The Science of Reverence
There are many artefacts the world over whose origins lie shrouded in mystery. Take Stonehenge, for instance: how did the stones get there? Did Druids drag them from quarries in Wales, were they transported by UFOs, or is the assembly of monoliths simply the result of student antics during a Bronze Age 'Fresher's Week'?
A similar enigma surrounds the Moai, the thousand or so statues with elongated faces that populate Easter Island - one of the most isolated spots on earth - 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile. The tallest statue, called 'Paro', is nearly 10 metres tall and weighs 75 tonnes, so how were they manoeuvred into position?
One theory states that the statues sprouted legs and walked to their spots after the Island's king prayed to a deity (no doubt after putting his back out trying to lift one). Another theory, proffered by a Norwegian explorer in the 1950s, argues that some of the stone giants had spiritual significance and so were rolled to prominent positions on the coast, but that others had no such significance and so were abandoned inland. A recent British survey, however, has revealed that all the statues are located along an intricate network of paths that lead back to a holy site - the quarry in a redundant volcano from which the rocks were hewn.
It's easy to treat this as an example of science trading away awe for reason by finding the method in the magic. This, though, would be to do an injustice both to the islanders and to scientists. To the former, whose reverence for their religion caused them to work to carve the statues over 300 years, and to the latter, who often only come up with answers after their own Herculean efforts.
After all, reverence is not only about wondering at the mystery of what we don't know, but also about marvelling at the sheer wealth of what we do.
Perhaps that's why our age lacks reverence. We cherish those things we put effort and time into understanding and accomplishing, but today knowledge often seems to come to us with little or no effort at all. We may be tempted to dismiss the extravagance of our own religious edifices, but it's hard to walk through a cathedral without feeling awe - not only at the beauty and skill of the craftsmanship, but also at the strength of belief that motivated the endeavour.
There may be no need to start constructing our own monuments, but we should be asking what it is that our reverence for Christ is causing us to search out, causing us to build?
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