Thursday, October 30, 2014

Can you still wonder?

 Picture from the International Space Station over Great Britain, also catching a view of the Northern Lights on the horizon.

What about wonder?  We can talk truth and philosophy all we want, but wonder is the backdrop that draws us.  It binds us into the search.  Don't you think?  I am not primarily a logician, but I love logic.  I'm not primarily a rationalist, but I love rational.  

I'm primarily an intuitive.  I subconsciously reel in toward the conscious clues of time, space, reality, nature, society, people, all into a cohesive band of thoughts and perceptions, systematizing into my prefrontal cortex, as a worldview.  Is that you?  

Modern Christianity has been described as dogmatic.  Fair enough.  Perhaps it has become that.  R.C. Sproul wrote a book on the importance of the arts to Christianity, which suggests to me that perhaps we have abandoned the arts?  Listen to some Christian rock and you'll be in full agreement with me on that one.  Blah! 

In addition, Ravi Zacharias wrote a book titled "Recapture the Wonder."  To recapture something must mean, in the general sense of a movement, that it has somehow been lost. 

I can see why.  The theological bullies out there are pretty intense.  The orthodoxy.  The fear in my mind as I write sometimes, wondering if I might get pinned as a heretic if I don't phrase something in just the correct theological way.  It damages the ability of the believer to creatively and wondrously interpret the scriptures.  

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to put together a systematic theology that isn't at least somewhat contradictory or very often it doesn't seem quite, quite right?  Do you know why?  

I think I know why.  Point one, maybe it was never meant to be systematized.  Point two, the startling coalescence of contrarieties, the mystery of the wide, deep depths and finely tuned breadths of the message of the Bible, the cross, the gospels, is so powerful, so mysterious, so groundbreaking, so variable, so multifaceted, and multidimensional; and so truly the revelation of the divine architect of the universe that it cannot be understood fully on a purely rational systematic level.  It must be invibed on an intuitive level.  That takes wonder, and imagination.

So here are two videos that may just capture some of the wonder of the world we live in.  Enjoy.   

(Click play on the video, and then in the lower right corner you can make the video full screen if you'd like)

1. The North Lights



2. Fly on wings like Eagles



3. Time Lapses of Natural World



4. Formation of a Snowflake



5. Time Lapse of our Home from Orbit at International Space Station


Related Posts:
A Vital Spiritual Experience 
Daybreak: Examining the Problem of Pain 
Journey of the Christian through the Forest called Earth 
The Heavens Declare // Photos from Hubble 
The Cross of Christ Jesus & Reflecting the Savior