I found this quote via Tim Ferris:
“I sometimes wonder whether conspiracy theories are an attempt to re-enchant the world in a distorted way. It’s like religion knocking on the door and trying to come back in a strange and distorted form. A sense of mystery beyond our own understanding of the world. If you ever talk to conspiracy theorists, that’s the sense you get from them.” — Adam Curtis
I confess that I am not familiar with Adam Curtis. I don't know who he is but I think he may be onto something.
Across our culture in recent years I have sensed a growing sense of anxiety, cynicism and a bit of despair.
And as the negativity rises, there seems to be a corresponding decline in awe and mystery.
Is one side cause and the other effect? If I had to guess, I think we lost our sense of wonder first, and that precipitated a general malaise. If all the magic of being alive and aware of our surroundings disappears, we're left with nothing but the sadness and tragedies of this world.
I don't know how the mystery was lost, but the Church must bear some blame.
We were keepers of the miraculous and the supernatural.
And now we mainly just gather together for an hour on Sunday mornings to sit and listen quietly. Is this what it looks like to be filled with the Holy Spirit?
It puts me in mind of a couple of other quotes; these from missionary Jim Elliot:
“We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the Twentieth Century does not reckon with.”
And
"Forgive me for being so ordinary while claiming to know so extraordinary a God.
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