I really want to talk about two things in this post. I suppose I could post two posts, but I'm blogging from my office on my lunch break and I just want to make it short and sweet. The main thing is Pearl Harbor Day and the other is about a comment my brother made about arrogance in academia.
December 7, 1941 is a very important date to me because my grandfather, may he rest in peace, was a Pearl Harbor survivor. He should have been on the USS Oklahoma that fateful morning, but instead he was staying with a friend in Honolulu and attending church with him that morning. My Grandfather felt as if God told him to leave the Oklahoma. This is attested by the fact that he took all of his clothes and money with him when he went ashore. Had he not done as the Lord had directed him, my father, myself, and my son (who's named after his Grandpa) would not have been born.
My Grandfather passed away this year. He wasn't able to get to see the memorial that is being dedicated to the Oklahoma on Ford Island today. I hope that America never forgets what happened on December 7, 1941. Tyranny and evil still exist in this world and they must be unequivocally defeated. Whether or not you agree with how our current President has decided to confront evil and tyranny, there are definite parallels between 12/7/41 and 9/11/01. Hopefully the lessons we learned after Pearl Harbor will help us in confronting our current enemy, terror.
Now, regarding my brother's contempt of arrogance in academia. I could not agree more. My brother has taken a more traditional route to his education, while I've taken the indirect route through distance learning with limited interaction on campus. Regardless of the differences in our college education, one fact remains, academia is the new "leaven of the Pharisees". That is not a concept I came up with on my own, "leaven of the academy" is a term a teacher of mine, Matthew Fellows, came up with after speaking with a certain professor.
The aim of academia is to take something and deconstruct it by each of its constituent elements and examine each one of those constituent elements in profound depth until new conclusions are reached. Then after deconstruction, the elements are put back together in a different order and with new conclusions and a new theory, hypothesis, conclusion, (etcetera) exists. But what do we find from all this? Do we find the truth? It was Matt's contention, and mine, that we only end up with more questions and never find the truth. So Matt asked his professor what the truth is and the answer he got was, "The truth is that there is no truth."
Now think about that statement for a few moments..."the truth is that there is no truth". Isn't the purpose of academia to help each student find his or her own truth? If there is no truth, then it only follows that everything is a lie and all is in a state of atrophy. I cannot subscribe to this theory. There is truth, but it comes from a different source than academia. It comes from within us. Each one of us is endowed with a divine ability to distinguish between what is true and what is false. From that point we can choose to investigate further.
When Christ spoke of the leaven of the Phairasees, what he meant was that the Phairasees had replaced the gospel of God with the philosophies of men. Leaven is what makes bread rise and what fills the bread with its flavor. Today's "leaven of the Phairasees" is academia's arrogant assertion that they know what's best (even though there is no truth, according to them) and replacing God's doctrine with the commandments of men. We are starting to see "the leaven of academia" fill the world.
"But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach; and it will be given to him." (James 1:5)
"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32)
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