A High Call - Part II

CHAPTER 3: (THE TURN TOWARD) KNOWLEDGE

“So give Thy servant an understanding heart to judge Thy people to discern (understand) between good and evil.“
I Kings 3:9, underline mine

This is a very interesting turn of phrase; for it bears a slight familiarity with another passage found far earlier in the Bible. In fact, it was a pre-fall declaration by the Creator of the perfect world:

“but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” Gen 2:17 NASB

If we inspect this verse further, we discover something highly profound. Through it we can unlock how these first two terms are tangibly separated. In Proverbs 8, we are told that wisdom was in the garden of God and both existed and was ordered pre-fall. But in Genesis 3 we read that mankind rejected wisdom. And that rejection manifested through eating the fruit from a particular tree. And what did mankind eat? Knowledge.

“…but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat…” Gen 2:17 NASB

So we can hypothesize that mankind, in the garden, rejected wisdom…

And… chose… knowledge.

And therein lies the difference between the first two distinctions: Wisdom is a pre-fall. But Knowledge is POST-FALL. After creation, wisdom dominated and operated the world’s systems in perfection, until mankind volitionally rejected wisdom and embraced knowledge. The scriptures carefully and strategically unveil that knowledge came out of the fall. Therefore, a new definition for knowledge can now be added:

Wisdom:
The foundational laws, principals and regulations that govern all fields of existence and humanity in their perfect, pre-fall state.

Knowledge:
Any single discovery of the new systems, principals and regulations of the earth and/or mankind as they exist post-fall, or outside of their originally created context.

The correlation between these two terms comes out of the outcome of both entities. Wisdom has the capacity to produce perfection, since it is pre-fall. But knowledge, taken wholly on its own, produces destruction, since it is a post-fall entity and operating under the law of entropy. Again, the Bible shows this to be the case:

“For he who finds me (wisdom) finds life, And obtains favor from the LORD. But who sins against me (misses the mark of wisdom) injures himself; All those who hate me (wisdom) love death.” Pr 8:36 NASB (parentheses mine)

THE CONSEQUENCE OF REJECTION

Since wisdom comes from the Creator of the earth, mankind, and the universe, the rejection and deliberate removal of the Creator carries far deeper consequence. It’s also a rejection of wisdom, a dismissal of the prefall principals that once governed the earth and an embrace of a postfall, entropic-ordered world system. Listen to wisdom’s call through this lens: “They would not accept my counsel, they spurned all my reproof. So they shall eat the fruit of their own way, and be satiated with their own devices. For the waywardness of the naive shall kill them, and the complacency of fools shall destroy them.” (Pr 1:30-32 NASB) The farther mankind moves away from its Creator the farther mankind must, by default, move away from wisdom since it His system. And the more inevitable the destruction on the creation; be it plant, animal, or mineral. As non-theist leaders have distanced mankind from a supposed arcane and irrelevant Deity, they have actually removed mankind from its own perfection and protection. Listen to the Creator’s petition to those reveling in their post-fall state and deliberately rejecting the Lord: ” Do they spite Me?” declares the LORD. “Is it not themselves they spite, to their own shame?” (Jer. 7:19 NASB)

IN THE (SECOND) BEGINNING…

It is then possible to use this reasoning to determine when mankind’s Secular divergence occurred. Modern secular philosophy hinges on the foundational tenet “Cogito Ergo Sum,” or “I think, therefore I am.” It is from this point the “study of thought” diverged from its prior state; as Pope John Paul II declared:

“The cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) radically changed the way of doing philosophy. In the pre-Cartesian period, philosophy, that is to say the cogito, or rather the cognosco was subordinate to the esse… To Descartes, however, the esse seemed secondary, and he judged the cogito to be prior… After Descartes, philosophy became a science of pure thought… both the created world and the Creator–remained within the cogito as the content of human consciousness. Philosophy now concerned itself with beings qua content of consciousness and not qua existing independently of it.”
Pope John Paul II, Memory and Identity pp 8-9

But exploring this epic moment through the lens of the Wisdom/Knowledge paradigm unearths a far greater revelation. Descartes’ declaration can be amplified to: “I have the capacity to produce and comprehend knowledge (“I Think”), and therefore that revelation becomes the central point to my existence (“I am”). The roads of these two worldviews (Biblical and Secular) now diverge in nearly exactly opposite directions:

At the beginning of creation, God said, “let there by light” and created the world through Wisdom (Pre-Fall Perfection).

