What Do I Know or Care?

If nothing else, I read a lot. The Bible, theology, philosophy- and I can't for the life of me say as I know a heck of a lot. I now know I know nothing. And it seems like most thinking people today agree that we don't really know very much. Our theories of ultimate origins, of the structures and ends of the universes, of how many dimensions there are and what they might be like, of how different minds, societies and cultures work- All our theories are highly speculative. With 7000 or so different human cultures on our little planet, all differing in what we value, believe, assume and our reasons for what we do- we have to ask a lot of questions and talk for a long time just to get to know one another and understand each other. That's why thinking people say "all is relative" and "we create our own realities", imprisoned in interconnected labyrinths of imagined worlds. Nietzsche said we are "trapped in a prison house of language".

Well, a lot of religious thinkers and philosophers have being saying similar things for thousands of years. The Bible for example has many stories and statements about how limited human understanding is. But beyond our profound ignorance, the Bible adds that we all helplessly and hopelessly tend to cruelty, injustice, irresponsibility, callousness, escaping "reality", the single-minded pursuit of pleasure at any cost, self-destruction, hatred, bitterness, arrogance, selfishness, thoughtlessness, recklessness, negligence, narrow-mindedness, hypocrisy, defying and ignoring God.

So I don't know anything and can't do anything good, trapped in my subjective (mis)interpretations of my social world, and unable to care. How awesomely kind of God to persist in seeking us, breaking in to the prison houses of our minds and filling us with His loving Presence, motivating and guiding us to surrender unconditionally to fulfill His loving will.