Tag: worldly wisdom

Want to See Something Weird?

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Grim figure banished by enlightenment.

Monster fleeing from Science, Industry, and Education

Within walking distance of my home is Roosevelt Park, a county park established during the Great Depression, home to one of the weirdest sculptures that you’ll ever see.

“Light Dispelling Darkness” was sculpted in 1937 as a WPA project of government-financed art: there’s a reason why so much of America’s painting and sculpture from that era looks like it was made in the Soviet Union. It’s a fountain with a globe on top–which I used to call “the ant world” when I was a little boy.

Image result for images of sculpted fountain in roosevelt park edison nj

Gathered under the globe are the forces of Light–to wit, Science, Industry, and (LOL) Education. Around the edge of the fountain, fleeing from the Light–are we getting a wee bit Zoroastrian here?–are the Forces of Darkness: Ignorance, Poverty, Disease, War… and, of course, Capitalist Greed.

Gimme that old Worldly Wisdom, it’s good enough for me!

Yes, the sane application of science and industry has lifted millions of people, world-wide, out of poverty and misery–much to the dismay of the Far Left, we might add. As for Education–well, that isn’t worth much anymore. Not after what they’ve done to it.

“Light Dispelling Darkness” is a relic of a time when things were bad and optimists reckoned times would be good again, if only they pulled the right strings and pressed the right buttons.

But except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it (Psalm 127:1).

‘A Lesson in Folly’ (2014)

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See the source image

They worked better when they had ammunition.

One of my Political Science professors had a thing about this “Dogger Bank Incident” of 1904, in which the Russian Navy, sailing off to go to war with Japan on the other side of the world, mistook the British North Sea fishing fleet for the Japanese Navy in disguise and shot it up.

(https://leeduigon.com/2014/04/26/a-lesson-in-folly/)

The men responsible for this insane decision, Prof. Mansbach pointed out, were experts and professionals–not escaped mental patients. The lesson: Be afraid, be very afraid, when the experts insist they know what they’re doing.

Without Jesus… Nothing

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of jesus christ as king of kings

You’d think there wouldn’t be much to fear, in reading dreary books for teens, and following the world’s news from the safety of one’s living room.

But lately it’s like looking down into the abyss with your toes hanging over the edge.

What we see there is complete and utter Godlessness, no Jesus Christ, no Light of the World: only darkness, and the lurid red light of creeping landfill fires.

This is an indescribably evil age. World War I, World War II, and the 20th century charnel houses of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were bloodier and much more violent. But in this age the devil is playing with seduction and seeing how much mileage he can get out of idiocy painted up as wisdom. He is trying to convince us that there is no God, there is no King of Kings: and not only that, but also that we don’t need a Savior anymore, we can do the job ourselves. To Satan this is much more hilarious than war.

Everything we have that is good, everything we hope for, everything we are or ever hope to be, all of it… is from the Father of lights. From the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable (I Corinthians 15:19).

Without Jesus we are nothing but prey–to disease, to accident, preyed upon by other human beings, preyed upon by sin (our own and others’), and hunted down in the end by the arch-predator, death: and there is no possibility of anything but that.

But we are not without Jesus Christ! How many times does He tell us He is with us, He does not abandon us? We have to believe Him. The Holy Spirit testifies in our hearts that God has not forgotten us, but we have to listen. And sometimes it’s hard. Like when you’re peering down into the abyss. And hearing those mocking voices float up from the darkness: No God, no Christ, no eternal life, no forgiveness of sins, you’re all alone, you’re all alone… Mocking voices whose owners wear sandwich boards proclaiming themselves the wisdom of this world.

It’s crap. The devil’s full of it.

Cling to Jesus, cling to God’s Word, cling to His promises. Don’t let go.

I don’t know if I’m saying what I want to say. It’s that the abyss is looking especially dark lately, and smelling especially foul, and I am conscious of some evil force, some counterfeit wisdom backed up by power and money, trying to pull us all down there into the darkness with it.

Believe God. Worship Jesus Christ the King of Kings, our only Savior.

Just do it.

‘Except the Lord Build the House…’

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Image result for images of building a house

In the course of my work for The Chalcedon Foundation, I’m reading a book about income inequality, the resulting lack of social mobility, and what to do about it. I can see that a great deal of hard work and research went into the writing of this book; and I can also see that what drives it is 100% pure worldly wisdom, devoid of any reference to God and showing no attempt at all to know His will.

Psalm 127 springs immediately to mind: Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it (v. 1).

This is one of the most profound verses in the Bible; and so, naturally, it’s also among the most ignored.

I plead guilty. When I sit down to work on one of my novels, I always pray for God’s guidance before I write a word. Well and good. But then I don’t even think of doing the same whenever I prepare to write a blog post or a column, to say nothing of more mundane tasks. It may be that it’s not really necessary to ask God for His guidance when I  wash the supper dishes–but what could it hurt? Meanwhile, it came to me today that I really ought to ask Him for His help in all my writing, not just the books: so I will do that, because I hope that all my writing is in His service. Even when I’m writing something just to get a laugh, because God blesses wholesome laughter.

We have been collecting and applying worldly wisdom all the time. We invent all sorts of jimcracks and procedures, and then never find the best way to use them. We heap up knowledge, yet grow no wiser. And so we in general, and the author I’m reading in particular, will not only fail to come up with the definitive answer to the problem we’re addressing, but we won’t even understand the nature of the problem–even if we think we do.

Wisdom sought apart from God will only take us so far, and never to where we need to go. For all our inventions, for all our worldly wisdom, the smartest people in the world just can’t get done any of those things they say they’re trying to do. And to make matters worse, a great deal of this wisdom is only foolishness. I think that explains, entirely, the condition of our universities.

There are an awful lot of houses getting built without the Lord’s advice–and an awful lot of houses falling down.

Everywhere you look.