THE FOLLY OF WORLDLY WISDOM

THE FOLLY OF WORLDLY WISDOM

By Cornelius R. Stam

Has not the world made great progress, intellectually,
since Paul’s day? Is this not evident on every hand?

Of course! For one thing, our physicists have taught us
how to kill each other much faster now. Moscow, London
or Washington could be wiped out in a few minutes, and
this is a considerable saving in time!

And think what has been accomplished in the field of
electronics! We can now keep intelligent people glued to
their TV sets for hours on end, their eyes riveted to shows
which are often unwholesome, but sometimes at least enter-
taining and occasionally even informative. And think of the
many time-saving devices in our homes! We are all saving
so much time that we cannot even be hospitable to each
other and our mental institutions are over-crowded with
patients who have collapsed from enjoying all this leisure
time.

Then consider our achievements in transportation! Our
thoroughfares are crowded with automobiles whose drivers
are getting jangled nerves in traffic jams and choking in
the deadly carbon monoxide fumes, or else racing at high
speeds, which is great fun until suddenly some object looms
up ahead as if from nowhere. And the airplane! This is
really something! We can now fly through the air with so
much noise and commotion that innocent people for miles
around our larger airports are kept awake nights. Of
course, the minority should be willing to suffer cheerfully
for the majority and it is important that great numbers of
people get places fast, fast, fast.

But all this is nothing compared with what is going on in
outer space. We now have all sorts of things orbiting
around out there -- and it’s not all debris. It includes some
very sensitive instruments, serving us faithfully from day
to day. Indeed, men from our earth have actually landed
on the moon and have brought some of its rocks and dust
back with them. Soon, maybe, we will have people from
beautiful New England, or the breath-taking Rockies, or
the lovely shores of Oregon, living on its barren wastes.
Wonderful prospect! And we can always get the necessary
billions from the taxpayers.

But the best of it is that while we have aspired to reach
the moon, and even Mars, we’ve got a Great Society going
on earth; a Society whose wild pagan music has all but
replaced the beautiful melodies and harmonies of the clas-
sics, and whose twisted "art" reflects the bewildered con-
fusion of our times; a Society in which children and young
people are corrupted, women are robbed and raped, and
men, women and children are murdered in the streets.

Oh, it’s wonderful! The young people demonstrating at
our universities for the right to use filthy language if they
want to, and demanding a greater voice in running our
institutions of learning; the minority groups marching to
protest their various grievances, the rioting and bloodshed,
the burning and looting! And meantime, ever so quietly,
our most sophisticated mob syndicates are running fine
motels and other business organizations -- and pouring an
ever-increasing flow of narcotics, pornographic literature,
etc., into our enlightened community, judges and juries
doing what they can to favor the criminals and, should any
of them land behind prison bars, the parole boards are there
to help get them released as soon as possible, so that our
happy society may benefit from their experience and our
mental and penal institutions may be further enlarged.
Surely we’ve never had it so good.

Thanks be to God for the truth of Gal. 1:4: "[Christ] gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this
present evil world [or, "age"] according to the will of God
and our Father."

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