The following is an embellishment of a story a teacher of mine once told:
You're walking quickly toward the center of a brick wall. If you keep walking toward the wall, you're going to smash your face.
People who complain about this or that "crisis" or cosmic problem -- they're yelling at you to stop before you hit the wall. That makes sense, doesn't it?
But, my teacher said, what if there's a door just a step off center of the wall? A door that's in the shadow right now, a door that you can only see when you get close to the wall? A door that, when you get to the wall, a simple and single step to the right takes you through to a wonderful room full of opporunities you never saw before? A door that, do you come crashing to a stop the way the complainers want you to, you'll never see. A door that, do you listen to your terrible fears, you will never open.
So, what do you do? Do you continue your headlong plunge toward the wall, in faith that the door and greater knowledge will appear? Or do you take counsel of your fears and your-still limited knowledge, and sacrifice the potential opportunity for the safety of avoiding a potential crash?
I know where I stand.
In the latter part of the 18th century, T. Robert Malthus, armed with cutting edge knowledge of economics and agriculture, forecast population increasing at a rate beyond the land's ability to support it with food lest drastic measures were taken. And, missing the great transformation that trade and industrialization was working on the world economy, was most spectacularly wrong.
When I was in college, the Club of Rome, armed with cutting edge knowledge of economics and natural resource use, forecast unavoidable limits to growth that, unless drastic measures were taken, would exhaust key resources in my lifetime. And, missing the magic that trade and technological change was working on the world economy in the last half of the twentieth century, was most spectacularly wrong.
I don't know if the global warming "experts" have it right or not. Like Malthus, like the wonks at the Club of Rome, they have some cutting edge scientific knowledge at their backs as they forecast doom and gloom.
But I know where my faith lies. It does not lie with those whose understanding of the earth and its elements remains dwarfed by their ignorance. Those who, despite their PhDs and their scientific papers and their political/marketing skill that all dwarf mine, are so overcome by their hubris that they forget how small is the ratio of what they know to what they do not know.
My faith lies with man's ingenuity to overcome and grow. To discover those doors when they need to be discovered.
Not because of government regulators and blue ribbon task forces made up of Nobel Laureates and Ivy League PhDs. Those people have always ended up following the Malthuses and the Clubs of Romes and the rest of the spectacularly wrong.
No, my faith lies with those who, despite the know-everythings who turn out to be know-not-nearly-enoughs, find new doors and new opportunities.
And yes, it is faith. Because until we reach that wall, we don't know what is possible in terms of doors. Yes, if we don't listen to today's know-everythings, we might crash into that wall without finding the door we need.
But I'd rather have faith in the discovery of new opporunities, than a faith that requires me to content myself with solitary, nasty, brutish, and short.
So I believe.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)