Wonder.
I am reading G.K Chesteron's Orthodoxy right now and so most of the blogs for the time being will stem from my quotes from his book.
"In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone" (p. 53)
Right now, I'm sitting in a coffee shop, connected to the internet which, thanks to sites like Wikipedia, now has all the answers to any question you might have...though these answers are extremely biased at times. What Chesteron is suggesting is that the condition of man has been tainted by our desire to have all the answers. When we open the box for the answer we lose some of our innocence. Some of our wonder has been taken away because we now know how something works, or why something is the way it is.
This incompressible condition which Chesterton refers to flies in the face of our post-modern practice of knowing all the answers and being connected at every turn.
I'll never forget my first church business meeting in 2000. I had begun working at this church as their VERY part time Worship Leader. It wasn't that it was a bad meeting or that fights and arguments ensued, but there was a loss of innocence in my perspective because I realized Church had the propensity to turn into a platform for people's soap-boxes and deranged ideas on organization. I had lost some of the wonder that I had in viewing church and it's ability to be this wonderful place. I lost some of my innocence. And while the old term 'ignorance is blisse' might be a bit extreme, I think there is a balance that our western, want-to-know-how-it-all-works, society has lost.
I don't know alot about ancient Jewish Culture, but I know they were more interested in the stories about peoples accomplishments and events then they were interested in the 'how'. That's something we in the west have really championed.
When Chesterton finishes the paragraph tying that desire to open the box, light the lamp or pluck the flower into The Fall found in Genesis 3. Our desire to know the unknown gets us intro trouble sometimes. It makes us loose some of our innocence and wonder when we learn there is no Santa Clause or when there are bitter angry people hiding behind the guise of a church business meeting.
What would it look like if with our Christian Faith, we began to recapture that Wonder with which we started? Remember when we were small and we all heard about Moses and the Parting of the Red Sea? We were all amazed at that story! Then somewhere along the way, scientists wanted to find a 'logical' explanation for that and so they searched for that answer...
Maybe the logic was in the illogical nature of it? Maybe the only logic was that God, the creator of the Earth, had a plan for His people and wanted to lead them safely out of harm's way? That WAS the only "logic" needed! The story wasn't about how it happened, it was about why it happened!
I want to continue on this journey of recapturing wonder in my Christian Faith. I hope you do to.
