BS1A - UNIVERSAL SEARCHING
Since our creation, we find in history a searching by men and women for “something” outside of ourselves. It’s as though there is something missing in us and we are on a quest to find it.
From the earliest literature we find people writing about gods and demigods – …..human-god-like creatures from outside of this world—that have special wisdom, special knowledge, and special powers to fix what is wrong with us and our world.
As the Apostle Paul wandered through the streets of Athens, Greece he found exactly that amongst the Greeks.
Acts 17:19-23
For all of us have the innate sense that we are not all we could be, something is missing and we must find it. Something is not quite right in our societies and we need to fix it.
That is the essence of all religion – man’s attempt to find outside of himself the answers to things that are intangible.
Job 23:3-5 / Acts 17:26-27
We only seek for things that we feel are missing and lost to us. From myths to fables to fairy tales and science fiction, we have written our wildest imaginings in attempts to “fill in the gaps” that we all know are there. There is an emptiness within each of us that we keep attempting to fill. We contemplate nature, develop relationships, have a family, eat too much food, amass material things, strive after knowledge, go into politics, seek to do good for others and…..(fill in your own blank).
King Solomon was considered the wisest man in the world as well as the richest. If anyone should have been satisfied it would have been him. He did everything he could think of to achieve meaning and purpose. And for all his “doing” what did he conclude?
Ecclesiastes 1: 2
He found that nothing in this present world could truly satisfy his heart. And today, most of us have come to – or are coming to – that same conclusion. Why is this?
Ecclesiastes 3:11
King Solomon was on the right track when he wrote that “He (God) has planted eternity in man’s heart and mind.” In other words, God has planted in us a divine purpose which nothing in this world can fill or satisfy. The emptiness that we all have inside is like a vacuum that never seems to get filled or satisfied. And therefore, we keep searching.
In 398 AD, Augustine of Hippo wrote in his Confessions: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
The centuries continued, and in 1670 Blaise Pascal published Pensées, in which he writes:
“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself.”
Notice those words “…..there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace.”
Next Study: BS1B - Back to the Beginning