“Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command.”
1 Chronicles 12:32
Recently, a question was posed concerning our American situation specifically as it relates to the circumstances surrounding the assassination attempt on a former president and presidential candidate on Saturday, July 13, 2024.
It was a simple yet profound question reworded for a general application: “What are we supposed to do with this knowledge?” In other words, how does one process the magnitude of knowledge disseminated from the attempted murder of a former president and presidential candidate? From the ubiquitous videos of the failed bullet placement to the amount of seemingly unmolested time the shooter had to get into his killing position, the average person is drowned with data and information stirring up all sorts of emotions flung out of the media machines like corndogs at a fair.
It must be stated that this would-be killer’s act in and of itself is heinous beyond words. It’s an explicit manifestation of all things disgraceful and cowardly. Any human—hiding behind the trigger, crosshairs, and ammunition of equipment designed to protect and defend citizens, homes, and individuals and to harvest food for survival and contentment—with the purpose of ending another human’s life without cause represents the essence of evil.
Thus, when evil’s tail stings and its claws tear, we are forced to contrast all posited as knowledge with truth so that clarity and true knowledge may be crowned queen.
Where to begin? We must start with God, the one true God of the Bible.
A basic thesis:
Ultimate knowledge is derived from filtering all knowledge (actual) through the Bible (God’s revelation to humanity) because the Bible is the only authoritative source from which knowledge (and understanding and wisdom) is recognized, felt, and applied to everyday life.
Consequently,
- Knowledge is easy to one with understanding (Prov. 14:6),
- Understanding is derived from godly wisdom (Prov. 16:21), and
- Wisdom resides with one who fears the Lord (Prov. 9:10).
Thus, to fear the Lord, one must have access to the Creator-God, which is only possible by grace through faith in the substitutionary atoning sacrifice of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. This is a Divine gift available to all humanity. Consequently, all other knowledge (though actual) found outside God and not filtered through His Word will end up twisted, warped, and insufficient for flourishing in God’s created world and ultimate fellowship with God in eternity. Therefore,
- Knowledge understood outside of God’s revelation (the Bible) is actual yet bent horizontally to creation.
- This is knowledge to the glory of man (Marxist’s homo faber: Man the Maker)
- Knowledge understood through God’s revelation (the Bible) is ultimate and raised vertically to God.
- This is knowledge to the glory of God (Soli Deo Gloria: Glory to God alone)
To prove the thesis above, I will ask and answer:
- (1) Where does knowledge begin?
- (2) What understanding must be known?
- (3) How can we live wisely in God’s world by filtering knowledge and living with understanding?
(1) Q: Where does knowledge begin? A: A biblical-theological understanding of the Judeo-Christian God.
The Judeo-Christian God is distinct from all other so-called gods. Every other family of religion claims faith in a deity or deities. As Os Guinness points out, there are at least two besides the Judeo-Christian family of faith (Islam is a distortion of the Judeo-Christian faith), and they are:
- Eastern (Hindu, Buddhist, New Age, and more): the pantheon of impersonal gods interacting with and aiming ultimately toward impersonality.
- Secularism (Humanism, Atheism, Naturalism, and more): the replacement of religious gods for the gods of science, materialism, and myth, which oscillates between hedonism, indifference, and fantasy.
These two aberrant families of faith would answer the question, “What are we supposed to do with this knowledge?” very differently than the Judeo-Christian answer. In brief,
- The Eastern family of faith would end the quest for knowledge as impersonality integrated into an ocean of nothingness. In other words, the highest aim for knowledge in the Eastern families of faith would be peace through nirvana.
- Objective knowledge is irrelevant and melted in moksha or the perfect place of happiness in nothingness.
- The Secular families of faith would say that time plus chance plus matter equals existence and fate.
- Knowledge is found through experience and thus changes with each person, phenomenon, etc.
However, the Judeo-Christian answer is much different. It begins with a Creator God who is self-existent.
This means God is eternally, infinitely, and contentedly God without contingency, potentiality, or complexity. God is the I AM. He is who He is. He is Divinely distinct from everything. There are no comparisons.
Nevertheless, it was within His distinction that God created; that is, He spoke all things into existence ex nihilo (from nothing). Because God has self-existed forever as Triunity, the perfect unity, and diversity (three persons in one substance), He is the absolute Generator, and His creation is absolutely generated. In other words, because God is Triunity, he does not need anything. Instead, that He created reveals His desire to unveil His goodness to His creation. Thus, creation is the most supreme act of benevolence.
It follows that something cannot come from nothing. That’s impossible. Everything must come from God. There can never be something from nothing. Therefore, all of God’s creation derives from and depends on God. Nothing in creation is independent of God, actual in its essence, or simple in its composition. We (and all of creation) are complex created beings, things, and predicates revealing aspects of God’s creation, i.e., from the dust…to the dust. What glory. What kindness.
Furthermore, the situation is dire if God only creates and then leaves His creation to itself. If that were the case, it would be evil upon evil, death upon death, and ultimately annihilation. Consequently, creation’s only hope for surviving is that God not only creates but also sustains. Paul, in Acts 17, declares that in God, we live, move, and have our being.
The three key elements evading all philosophers are being, movement, and life, and are answered in the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible. There was/is never (will be ever) a time when God did (does) not consider His creation, and because of the existence of creation, creation is always sustained in Him. In other words, creation’s existence is generated and sustained by God’s being: He is the I Am, and because of that, creation is sustained. He who spoke creation into existence is He who sustains creation’s existence. “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17).
Moreover, because God created and sustains creation, it must also have a purpose. An aimless creation is a pitiful creation. Indeed, God’s purpose for His creation is manifold but is primarily to express, experience, and enjoy His glory. Thus, Habakkuk would say, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14). In other words, because mankind was created for God’s glory (Is. 43:7), it follows that when mankind expresses, experiences, and enjoys God’s glory, mankind is most fulfilling his role, being, and purpose as that which is created. Man can know that he is glorying in his Creator. This is love’s most comprehensive manifestation! Man can know that he knows his Creator-God. There is no greater gift!
So how do we, as created beings, process knowledge within God’s creation?
Knowledge by Revelation, not mere Reason.
God revealed knowledge (Truth) from His Word to order and sustain His creation. God made knowledge accessible to humans through (1) being made in God’s image, (2) opening their minds to knowledge, and (3) His creation.
This proposition is unveiled in God’s Word. Four fundamental movements of God’s Word unfurl our gazes to discover that history is His story, our position as His trophies of redemption, and our role as His instruments of reconciliation. We see this clearly in the Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Re-Creation of God’s world and the humans, animals, and things that occupy it for a time.
Thus, when knowledge, data, and information come at us from the technological platforms of our day, they must be filtered through God’s Word to order our thoughts and emotions rightly and, ultimately, our actions in God’s way. We must do God’s work God’s way—despite the confusion.
In the next question (What understanding must be known?), we’ll examine the four critical movements of God’s Word and explore how we recognize and process knowledge in our day.
— July 15, 2024