"No religion of this world, no ethics, culture or law can improve the fallen human spirit. Nothing from a man can return him to a spiritual state". Watchman Nee, Chinese evangelist
Humanity has made great strides forward in many areas of life but rarely, if ever, has it left the ground. It does not want to. Endlessly self-interested, the gifted minds throughout history have relied on their own ingenuity to resolve conflicts, cure diseases, make new technological and scientific advances and scale the numerous heights of philosophical branches.
Philosophy, from the Greek 'philosophia' or 'love of wisdom', is central to the Bible but biblical philosophy is unloved by most people. It is wisdom from above. The Bible teaches that God created the universe - all that is and all that exists, visible and invisible - with wisdom. This wisdom is personified in the Book of Proverbs chapter 8 and is described as eternal. We are invited to live our lives in this wisdom with wisdom herself 'calling out' to us but her calls mostly go unheeded. She remains largely unloved.
Man's problem is sin and sin, as defined by Nee, is mankind deciding "what is good, wise and intellectual according to his own idea." On the other hand, biblical wisdom says this, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths" (Proverbs 3:5-6). The genius of Jesus is that He did precisely this: He trusted in the Lord with all His heart and did not rely on His own insight. He acknowledged God in all His ways and let God direct His steps.
People are shocked by the notion that God has any claim whatsoever on their lives even though we were created by Him. He gave us our lives to spend but we are responsible for how we spend them. We can squander our lives, invest them in temporary things and fleeting interests or we can invest them in God. One way or another, our lives will be spent and we would be wise to spend them on His terms. The great Scottish preacher of the 19th century, George MacDonald, articulated the Christian ethos perfectly by saying, "The one principle of hell is 'I am my own'". To be "not our own" and to be for God's glory is to truly live. Things go wrong when we live only for ourselves.
So what is wrong with our world? G.K. Chesterton once answered that question by saying, "What's wrong with the world? I am". After World War II, U.S. Army General Omar Bradley said, "We have men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom but have rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner."
As in Bradley's day, our politics are lowbrow. Our desires are self-serving. Our ethics are situational and often void of personal responsibility. We justify greed and envy by disguising our wants as entitlements. What passes for wisdom is often just indulgence. Despite all of man's efforts of good progress, there are still and always have been wars going on somewhere and people still die of sickness every day. Speculation aside, scientific knowledge is mostly confined to our planet. When our rockets blast off into outer space, who can even say what "up" is beyond Earth's gravitational pull? And who has ever really proven Plato's "forms" or Aristotle's "accidents"?
We need to get back to the Nazarene peasant who personified the wisdom from above, bringing it down to us. Wisdom is accepting Him and acknowledging that we cannot help ourselves by ourselves. The reverence of the Lord is the beginning of all true wisdom and it's a fact that while there are many counterfeits, there are no legitimate alternatives.
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