Where do we come from?
What are we?
Where are we going?
I have wondered about these enigmatic questions for many years. I could not recall their origin. I went to Google Search to recover what I could not remember. To my surprise, Google Search doesn’t seem to think that these questions existed before Paul Gauguin used them as a title for one of his Tahitian paintings.
Perhaps.
I doubt it. I think he found these questions in a book -
a book that was citing some more ancient source. Curiously,
he painted the words in all caps, on the top left-hand of the work; without question marks.
He might just as well have added a fourth question:
Who cares?
Roughly done. Hardly what you would expect from trenchant philosophy. Yet, if he Is the source of these questions, he must be reconsidered; as a great thinker, as well as a great painter.
Regardless of their providence, these are questions worth pondering.
Although the phrasing varies, these questions have been asked, and answered, over millennia by every culture, philosophy, and religion that ever existed. Did any of them get any of it right? Maybe, but, which?
How can we be sure?
Can we be sure?
I’m ready to dismiss the notion that we all came from eggs laid by the Great Turtle in the sky – eggs that then hatched into humans – humans that then ranged across the entire Earth - until the final day of Dragendorff, when fiery explosions from great serpents under the Earth sent the entire human race flying into the sky – where they were devoured by the Great Turtle – then the Great Turtle laid eggs, and then … so on, and so on… cycling… endlessly… and pointlessly.
A spinning wheel doesn’t go anywhere.
I think that’s why I find cyclic theology’s so unsatisfying. Even the most cogent of them fail to explain purpose.
The cyclic beliefs are many and varied. They are also the oldest attempts to illuminate the darkness that shrouds reality. They form the core of Asiatic religions such as Taoism, Hinduism, and all their offshoots.
It’s likely that the model for all these cyclical cosmologies
is the observable cycle of the seasons. Ancient man perceived these patterns as plainly recurrent, and reckoned, “So on Earth. So, on High”. It’s a reasonable assumption. It’s wrong.
In all the 4.5 billion years of the planet Earth, not one day has ever been completely like the day before - or the day after. The Seasons come, and go, but they do not return quite the same as they were before.
Sometime around 500 B.C, Heraclitus of Ephesus wrote:
“No man steps in the same river twice”. Heraclitus wrote that aphorism to punctuate his notion that change is the only thing that is constant. That’s not true, but it is true that the river of time is endlessly in motion.
Cycles of time are not possible. We are on a one-way voyage downstream. We are going somewhere. We are not going back.
“Where do we come from”? The cyclic answer seems, “We’re going around in circles”.
It begs the question, “Where did we come from”. As to the question, “What are we”? The cyclic religions are not interested. We’re humans. Everybody knows that. It’s a silly question. So, what about, “Where are we going”? The cyclic answer is, we’re going right back to where we came from… again, and again, and again.
The Bible tells us: where we came from; what we are; and, where we’re going. No other religion, or philosophy, does that.
We came from Heaven - by the will of God.
We are made of Earthly dirt, combined with immortal soul.
We will return to Heaven when our task is complete.
Some of us will not return. Pray for them! Those who do return will return to their true life. The illusions of this world will fall away. We will live forever with God in our Heavenly home.
Heaven is eternal.