Now these were more Noble-Minded than those in Thessalonica

In my last entry I spoke about Rene Descartes and what led him to temporarily discount all that he had previously learned to find something that he could use as a philosophical foundation in developing his view of the world.  I hope I'm not misunderstood in my examination of the ramifications of his mental exercise as being in agreement with what he had to say about sense perception.

Descartes believed that since it was possible that your senses could at times be mistaken that they shouldn't be trusted at all.  I think his approach over-emphasizes the regularity and power of illusions.  I disagree with him on this point.  I instead adhere to a "common sense" epistemology, that puts a basic trust in our body's 5 senses to give us mostly reliable information about the material world.  This of course doesn't mean that we can't at times be mistaken, anyone who has watched a magic show can recall the delight they felt by the magician's ability to make something appear differently than it really is.  But while our senses can at times be fooled by illusions it is those same senses that are able to discern the trick when given a different vantage point.  This is one of the reasons why God gave us 5 senses because  something may look like an alligator and even can be made to sound like an alligator but if you touch it and feel the smoothness of plastic instead of the coarseness of lizard skin then you are able to discern that this is in fact not an alligator but rather a fabricated replica of some kind.

With all that being said I think taking someone to a place where they acknowledge their own existence can then make for an interesting logical journey to a Holy God.  And the notion that everything we see and understand about the material world is in fact based upon Someone we cannot fully understand is truly a wonderful meditation.  While we can know what God has revealed about Himself in the Incarnation of Christ as contained in the Divinely Inspired and Inerrant Holy Scriptures, we cannot know everything there is to know about the Eternal, All-Powerful, All-Present and Unlimited God.

Its Time to Return to the Word

So disclaimers aside about Descartes I want to further draw a parallel between the current day and that of Descartes' time.  In the same way that Descartes' world was a time of confusion where different groups were striving for the minds of Europe, so we face a similar thing today.  Descartes retreated inwardly and only trusted himself.  Those of us within the faith, who have been chosen by God and have had Jesus reveal Himself to us need not retreat that far.

Rather we can find refuge in the Word of God.  Many may say "I'm a Christian, of course I believe in the Word."  But in a day where you are constantly challenged by articles, posts, discussions, movies, movements and organizations that have as their goal influencing your perspective on the world you don't just need to confess a belief that the Bible is the Word of God you need to give yourself to the study of this God-Inspired Holy Book.

Charles Spurgeon once said that "for every ten people that are willing to die for the Bible, there is only one who will actually read it."  And in these days for a Christian to not set his/herself intentionally to search the Scriptures for God's perspective on today's world is to position yourself to be swept up into some kind of error.  Many of course fail to do just that and as such there are 3 types of believers in today's world.

1) The Conventional Man - This individual is one who adopts the belief system of mainstream society.  The obvious motivation for following convention is that doing so will always ensure that you are kept in favor with the power brokers of the world.  It has been said that you have to "pay to play" and embracing the ideology of the mainstream is one way to do that.  But while many may follow this route without a second thought because they want the benefits of being on the good list of those who call the shots, embracing convention isn't necessarily done from a motive of attempting to secure one's status in society.  At times one will embrace convention with passion and fervor because they are deeply persuaded that these beliefs are right.  This is the great tragedy of nominal Christianity.  Our failure to go to the Word first and regularly in regards to all of the questions and challenges of life makes it so that our belief system is given to us by whatever is popular in our day.  We embrace the status quo because we don't have the hunger to seek God for Truth.  And since we have embraced the zeitgeist of our day we become more and more convinced of it from all of the confirmations of these ideas that we see regularly from the influence centers of mainstream life.

2) The Contrarian -  This individual is one who questions everything that is new.  This is something that can mark us as we grow older but isn't necessarily connected with age.  We don't like and can't understand why people are acting the way they are and when we were their age things were way different.  The contrarian doesn't reject every aspect of mainstream society because much of what we see in the world has been that way for a long time.  There are shared values in many ways but usually the point of contention is with something that is new.  And the contrarian will reject it almost simply because it is new.

3) The Berean - This individual is one who seeks to funnel all of his understanding of the world through his relationship with God.  If there is something that he doesn't understand about society he prays and studies Scripture to understand both what God says about it and how God wants him to live in light of that.  If something comes up that is new again he seeks God for wisdom.  The Bereans modeled this in Acts 17:10-12.  They were confronted with something new from this out-of-town speaker who was challenging their understanding of their religion and worldview.  Rather than just accepting the trendy new spirituality or rejecting it on the principle that they weren't raised that way they turned to the Scriptures.  The Bible calls them "noble-minded" to indicate that their act of filtering all new influences through the Word of God is a higher and more Heaven-ward level of thinking.  From this place of Heaven-born thought they were able to receive the Gospel because what is new is not necessarily bad if it is in fact from God.

The Bereans recognized something that we might not always see.  They saw that ultimately every person is the product of the influences that have shaped them.  We didn't arrive at our beliefs by sitting in a cave pondering existence.  And even if we actually went to a cave and thought about the world the content of our thoughts would be comprised of how we felt about everything we had learned up to that point.  In other words we would just be sorting through the various influences we have been exposed to and attempting to choose the one that we think is the best.

Its actually a sad commentary of philosophy in general unless you understand that God is working in the world.  He is actively drawing men and women to Himself (John 12:32) both through the ministry of the Church and in supernatural ways that aren't connected to the agency of men.  We didn't find truth but rather Truth found us.  And it happened when God opened our hearts to the Gospel and we saw the beauty of Jesus and put our faith in Him.  And we recognize that in the dizzying fray that is the noise of this world - where everything and everyone is seeking to mold our opinions on something - that we have been chosen by God.  And since we have come to know Him we should seek to funnel our understanding back through what we know is good.  The holy, pure, righteous and true Word of God - the Bible.

Help us to always return to Your Word oh God.  Amen.