Pratt: We seem to have lost interest in understanding what history can teach us – LubbockOnline.com

Beth Pratt| Special to the Avalanche-Journal

Going through accumulated paper stuff, including copies of some feature articles as well as copies of columns, is a slow process.

Reawakened memories send me in remembrance of people and their stories, the part of the job I most enjoyed was listening and learning how amazing people really are at overcoming life's sometimes difficult surprises.

And I wonder, how could I forget this, that or the other? I am thinking not just of the newspaper career, but of other activities, ideas and challenges that loomed so important at the time.

Although the time frame would be somewhat different in the big cities, rural America's awakening tended to arrive after its sons (and sometimes daughters) left home to go to war during the 20th century.

Travel and cultural experiences also were influenced by the growing communications possibilities. Firstradio and then television brought the world closer together in one sense and sometimes further apart as cultures collided.

What is unique about today's culture is the speed with which it moves. In every environment, families are exposed to a vast flood of information and entertainment. The possibilities for knowledge seem endless.

Yet, a heavy sense of despair seems to grip much of the country as neighbor turns against neighbor.Imported, failed ideologies became popular among many of the so-called scholars of the day and the early 1960s university students were prime targets.

Now, our greatest inner-cities have become killing fields as a brazen lawlessness paralyzes the forces of legal restraint with bitter cries of hatred and blame.

The public good seems to have mostly turned into public bad in many areas of the country, still known in other parts of the world as a beacon of freedom even in its imperfections.

Some people blame all our troubles on politicians whichever side they choosebut they are wrong in that the voters make the choices for office.

What we really have is a spiritual crisis brought about by the same problems that have assailed the world's people groups from its beginning.

The issue? We are still trying to create God in our own image instead of letting God transform us into His image.

To his people, God says through the Prophet Isaiah, I will lay waste the mountains and hills and dry up all their vegetation; I will turn rivers into islands and dry up the pools...

"You have seen many things, but you pay no attention; your ears are open, but you do not listen. … So he poured on them his burning anger, the violence of war. ...but they did not take it to heart. (from Isaiah 42 NIV)

What we experience today is as ancient as time itself, but we seem to have lost interest in knowing and understanding what history can teach us.

Yet, we have astounding advancement today in science (I'm currently reading The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson about what science calls the code of life. It is a compelling story of scientific advance amid other wonders of our Digital Age.)

The story of genetic manipulation is enhanced by the 2012 publication of research that brought the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry to Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier.

It opens a window on major researchers and their painstaking lab work. On the outside, warnings reverberate around the moral issue of making genetic code changes in human life. Rewriting the code of life to fight disease by changes to human genetics could be be opening a last frontier of human effort to make God in our own image.

From way before Isaiah's time until now, human history has shown itself to be repetitive.

Do not be deceived. God, who designed and set life on Earth in motion, will not be mocked according to the accumulated wisdom and prophesy of the ages.

Beth Pratt retired after 25 years as the religion editor of the Avalanche-Journal.

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Pratt: We seem to have lost interest in understanding what history can teach us - LubbockOnline.com