Musings about life

Friday, July 11, 2008

Life is complicated isn’t it?

Trying really hard, I could never explain.

The word echoes and I could imagine every nerve cell in the hollows of my reservoir of information racing so fast, sending electro-magnetic signals in every direction, scanning for the keyword. "There were no items that much your query, try existence instead." Searching for existence, it read, "to be, reality, life".

Sigh.

Life, even Mr. Webster cannot exactly define it, he however lists the characteristics that give rise to life: cellular structure, growth and metabolism, response, reproduction, adaptation and evolution. Life has been an enigma. Life has a far richer tone than we commonly attach to the word. The word itself is a great puzzle. Life therefore, cannot be contained in the contexts of words, for in itself life is larger than life.

Life, as my favorite author (Selwyn Hughes) writes, "is a stream attached to an infinite source." The source he was talking of was God because life is God-breathed and in aligning ourselves to the "heartbeat of the universe, we do not merely exists but lives."

There are three ways to perceive life. Traditionally, during the earlier civilizations they viewed life both in philosophical and scientific contexts. However, there is a theory about the three answers toward the meaning of life.

First, is looking at it theistically. This belief states that a God creates man. For if there is no God, as an author puts it, man’s life would be absurd. Without God and immortality, life has no meaning.

Another way of looking at life is atheistically. Imagine this: “You and everything in this world are accidental by product of nature, a result of matter plus chance.” And this is the way most scientist answers the question. If this was the case, there is no reason for my existence. Where do I go from here?

Lastly, man sometimes regard the question and approach it in such a way that the question sees the meaningfulness of the question itself. By the way I did not understand that…

However, life is in my perspective, loomed larger when we have associated ourselves with God. Without man, God is still God but without God, man is nothing. I do not know how these views about prokaryotic cells evolving into multicellular organism as complex as man emerged, but one thing for sure, I remain indignant in the faith that I profess. I think these intelligentsia stuffs were only to smokescreen the God-vacuum in the hearts of these scientists. How complex is it for my human brain to understand that this world that I live is from a cosmological explosion. Absurd, it really is to me. To think that scientist have not known the source of such the force, it must be something beyond our grasp! Something that even the most genius creature cannot even fathom!

Therefore, the cliche that says life is simple is an understatement. What more can I say than what had already been expressed by Mahatma Ghandi, “there is more to life that increasing it’s speed.” The way we live should be slowed down for as the song goes, “life is too short.” To add, I quote Fr. Jerry M. Orbos when he said, “In the end, only three things matter most; how you lived, how deeply you were loved and how carefully you let go of the things not meant for you.

2 comment(s):

Chiefmadapple said...

I guess in the modern world where man thinks he can know and understand everything, God who cannot be explained, has no place.

pchi said...

yeah, i agree.

God cannot be explained. It is difficult to prove God (especially to atheists) but it is difficult to deny existence of a God too.

Man may know everything about the universe and all the physical and tangible things (in this modern world) but there are issues about his soul and mortality that he cannot resolve on his own.

Unless man is able to create a soul by his own knowledge, then I will continue to have a place in my heart for what I believe is God.

thanks kathleen, that's a nice opinion to think about (i'm pretty open-minded somehow)

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