we sure are stupid (but we don't have to stay that way)

The Word for today:
Jeremiah 8:4-9:22

mark this: Jeremiah 9:10-14 --
I will weep and wail for the mountains and take up a lament concerning the desert pastures.
They are desolate and untraveled, and the lowing of cattle is not heard.
The birds of the air have fled and the animals are gone.
What man is wise enough to understand this?
Who has been instructed by the LORD and can explain it?
Why has the land been ruined and laid waste like a desert that no one can cross?
The LORD said, "It is because they have forsaken my law, which I set before them; they have not obeyed me or followed my law. Instead, they have followed the stubbornness of their hearts." (Jeremiah 9:10-14)

We sure are stupid.

But God doesn't want us to stay that way. He intends for us to gain wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. But he wants us to approach knowledge in the right way, or it can kill us.

The story of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil has been interpreted to mean all kinds of things. Many of the interpretations are, well, stupid.

One interpretation is that God didn't want Adam and Eve to know the difference between right and wrong. That way they could remain in blissful infantile oblivion, forever.

The Tree of Knowledge means a lot, but it doesn't mean that.

The fundamental meaning of the Tree is that there is a way--God's Way--to knowledge, and there is a way to knowledge that is not God's way. God wanted Adam and Eve to learn everything. But God knew that the pursuit of knowledge outside of the parameters of his Word is a self-deluding dead end. Adam and Eve stepped outside those parameters.

Science, rightly understood, is the study of God's hand--the hand which shaped creation.
Theology, rightly understood, is the study of God's heart--the heart which went to the cross to achieve our re-creation.

But "scientists" don't generally meet in the morning to pray for God's guidance and wisdom as they seek to unlock the mysyteries of the natural realm. They skip prayer and go straight to the test tube or the telescope.

The Word of God tells us that if we acknowledge him in all our ways, and lean not on our own understanding, he will direct our paths (1)--towards knowledge, towards peace. But we have not acknowledged God in our pursuit of knowledge. We have turned, every one, to his own way (2).

Thus we have managed to get further and further away from knowledge and peace. We have put ourselves in harm's way, playing with fire that we cannot control. Aren't we great. Aren't we grand.

*****

They tell me there is enough energy locked inside the atoms in a barrel of water to power a city or even a country for a year, without pollution. But the way to safely unleash that power has been hidden from us, because we have tried to find it without regard to God. Although He made the atom, and is the only one who knows how to unlock its bonds, "science" doesn't think to ask him.

So we are forced to buy a barrel of oil, instead. It's expensive, it pollutes, and its procurement is fraught with dangerous geopolitical repercussions. And it sure won't power a city or even a car for very long.

*****

The earth and the animals and all of nature were subjected to defilement when man, in the Garden, stopped listening to the voice of God and listened to another voice instead.

There's a sad reminder of that in our reading today:

I will weep and wail for the mountains and take up a lament concerning the desert pastures.
They are desolate and untraveled, and the lowing of cattle is not heard.
The birds of the air have fled and the animals are gone.
What man is wise enough to understand this?
Who has been instructed by the LORD and can explain it?
Why has the land been ruined and laid waste like a desert that no one can cross?
The LORD said, "It is because they have forsaken my law, which I set before them; they have not obeyed me or followed my law. Instead, they have followed the stubbornness of their hearts." (Jeremiah 9:10-14)

*****

There was just one tree to avoid in the Garden. Every other tree was life-sustaining.

But sin denuded the Garden. Now there is only one life-sustaining tree:
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed (3).

We sure are stupid. But we don't have to stay that way.

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(1) Proverbs 3:5-6; (2) Isaiah 53:6; (3) 1 Peter 2:4