Wise Guys and Evil Ways

 I Cor 1:19; For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

Over the course of the last few Sundays, my pastor spoke about the difference between man’s highest achievement of intelligence and the gap that exists in order to get to the lowest describable level of God’s thoughts. Pastor read I Corinthians 1:19-31, which speaks to this confounding aspect. God used the simplest and base things despised by our world’s intelligentsia in order to make sure humans attained a threshold for knowing God’s character. The issue centers on whether or not a man will lower himself to a standard that allows one to begin to understand how God intended life to be.

In only one example of the wonders of this creation we begin to understand our God gap. We know that mankind’s science told us for years atoms were the smallest particles. From a google search:

John Dalton was an English chemist most famous for proposing atomic theory. He proposed atomic theory in 1803, which states that all matter is composed of small indivisible particles called atoms. It also stated that the atoms of each element had distinct characteristics and weight. Dalton’s theory was in direct opposition to Isaac Newton’s theory of chemical affinities, which was popular at that time.

Then we found out that atoms had protons, neutrons and electrons.

Now science is clear that protons and neutrons have quarks, and although electrons don’t have quarks, they do have a power though unexplained. Quantum mechanics may be able to break electrons down to strings, but that is new science and not proven. For instance, in response to questions from students at the University of Maryland to their Astronomy Department, Professor Cole Miller responds with this.

“On a final note, keep in mind that string theory is still just a theory. It is unbelievably elegant, to the point that people believe that it must be true. However, we are still at least a decade or so away from testing even the simplest predictions that it makes, let alone the theory as a whole.”

What we see here is that with all of mankind’s intelligence and knowledge, we have yet to determine how the wonder of God’s creation can be described.

If we are to understand God’s plan and character as described in scripture, we must take into account that the Creator, who made us in His image, also understood our limitations. In fact, throughout the scriptures of the Old Testament, man demonstrates to God how ignorant we are. Take the Israelis’ trek to the Promised Land after they left Egypt.

In Exodus 3:10 we find God commanding Moses to go to Pharaoh. Moses showed up on the Pharaoh’s doorstep after the burning bush incident. Pharaoh didn’t believe Moses spoke for God. God made sure that he stayed stupid until the seven plagues made the point for Him. The Hebrew people obtain rich rewards from their oppressors and hike toward the sea.

They feared for their lives when the Egyptian army bore down on them. Moses heard from God and raised his rod. Bingo, the sea split and dried up in front of the Jews so they passed over on dry land. God conquered the most advanced and feared army in the world in a matter of minutes when the sea crashed down on the soldiers. Even so, those people griped and complained their way for forty years in the desert.

When they finally settled in and followed God’s fire and smoke columns, He gave the Ten Commandments. Again, they spoke from their knowledge of good and evil and failed to follow the new rules established by God. That’s right. Man’s intelligence is no match for understanding His ways.

However, God’s mercy endures forever, and He sends a propitiation for our sinful ways in order that we may complete our purpose. He does this with the miraculous birth of Jesus. God also told of this coming event over hundreds of years, through the voice of many men, in lots of places. So many ways and descriptions were told that it would be beyond our scientists’ wildest conjecture of probability that any one individual could fulfill some three hundred prophecies. In fact, if you were to take only eight of these three hundred prophecies, the probability of any one person fulfilling all eight is one to the 17th power. Today’s science says that it’s improbable for anything to occur if the odds peak over one to the 3rd power.

Now that we begin to understand the level of God’s commitment to us, we begin to see how what God said retains importance for all of mankind. Perhaps one hasn’t accepted the notion of God. Perhaps one hasn’t believed in Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection, but that hasn’t changed the facts attested to by history, language, philosophy and science over the last two thousand years. When God said, “Thou shall have no other god before me,” he meant it. When he said, “Thou shall not kill,” he meant it.

Since we people of the world tended to stray away from God and His Word, there grew a need to be brought back to Him. The Creator understood how we erred and He understood our nature. He made the things we worshiped the focus when He corrected our ways. His pattern remains true to this day. One example is how He used the Babylonians to hold the Hebrews in captivity for seventy years to make up for the four hundred and ninety years they did not rest on the seventh day. He still uses the despised to confound the wise.

When the founders of our constitutional republic wrote a simple document, they wrote specific words to convey basic thoughts; they predicated the understanding of it on being a moral and religious society. This we know because those same founders created the Northwest Territories Act of 1784. The third article reads:

“Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."

