I wonder if anyone has written a math textbook full of nearly impossible quantum physics problems, and in the middle of the textbook is one page that very clearly explains the answers, but then – very surprisingly – this same page condescendingly mocks its own answers as outrageously irrelevant. Probably not. Such a book would never exist. I did, however, see something like this when I flipped through my most recent alumni magazine from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Higher education is experiencing athletic department scandals, tuition conflicts, research roadblocks and racial tension. Among my alumni magazine’s somber stories on these sorts of topics was a nostalgic two-page spread that poked fun at the university’s practice of handing out a Bible to each graduate from 1842 until 1971. How silly we were back then, the story goes. Look how sophisticated we are now, the modern thinking says. See how far we’ve come, right?
Twenty pages after this story is one titled “What Mice Can Tell.” God created those mice, knows more about them than we ever will and could Himself write an award-winning thesis on them without even trying. And He would just be getting warmed up. But I suppose it is human nature for inquisitive people to prefer congratulating themselves on discovering things on our own. We can do that. It is as much of a breakthrough as a toddler delightfully informing his parents for the first time that there are stars in the sky.
People who mock the Bible love to talk about the separation of church and state. This is about as cohesive an argument as denying a drink of water to a dying man by telling him the county has water restrictions on Thursdays. Galatians 6 says, “Be not deceived. God is not mocked.” Perhaps our nation could go back to considering the Bible as the best resource for human insight, rather than being amused by it.
Higher education is experiencing athletic department scandals, tuition conflicts, research roadblocks and racial tension. Among my alumni magazine’s somber stories on these sorts of topics was a nostalgic two-page spread that poked fun at the university’s practice of handing out a Bible to each graduate from 1842 until 1971. How silly we were back then, the story goes. Look how sophisticated we are now, the modern thinking says. See how far we’ve come, right?
Twenty pages after this story is one titled “What Mice Can Tell.” God created those mice, knows more about them than we ever will and could Himself write an award-winning thesis on them without even trying. And He would just be getting warmed up. But I suppose it is human nature for inquisitive people to prefer congratulating themselves on discovering things on our own. We can do that. It is as much of a breakthrough as a toddler delightfully informing his parents for the first time that there are stars in the sky.
People who mock the Bible love to talk about the separation of church and state. This is about as cohesive an argument as denying a drink of water to a dying man by telling him the county has water restrictions on Thursdays. Galatians 6 says, “Be not deceived. God is not mocked.” Perhaps our nation could go back to considering the Bible as the best resource for human insight, rather than being amused by it.
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