In The Medusa and the Snail Lewis Thomas, a truly distinguished scientist, wonders at all the fuss over test-tube babies. The mere existence of that cell should be one of the greatest astonishments of the earth. People ought to be walking around all day, all through their waking hours, calling to each other in endless wonderment, talking of nothing except that cell. We study and teach history, as Paul Gagnon has observed, in order, among other things, to develop judgement . We want to understand from a biblical point of view what is comic and what is tragic in a fallen world, and how strikingly often they combine.
Christians have a general explanation for such surprises.
Sheer gratitude makes us thankful for even provisional historical solutions, but our knowledge of human perversity leads us to do so with a tinge of irony. We learn to distrust simple accounts of complex events and to be prepared for the place human irrationality has in the course of human history. All this equips us to understand the world in which we are to be peace agents. Just as no CIA agent would be sent to an area of which she was ignorant, so it's folly for us to expect to serve and transform a world we do not know. We learn in literature classes the best that's been thought and said.