BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

No doubt we will always feel a tug between two worlds, for human beings comprise an odd combination of the two. We find ourselves stuck in the middle: angels wallowing in mud, mammals attempting to fly. Plato pictured two horses pulling in opposite directions, with our immortal parts pursuing the divine Good while beastliness strains against it. We have "eternity in our hearts," said the Teacher of Ecclesiastes, and yet bend under the "burden of the gods." We stumble from cradle to grave, tipping sometimes toward eternity and sometimes toward base earth, the humus from which we got our name.

C. S. Lewis once made the observation that the tug of two worlds in humans could be inferred from two phenomena: coarse jokes and our attitude toward death…

… These two "unnatural" reactions hint at another world. In a way unique to our species, we are not fully at home here. As a symptom of that fact, we feel stirrings toward something higher and more lasting. Although our cells may carry traces of stardust, we also bear the image of the God who made those stars.

-- Philip Yancey in Rumors of Another World

 
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