Monday, April 30, 2018
598 - Old School
Spirituality Column #598
May 1, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Old School
By Bob Walters
Learning from the past, which is
important, doesn’t mean living in the past, which is devastating. Hope’s only direction is forward.
Humanity
has a long, long written history of what works and what doesn’t: what thinkers
have thought, dreamers have dreamt, schemers have schemed, statesmen have
wrought, and lovers have loved. The last
couple of centuries have seen astounding new technology provide marvelous
physical enhancements to the human experience while humanity’s broad contemporary
cultural thought-life and moral composure, perhaps now more than ever, has
stumbled dangerously and sadly off the well-documented path of truth and
righteousness. Forward, suddenly, looks
backwards.
The
document I’m thinking of, as you might expect, is the Bible, yet there is so
much more to a hopeful, trusting, and morally assured human spirit. The Bible is not an end in itself; the Bible
is the Holy Spirit’s gift to all humanity shining light on the path of God’s
truth and righteousness embodied in Jesus Christ. My view of the critical contemporary cultural
mistake being made all around us is that somehow all this technology has made
people think that human truth has changed.
It hasn’t.
Our hearts
remain sinful, our eyes lustful, and our passions self-directed while our minds
perpetually search for meaning, our souls yearn for peace, and our spirits
hunger for purpose. Technology provides
comfort but not coherence, and therein lies the confusion of our time: we do so
much and understand so little.
My own
intellectual comfort comes not so much from consuming cultural commentary (of some
value) and certainly not from watching mainstream news (of no value), but from knowing that smart humans have pondered the classic themes of
humanity for thousands of years. Love,
power, survival, politics, philosophy, theology, sexuality, societies, family,
clans, nations, warfare, arts, religion … feel free to add to the list … all
have massive, historical literary, deliberative, practical, and trustworthy
commentary. Yet how often the earnest student
asks: “Why study the old stuff?”
My answer is, “Because there is
truth in the old stuff.” Go anywhere you
want in literature: the Old Testament, Greek-Roman philosophers, Jesus, the New
Testament, the Church fathers, Cicero, Charlemagne, or Shakespeare. There is copious advice on the right and
wrong ways morally as it regards humanity and God’s promise in Christ.
It is telling, to me, that faith
and philosophy faltered at roughly the same time Darwin’s theory of Evolution
and scientific advancement and technological development became ascendant. Christianity has taken a horrible hit in culture,
probably because it contains the ultimate inconvenient truth which is that God
is sovereign, righteous, and active in this world that humans, in recent times,
believe they can run on their own.
When the teacher of Ecclesiastes –
the wise Solomon – says repeatedly, “Everything
is meaningless,” he is referring to errant human aspiration, accomplishment,
and arrogance that believes it supersedes God’s wisdom, glory, and
righteousness.
It is foolish to think we need to
“start over” intellectually and spiritually with every generation; it is wise
to use all that God has given us before to move ever toward Him.
Truly, “nothing is new under the sun.” Solomon knew that 3,000 years ago.
Walters
(rlwcom@aol.com) reminds all that we have not yet sinned
tomorrow.
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