My friends and I like to talk about ideas. We tend to get carried away with it too. Most recently I was in a discussion with someone around the concept of perspective. Perspective is achieved in several ways.

First, no one can have a perspective, that is, it is impossible to see depth of field, without two lenses, or eyes, involved. The difference between one lens and the other produces depth of field. Second, this sense of depth is enhanced by reference to a point on one's horizon. It is the combination of depth perception and reference to the horizon that produces any particular visual perspective.

When it comes to perspective on events, ideas, or people in our lives, a similar dynamic is in play. It has to do with the way in which we view them. If depth is accomplished by comparing the view through two lenses, then comparing at least two views of a given situation might enhance depth in life's matters.

Now comes an interesting consideration, however, with reference to a point on the horizon.

Perspective technically depends on position with regard to the horizon, and phenomenologically, that brings up another connection. Neither physical nor phenomenological position with regard to a horizon is a matter of one's position in the field alone, and thus one's own stereoptic vision alone. One's position, and thus one's perspective, is a matter of the difference between where one is (in a situation) and a given point on the horizon. The horizon in phenomenology is what one regards to be possible or available such that if it isn't in one's horizon, that person will not even contemplate it; it never comes to mind.

Thus, one's perspective on aggression, for instance, depends upon where one is in some lexical-hermeneutical vortex and what causes some kind of blip on one's radar screen (horizon). Thus, it doesn't have to be multiple lenses; it can also be a matter of multiple points on the horizon or multiple positions in the situation.

Here is the place for an older concept – empathy. Empathy can be defined as having primordial experience of foreign experience: You are sad, and I observe your (to me foreign) primordial sadness, which on its own would be to me a secondary experience, but suddenly I have a primordial experience of your sadness; that is, I DO sadness in my own way in tandem with your sadness. Others call this emotional perspective taking (taking the perspective of the other). There can also be cognitive perspective taking, in which a person "gets" conceptually what another is talking about. The old Rorschach come back, "Help me to see it like you see it" is at the core of such perspective taking. When one takes the perspective of another, it has the possibility of enlarging one's horizon.

When it comes to the things of God, one might have great depth, but lack a point on the horizon that orients everything else. Jesus spoke to people in parables and when asked about this by his disciples, He told them that he did so because the parable created a situation in which those who had a perspective informed by the Spirit of God could see the point being made by Jesus, but those who did not have such a reference point in their horizon, would not see it.

Great thinkers who compare notes with one another can achieve a kind of stereopsis; they can gain a depth of field with regard to their scholarly pursuits. They may write stimulating books and display rigorous scholarship. However, if their horizon lacks reference to an actually existing and present God, and their scholarly subject is those things pertaining to God, they will lack a needed perspective. They might appear to know a lot about which they speak, but when they speak something is lacking.

This was the problem, for instance, in pre-World War II Germany, when liberal scholarship lacking a supernatural perspective held sway in the seminaries and left the church undernourished. That made the people in those churches vulnerable to the wave of Fuhrer worship that swept Germany in the influence of the Nazis.

This is also the problem when people today speak about "spirituality" but lack God as a reference point. They end up talking about connecting between people, touching one another, feeling excited by human contact alone or by the beauty and intricacy or power in what God has made without due credit to God Himself as creator.

God is the reference point that gives perspective to our lives, but if God is not in our horizon, we don't even "go there." Instead, we attempt to make sense of a world created by God and we always seem anemic in our explanations. We can appear to have great depth but be blind to our place in the situation, and that appearance of depth can be deceptive.

Depth and eloquence alone, even a cleverness of speech and a facility of expression, only produce what the writer of Ecclesiastes called vanity and a striving after wind.

I have realised that comparing notes with others and gaining depth is a good thing, but unless I get alone with God and orient myself to His point on my horizon, I lack the kind of perspective that provides peace in the midst of difficult circumstances, and often this peace is the kind that passes all understanding. Depth is one thing, but a godly perspective is another and, to me, more valuable thing.

So, I'll talk with my friends, and then I will take all such deepening of my thoughts to God, and together we will sort them out. Without God in my horizon, I think I would truly be lost.