They made this statement under the context of Protestant Reformation Christianity. Our society grew darker over the past two centuries. People replaced God with our intelligence. With our constitution ignored and our politicians corrupted, the non-religious and immoral society led us down a dismal path.

Our nation accepted murder by abortion over fifty years ago. It replaced the sanctity of life. The result led the nation toward anarchy where the culture of life lies hidden in the culture of death. The young exhibit no expectation of honoring life. Self-mutilation escalated. Suicide rates skyrocketed. Neighborhood murder threatened more people every minute. Simple acts of violence escalated to proportions unheard of in history. Urban crime rates soared. Laws passed to protect the innocent resulted in worse statistics than when the laws weren’t there, as experienced in Chicago, Baltimore and San Francisco, to name a few places.

So how do we as United States citizens turn our society toward the moral and religious standard envisioned by our forefathers? The answer appeared in simple terms thousands of years ago. God confounded our thought process. We thought great ways to eliminate the poor among us. We conjured programs to give people food. We changed the Constitution to cripple the Republic. We touted tolerance so evil would rise up. Yet He directed us to our knees. Leave your idols, focus on Me. Recognize your sin and ask forgiveness. Turn away from evil and by your action I will hear your prayer and heal your land (II Cor 7:14).

Our challenge lies not in understanding God’s thoughts, but rather in realizing that our thoughts cannot compete with His. Once we acquiesce to His simple standard of humility before Him, He frees us to accomplish our purpose. Without repenting from our pride and intelligence, our culture of life remains hidden in the culture of death, bound in abortion, and manifested in violence and murder rampant in our society.

Great Expectations Today

Life in these United States of America has changed a bit from my memories of growing up. Some changes have been for the good, others, not so much. The single biggest change toward the negative side of the scale is the lack of expectations. When I joined the Boy Scouts, I was expected to learn and live by the Scout Law. I knew that I was to be Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean and Reverent. And that from memory at the age of 65.

One primary focus of mine revolves around the merry-go-round of education. Bear in mind that I am all for getting kids involved in learning. How they learn has challenged many educators over the years. Some students will only learn after they mature more. Some students won’t learn in a rote environment. Some students will learn in spite of a teacher’s style. No matter how the students learn, there remains one sure way for them to fail—don’t expect them to learn.

My wife of over forty years invested her career in educating elementary students. One time her elementary class received calculators with which they could figure out what 2+2 equaled. My discussion with her at the time revolved around the problem with not expecting them to learn, and to know what 2+2 equaled, for if a student could not or would not learn this simple fact, they would be challenged the rest of their life by any subject matter. Sadly, these students and many more like them now struggle with daily math application. Perhaps you know some of them. They are the ones that cannot make change at McDonald’s. They are the ones that never learned what year the United States federal government was ratified. They are the ones who were never expected to behave in public. They are the ones who pass you on a solid, double-yellow line in a no-passing zone while you travel at the speed limit .

They are also the ones to whom the progressives have appealed for votes. Since the children were never expected to perform or to succeed in doing some little thing, they don’t believe that they should have to work at anything. Their expectations are that someone should supply them with all their needs because, like their parents who would not allow a teacher to expect them to perform, they learned to expect something for nothing. They feel they are entitled to pass a grade without studying, without knowing any answers, without having basic math facts at the ready to use. They are the ones who have no work ethic. They are the ones who refuse to take a menial job because they are better than that.

The latest news affecting much of our nation concerns the influx of children from developing countries crossing our borders through no legal process that qualifies them to be here. Again, I am all for children receiving education, medical assistance, clothing, meals—a new start to life. Our household contributes far more than an average household to organizations doing exactly these things. However, if these children entering illegally are taught by experience that there are no expectations of following the law of the land in the United States, to what end will they aspire? My guess, and my fear, is that they will simply add themselves to the rolls of entitled individuals who don’t contribute to society, but will vote themselves a benefit.

The founding fathers of America warned over and over that the Republic would soon fail under these circumstances. In the book, Why Nations Fail, you can read about the Roman Empire and the Roman Republic failing. If I were to copy and paste that narrative here, you couldn’t discern it from today’s news.

It is time to call America back to an era of expectations. Expect children to learn. Expect young adults to work for a living. Expect businessmen to have character. Expect statesmen to make decisions for the benefit of the country, not for the benefit of the faction with the loudest voice and not for their personal wealth management plan. If you don’t start to expect these things now, today, then you’ll have very little to complain about when you don’t expect to use your vote come the election cycle this year.