The other day I saw a post on Facebook, quoting Sigmund Freud, which goes something along the lines of:

Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race; it had been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity. It had promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that humanity has come of age, however, it should be left behind.

Several people commented on this post, approving it, claiming it was such an enlightened statement, and how dumb you must be if you don’t agree with it.

But one line in particular from the quote made me almost laugh out loud when I read it: Now that humanity has come of age, however…

Come of age!? On basis does anyone think that we’ve “come of age”? Most generations tend to think that they’ve come of age. They’re much smarter and more enlightened than previous generations. They know so much more. They’ve learnt from the mistakes of their predecessors. They’ve made significant advancements into science and the understanding of life and the universe.

But we’re deceiving ourselves if we think we’ve “come of age”. We still don’t know much about the universe and what goes on around us. We still hurt each other, kill each other, and do things we don’t understand. What we want to do, we don’t do. And what we don’t want to do, we keep on doing.

No matter what achievements or advancements we think we make in unlocking the mysteries of life, usually each discovery produces a bunch of more unanswered questions. Rather than pride ourselves on our coming of age, we should humble ourselves and realise we don’t know all that much really, we often get it wrong, and our understanding of things doesn’t even come close to the infinite wisdom of the creator and designer of all that’s around us.

Life’s a great adventure! Let’s marvel at it, even the things we don’t understand, but let’s never try and claim we know how it all works.