In ancient times people would look up at the stars at night. Now, we look down at our phones. Stars make the world feel big, screens make the world feel small. I wonder how this is affecting us? I remember seeing a recent post on X encompassing this idea and it stopped me in my tracks. We’re more connected than ever, have more information at our fingertips than anyone could have dreamed of, yet many are lonely, anxious, full of fear, and experience a felt absence of God.

Our broad culture in the western world shows similar symptoms as well. Unexplainable things are rationalized away producing a pseudo sense of control. People find meaning in materialism causing looming uncertainty. Relationships are governed by instrumental reason rather than sympathy causing fragility. Lives are all about the material, immanent, and pleasurable.

These are all symptoms of what many call disenchantment. It’s a word to describe our culture where more and more aspects of human life are subject to calculation, measurement, and control. This is in contrast to wonder, awe, and mystery. It’s all too uncommon to marvel at the mysterious beauty of life. Living can feel dull, mundane, and gray. When deep questions about life surface, such as how we got here, why we are here, and where we are going, they are pushed away by immediate distraction. Instead we find purpose in the present, meaning in the material, and satisfaction in the sensual. With great advancements in science and thought over the past few hundred years has come a world we can grasp and measure, rather than a world of great wonder and awe.

How did we get here? How did we go from viewing all life as enchanted by the Creator of the cosmos to a reductionistic material world? Paul Gould in his excellent book, “Cultural Apologetics”, offers two ways through which we have wandered into a disenchanted world as a culture.

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The first being a suppression of truth about God. This is what Paul describes in Romans 1:20-25:

20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

Failing to recognize God and the truth of reality distorts our thinking and provides unstable foundations. Reality is turned on its head. We cannot see the world clearly if our fundamental beliefs about God are wrong. To quote Paul Gould, “Our cultural beliefs regard God’s existence and nature are determinative factors in our culture’s ability to see reality clearly.” (Gould, Cultural Apologetics)

The second step is emptying the world of the divine and sacred. Instead of seeing the magic and mystery of the world, everything is rationalized away as molecules in motion caused by the previous cause. Materialism replaced transcendent worldviews in the west over the past decades (although this is changing). Meaning is made and not given, purpose is whatever you want it to be! Life is not as the ancients believed, the battle of opposing forces and mythical adventures and value based actions. In the west, it’s rational, calculated, and materialistic.

I notice this in my own life as I see a tendency to see the supernatural and quickly rationalize it away as simply cells working like they ought, or medicine, or luck. I try to explain away what could be divine intervention or cause. I’m often consumed by immediate gratification and the belief that the material world will provide what I ultimately long for. Rather than sitting in awe of the unimaginable God, I try to break Him down into bite sized pieces or or understand His will and workings to make Him more manageable.

This experience of disenchantment is like discovering a piece of art that captures your perception, or a poem which evokes emotion, or a short video that speaks to transcendent values. Yet, upon further investigation you quickly realize it was created by AI. That realization sucks the life out of it. It becomes not a thing of beauty but simply the product of a designed system which produces code based on probability. It divides it from true life and the work becomes bland.

But for all of us, in moments filled with dull and grey, wonder and mystery breaks through. It’s in moments like a movie portraying self sacrifice for the sake of others, or a poem that touches our longing for something more, or a song that speaks to the transcendence of the good and beautiful, or a sunset beyond description There is more than the materialistic and reductionistic world, but we have to look up and wonder.

All through scripture we read of the beauty and majesty of God and humanity’s natural response.

Isaiah 6:1–5 Isaiah sees the Lord high and exalted; he cries, “Woe is me!”

Psalm 8:3-4 3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?

Psalm 33:8 “Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.”

By suppressing the truth about God and emptying the world of anything other than the material, life becomes dull, purposeless, meaningless, monotonous, and unexciting. It becomes inhuman. Instead, we should look up. Wonder about the fact that this world would not exist without a cause, be in amazement of the fine-tuning and design which sustains fragile life, marvel at the beauty of creation, and be in awe of the God behind it all. The natural response to the majesty of God is awe.

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Here is what I have been doing to sit and wonder.

First, I look for the ways in which my life is dominated by material things. It’s my phone, the clothes I wear, or the hobby and its accompanying things. These things distract me and cause my eyes to drift from wonder to worldly.

Second, I put myself in situations to encounter God and the beauty of His creation. I do this by reading a good novel, or going for a walk in a quiet place, sitting in front of a beautiful view, or speaking with a friend face to face.

Most importantly, I meditate on God’s word and marvel at who He is and what He has done. We have an incredible opportunity to meet with and experience the God of the universe. What can you do this week to move from a disenchanted culture to see the beauty of life?