Our world today is becoming an increasingly oxy-moronic place to live. We have split the atom, drive cars that essentially run on corn and we even have the Iphone - yet when I sit in my living room and surf the channels on my television there is a 1-2 second lapse between every station switch. Those one to two seconds may as well be an eternity.
More simply, we drive on parkways and park our cars in driveways. With working vacations, the game you watched last night being taped live, or the peace offensive program we are using in the Middle East, our world is full of contradictions.
Or consider this; politician Mario Cuomo is a catholic who has said he personally accepts his church's doctrine that abortion is the murder of an unborn child; yet, strangely enough, he has also said he believes in a woman's right to choose. So essentially it seems as though he believes in a woman's right to choose murder. Mr. Cuomo has obviously thrown reason to the wind.
More recently, Ohio State finished building "America"s first postmodern building.' The architect argued that if life has no meaning or design nor should our buildings. The building is complete with stairs to nothing, pillars without purpose randomly throughout; a building completely made out of senselessness. This is the ideas of postmodernism, no real truths of meaningless uncertainty. Yet just as postmodernism may seem copasetic initially, upon being applied to reason it cannot stand.
Even "America"s first postmodern building' has a very traditionally un-postmodern foundation poured with logical precision and reasonable calculations. How are we as a nation, after promoting freethinking at any cost, shocked by events like the shootings at Virginia Tech on April 16th? How have we gotten to a place where contradiction rules over reason? Where logic is as beauty - in the eye of the beholder? I think to understand even a glimpse of how we have arrived at this crossroad in our country's history we must look at the past 60 years.
The latter half of the 20th century has been broken down to show generations of moral decline. The 1950's brought the age of lost innocence. Children gained new found freedom from their parents through high paying jobs and the "generation gap" was formed. In the 60's authority was up for grabs. All traditionally accepted forms of authority were challenged and found lacking yet nothing filled this new void. This made way for an era of protests and an overwhelming strive to be different. Then the 70's brought the new authority; love.
Namely love of self: self- image, self-esteem, self-indulgence, self promotion. This led to a society filled with a lonely generation. In the 80's hope was taken. The threat of a nuclear dogfight fueled an already self-indulgent and lonely society to lose sight of a hope for the future.
Then in the 90's what was lost? Perhaps the will to live or the value of life? Philosopher Ravi Zacharias supposed it was the ability to reason that has vanished. In 2002 he said of the 1990's, “the power of critical thinking has gone from induction to deduction and very few are able to think clearly anymore. I have often said the challenge of the truth speaker today is this: How do you reach a generation that listens with its eyes and thinks with its feelings?”
Recently in Canada a survey was conducted of young Canadian men and women. The question was “what is it you long for most in life, at this stage of your life?” The most common answer was, “somebody I can believe.”
After processing this information on a broad scale it is very sobering. How can we change our down sliding world of contradiction? What must we do to have something to believe in? I submit that it will all start with a change of perspective. The way we view our lives is the catalyst for how we live them. If we can refocus the microscope through which we examine our lives, I believe we can bring about a monumental paradigm shift in our world.
This perspective change must transition us from the immediate here and now to an eternal mindset. From the breadth of the universe to the eternal quest to live forever; eternity is a concept that has been with us forever, we must embrace this fact and apply it to our lives. The ever popular C.S. Lewis put it like this, “We are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. 'My how he's grown,' we exclaim or, "How time flies," as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed; unless of course the fish were destined, one day to become a land animal.” The way we view our lives leaves me to believe ultimately we long for eternity.
