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Wise and Foolish Builders
Matthew 7:24-27Perhaps it is this way throughout the world, but the West carries a long history andculture of seeking and embracing a firm foundation. Already in 1500s at the time of theReformation and even before that time there emerged a new generation of peoplechallenging the accepted ideas of the day. The church, the foundation of ChristianEurope, was increasingly viewed as self-serving, superstitious and ultimately unsuitableas a firm foundation. The growing unrest increased until people like Martin Luther rejected the idea that Church leaders and doctrines alone held supreme authority and wasthe foundation for all of life and truth. Luther decided to base his work instead on thefoundation of interpreting the Bible and not simply what the church told him. This led tocharges of heresy and he was taken before a type of jury where he told them, “I am bound by the texts of the Bible, and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. Here I stand;I can do nothing else.” Luther had lifted his feet off of the assumed foundation of thechurch and accepted the authority of the Bible alone. It was not only in the church that people were questioning the foundational truths of that time. Some people set sail withthe crazy idea that the earth was round. Others went further saying that not only is theearth round but that it is not even fixed or stationary. They said that perhaps it is the Sunthat is fixed and the world is actually moving as we speak, spinning around. Imaginehaving been nurtured on the Bible that tells us that yes the sea can be chaotic andunstable but the ground, the ground was sure and stable, fixed by God at creation.Imagine having to overcome what must have been basic common sense to people as theycould not
feel
or see the earth moving.
2And so over time a massive shift in the culture’s sense of foundation began to occur. Atone time authority was placed in the hands of religious leaders who were supposed to beinspired by God. Now, authority was placed in the ability of the individual’s mind toreason and make sense of observable nature. The individual mind had the right todetermine what was trustworthy, what was a good foundation.This movement inspired philosophers to rethink just what truth was. It is little publicizedthat around 1640 Rene Descartes, who is often viewed as the father of western philosophy, wrote his most famous piece, at least in part, to prove the existence of God.In his quest to prove the existence of God he writes,
I can think there can be no more useful service to be rendered in philosophy than toconduct a careful search, once and for all, for the best of these arguments, and to set them out so precisely and clearly as to produce for the future a general agreement that they amount to a demonstration of proof
.I should mention that he was quite hopeful and ambitious in this pursuit adding “thatthese proofs are of such a kind that I reckon they leave no room for the possibility that thehuman mind will ever discover better ones.” So Descartes set out to prove God, theultimate foundation. And how did Descartes begin? Listen to the words of his openingmeditation,
Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I accepted as true inmy childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole foundation that I had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of mylife, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all . . . that was likely to last
.
3As I said, he was ambitious. And so Descartes set about the task of distrusting andrejecting
everything
that could possibly be doubted. And what was at the bottom of itall? He secluded himself in a small cabin and thought and thought and thought. Hedecided that he could not trust his feelings or his senses and eventually came to theconclusion that the one thing he could never doubt or deny was that he was thinking.And so the famous line,
I think therefore I am
. Descartes’ work concluded that theindividual self and more specifically the mind
was the foundation
of all truth and reality.And so the West began to build. The foundation of reason through individual ability wastrusted as secure. Some wrote histories that traced and forecasted the evolution andtriumph of the human spirit. Others boldly crossed the ocean to establish a new societyand empire on this continent. There were unprecedented achievements in medicine,architecture, transportation and communication. The spirit of human achievement wasfull and robust as the West entered the twentieth century.Many announced science as the saviour of our society. Sigmund Freud wrote powerfullythat religion was no foundation, it was in fact an illusion. Science he believed exposedreligion’s contradictions and superstitions. To him religion was infantile, childish, andwe needed as a society to grow-up and accept the foundation of science. He concludesone of his books saying, “No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be tosuppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere.” Science will save.Science is our foundation. This is what emerged in the West.
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