Challenge:
Helping Our Children Find Meaning and Purpose

by Harlan Carl Scheffler

Oxford: George Ronald, 2006

Abstract: This essay contains ideas that can change the world. Bringing into focus the essential oneness of things, it explores how energy motivates all forms and instils meaning and purpose. Parents and teachers who are troubled by present-day trends and who are searching for answers to the plight of boredom and the stigma of ineptness will find valuable ideas here to assist them in helping young people to discover the essential nature of life, how they fit into its structure, and how their lives matter. "Challenge" is Part 1 of a longer work, The Quest, which can be purchased at georgeronald.com.

Description: Drawing on 'Abdu’l-Bahá's profound explanations in Some Answered Questions, Harlan Scheffler explores the relationship between the physical and the non-physical aspects of life, between science and religion, to propose a scheme of education that will help children find their way in a globalized world now awakening to its spiritual purpose.

What is life all about? What makes it work? How can children be encouraged to ask good questions and where can they find good answers? How can parents and teachers help children to develop the capacity to investigate truth independently? What can they teach children about religion without indoctrinating them into divisive ideas?

Many parents and teachers are troubled by present-day trends and their influence on the children they know or have responsibility for — trends such as indifference, apathy, and materialism feeding our increasingly fragile connections with our environment and with each other, our worldwide and unrelenting distrust of each other, our isolation whether racial, religious, societal or ecological, our war-torn planet, our divided consciousness where material things are true and non-material things are also true but are treated as poles apart.

This book demonstrates that logical and independent thought can be reconciled with spiritual insight. It explores how energy — spirit — motivates all forms, both in the natural world and the non-material world, and how an understanding of this can help young people to rediscover their connections to their surroundings and imbue their lives with meaning and purpose.

Harlan Scheffler is an artist turned writer. A native of Illinois, he received his art training at the Evanston Academy of Fine Art and worked as an artist in the United States. On his retirement with his wife Barbara to a log cabin in the hills of Indiana, he began the work which has resulted in this book.

The cover for "The Quest" has received an American Design Award in the book design category.

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