field and gaining some recognition.  A recent article (even accented on the internet) suggests that there is a new approach to physics that may make Einstein seem antiquated and Niels Bohr more meaningful to science and truth.

All this complexity and immensity is addressed by God in Scripture, by way of faith, with enough factual information that we can personally confirm probability related to God and man.  Scripture addresses the matter of life, both in time and eternity and notes the necessities of both contexts in similarities and differences.  The person is addressed as a person, not in mental competence but in that relationship introduced in the creation at which time the created couple was afforded a factor that was related to the image of God.  It takes revelation to make that known, and revelation related to the life, decisions, and nurture of the individual person.  That image makes thinking persons of us – higher if not deeper.  That personhood has privilege that nothing else in the material world and cosmos has, culminating in the rescue of that life factor in the reflective self- person when all else has died.  Ultimately the body of the person dies, but also the material world dies to the person.  The ideas and experiences of the process are a burden of Scripture.  Natural life for the person is identified as dust, from beginning to the end.  (Ecclesiastes 3:20)  The body is a container as a cup is a container, but the principle of conscious life is made practical in personhood.  The person, meeting the requirements of God will be a part of the family of God.  The context of heaven is shadowed in the context of earth.  Jesus spoke in parables, from the context of life.  This was not in disrespect for disciplined thought so well taught by the perceptive Greeks, and the backbone of our present search for truth.  God works with mankind in the simplicity of faith so to leave no one out of the true spiritual story.  Even mentally handicapped persons can embrace it.  The story is inclusive, on a level playing field for all.  Long ago Solomon already thought there was intellectual overload.  Even then it threatened faith principles.  He would say the same thing today, perhaps underlining his words.  We rightly rest in the faith context given of God and that beyond nature.  We want to lift lives above nature.