To all the philosophy majors out there . . .

In my last salaried job as a manager for a Chicago non-profit organization, I dealt with college students on a regular basis, both working beside them in a variety of capacities and recruiting them through non-stop hiring searches. I was always floored by how many of them stated they were majoring in philosophy.

Media reports about the continued dramatic increase in enrollment to philosophy programs at major universities seem to point to at least one common denominator—the students “experience a kind of intellectual ecstasy.”

*****

The 19^th century English poet Matthew Arnold once wrote, “What is the course of the life of mortal men on the earth? Most men eddy about here and there—eat and drink, chatter and love and hate, gather and squander, are raised aloft, are hurled in the dust, striving blindly, achieving nothing; and then they die.”

What he’s saying is exactly what King Solomon says in the first two verses of Proverbs 18: 1] Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom.
[2] A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself.

Jordan explains, “You need to understand that the loving of human viewpoint won’t get you an education that’s of any value, and when you go off to the university, and to the studying of human viewpoint, this passage in Proverbs is one you need to consider because right here is the explanation for what goes on in the education systems of the world.

“Notice how it says ‘through desire’; an inner desire. You got something you want to do. Your heart wants to get something.

*****

“I talked to a young man recently who had switched his (college) major to philosophy and wanted to have a discussion with me about (French philosopher) Descartes. Well, you know, there’s probably nobody any more worthless than Descartes, unless it’s Spinoza, but he was really caught up with it all.

“The last time I’d seen this young man not quite a year before, he wanted to talk about some verses in the Bible. Now, he still believes his Bible, he says, and I’ll take his word for it, but what he’s filling his mind with is this human viewpoint.

“And I asked him, ‘What would cause you to change from this major over there, that was going to allow you to gain a skill, and get a job, and make some money in life, to a major like this when the Bible says beware of that major?’

“He said, ‘Well, I never thought of it quite that way.’ Of course, his problem is he’s already three years into school and fixing to go to graduate school, and you don’t pay $80,000 a year for an education and then say it’s of no value.

*****

“Solomon writes, ‘Through desire, a man having separated himself.’ When you separate yourself away, and you seek and intermeddle with all wisdom, there’s a word that comes out of that and it’s the word elitism. Another word is egalitarianism.

“That’s a way of saying everybody’s equal. That sounds good because, frankly, that’s a good attitude to have except for the fact it just isn’t true. You know that everybody doesn’t have the same faculties in life about different things. We’re not all equal.

“But what egalitarianism is isn’t so much about the individual—I mean, we’re all equally human, we’re all equal that way and in Christ we’re certainly all equal; nobody blessed more than the other—but what egalitarianism is talking about is more political and it means one culture is not better than another.

“And when you hear people talk about multiculturalism and our pluralistic society those are buzz words designed to say that the Bible is irrelevant; that God is irrelevant; that all truth is relative and one person’s philosophy, and one culture’s ideas, is just as good as another. And there’s no basis to decide that one thinking process is better than the other if there’s no God and no absolute, identifiable truth. Well, that’s the thinking process here.

“The thinking is, ‘No God, we’re going to decide for ourselves what we think is good.’ Well, the problem with that is there are people trying to blow us up today. Terrorists and Islamo-fascists. They think they’re right.

*****

 

“There’s a billion of those people on Planet Earth who think the way you and I think as Americans—or the way we think as Christians—is all wrong. And if deciding which is right is based on some societal decision, which is the only thing left when you don’t have absolute truth, is to say we as a culture, or we as a group, can come to a decision about what we think is good or bad.

“Then they decide some things are good that we think are decidedly bad and there’s no way to argue that out if all cultures are just as good and every process is just as equally valid. You see, the whole problem is they don’t glorify Him as God—they throw Him off the table.

“When the Word of God is irrelevant, what are you left with? You’re left with trying to figure out what you want to do. ‘Through desire a man having separated himself’ goes over here and intermeddles with all wisdom.

“He goes around and he’s seeking and intermeddling; going in and working with, studying, figuring out, interchanging with wisdom. ‘A fool hath no delight in understanding.’ Solomon’s telling you the guy in (Proverbs 18:1) is a fool.

“But, what’s the guy in verse 1 really want to do? ‘That his heart may discover itself.’ You see the real desire in verse 1? A man through desire goes out and intermeddles with all this wisdom. Why? Because his heart wants to have its own way.

"But what does a fool say in his heart? Psalm 14 says, ‘The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.’ You see, the problem in Proverbs 18 is not intellectual honesty; the problem is moral corruption. The problem is the guy studies for just one thing: his heart to develop an alibi to do what he wants to do. Do you see that? Now, that’s God’s evaluation of what’s going on there.

“Psalm 14:1 says ‘The fool hath said,’ and underline these next words—‘in his heart.’ Way before it comes out of his mouth—and it may never actually come out of his mouth this way but his heart attitude is, ‘There is no God.’ The problem is he’s corrupt; the problem is a sin problem.

“Psalm 10:4 says, ‘The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God.’ Verse 6 goes on to say, ‘He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved: for I shall never be in adversity.’

“In his heart he’s saying, ‘Hey, nobody’s ever going to get after me. I can make it.’ In verse 11, it says, ‘He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it.’

“What he’s saying is, ‘I’m gonna get away with it. God isn’t lookin!’ and that’s his heart’s attitude. You see this guy’s got a heart problem, not an intellectual problem? It’s a heart problem. It’s, ‘Get rid of God and I don’t have to give account. Get rid of God, I can get away with it. Get rid of God, I can do what I want to do my way.’ That’s his heart and that’s who Paul’s talking about when he says, ‘Professing themselves to be wise they became fools.’

“The alibi to live the way you want to live is to convince yourself God isn’t real and that’s the whole issue here with philosophy—the whole push behind it.”

(new article tomorrow)