Thought for Today
Psalm 37:30 The mouths of the righteous utter wisdom, and their tongues speak justice.
Proverbs 1:20 Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice.
Acts 17:18 Also some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him. Some said, "What does this babbler want to say?" Others said, "He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities." (This was because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.)
1 Corinthians 1:20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
Colossians 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.
Last night I watched the last segment of a documentary about Henry David Thoreau on PBS. In case you are not familiar with him, Thoreau was a transcendentalist philosopher, a protégé of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thoreau is probably best known for Walden and Civil Disobedience. Thoreau was a writer, philosopher, public speaker, surveyor and polymath.
Many years ago, in my youth, for a short period of time I was fascinated by the writings of Thoreau and even more so by Emerson. I have never considered myself a transcendentalist, “A transcendentalist is someone who adheres to a philosophical and spiritual movement emphasizing the inherent goodness of people and nature, self-reliance, and the primacy of intuition and spiritual insight over materialism and societal conventions.” (Copilot Search)
Engineers are not much given to philosophy and/or spiritual movements, much less to spiritual insight. Although, most of the engineers with whom I worked over my career were deeply religious. Engineers are generally quite conservative; we don’t flaunt societal conventions or materialism.
I never took any philosophy courses in college until I was in seminary. About the midpoint of my seminary studies, I transferred to a different seminary. My new seminary did require that we take at least one philosophy course. I took a class titled “Christian Worldview.” The professor was a great teacher and lecturer and the class was truly both fun and eye-opening. One of the more interesting things was that most of the students were Presbyterian and the professor was a Pentecostal minister. We were also introduced to concepts and ideas from a wide spectrum of Christian thought and faith traditions.
How are we as Christians called to approach and understand philosophy? In Athens, Paul contended with “Epicurean and Stoic philosophers.” They accused Paul of being “a proclaimer of foreign divinities.” Have you even been confronted by unbelieves who mocked and derided your faith?
I must admit that over the years I have confronted such unbelievers. Even when they were unfamiliar with, “Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” they would essentially deride faith on the basis of its being unscientific and not subject to mathematical proof. Such accusations, while true, are not convincing, since few of us, scientists or not, have ever seen an atom. No one has ever seen gravity. The only folks who have ever seen air live in places so polluted no one really wants to even be there.
Christian, Jew, Moslem or atheist, all of us certainly have “the conviction of things not seen.” I believe that a life without “the assurance of things hoped for” would be a life devoid of all dreams of a better life, here and now or in eternity. Even if one does not believe in eternity as anything beyond a mathematical limit in calculus, a life without the assurance of the things for which we hope seems dreary and bleak.
I am not “someone who adheres to a philosophical and spiritual movement emphasizing the inherent goodness of people and nature, self-reliance, and the primacy of intuition and spiritual insight over materialism and societal conventions.” I am not a transcendentalist. I am a Christian. My life is filled with “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” And, I am aways assured that “Ephesians 2:8 by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—
Stay safe, believe and have faith, trust God,
Pastor Ray