The Mirror of Our Soul

Since our values create our world, the values we select are the most critical decisions we make in our lives.  However, we have not been very successful at determining what our values should be and our efforts in creating our world have consistently stumbled.  Human history is a record of the constant rise and fall of civilizations, and of constant wars between nations.  The atrocities committed on a daily basis on our planet are staggering.  The major problem the human race faces is not in discovering new scientific facts or in developing new technology to improve our lives as is evidenced by the problems that have been solved by science; the problem is in getting along with each other as is evidenced from watching the news.  We are very adept at using science and technology for our wars and terrorists acts.  We have become very efficient in utilizing our technology to destroy human life.  We have developed our agricultural science to such an extent that the issue is no longer having sufficient food to feed the world but whether we have the will to end starvation on our planet. [1]

Evidently, the values we use to create our world are lacking.  It should be obvious we need some assistance in deciding what to believe, in deciding upon the value system we should use to construct our world.  We humans have devised a variety of institutions, such as government, education, business, science, and religion to name a few, to organize ourselves in order to improve our existence.  To which of these institutions should we turn for guidance on what values we should hold?  Each one of these institutions has a dubious record.  Given that each of these institutions is a human construct and given that we humans are finite, that should not be surprising.

So why does God give us the freedom to make decisions on how we will live our lives but does not provide us with all the information we need to make the correct choices?  Why does God give finite beings infinite choices?  First, being limited forces us to work with others to overcome our limitations and improve our lives.  It is only by working with others that we can eliminate famine and epidemics.  Only by working together can we enjoy the benefits of living in a technologically advanced society.  It is only by working together that we can find out the reality of our existence.  This is a rather ingenuous way to persuade us to overcome our self-centered nature.

Second, being limited forces us to call upon resources deep inside us that we never knew we had:  our soul.  The values held by our soul are used to make decisions in life and those values create our world.  If we want to know what our soul is like, we only have to look at the world around us to see what we have created.  Our world reflects back to us, in a physical form, the reality of our non-physical soul.  This applies to our world, our nations, our communities, and our families.  The values held by each of these entities are reflected in its character and actions.  And if we do not like what we see, should this not give us the motivation and opportunity to change our soul?

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[1]   Dan Morgan, Merchants of Grain (New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 1980), pp. 444-445.

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