Mind Being “Saved” Session # 4 of 10.
The Curse of Genius, Putting the Babel back in Babylon.
|
| |||||||||||||||
 |
Rocket launch NASA (Adobe Stock)
“Then they said, “Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky…But the Lord came down to look at the city and the tower the people were building. “Look!” he said. “The people are united and they all speak the same language…Come, let’s [1] go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other.” Genesis 11:4-7
“If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their own craftiness;” and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” I Corinthians 3:18-20
No Longer A Bystander is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
“To anyone I’ve offended, I just want to say, I reinvented electric cars and I’m sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?” Elon Musk, Saturday Night Live, May 8, 2021. [2]
Who needs a brain?
There is no doubt, some people are smarter than others. Elon Musk, Asperger’s and all, is brilliant. His brain has raw speed combined with great capacity. The brain is a marvel of creation, but it also is only necessary to terrestrials and fish. God the Father and The Holy Spirit don’t have brains, they don’t need them, they, not having bodies, have no place to put them. Jesus however, does, but of course he needed one for incarnation. I recall telling a close friend during a golf match that God didn’t have a brain. He stepped away from his shot, “What!” he stood looking at me with a puzzled look on his face. Intelligence did not originate in the material realm. In essence, God is immaterial, He is knowledge, information, the logos: word, the truth behind all being. [3]
I also know from experience that the human brain declines, gets slower, diseased, and finally medical science will begin to study it, tinker with it, and attempt to keep it going. But eventually it dies, our bodies die, but we don’t. Ok, back to earth. Humans with big fast brains and the egos to go with them accomplish great things. They skip grades in school, they win spelling bees, and until recently, they got into the best schools, were included in the power elite and usually made a fortune in the process. You add to this, as in Elon Musk’s case, an abusive childhood that erased his human empathy, a relentless drive to reach a specific goal, e.g. populating Mars and outer space with billions of people, essentially, with his brain, saving humankind. He has gotten into his lightening quick cortex that he will not be defeated—he will triumph over everyone. He will smoke Bill Gates or anyone else who disagrees with him. He will fire everyone he can’t control—who will not bow to him—except his sons. He will make Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink and return free speech to Western Civilization on the way to saving the late great planet earth.[4] I have great affection for this genius, but he is trying to build a tower into the heavens and God will bring confusion and stop Elon and any other highly competent genius from self-destruction. God stops them because he loves us, because if he doesn’t stop us, we will incinerate ourselves, and it will indeed become the late, great, planet earth. Musk is not unique in that every person on earth will use what power and ability they have to achieve their goals. And many don’t have the restraint or good intentions of Elon Musk. He wants to help others. Many dumber egomaniacs have malevolent intentions. In fact, given the right circumstances, every human on earth would build their own tower into the heavens.
A fool or a fool for Christ? Decide.
St Paul on the road to Damascus to persecute Christians was stopped in his tracks. Ignacio de Ries (1612 - 1661) Adobe Stock
 |
“If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their own craftiness;” and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” I Corinthians 3:18-20
Have you ever thought, “Boy, that was clever of me?” I must confess, yes, many a time. It brings hubris, conceit, sometimes guilt. That is the way we work, get used to it. I will not stain the page with my examples. But as a great hymn says, “He took all my guilty stains.” [5]
Rather than continue depending on our brain power and our innovations, we must listen to the Apostle Paul, another genius, but one who got knocked off his horse, given a good chastizing and rebuking by God, and blinded for three days—who recommends becoming a fool. Yes, a fool! When you choose Jesus as your Rabbi, and become his apprentice, walking in his ways, and in his dust—You have chosen the foolishness of God and have rejected the wisdom of the geniuses of this cosmos. Anything else is futile, God laughs in his heaven at our attempts to run the world.
Being a fool for Christ doesn’t preclude benefitting from the genius of the world. Yes, we will take the pills, new knee joints, hips, and medical wonders. We will fly in the planes and drive the cool cars. But we will never make the mistake that any of it lasts for long or that we are in any way in control. If you don’t believe your life is a mystery, a puzzle, then you are not paying attention. “God knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” That should give any human pause. Every culture has a way of saying, “Only God knows.” It means at some point we get on our knees before the ultimate reality, Christ on the cross. God dying for me. And why did it need to be Jesus? I was just telling my personal physician during a very human moment that he didn’t really have the final answers to my health and well-being. He can look at the science and he can talk with me, but unless he could somehow get into my person, my body, and live for a few weeks, would you understand the best for me. That is what incarnation is—God becoming one of us, living with us and in us. God had to do it for it to be authentic. It had to be his blood, his life, otherwise, hanging on a cross is just another person dying. So, drop the genius thing, start following Jesus today.
Bill Hull
February 2024
No comments:
Post a Comment