Does anyone else look around at the world we live in and get the feeling that we have all gone mad? There are times when watching the news or roaming the internet I am literally astounded by some of the things we have come to believe, the things we no longer believe and the things we doubt. Things which until very recent history the majority of people in all cultures and in all times were held as self evidently true are now in academic and media circles seen as the “views of extremists”. How has this happened?
The root of our post modern madness, where we no longer know if anything is true, ironically stems in the west from the attempt of the famous French philosopher, René Descarte, to find some “certain knowledge”. His method of systematic doubt had resulted in him having a massive intellectual crisis so great that he finally doubted his own existence. However in the end he found one thing that he could not doubt. Proclaiming “Cognito, Ergo sum” or “I think therefore I am” he came to the conclusion that, as he was the one doubting, his very doubting proved his own existence. From there he sought to rebuild his world view with this “certain knowledge” as it’s foundation and cornerstone.
Unfortunately what Descartes had done was moved his anchor into the inside of his own head, his foundation had become his own thinking, his own mind. The human mind, as wonderful as it is was never designed for the kind of pressure now exerted on it to provide the intellectual, spiritual and moral underpinning for all existence. Since then the certainty of the west has rapidly decayed which has brought us into our post modern world where Descartes statement “I think therefore I am” has led to “I think I am, therefore I am!” Inevitably when we moved truth into the subjective realm of our own mind we lost not only our minds but our ability to see truth at all.
God never designed our minds to be the foundation of life. Hebrews 11: 3 declares
“By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.”
The Bible’s response to Descartes’ “Cognito, ergo sum” is “Per fidem intelligimus”. (By faith we understand) From Descarte’s time until the present, many have sought to build their lives on the shifting sand of their own thinking and current intellectual trends. However as Jesus warned in Matthew chapter 7, in a time of pressure or crisis such foundations will turn out to be as inadequate as a house built on shifting sand during a storm. We have to return again to the only foundation upon which eternal security can be based. God himself.
In order to do that we must go way past Descartes into the Sinai desert. To the time the father of our faith, Moses, encountered God whilst he was herding his father in law’s sheep. Out of a bush burning with the supernatural presence of God, God revealed himself to Moses and set the course of history. As Moses trembles barefoot before this awesome spectacle he hears the voice of God speaking from the unseen realm who reveals himself as the great “I AM” or “I AM THAT I AM”. God is the only never shifting, self existing reference point in the universe. He is the “I am” that we can trust, whose presence and voice from out of the burning bush gives us the moorings we need for our lives. From God Moses received the 10 commandments and so much more on which our freedoms developed. God did not stop there, in the fullness of time he sent Jesus into the world. Jesus proclaimed clearly “I am ..the Truth” then he substantiated his claim by dying and rising from the dead. God and his word provide the only foundation for life as God intended us to have it. In the light of God’s presence in history whether in the burning bush, embodied in Jesus who was called Emmanuel (God with us) or present eternally with the church filled with the Holy Spirit, we can listen to and trust the voice of God calling out to us and leading us into a deep and personal love relationship with him. The thing is, it is only in knowing Him, the great I AM, that we will ever be able to clearly declare “ I am, because He is!”
