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This Is Wisdom?
The September 2010 edition of Reader’s Digest included an interview with primatologist Jane Goodall. Goodall “is celebrating the 50th anniversary of her pioneering research among the wild chimpanzees in what is today Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park.”
It is a very interesting interview, though as a follower of Christ I was saddened that someone so intelligent appears to have rejected the Biblical understanding of who God is. For whatever reason, interviewer Edward Klein asked her if she believed in God:
“I don’t have any idea of who or what God is. But I do believe in some great spiritual power. I don’t know what to call it. I feel it particularly when I’m out in nature. It’s just something that’s bigger and stronger than what I am or what anybody is. I feel it. And it’s enough for me.”
The next question was “Who was the greatest influence in your life?” Goodall replied that it was her mother. She described her as “a very wise woman.” But this is Goodall’s understanding of what constituted “wisdom”:
“She would say, ‘You were born into this family, and your grandfather was a Christian, so you grew up as a Christian. But you might have been born somewhere in the Middle East, and then you would talk about Allah. Or you might have been born in a Jewish family…Or a Buddhist family…’ My mother always put things into perspective. She said there could be only one God, and what we call him depends on where we were brought up.”
I don’t mean any disrespect to Jane Goodall or her mother, but it does seem to me that a “wisdom” that essentially says that Islam and Christianity and Judaism are basically the same isn’t wisdom at all. That line of thinking is one fed to us by a secular society that refuses to admit that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Fellow believers, this is the world we live in. This is our culture, and it is affecting us, our children and our grandchildren more than we realize. It is not Biblical, it does not proclaim Christ as Lord, it does not honor God. We who follow the Lord Jesus Christ must be careful not to allow this poisonous philosophy to creep into our hearts and minds. Today more than ever we must know what the Scriptures teach and be bold in our witness and testimony.
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--Rocky Henriques, www.timothyreport.com
