Perspective on our Life ...

Monday, May 23, 2016. Humans have always wanted to know what will happen. It is very human to try to understand nature, its laws and its function, and then try to use it, to live with it, to eat and use it. Part of this activity is that we would like to know what will happen. Forecasting is an important business. Today it is usually built on understanding of processes and on modeling them.

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The future …

Learning about the future is an old dream of mankind. Today we try to forecast the economic growth of this and the coming year. We try to forecast the climate. We try to forecast the outcome of elections, before they took place. We try to forecast the behavior of consumers. We forecast the growth of populations and the change in retirement systems.

Knowing the future is an old dream. If we know what will happen, we can adapt our actions today. We will not have false expectations, but we will be able to have the correct expectations. When it comes to the weather, forecasting might be important, for example when big storms or extreme temperatures can cause death and devastation. It is important to prepare, to save lifes!

But what about our human life as a whole? What is forecasting good for? We would like to learn about what will happen to our life, to our community, to our society, to our state. Humans have always had the desire to know what would happen - and also to influence it. Humans have always had the desire to influence the future. When we look into the biblical books, we find various examples, which tell us a lot about human desire, but also about ourselves and about how we can approach this very basic human demand.

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Understanding …

In the book of Daniel we hear about him and his young friends, all raised in the Babylonian excile:

As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.

(Book of Daniel 1,17)

It is interesting to hear this record of the wisdom and understanding of Daniel. Perhaps we should remark that Jesus and the apostle John rely on his book a lot, they use it as their compass when it comes to the future development of mankind. But here, Daniel is in a pagan environment, in Babylon, and the biblical book claims that he received learning and skill in all literature and wisdom. Do we value literature and wisdom as it is valued here?

The book of Daniel mentions literature and wisdom before vision and dreams. It is as if it wants to make very clear: visions and dreams must be rooted in sincere knowledge and understanding. When you know literature and wisdom, you are prepared to have visions and dreams. Without a solid basis, your visions will be empty fantasy. But when your wisdom is well rooted in literature - first of all in the biblical books - then your visions and dreams can have the power to lead and guide you, to open your mind to what might come and to God's perspective on our life. (Roland Potthast) ... more texts