Pannenberg on Change: Or, on Getting Older

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Roughly a week ago, I reached a somewhat significant milestone; I turned 30.  While normally this would not elicit a blog post, around the time of my birthday I reread this passage in Pannenberg's early work Theology and the Kingdom of God which resonated with me:
The perverse (in the literal sense of that word) apperception of the divine reality in religious experience is only one more form assumed by the perversion of man's relation to the future. The perversion, of course, is the conventional perspective of experience in which the future is understood as a prolongation of what is already existing, rather than being understood as the creative origin of reality ... All conservative persistence in established securities will be shattered and surpassed by historical change.  The process of history is God's instrument in the education of humanity, bringing man to the awareness of his historicity and thus completing his creation. (68-9)
As I reflect more on this passage, it seems appropriate for more than my recent birthday. These last couple years, where I left working in a church and nearly all my friends and family, and moved to Minnesota to pursue a PhD, have "shattered" most of my "established securities." While this has been difficult at times, I'm grateful for the opportunity, and my hope is that I'm "learning" from it.

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