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Losing Wonder

Matthew Harrison

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

as11-40-5903This week's celebrations on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing has brought many articles lamenting a declining interest in the space program.
Why the lack of interest? From a government’s point of view, there’s certainly been other issues taking a higher priority; the most recent example an economic meltdown.
Even if government did invest millions more into space programs, would the public buy into it? From my point of view, and I could be wrong on this, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of public interest.
But why? Sending men and women into the unknown over 350-thousand kilometers away at speeds of over 28-thousand kilometers an hour sounds pretty thrilling!
The more I thought about this, the more I came back to one point.
Perhaps it is because we have lost our sense of wonder and awe towards God?
Instead of wanting to explore the universe and to understand the ways of the world, we want to control the world around us.
Look to any of the contentious bioethical issues today – cloning, stem cell research, euthanasia – it often entails us wanting to control creation; essentially acting as God.
And when we can control it – we buy into the idea that we are solely reliable on ourselves. We don’t need anything else, we don’t even need to assume there is anything else. We hold all the answers.
And so the excitement, the wonder, the awe of the world – the universe – around us, created by God, becomes something everyday and unremarkable.
And an incredible accomplishment forty years ago becomes a fleeting moment of nostalgia.
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Photo NASA; for more fastastic pics from Apollo 11 check out the image library HERE.
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