Wednesday, March 10, 2010

On Teleology And Society

"We live in a culture that has cut us off from our ultimate destination. The mantra of the humanist and of the naturalist is this: We have come from nothing, and we are bound for nothing. We are told that as human beings, we are the result of the chance collision of atoms, that we have emerged gratuitously from the slime. We are at best cosmic accidents. Our origin is insignificant, and our destiny is equally insignificant. We've come from the dust, and we will return to the dust, and human life is a tiny blip between those two points of origin and destination.

The folly of the humanist is that he says our origin is meaningless and our destiny is meaningless, but in between these two poles, life is meaningful, and humans have dignity. If ever there was a philosophy built upon wish projection, this is the one. If indeed our origin is meaningless and our destiny is meaningless, it would be impossible t have any significant meaning in between.

The purpose of the act of creation is not ultimate ruin, but rather what God creates, He works to redeem. The destination of the Christian is not the abyss of meaninglessness. The destination of the Christian is heaven. In so far as our final destiny is heaven, our final destiny is also glorious. We start as dust, we end in glory."
- R.C. Sproul, Foreword, in Bound for Glory: A Practical Handbook for Raising a Victorious Family, by R.C. Sproul Jr. (White Hall, WV: Tolle Lege Press, 2008), 9f.

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