Where do we lose the battle? – Loss of Wonder

(Continued from previous post "Should we or not? Stories -Heroes" - Chaitanya)

Heroic acts of yesterday cause inspiration and bring hope to our own everyday battles. While it is necessary for us to hear them on a repeated basis, in order to develop faith in God and build confidence in ourselves, there is also a danger of losing the heat in the process of repetition. I believe we lose our zeal to become lion chasers, and join the elite achiever’s club, as we allow the heat to simmer down.

For example, our reaction to a courageous act of a hero changes from the first time to every other time we hear it. The first time I read the story of a plowman, Shamgar, who used his ox goad to kill six hundred soldiers of philistine, I was amazed. But by the time it was repeated three times I lost the original admiration. As I discussed in my previous post, repetition of heroic stories has its own disadvantages. I laid down three of them, and I would like to explore them one by one.

The primary disadvantage is our sense of wonder diminishes. How do we lose our sense of wonder?

I think, our sense of wonder diminishes, primarily for two reasons. One is the explanation of the reasonability of a given event and other is the acceptance of the supernatural involvement in an incident. Let me explicate.

As children, every time we hear about how we have come out of our mother’s tiny womb, our minds are filled with wonder. Our eyes swell, mouths gape, and hearts pound at the incredulity of such a thing. As we grow, we learn and understand the human anatomy, we gain knowledge on the reproduction process of human species. I think that’s when the marvel of it all gets lost, in the reasonability of a baby’s birth process. You can explain it away!

The death of a giant in the hand of a teenage boy with a single sling shot will definitely raise astonishment. As the story gets repeated, we start explaining away the courage of David. This guy encountered several other perils as a shepherd boy even before he became a giant killer. He probably could kill the giant in the first attempt, because he became an expert sling shot. He had practice protecting his sheep from wolves and bears. That explanation steals the thundering feel of the story. We then conclude an act like that is possible, reasonable, and therefore achievable. Its greatness is lost. That exactly is my point, reducing a heroic act in to rational explanation can diminish the ‘wonder effect’. Our minds start rationalizing everything we hear repetitively.

The miracle of an axe head floating on water, with a simple, faith filled prayer of Elisha is simply unbelievable. Once it is established as a historical fact then the trouble starts. Anything out of ordinary will catch our attention. Floating axe head is extraordinary. Our initial response is to question the reliability of the story, once it is authenticated, the predictable conclusion would be the presence of supernatural element in it. Then the tendency for us is to think, since it is not our typical everyday happening, and there is a transcendent power involved; should I expect that power to get involved in the problems of my own tiny world? Is not, my life too small for something like that to happen on everyday basis.

A conclusion of this sort will pinch the cherishing feel of that event. Though the event itself has spectacular in it, eventually we ramble about the impracticality of anything spectacular happening in our own lives.

Did you see my point? Both, explaining away the reasonability of an event or focusing only on the  supernaturality of an event, naturally results in loss of Wonder.

Tomorrow we shall dig deeper…

Should We or Not? - Stories - Heroes

Few days back Josh, a friend of mine, posted an intriguing comment on his facebook page. “How long do we read about people like David, Benaiah, and Peter and feel good about what they did? Aren’t we called to be part of that league? Let's do something "worth His calling" with our life!”

Honestly, this comment has a resounding truth in it. Whether he made it with an encouraging tone or exasperated tone, it is something worth pondering. We can’t sit on our own comfortable chairs and do the ‘bhajans’ of those who chased lions all our lives; and yet at the same time shriek away from our own lions. Sooner or later we will inevitably get bored of listening to the same story and there is always a lurking danger of developing indifference towards those courageous acts of our heroes.

Therefore our primary question is, should we or should we not listen to the stories of heroes of the Bible?

In my personal opinion, the courageous acts of yesterday’s heroes are inspirations for today’s generation. They become useful if we ‘learn’ from them, they are useless if we just ‘listen’ to them.

Reading or listening to monumental acts of Benaiah, three thousand years ago, can bring a sense of amazement and a sense of incredulity. One man single handed chases a lion on a snowy day into a pit and kills it, with or without weapon. The story has a ‘too good to be true’ ring to it. And yet it is a true incident. A boy takes on a giant, four times taller and heavier, with a sling and a stone; a fisher man walks on water; three young men walk into a fiery furnace and walk out without a scratch. All these stories are unbelievable, but they are true, historical and authentic. No matter how many times we talk about them, they are still going to cause some wonder in some body at some point of recollection.

Psychologists say, a person needs to hear at least sixteen times for anything to turn into a belief. Therefore repetition is necessary. That is the reason, we repeatedly hear and learn the same things over and over again in different ways from the time we join nursery till we graduate from a university. My point is, not only we need to consider what our heroes have done in past but we must also hear them frequently.

Hearing these courageous acts of past has its own advantages, first of all we will always find some revelation of the character of God; we also find inspiration from them to face our own horrors; we might even end up learning few tricks for ourselves in lion hunting. Virtues like faith, courage, patience and honor are always present. These heroes will pop into our minds at right moments to fill us with hope. They are definitely beneficial and valuable.

I strongly believe there are also certain disadvantages, let me put them in simple terms. By hearing heroic stories repeatedly, our sense of wonder diminishes; our desire to learn from them weakens and our resolution to imitate them withers away over time.

So, I think the question is not really, should we or should we not talk about past heroes, or how many times are we suppose to talk about them. But the real question is, are we learning or just listening?

I plan to explore on the reasons behind these loses and find some practical solution for our predicament in the next installment.