Tearing Us Apart

Illustration from a Body Psalms design

We can all feel that something subtle and strange seems to be ripping our community from the inside. Something is terribly wrong in our collective soul.

Ours is a culture growing away from the traditional sense of cohesion that the west has enjoyed since its dawning. The microbiologist Jacques Monod pointed out that societies have always derived their knowledge and their values from the same source. Our source was our religious faith. Over the last few hundred years though we've kept faith as our source of values, we've replaced our source of our knowledge with science. Ours is the first culture in history to do so. No wonder we feel so out of sorts; we are looking in two directions to find our center!

I suggest it cannot be done and we will never find peace until we restore a common source of wisdom. We need both science– to explore how things work– and religion– to explore why. But looking for values in science or technology in faith is a recipe for disaster. Which is exactly what we have found.

If we could agree on the human need for that common source– probably a solid faith responsive to the changes in history– maybe we could then get on to the pressing questions that just might wipe us out if we don't. Christianity offers that hope, but only if it's unshackled from an obsolete tradition and allowed to breathe the air of the 21^st century.