Those born into the digital age may wish to learn about kaleidoscopes before proceeding…

There’s something about the image of a kaleidoscope that intrigues me. It’s not what I see in the kaleidoscope; it’s the kaleidoscope-ness that captivates me. It has ever since I heard of the girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

I believe I utilized kaleidoscope imagery in The Dark Man. It was extremely brief, maybe just a quick reference or word picture, but I could not resist the pull of the image, if only for a moment. Look for it, keep an eye out for it, and if you haven’t read The Dark Man, go to Amazon and order it. You’ll be happy you did…oh yeah, my publisher will admonish me if I neglect to mention that The Dark Man features attack gunship helicopters and loads of action in addition to its deep theological themes and kaleidoscope-like imagery.

The Kaleidoscope image fascinates me because of its total and continuous becoming, given that someone continues to turn it, of course. This shifting, this morphing, this you never step into the same river twice: it’s contingency at large and on the move. It has little or nothing to do with the colors involved. It’s the shape shifting, the image of a world with constant blending of substances and their properties into new substances and properties that give way to yet more S & P.

In case I’ve lost you, let me shout real loud: ATTACK GUNSHIP HELICOPTERS & ACTION. Okay, now that you’re interested again, let me approach my point. If you stare into a kaleidoscope long enough, you can forget that you’re actually turning the lens that changes the colors. When this occurs, there’s a point in time where, unconsciously, your mind has lost the sense that all is not becoming. Under the entrancement of the colors, your mind may forget that there’s someone–in this case yourself–turning the kaleidoscope.

We’ve all had similar experiences: the movie that was so good we forgot where we were, the sunset we got caught up in, the musical score that transported us to another place. Sometimes, and most of them are good times, we forget that we are conscious.

The kaleidoscope phenomenon is a forced, or enticed, event that mirrors our greater lives. I would argue that a substantial portion of our waking life is spent in this conscious yet unconscious state. We are caught up in the hue and cry of life, or the doldrums of life, and forget that we are actually thinking, conscious beings. In effect, we forget to think that we are thinking.

Have you ever asked yourself why something exists rather than nothing? Try it again if you have, or for the first time if you have not. Very quickly, you’ll notice that all of a sudden you are thinking of your own existence, as well as the existence of everything else. It’s a staggering thought with miles of untrod, virgin ground; yet I ask you to think of it now as a reminder of just how often you don’t think of it. Mostly, we spend our lives lapsed in a state of unconscious, assumed existence, as if we were entranced by a kaleidoscope.

Through the kaleidoscope of the natural world, we observe constantly changing frames and colors: the sunsets, the stars, the full moons, the forests, the events of our lives, the pain of injury, and the love of friends. And, no doubt, all these things we see are in a state of becoming. The flowers fade, the grass withers, we grow old, and those yet to come are born. But how often do we forget that the colors of the kaleidoscope are not all there is?

Most importantly, when we are entranced, we forget that someone is turning the kaleidoscope. Our lives can lull us into the false perception that all is becoming–that there is no being–that this world of becoming is all there is. In this, we are but dark men traversing a dark world, oblivious to the light that shines through the pane of the kaleidoscope. The world around us is indeed turning, but it does not turn of its own accord or power. There is indeed someone with His hands on the kaleidoscope of the world. He is the one that is not becoming, but Being.

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

It’s generally accepted in the western tradition that the Greek philosopher Thales predicted a solar eclipse on May 28, 585 BC—no need to check your screen, that’s BC, not BCE. This date represents a marker for the genesis of philosophy, and perhaps rudimentary science and mathematics, for many historians.

It’s probably safe to assume Thales was not calculating in a vacuum; his efforts most likely existed alongside other thinkers of his day. Nevertheless, classical philosophy operated from Thales’s day forward, virtually unchanged with respect to its foundational metaphysical assumptions for two millennia, before the advent of Hume and Kant, namely that reason, experience, and natural theology, properly handled, possessed the capability to lead a thinker to a true knowledge of God, the noumenal, and the supernatural.

There’s a sharp distinction in philosophic thought on either side of the Hume/Kant boundary. I do not wish presently to explore this divide in depth. Nonetheless, it’s clear historically that Hume and Kant ushered in thoughts which have blossomed into commonplace objections against theism, and Christianity in particular—objections we encounter routinely on the Internet: evidentiary challenges, questions of epistemic warrant, refutations of standard arguments for the existence of God, and agnostic principles, to name a few. It’s no stretch to claim that these two philosophers shaped modern thought as much as any other, including Charles Darwin.

Though many Christians demonize Kant, he’s actually sympathetic to theism in comparison with many subsequent thinkers who piggybacked upon his work. Here’s a highly surprising passage buried within Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, which serves as a preface to his ensuing Critiques:

So I find that the psychological idea (however little it may reveal to me the nature of the human soul, which is elevated above all concepts of experience) shows the insufficiency of these concepts plainly enough and thereby deters me from materialism, a psychological concept which is unfit for any explanation of nature and which in addition confines reason in practical respects. The cosmological ideas, by the obvious insufficiency of all possible cognition of nature to satisfy reason in its legitimate inquiry, serve in the same manner to keep us from naturalism, which asserts nature to be sufficient for itself. Finally, all natural necessity in the sensible world is conditional, as it always presupposes the dependence of things upon others, and unconditional necessity must be sought only in the unity of a cause different from the world of sense. But as the causality of this cause, in its turn, were it merely nature, could never render the existence of the contingent (as is consequent) comprehensible, reason frees itself by means of the theological idea from fatalism (both as blind natural necessity in the coherence of nature itself, without a first principle, and as a blind causality of this principle itself) and leads to the concept of a cause possessing freedom and hence of a Supreme Intelligence. Thus the transcendental ideas serve, if not to instruct us positively, at least to destroy the impudent and restrictive assertions of materialism, of naturalism, and of fatalism, and thus to afford scope for the moral ideas beyond the field of speculation.

Great stuff. So, true enough, Immanuel’s not Immanuel. After all, who is, but the one? But certainly he’s not as far off as some might have you to believe.