Friday, March 19, 2010

Unfashionable

From “Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World by Being Different” (Tullian Tchividjian)

In this windowless world, God, transcendence, and mystery have become less and less imaginable. All of life is “rationalized.” Everything becomes a matter of human classification, calculation, and control. “What counts in a rationalized world,” says Guinness, “is efficiency predictability, quantifiability productivity, the substitution of technology for the human, and “from first to last control over uncertainty”. Everything's produced, managed, and solved this side of the ceiling, which explains why so many people are restless and yearning, as I was, for meaning that transcends this world - for something and Someone different.

This may be why every television season seems to bring new supernatural dramas, such as Ghost Whisperer, Supernatural, and Heroes. And why people are increasingly fascinated with Eastern mysticism, angels, aliens, psychics, the afterlife, and metaphysical healing. Our generation is crying out for something different, something higher, something beyond this world. They long for elements that a world without windows disallows””mystery, transcendence, and a deep sense of wonder, awe, and spirituality. “Eternal questions and yearnings,”� says Guinness, “are thrusting their way up between the cracks in the sterile world of secular disenchantment.”

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