Ideas Matter: if you don’t think right, you won’t live right.

No matter how smart you imagine yourself to be (subjectivism), existence does have a functional design and all things are made to fit together and operate in harmony for life to work (objectivism). Therefore, proper thinking must start at the top. As the sun shines golden-light down on the world so we may see and be warmed, an overarching framework (Weltanschauung) for understanding reality is necessary for healthy thinking to take place.

Western classical thinking, as well as Judeo-Christian thought, approached understanding with this top-down paradigm. It was the default mode for both philosophers, rabbis, professors and theologians alike. That is until human arrogance kicked down the door of sound reasoning when Renee’ Descartes muttered that fateful phrase, “Cogito Ergo Sum.”

“I think, therefore I am.” Falsely postulating that the human individual determines universal truths from his own viewpoint – – this is the modern era’s philosophical bane known as “postmodernism”. As hungry moths chew holes in fabric in the dark, postmodernism devours sound reason, logic and sane thinking. 

But it hasn’t always been so. Men of wisdom once had the humility to acknowledge a grand designer behind the workings of this world. As Paul, the Apostle, writes 2,000 years ago on top of Mar’s Hill in Athens, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.” (Acts 17:24-25).

Smart men and women use to take this as the first axiom of knowing. Solomon expressed it like this, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” And fear means to give God the right to define and name things. I like how Ephesians 3:14-15 says very clearly, “For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and earth is named.” Identity and purpose are his doing, his decision. He gets to establish definitions. This is one of the major pillars of objective thinking.

You can look at it like this: Let’s say you go into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and you see one of his inventions and it spits and spurts and then it shoots out a small little candy that looks delicious but you have no idea what is. So you ask him, “Mr. Wonka, what is that?” And he says, “It is an Everlasting Gobstopper, you can suck it and suck it and suck it and it will never get any smaller or lose its flavor.”  But until you ask him, you have no idea what it is. But since he is the creator, he gets to define it and explain its purpose. You don’t. And when you ignore his warnings about his other inventions, as Violet Beauregard did, you turn into a giant blueberry.

Sounds so simple, the one who creates it, explains it. But people don’t like simplicity, or to put it in more basic terms, people don’t like to be told what to do or what is what. This is the root of postmodern thought, it is the fatal germ that brings death to objective thinking.

Psalm 2 is very plain about the evil arrogance of collective thought, “Why do the nations rage? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.’” When God defines things, this passage says our rebellious hearts do not want to be under his stated reality. So collectively, we do what we can to “burst God’s bonds” and “castaway cords.” In common parlance, this means we ignore objective truth. Romans 1:18 says, “People suppress the truth.” And in that passage, the specific truth they suppress is the reality of God the creator and definer of objective reality.

Let me bring it down the ladder of abstraction. 

When objective truth is suppressed, and God’s definitions concerning reality are ignored, then man becomes the definer, and in turn, he takes the place of creator. And when you become creator, you naturally grow very proud of yourself because no one can tell you what to do. It is as simple as that, and that is why subjective thinking is darkly arrogant at its roots. Arrogance destroys all healthy thinking. As Hosea 4:6 says, “my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.”

So how does the collective suppress the truth that God is the creator? They must reject the idea of God altogether. Once God is gone, we are left to define things ourselves. So…

Step One: is getting rid of God. This is done through conjuring up a very creative scientific solution to origins, a theory that even though it has no direct first-person evidence, it has tremendous persuasive pull. This wonderful sleight of hand is known as evolution. Convince people we have come from apes, and wallah, God is gone! And if that is too much to swallow, there still is popular ignorance, where I pay lip service to his word and leave my heart behind as I go and do my own thing.

Step Two: When God is gone we get to start defining things. The tricky part of defining things is that we must act like we don’t already know what things are. Remember, he has written his law on our heart so we know before we say we know. So to start defining we must work hard at forgetting. So, for instance, when God says he made people male and female we must reject what we know in order to start from scratch. This is nothing more than mental gymnastics. Just so we don’t give God credit, we make brand new categories to give us the creative powers we have been hankering for. Gender theory brings us into the brave new world of stupidity. Everyone knows there are two genders, but gender theory allows for us to assign any kind of gender that meets our fancy. We become the creators. So now Johnny becomes Sally, apply some makeup, and there you have it.

Step Three: Get mad, act hurt, be offended, when people call your bluff. I love this one. If you can make people think the minority opinion is the majority you win. And the way you do this is by calling people names. Oh, there are a bunch of great names out there to use: homophobic, hater, bigot, and one-percenter. There are so many names that you can use to keep your hold on creative power. Shout people down and shame them and the dictionary to a new reality is all yours. A baby is not a baby, it is tissue. Marriage, which always has been defined as a binding covenant between a man and a woman, now includes anyone who just wants to make an agreement that will last as long as they like it. A man can marry a man, a woman can marry her son, and soon we all can marry ourselves. Remember, we are the dreamers of the dreams, the creators of the world we have always wanted.

Do you see how it works? 

One of the biggest problems with being God is we can’t save or deliver. So when Johnny no longer wants to be Sally and he wants his genitals reattached, it is too late, we can’t perform miracles. When Tommy sleeps with Timmy and finds out Timmy is a player who has ruined Tommy’s heart and soul, we can’t forgive because we have no Son to die for the sins of Timmy. Our creative abilities can only mess up what was already good. We become very sad, infantile, and impotent gods.

So before you are seduced into stupidity, listen to this, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.” (Romans 1:21-22) Or to break it down some more, “Pride goes before the fall.”