Folly Of The Earthly Erudite

    It is a formidable feat for an intelligent young person to go through the modern college system and come out with unshaken faith in the God of the Bible.  There are a plethora of professors who are so convinced that God is a myth and the Bible a fable that they unceasingly make assertions (sometimes implicitly,  sometimes explicitly) with the express purpose of debunking all credibility in the Bible.  To make matters more difficult, it is usually the doctorate-holding professors (the more intelligent, and therefore, those lent more credence) that iterate these slanders.

    One employed tactic that I have witnessed is to exploit apparent injustices of the Bible.  One professor of mine made a claim that the Bible condones slavery, for example.  While in the Old Testament there were instructions regarding the treatment and/or liberty of slaves, it is not any more condoned by the Bible than polygamy or killing.  The fullness of the true will of God was not realized until the time of the New Testament.  It was the hardness of men's hearts that necessitated God's commandments along those lines, but from the beginning it was not meant to be so.  In short,  the only people who have ever made such accusations against the uprightness of the Bible are they who have not read the Bible in its entirety.  Those who have read all of it find no confusion in the state of things past and God's abhorrence of the sin of slavery.  To pick out a part of the Bible without consideration of its counterparts is like leaving off the negating clause of a sentence.  The entire meaning is misconstrued to represent the opposite of the intended message.

    Another method of calling the Bible into question which is often used is the pointing out of alleged contradictions in the Bible.  I have heard so many of these through the years and have yet to find one that can stand the test of scrutiny.  Rather than go into the many examples I have heard throughout my scholastic life, I will simply make an offer that if any can find even one contradiction in the entire Bible, please present it to me and I will admit the error of my misplaced faith if there is no reasonable and clear solution.  Those who make these claims in a setting of higher learning have only ever proven to me the depths of their prejudiced, unyielding affinity for ignorance.

    Perhaps the most difficult storm to weather in a ship made of faith is the atheist science professor.  I have witnessed these men and women exhibit some of the most malicious calumny seasoned with hard bitterness against the Bible than I have scarcely witnessed from anyone else toward anything else.  Science is knowledge, and yet so much is taught as    known that is really only believed, and therefore NOT (in the strictest sense) science.

I have seen scientists exhibit more faith in their incomplete data and unprovable theories than I have seen Christians display faith in their own God.  And the latter is the only one that claims to have faith.

    Students, be informed and apprized: the principal point that an atheist/evolutionist will use to disparage the veracity of the Bible is the age of the Earth.

• Evolutionists claim that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old
• The Bible's timeline makes the Earth out to be about 6 thousand years old

There are countless angles at which this claim of the Bible is lampooned.

1. Fossils
2. The distance of the continents
3. The rock layering of Earth's crust

    All of the above, among others, are used as points of discrediting the Biblical authority.  Most of these are explained by the great flood of Genesis.

1. The ideal condition for the creation of a fossil is quick burial, copious amounts of water, and lots of pressure.  All these and more would be the case in a great flood.  That is why as we speak, fossils are not being made.  They do not continue to be found younger and younger than the previously found.  Fossils indicate Biblical authenticity.
2. Pangea is the name we ascribe to the giant, united landmass surrounded by ocean in which form the world was created.  It is a fact that the continents are drifting apart at the approximate rate of human toenail growth.  At this rate, the continents could not have drifted so far apart as they are in the span of 6 thousand years.  Yet the history of the flood accounts for it.  In the Bible, God is said to have "destroyed the world" by water.  It says that when the flood came, the fountains of the deep were broken up.  It seems therefore that the Earth was literally destroyed, that is to say, broken up and reformed.  The Earth after the flood was not the same as the Earth before the flood.
3. Needless to say, a worldwide flood which ravaged the Earth so, also made deposits of unparalleled proportions, which account for rock layering in the magnitude and fashion in which it is now laid.

    Notwithstanding the countless and interminable arguments that can be bandied about on both sides, all the discrepancies regarding the age of the Earth can be explained with one simple concept:

God created everything with age.

    Has no one noticed that God did not create a baby from the dust of the Earth?  He created man.  He created Adam with age and Eve likewise.  He created fully developed animals and plants, yet are we to suppose that the Earth itself was created without any intrinsic age?  It is indeed an unorthodox concept, and yet no one seems to have problems with the concept that God created a fully grown man with intrinsic age when his actual Earth age was zero.  The Earth itself is the same.  It and indeed the whole of the universe were created with age.

This removes that subject of ridicule which is so pleasurably ascribed to the Bible as its folly by the ignorant who claim erudition.

