The Most Basic Lesson of Life

It may well be that human­ity has only one basic les­son to learn, and that les­son is ulti­mate trust. That may sound sim­plis­tic, but it seems to be the foun­da­tion dynamic. It is not eas­ily learned. There are so many com­pet­ing sub­sti­tutes — things like fear, sus­pi­cion, and all of the “isms” that try to make cre­ation and human­ity look like a fluke of nature.
Love is built on trust, so are all of the valid sci­ences. There must be a trust in the abil­ity to observe, in that neat lit­tle con­nec­tion between cause and effect, and in real­iz­ing that we are able to know what we know. Even Ein­stein was amazed by the fact that we have brains with the capac­ity (and appar­ently the com­mis­sion) to probe deeply the very essence of phys­i­cal real­ity. In other words, it kind of blew his mind that our brains are the best tool for the job. It is as if we were designed to observe some­thing so mind-blowing that our most appro­pri­ate response is awe.
The Old Tes­ta­ment strug­gle from Adam and Eve to the close of the era of the prophets, was one of get­ting peo­ple to trust God’s words about life. When Jesus came to deal with human­ity face to face, he had the same mes­sage. You have to trust in order to have the per­spec­tive (and the san­ity) to deal with all of the rest. Super­sti­tions, the tales of the uncar­ing Greek and Roman gods, and a quest for some kind of magic — all had one thing in com­mon: try­ing to fig­ure out how to con­trol the com­mon and the divine. (Yes, control-madness is faith­less­ness.)
Trust puts you at ease. It is the best response toward real­ity. We may not have a full han­dle on life, but we are going to have to go about with a basic sense of trust — that what­ever this is all about — it is benevolent.