A Digression upon Foolishness

by   T. C. Pinckney                                                                                                                                        Vol. XII, No. 7, August 1999

In his autobiography Benjamin Franklin writes, “So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.” Here he touches on one of the most deadly of temptations, one to which the present age seems peculiarly vulnerable.

If alert to this subtle appeal, you can spot its victories all around. Indeed, our “culture” has taken it so far as to deny that there is any absolute truth, any objective right and wrong. And logically (there’s that “reason” again), if there is no law, there can be no Law Giver, no Supreme Being with power to create, to save or punish eternally. And now the flesh really begins to rejoice, for consider the implications of the above line of thought:

(1) If there is no true God, then all gods are merely human constructs and at best convenient hooks upon which to hang a humanly developed moral code. This excises the command, “Go and tell,” thus relieving us of the fear of witnessing from which all of us suffer in varying degrees. After all, if Buddha = Allah = Jesus, and if all roads lead to the same destination — eternal oblivion — what sense can there possibly be in evangelizing?

(2) Similarly, sans God the Bible is reduced to the record of some men’s search for god. It cannot be God’s revelation of Himself to men. It may have many good thoughts and things to say, but it becomes ridiculous to believe the Bible to be without error even in the spiritual realm, much less historically, scientifically, and in every other respect. Thus in one fell swoop we are accommodated to the leaders of modern thought: Darwin, Dewey, Paul Kurtz, Gould, Jane Fonda, Hemingway, Steinem, Michael Eisner, Kinsey, and on and on who in bone-wearying banality and pulverizing persistence proclaim, each in his own time, each in his own way, the death of God, the dearth of hope, the degradation of beauty, the despoliation of truth ... in short, the defloration of all that makes life worth living, that distinguishes positively between man and beast.

(3) Having assumed away the authority of the Bible as well as the very existence of God; having banished purpose and design from creation; indeed, having denied creation entirely and having substituted chance (Chance, which does not actually exist, which has no being in and of itself, in supreme irony becomes the god of those who refuse to acknowledge the existence of the one true God!), these devotees of thought and logic and reason are brought inevitably by their own chosen processes to the conclusion that there is no such thing as consciousness, no true thought, no logic, not only no standard of right and wrong but no way to know what is correct or incorrect. For all is material and only material. They logically determine that there is no such thing as logic!

(4) And in culmination, absent a Judge, absent His law, absent any punishment or reward, absent any spiritual realm at all, and existing only in the material, these fools (in the biblical usage of the word) are left to revel in material rewards whether monetary, academic status, self-satisfying pride, or sexual license. They ignore Jesus’ words in Luke 17:26-30 as they do every other biblical passage. They have convinced themselves of their freedom to sin.

Franklin’s insight is true. May we avoid the pit into which they have fallen, the pit of pride and frowardness. May we joyfully accept the command of our great God and King to go and tell, even witnessing to those who regard us as at best misguided, more likely as dangerous psychotics, in the hope that the Holy Spirit will use our words to win even one of these to God’s blessed kingdom.