Are YOU in Control of Your World???

We would all like to think that we are in control of our own ‘world’; in control of our personal life, our finances, our thoughts (well most of the time) and our future. However, if we stop and reflect on the year that has been, we may need to re-think just how much control we really do have and therefore what are our prospects?

 

Here are some events that NO-ONE had control over in 2011:

In the USA alone there were no less than 3,000 record breaking weather events! And while Texas wild fires destroyed over 1,000 homes, Thailand, Argentina and the east coast of Australia were being deluged by floods affecting hundreds of thousands more people.

Who will ever forget the images of the earthquakes in Turkey, New Zealand, and Japan with the devastating tsunami that followed?

Then there were the shocking images of drought, famine and starvation impacting on millions of people and wild life in the Horn of Africa..

And there was more….. 2011 had many significant political upheavals, particularly in the Middle East; changing the lives of entire nations.

Then of course economically none of us were in control through the Great Financial Crisis, which is still far from over,  as the US and European economies continue to labour under massive debt and mismanagement with seemingly no way out.

 

These are just some of the events that have impacted on many of us this year. It would  be just too depressing to mention the numerous random senseless killings and shooting rampages on the innocent that occurred this year as well!
 

Then on a personal level, even when we have done everything we can to guard the health of ourselves and our loved ones, anyone of us can be struck down and debilitated through disease and illness.

But I thought it was quite curious that in the meantime, scientists are spending millions of dollars and are so excited about trying to find the “God Particle” in beams of protons that are accelerated around a 27-kilometre ring at close to the speed of light before being smashed into each other! This seems really quite meaningless to me given the events listed above when maybe, we should really be looking for God (beyond colliding protons) who can turn all of this around and really improve our prospects.

I really like what Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) had to say in what came to be known as “Pascal’s Wager”. He stated that; “God is or He is not”!

Pascal was a mathematician, physicist and moralist. He also lived at a time that the existence of God was being searched for and contended.

Here is his very thought provoking argument:

 

“God is or He is not. But to which side shall we incline?

Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is.

Let us estimate the two chances. If you gain, you gain all;

If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that HE is”.

[Thoughts -1670]

As we are clearly not in control of our world, we need to side with someone who is…just sayin’