Wisdom and foolishness 08/09/2021

We live in a world where there has been a great expansion in knowledge. We know more about our natural world, for example, than we did a century ago. There has been a massive increase in scientific knowledge and our insight into the working of the human body has been a huge benefit to the human race. Cures have been developed for so many conditions which were killers a century ago. In the last two years, it has been impressive to witness the dedication of the scientific community in inventing a vaccine for the virus which has swept the world and caused economic and social ruin. And we could say much more. And yet, Paul in his letter to the Corinthians dismisses the so-called wisdom of this world as foolishness in God's sight.

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. [1 Corinthians 3:19 NIV] The background to this verse is that the Corinthians were making too much of human wisdom and were so impressed with learning and human wisdom that they were, in effect, worshipping men instead of God. Paul advises them to stop boasting about human leaders. The Greeks liked their philosophy and their reasoning but it often was in direct conflict with God. In a previous Day Share I spoke about a Scottish history book by Neil Oliver where he talks about the origin of the land we know as Scotland as follows:

"…… this history of Scotland begins four and a half billion years ago when the planet was formed. Half a billion years before that a dying star had exploded, filling a corner of the universe with super-heated gas and vapour. Amid the chaos a new sun sparked into life and around it swirled the steadily cooling wreckage of its predecessor, the stuff of worlds and Scotland and us. Hot clouds cooled, condensing into clumps and clots. Some came together to make this earth, an object with sufficient gravity to hold, eventually, a thin silk of life-supporting atmosphere around itself. " [Neil Oliver: A History of Scotland page 2]

Notice that Neil Oliver speaks about all this as just happening without any plan or direction or purpose. He uses the passive voice - 'the planet was formed.' He is saying that this happened without any guidance or divine intervention. According to Neil Oliver and most of the academic establishment, everything just happens by chance and he uses the word 'chaos'. I am less concerned about the time scales in Neil Oliver's narrative than I am with the complete absence of a divine agency - a creator. The Bible places God at the centre of all this amazing event - in the Psalms the Lord is in control. He is the supreme being behind this amazing story.

As Christians, we must be careful to make sure that we give the Lord His rightful place. Like the Psalmist, we should acknowledge the greatness of God as creator.

"O Lord, my God you are magnificent (or very great)."

If we take God out of the process of forming the universe, we are really worshipping the God of chance. We are saying that all this happened by chance and by accident. When I get a flat pack from Ikea, it will never come together by accident - even if I left it for a long time. It needs to be formed carefully. There needs to be a plan. In my simple mind, the universe needs a plan - it is not the product of chance. There needs to be the creator - the one with the supreme knowledge to plan the creation of an amazingly complex universe.

This is one example of the foolishness of the world's wisdom in trying to remove God from their reckoning. In my first year at Glasgow University I studied a subject known as Moral Philosophy which was examining human ethics and conduct without reference to the Bible or to God. Almost every lecture began with a sarcastic gibe at those who believed in God.

We need a balance in all of this. As Christians we are not opposed to academic learning and we recognise that human learning has brought great benefits to mankind. For example, I use amazing technology which allows me to find information easily and effortlessly. It allows me to share this same information across the United Kingdom and beyond. But we must not begin to worship the technology or the science or the philosophy at the expense of the omnipotent Creator God. Human learning has still not solved many human problems - Scotland still has an unenviable record number of drug deaths despite its universities. We still have child poverty. We still have domestic abuse and violence. We still have bigotry and sectarianism.

In Christian circles, we have often benefited from people who have studied at universities and who have been trained to study the original languages of the Bible, for example. But I was greatly influenced by godly men and women who had little education but who had come to know God in a personal way through studying the Bible and because they had lived by faith in Him. We need to be careful that we are not blown away with human reasoning to the detriment of our simple Christian faith. One former colleague of mine once told me that he envied my simple faith. His scientific knowledge had become a barrier to trusting God. I am not sure that it was a compliment but it is a warning that if science becomes a barrier to approaching God or worshipping Him, then it is, indeed, foolishness.

[Photo by Ruijia Wang on Unsplash]