Whereas:

At the Enlightenment, man said, “let there be light” and began recreating the world through knowledge (Post-Fall Entropic Destruction)

YOU ARE HERE…

The centuries since Descartes’ declaration have been littered with non-theistic, secular leaders inadvertently recreating our world through knowledge. As citizens Providentially bound to the early part of this 21st century, we have been handed a world in which knowledge is used to formulate new knowledge, and so on and so forth. Like a photocopy repeatedly switched out and re-copied again and again, each new generational image becomes a further and further distortion of its once perfect and protected original image. Inside this distortion, society now functions and adjudicates. Inside this distortion, society now parents and educates. Inside this distortion, societal institutions now anemically perpetuate. Inside this distortion, diversionary technologies and systems are birthed. Inside this distortion, mankind now faces the consequences.

It is not simply a moral distortion, as most religious leaders continue to hypothesize. For if knowledge carries at its root core post-fall Entropy and Destruction, the more mankind embraces knowledge and rejects wisdom, the more post-fall Entropy and Destruction permeate both the societal and the physical landscape. Not just its religious and spiritual state. (The articles on The Daniel Project website will unveil just how much of society’s glaringly alarming statistics directly correlate to this reality).

While the Enlightenment furthered the wholesale sanctioning of the Knowledge-upon-Knowledge paradigm, the church, having lost considerable scientific and ideological ground to the new secular leadership, embraced a wisdom-upon-wisdom mindset (albeit surface, moral, and shallowly based) in hopes of keeping a modicum of control over its shrinking portion of the populace. In many ways, this remaining “moral” clutch has staved off the wholesale epidemic devastation unleashed through a mass embrace of post-fall (knowledge-upon-knowledge) sovereignty. But neither wisdom nor knowledge encompasses all of existence, or humanity – despite the church’ (wisdom) and the secularist’s (knowledge) claims to the contrary. The world and humanity were created PRE-FALL. But eventually, through man’s volitional action, both were thrust into our current POST-FALL state. So any objective transformative solution must be a bridge between both wisdom (pre-fall) and knowledge (post-fall), since mankind and the universe are now a combination of both. We find that bridge through our final term…

Chapter 4: CLASSIFICATION 3: (THE KEY TO) “UNDERSTANDING”

This bridge spoken of in the last sentence of the previous chapter is found through unlocking the last of our three terms: “understanding.” In a moment, I will objectively uncover exactly how the secular world remains incapable of producing understanding, and how the church, through the creation of its own form of moralistic dualism, is likewise unable to utilize its power. But first, I will use the Biblical Text to unlock the key to “understanding.”

”The beginning of wisdom is: Acquire wisdom; And with all your acquiring, get understanding.” Pr 4:7 NASB

”...knowledge is easy to him who has understanding.” Pr 14:6b NASB

“By wisdom a house is built, And by understanding it is established; and by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.” Pr 24: 3-4 NASB

Based on these verses we can deduce that: understanding is acquired through wisdom, easily uncovers knowledge, and acts as the establishment between wisdom and knowledge. Therefore, a rational formula for ‘understanding’ can now be developed:

Knowledge (a discovery or facet of post-fall existence) FILTERED through Wisdom (God’s divine pre-fall order to existence) PRODUCES Understanding.

Understanding operates inside both realms of existence, pre-fall and post-fall. Understanding takes any portion of knowledge (post-fall) and filters it through wisdom (pre-fall), producing the most optimal state in our post-fall world for any particular post-fall element of existence. “Understanding” uncovers that knowledge is not ultimate “power” as Sir Bacon claimed. Knowledge is merely a subset of (and subordinate to) wisdom. Wisdom is, therefore, the single most important entity in post-fall existence. It is the initial catalyst for the production of understanding. And, therefore, understanding – knowledge filtered through wisdom – has the capacity to transform the world, just as “knowledge-upon-knowledge” will eventually destroy it, and “wisdom-upon-wisdom” produces elitism and humanitarian/environmental negligence:

“By the transgression of a land many are its princes, But by a man of understanding and knowledge, so it endures.” Pr 28:2 NASB

“Man in his pomp, yet without understanding, is like the beasts that perish.” Ps 49:20 NASB

In its most simplistic term – going back to the beginning of this article – Understanding is:

“Strategies of heaven (pre-fall) that transform earth (post-fall).”

Were God, and thereby Jesus, merely man’s Savior, His call to His newborn children might have simply been: ‘Come out of this world and be separate.’ But because God is also Creator, Jesus’ mission is far more transforming: ‘Go back into this world and transform it.’ Not merely with theology, moral values, or even salvation: but through understanding; taking the Wisdom of the Creator and applying it like a pre-fall salve to all creation in its fallen and flawed state, displaying both God and His love for His creation simultaneously. Despite the unknowingly displaced and distracted efforts of many of our religious leaders, this has always been His “Way.” We can then affix a slight addendum to the statement above: Understanding then becomes…

“Strategies of heaven that transform earth back to its intended state.”

Or using scripture…

“Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, *on earth as it is in Heaven.*” Matt 6:10 (bold mine)

go to part III