The thinkers of our time understand well the predicament that the philosophy of human autonomy has created for us. If we are our own god and there is really nothing outside of the self, then there is no purpose outside of our frail choices, nothing to sustain us or hope in beyond the precarious perch of our personal preferences. One of my favorite popular philosophers is the filmmaker Woody Allen. He understands the nature of this predicament well and articulates it with his characteristic wit. Listen to how he describes our situation:
“More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. I speak, by the way, not with any sense of futility, but with a panicky conviction of the absolute meaninglessness of existence that could easily be misinterpreted as pessimism. It is not. It is merely a healthy concern for the predicament of modern man.”
If there nothing outside of our choices, there is nothing to hope in outside of ourselves. This just doesn’t work for us. Such despair makes us less than rational, less than human. We were made for something bigger than ourselves.
Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.”
“The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. ‘Vanity of vanities,’ says the Preacher, ‘vanity of vanities! All is vanity.’”
~ Ecclesiastes 1: 1-2
Woody Allen and the Despair of Modern Man
Kingdom Perspective: Sin & Grace Series (transcript only, no audio)
June 16, 2016 • Don Willeman
Striking at the Root of Evil
July 28, 2016 • Don Willeman
It was Henry David Thoreau who said, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” What a true and profound observation! Our problem as a human race is deep and serious. It cannot be overcome by a mere resolution to do better for God. No, our problem goes to the root of who we are, our heart. Listen to the prophet Jeremiah: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it” (Jeremiah 17:9)? Worse yet Jeremiah goes on to say that the Lord searches the heart and tests the mind. In other words, our sick and deceitful hearts cannot be hidden from God. We can’t pull the proverbial wool over God’s eyes, fooling Him as to our real problem. So what are we to do? Well, if we are the problem and that problem goes to our core, then there is nothing we can do. What we need is intervention. What we need is for the divine surgeon to perform a heart transplant on us. And this is exactly what the prophet suggests. Listen to verse 14: “Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me and I will be saved” (Jeremiah 17:14). God doesn’t just demand that we do better. No, He performs a one-sided rescue. He sends Jesus the savior/surgeon to single-handedly strike at the root of our problem giving us by His grace a new heart. Has He done this for you? Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “And He was saying, ‘That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.’” ~ Mark 7: 20-23
Fine Line Between Normal and Monster
July 26, 2016 • Don Willeman
An article that I read recently in The New York Times asked the question, “Where’s the line between ‘normal’ and ‘monster?’” It cited the infamous study that had been done at Stanford University back in 1971 in which researchers simulated a prison, randomly assigning 24 students to be either guards or prisoners for two weeks. Shockingly, “Within days the ‘guards’ had become swaggering and sadistic …placing bags over the prisoners’ heads, forcing them to strip naked” and perform humiliating acts. Why did this happen? How could these otherwise “normal” people so quickly become such “abnormal” monsters? Maybe the reason is that our normally “acceptable” behavior is generally, only a thin veil of socially-engineered “goodness.” In other words, our behavior is often only as deep as our social setting. Change the setting and the socially acceptable people suddenly become socially deviant. This, of course, means that the line between the good people and the evil people is thinner than we would like to admit. Interestingly, the article went on to quote Hannah Arendt’s phrase the “banality of evil,” which she used to describe the very averageness of the Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann. You see, it is easy to put ourselves in a different moral category from the worst of the Nazis. If all that separates me from Eichmann is socialization, however, then before God we’re all in the same boat. Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” ~ Jeremiah 17:9
The Worst Imprisonment
July 21, 2016 • Don Willeman
The worst thing that God could do to a person in this life is to withdraw His gracious presence and give one over to the corruption of his own heart. In Romans 1 when St. Paul explains the judgment of God upon those that reject the communication of God in nature, he repeats three times the nature of that judgment. And what is it? Three times the phrase is repeated: God gave them over. And to what did God give them over? To the lust of their own heart, to their own dishonorable passions, and to their own corrupt mind. According to the Bible, God judges us in this life by giving our corrupt desires free reign to run their course and eat us alive. It was the late, great preacher Jonathan Edwards who said that there is enough “hell” in the human heart to consume a man if only God would cease to restrain it. If we reject the gracious instruction of God, we are destined to become who we choose to be. We are destined to become those divorced from the beauty and gracious protection of God. We mustn’t think that we are escaping God’s judgment when it appears that we get away with our sin. God may be allowing us to become our own trap. In the haunting words of John Milton: “Thou art become (O worst imprisonment!) the dungeon of thyself.” Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “Why do You stand afar off, O Lord? Why do You hide Yourself in times of trouble?In pride the wicked hotly pursue the afflicted; let them be caught in the plots which they have http://devised.for the wicked boasts of his heart’s desire, and the greedy man curses and spurns the http://lord.the wicked, in the haughtiness of his countenance, does not seek Him. All his thoughts are, ‘There is no God.’” ~ Psalm 10: 1-4