    Philosophers beware the worldly wise!  If your philosophies have carried you to any place, pray God that it should have taken you to the following revelation: 

• Reasoning often cycles in the form of a circle.  Much thought and enlightenment averts one's opinion toward the reciprocal.  However, further education and simple sense coupled with experience and wisdom often enlighten again one's opinion back toward its primary disposition.

    Beware the intelligent.  Beware the learned.  Indeed they may have more terrestrial perspicacity than you, but this, a true philosopher must concede, in no way gives them a greater monopoly on the truth, as they may be one more revelation away from taking the next 180 degree turn in their cycle of wisdom back to the point at which they tried so poignantly to dissuade others.

The Bible itself characterizes such a philosophy: 

• "The foolishness of God is wiser than men...not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise."

Love

How can one classify love?

1. Love is not merely an emotion - emotions are unstable; love is constant.
2. Love is not merely a condition - conditional "love" is called infatuation.
3. Love is not merely an action - actions can be feigned.

Love is the motive that produces actions and emotions.  Because of this, love is at times present where emotions are not.  

How then can one classify love? 

•  Love is a state of the heart.
• It is best likened to madness.

This madness is nondiscriminatory of class, creed, or merit.  If we did not know this as a human race, no cliche would ever have suggested that love is blind.

Best advice on love: Your output should exceed your input.

One has a better chance of finding true happiness in death than in a life devoid of love.

•  How do you know when you love someone?
• When their happiness becomes synonymous and inextricable from yours.

Love is one of only three things in life that have the potential to make the human being experience every single emotion.  The other two are music and stories.  But the greatest of these...needs not to be stated.

Shame

1. Shame is the gateway to grace.
2.  Shame is the most effective, efficient, and sure means of positive change.
3. A day of shame is worth a lifetime of instruction.

    Shame is a good thing for bad people.  It is the direct result of an accurate reflection, and nothing more.  Good people cannot obtain it unless there be a departing from that which is good.

• The best remedy for shame is redemption.  Redemption is a process.
1. Repentance is in the mouth of the offender.
2. Forgiveness is in the hand of the victim.
3. Redemption is in the eye of the public.

• The best preventative measure against shame is to live by the following rule:
• Do not do that which you would undo if caught.

Knowing vs. Understanding

Everything there is to know about life can be learned two different ways:

1. Watching
2. Doing

Another way to put it is: 1. Observation or 2. Participation

Children learn most things by watching.  Adults learn most things by doing. 

Which is preferable?

That depends upon what is to be learned.  The first fact that needs to be stated is that learning can be divided into two categories because learning can occur in two different places of the human psyche (psyche being used by its 19th century definition: soul). 

• The first location in which learning takes place is the mind.
• This is called knowledge
• This is acquired through watching

• The second location in which learning takes place is the heart.
• This is called understanding
• This is acquired through doing

The second is far more powerful as it serves to inform its predecessor as it is simultaneously educated.  One can know something without understanding it, but it is not possible to understand something without knowing it.

1. Friendship: If you know someone, you can tell me what he or she is going to do.  If you understand someone, you can tell me why he or she is going to do it.
2. Love:  I knew a great deal about love before I ever felt it because I had heard old people speak of it in the most grandiose terms.  I had always gotten the message that it was indescribable, but why was it so?  It was so because most of the aspects of love can not simply be known, they must be understood - experienced, felt.  That nature of love cannot be taught.  It can only be learned through "doing."
3. History: One thing that can never be fully understood is the past.  Why do many students struggle with finding interest in history?  It is because history can only be known by observation, not participation.  Without understanding, there is an emotional dearth that creates a chasm separating history from emotional attachment.  This is why this author, for one, is a skeptic of revisionist history.  There is an old British saying, "Nothing is so false as modern history."

Is it better then, to learn all things by doing?  Certainly not.

Many have been the times that I have been asked how I don't know if I'll like something until I try it, usually referring to liquor, substances, or any number of debauched and sensual vices.  My answer has generally been, "Have you ever allowed a lawn mower to run over you?  How do you know you won't like it unless you try it?"

There is an innumerable number of ills that can be averted if one were so inclined to learn through observation before participation.  All the worst examples are easily available to our consideration before we partake of any activity that could lead our lives to shipwreck.

It should be the purpose of our lives to know and recognize the wrong and to do and understand the right and good.  Observe and know first.  Then allow prudence to dictate whether it should be understood or not.

The soul is comprised of the mind and heart just as wisdom is comprised of knowledge and understanding.

Knowledge is in the mind.  Understanding is in the heart.  Wisdom is in the soul.