“The simple believes everything but the prudent gives thought to his steps. One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool is reckless and careless.” Proverbs 14:15-16
Socrates once famously said that the unexamined life wasn’t one worth living. In this, the Bible would agree but for reasons unexamined by even Socrates. You see, Satan is a liar and was one from the beginning (John 8:44; Genesis 3:4) so it only makes sense that the basis of his assault and the key to his power is in duplicity, chicanery and every kind of falsehood. That’s his way and it’s why we live in a world riddled and shot through with half-truths, sophistry and out-right lies.
The simple, as the Sage defines him, is the one that’s drifting along in life. He’s uncommitted and refuses to see that he’s in a war zone. True, it’s easy to fall for this basic deception since we don’t always see with our own eyes the deprivations and destruction this war brings. Often we’re enveloped by worldly wealth. Indeed, we have food and drink (plenty of coffee!) and health and all this opulence can lead us to think that all is well. But the battlefield is moral and philosophical…it’s in the realm of ideas and belief and the simple minded who wanders around will soon be a casualty, just as this verse warns.
The strongholds of the Enemy are his unholy trinity of idolatry, all aligned against Christ. What are they? In our time they are the all-powerful state, the media/education establishment that teaches and disseminates the lies and propaganda of the idol-state, and the lusts of the flesh. It’s interesting to note how the American government in our time encourages sexual sin (in particular through abortion) and every perversion but will never allow the name of Jesus Christ to be mentioned in a school. The simple, of course, never bother to notice this appalling contradiction for the all too obvious reason that they’re too busy “getting a living” or “living it up” and “having fun.”
A short examination of the lies that we accept so freely is in order since they define the spirit of the age. And they’re so obvious and vacuous that the Enemy defends them with all his power, building elaborate strongholds of deceit and persecution around them.
The first is that there is no God and that He’s been replaced by science. The school system is okay with American Christians believing in God just so long as they don’t take Him too seriously. God, the secular state says, can’t be the ultimate predication of all reasoning. That job belongs to science, they say. Faith is okay as a personal virtue but it can’t be used outside of the church. Catch the lie in this? It’s so subtle that you know the Enemy is behind it. This whole idea is a philosophy, not science. If science is the ultimate tool of arriving at truth, how did we arrive at that truth since science can’t test philosophical and moral arguments? This is modern America’s greatest con. Science is a method of arriving at facts; theology and philosophy provide the context for facts, i.e., truth.
Furthermore, Christianity isn’t against science; in fact, it alone provides the logical basis for it. This probably surprises you, I know. It’s a fantastical claim to modern ears. But consider that science is based on the law of contradiction as well as the uniformity of nature. Modern scientific theory is awash in “chance theory” even though it depends totally upon the fact that material laws (like gravity and so on) will be the same tomorrow as they are today. Variables will change, but not the laws themselves.
Plus, modern Big Bang cosmology (that the whole universe exploded into being out of nothing) is unscientific and illogical. Where did the material come from that exploded into being? Unbelievers raise an objection to the truth that God is eternal and has the power of being in Himself. But that’s not illogical…mysterious, yes, but not contradictory. What is contradictory is that matter, whose nature is to be caused, existed eternally and then mindlessly exploded out of nothing and for no reason and that this explosion created order, not disorder. Since when do explosions create things? And how does that account for things like meaning, morality, personhood, and love? Did love explode into existence or is is a myth we tell ourselves? Scientists today know quite a bit of true facts (and thank God for that!) but refuse to acknowledge that their core beliefs are contradictory. In all, they stand on Christian principles in order to do science all while denying the obvious.
Then the world tells us that each of us has to find “our own truth.” But isn’t that someone else’s truth? How do we know this is true and if we accept it, haven’t we violated that belief right from the start?
Next, we’re told there are no absolutes in the world. This is quite hilarious and anyone who proclaims it has moved from the realm of the simple minded to the fool. The very statement is an absolute! Those that claim there are no absolutes are the wolves among the sheep and every day in America tens of thousands of those ravenous wolves teach our children this deadly nonsense. And the thing to know about lies is that they always contradict each other at some point (dialectical tension within false worldviews). If there are no absolutes, as they claim, then how is science to be trusted after all? Didn’t they say that “we believe in science”? Isn’t that an absolute?
Ah! What they want, what they’re counting on, is in you not paying close enough attention to the con to notice the sleight of hand. They mean that there are no moral absolutes even though there are material ones discoverable and knowable through science. But this is a moral absolute hiding in plain sight. The statement, “there are no absolutes” is uttered in absolutist language. It’s meant to be morally binding. Many Christians are busy searching Scripture and the headlines for the anti-christ to come and they miss him hiding in plain sight. He’s the controller of the system that lies and pressures us all to believe and conform to those lies. Our education system is the greatest enemy of God that Satan has raised up in centuries.
In Romans 12 we’re commanded not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewal of our minds. We’re to do this by testing everything to see if it conforms to Biblical principles. We’re supposed to be like the Bereans in the book of Acts that took everything they heard and applied Scripture to it. The simple don’t do that. They assume that they’re actually uninvolved in the great drama of history, not playing for either side.
And this brings us to the greatest lie of the age, which is that you can be neutral in regard to God. The manifestation of this lie is in the false belief that everyone’s goal is to “be happy.” You hear parents say it all the time. “I just want my child to be happy.” It doesn’t occur to us, being simple, that this is loaded with moral and theological content.
All of us have grown up under the moral measuring stick of “personal happiness” in one way or another. No one bothers to ask, “by what standard are we to gauge what happiness means?” Since we don’t ask this all-important question, the default setting of our mind is humanism – that is, each person is the standard of good and evil. Is it any wonder, then, that Adam and Eve took of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? If one’s highest good in life is their personal happiness and they are personally the standard of right and wrong since God doesn’t exist, then it only follows that each of us is god.
The simple can’t see the incredible lie at the heart of their education, chewing up their mind and soul like the cancer it is. American society indoctrinates us to believe that there are no moral absolutes, science is the supreme and final standard of truth, and that our goal is to be as happy as can be, given the circumstances. But we can’t use science to discover what makes us happy, so we’re left with “doing the best we can” and “finding our own path” and all that gibberish. This is why we’ve seen amazing technological advances in our time and, yet, the simultaneous the rise of astonishing foolishness. Without God as the premise of our thoughts, and His word as the final standard of authority in ethical issues, we may grow in technical knowledge (as we have) but never have wisdom.
Proverbs teaches us that a person can know many technical points of interest, and be magnificently skilled in some trade or another, and yet be utterly foolish. This is a perfect definition of our culture today and its happened because we’ve taught ourselves and children a theology/philosophy that isn’t. We can prove the point easily by the simple fact that to disagree with that statement is itself a philosophical act.
In all, this is our Father’s world. He’s a righteous God and His created world, including His image-bearers, men and women, will never be able to escape His divine nature. This is why, no matter how hard we try, we can never escape the questions of meaning and morality. And this is why we can’t be neutral. We must all decide; we’re all theologians and philosophers. We must all answer, once and for all, who/what is ultimate and whom do I serve? We are either with God though faith in Christ, depending upon and submitting to His word, or we will go the way of self-worship and idolatry.
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