Nailing it down

No longer do we live in a Platonic world of shadows from which we must escape if we are to receive divine light. No longer do we live in a Kantian world of phenomena that bars access to noumena. No longer do we live in a Naturalistic world devoid of transcendence. Rather the world and everything in it becomes a sacrament, radiating God's glory, by truly speaking of what God has wrought in creation.    William Dembski - Intelligent Design.

However wonderful life is (and it's astonishingly wonderful when we really look at it), we don't really 'sit' well with certain aspects of our existence. Human nature is daily revealed to be a scorn (with regards to the way we treat each other and the world we live upon), and elements of what is usually deemed 'natural' (pain, suffering, misery, death), not to mention the enigma of evil, prey upon us in our moments of quiet (which, no doubt explains why so much of modern life is so noisy). The common answer is to seek refuge in some manner of escape, either amidst readily available virtual reality, or the 'harder' notions of scientific philosophy, but these scurrying's twist us back into ourselves - into a universe that is hollow and empty, where nothing has any lasting meaning or value.

There is a very real alternative:



Once we begin to recognize that the answer to what is does not lye within that 'stuff' itself, but elsewhere, and what that implies, then the Christian answer to what life is and what really matters here and now begins to stack up.

Christianity allows us to see the world beyond our self-inflicted limitations, and understand that there is something much better ahead for that world, which is not an illusion or a prison to escape, but a wonder being rescued from our spoiling of its majesty.
The 'cave' was meant to be a garden. The obscurity was mean to be clarity. The natural was meant to reveal to us a richer, deeper, glorious splendor. Jesus Christ will indeed make it so.