The Larger Picture

Anyone who has seen an electron microscope photograph of, say, a mite or been staggered by the Hubble telescope photograph of ‘the Hubble deep field’ knows that with our natural eyes we hardly see the whole picture of anything. 

This ‘observation’ (or lack of it) carries over to our encounters with everything around us or involving us—whether material, philosophical, political, religious, aesthetic, or interpersonal.  In dealing with anything we are often forced or invited to interact with whatever crosses our perceptual field and proceed with whatever light we have.  Our light, however, may figuratively be only of a 10 watt bulb illumination in fields outside of our own expertise. More light nearly always helps clarify things. 

Unfortunately many of us act or proceed or draw conclusions without taking the time or finding and using the resources that enable us to see more clearly.  With our own intellectual resources, alone, we would often do well to listen longer and respond later.

 But an informed conclusion or decision must also take into account the context and especially the larger picture in which the smaller object or issue with which we are concerned is embedded to make sense of our initial observations.  In coming to understand anything more deeply we need to know that resources we may have never considered may be available to help us see.

Having additional tools in our intellectual toolbox and then using them is part of what it means to be an educated person.  Discernment is greatly facilitated by having not only the hammer of tradition, the saw of authority, and the scale of the scientific method, but having other tools: an intellectual and/or spiritual tape measure,  square and  compass, and laser level that may come from such epistemological (a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge) resources of revelation, sudden strokes of personal insight, testimony of witnesses, and consultation with or readings by those who have greater experience and expertise than ourselves. 

I know of nothing in the human experience that is not part of something larger than ourselves and our limited understanding of it. We are but a small cog in big machine, but a machine that was made for us—and we are invited to learn more.

If you are a regular reader of my little essays or postings you will know that in one way or another I often harp on this notion of getting the ‘larger picture’; hence the photograph of me with my binoculars and the notation in the subheading attributed to Sir Isaac Newton.  So many live life with just a ‘thumbnail sketch’ and have a very limited field of vision and depth perception of our physical, mental, and spiritual environment.  I invite you to use the ‘zoom button’ on every intellectual device to which you may already have access.  

In coming to understand anything more deeply we must first not forget that there is much that does not immediately meet the eye.