According to wisdom from below, people can transform God’s creation into a paradise by correcting some basic flaws in the world as God made it. The proposed solution is always some simplistic reduction of reality. There are crusades to get rid of private property, crusades to get rid of certain classes of people or certain races of people, crusades to get rid of fossil fuels, and so on and so on. Some people really believe in these efforts. What all of these causes have in common is that they are irrational leaps of faith. There is no objective evidence that these efforts would do anything other than harm if they were successful.

There are multiple examples of the current woke craziness, but I think that there are three that stand out from the rest. The first is the new legal definition of marriage to include not only the union of a man and a woman but also the union of a man and a man or of a woman and a woman. The second is the recent allowance for certain biological men to access women’s locker rooms and to dominate women’s sports. The third is the recent rejection of many of the virtues of western civilization as systemic forms of white supremacy. Why are such things happening in our culture, and why are they happening now? I think that a key to answering these questions is understanding what James 3:17 calls wisdom from above and the alternate wisdom which is wisdom from below.
In a nutshell, wisdom from above is a wisdom rooted in the fear of God, and wisdom from below is a wisdom rooted in rebellion against God. From the perspective of wisdom from above, wisdom from below is foolish. From the perspective of wisdom from below, wisdom from above is foolish. Everyone today is living a life that is some combination of these two contradictory forms of wisdom.
For those who do not know Jesus, wisdom from below dominates their lives, but not absolutely. Wisdom from below saturates and taints the totality of their experience, but wisdom from below does not dominate them absolutely. A total domination by wisdom from below would be fatal. No one could live a life absolutely dominated by wisdom from below. Wisdom from below leads to deadly lifestyles and actions. God restrains wisdom from below in the lost, and uses wisdom from above to exercise a moderating influence over them. That is the only reason why the lost are able to survive in this world. That is also why no one is as evil as he could be. The worst of people could always be worse than they are.
For those who know Jesus, wisdom from above dominates their lives, but not absolutely, at least not in this life. Their souls will not be made perfect in holiness until the time of their physical death. Wisdom from above saturates and elevates the totality of their experience, but they still have to struggle in this life with a continuing influence of wisdom from below. That is why no one in this life is perfect, and why even the best people may fail us at times.
So all who are now alive, both those who know Jesus and those who don’t, are living a life that is some combination of these two contradictory forms of wisdom. Our culture also, at any particular time in its history, is a manifestation of both wisdom from above and wisdom from below. What differs from time to time is the relative degree of influence that these two forms of wisdom have upon our culture. There have been times in the past when wisdom from above was the predominating influence in our culture. For several generations, there has been in our culture a gradual weakening of wisdom from above and a gradual strengthening of wisdom from below. What we have seen in recent years is a volcanic eruption of wisdom from below with a new consistency and capacity and range of influence. We have seen the flow of this destructive movement wreaking havoc and destruction in its wake. We hope and pray that this destructive force will not come our way, and we hope and pray that this destructive force will weaken before it destroys our culture.
According to the book of Proverbs, the beginning of true wisdom is the fear of God. The fear of God here refers not to abject terror but to a proper respect and regard for God based on a recognition of who God truly is and what God has actually done. Let’s consider who God is and what God has done. What is the original and ultimate reality? Does the original and ultimate reality consist of the dimensions of time and space? No, God created the dimensions of time and space as part of His work of creation. Does the original and ultimate reality consist of abstract qualities that God first possessed from eternity and then we began to possess at our creation? No, abstract qualities such as goodness, truth and beauty are not qualities that God possesses. They are abstractions of realities which God is. God is not merely good; God is goodness. God is not merely true; God is truth. God is not merely beautiful; God is beauty.
The original and ultimate reality is God Himself, and God alone. We know that God created the creation out of nothing, but sometimes we underestimate the radical emptiness of that original nothingness. The ultimate and original reality is not an impersonal background consisting of dimensions and qualities. God is the ultimate and original reality. That means that we live in a world that is thoroughly personal. Not everything created is a person, but everything created is God’s creation and God is a personal being. Creation is not an impersonal world where we are free to define and use things however we might want.
This personal God has no personal needs. He is not lonely. From eternity past, God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit have had a completely satisfying personal communion with each other in the oneness of God’s being. God did not create us because He was lonely and in need of companionship. God created the world and us as a completely free act of His divine will. He was under no necessity to do so, but God freely chose to do so. God created the world not to get more glory because God was already all glorious. God does not derive any glory from the creation but rather uses the creation to manifest His glory, to make His glory known.
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What’s better than a world without sin, sorrow, and death? A world with God. Yes, he will wipe away our tears. Yes, he will heal our wounds and cure our diseases. Yes, he will finally do away with that awful enemy, death. But those blessings, while infinitely great, will be as puddles next to the ocean of having him and being his.
People often describe pivotal moments in their lives as “the day when God turned my world upside down.” Some experience, some conversation, some trial radically reshaped how they viewed themselves, their lives, their relationships, and the world around them. Well, in my sophomore year of college, God turned heaven upside down for me.
I grew up in a Christian home with loving Christian parents, and had been a Christian myself for a number of years at that point in college. I read the Bible and prayed most days. I was part of a faithful Bible-preaching church and was surrounded by mature and intentional Christian friends. I was even doing ministry among high school students, sharing the gospel and discipling them in the faith. And then, in a moment—in a sentence—God suddenly flooded the gospel with new meaning, new colors, new intensity and joy.
To draw me deeper into the gospel, though, God had to first confront me, but it was the sweetest kind of confrontation, the most satisfying kind of rebuke. The sentence tackled me where I sat and has never let me go.
Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. (God Is the Gospel, 47)
Question for Our Generation

The gospel is the way to get people to God. The gospel is the way to get me to God. It was the kind of rare epiphany that is both devasting and thrilling. Devastating, because you realize just how much you’ve had wrong until now. Thrilling, because you have stumbled into a land you’d never seen before, an ocean you’d never sailed before, a favorite meal you’d never tasted before.
God is not just the only way to heaven; he is what makes heaven worth wanting. He is the great meal. He is the wild and wondrous ocean. He is the treasure hidden in the field and the pearl of great price (Matthew 13:44–46). John Piper presses home the surpassing gift of God himself with a haunting question:
The critical question for our generation—and for every generation—is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ were not there? (God Is the Gospel, 15)
Could you?
Could I? That was the question that turned heaven on its head for me. Could I be content in a heaven without Christ? And if not, if Christ really was what made heaven an eternity worth wanting, why wasn’t I doing more to know and enjoy him now on earth?
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Our secular world tells us to look inside ourselves so that we might find the good within, but at the Lord’s Table, we are asked to examine ourselves so that we might find our weakness and sin so that we might be taught to rely more and more upon Christ’s sacrifice, which becomes more endearing to us once we have determined through introspection that we are lost apart from his broken body and redeeming blood. As Gentiles were invited to humble themselves during the Day of Atonement, so we invite our guests to examine themselves and pray that they might find their need for Christ and become jealous for what we have found signed and sealed in those little tokens of Christ’s body and blood.

The mission and purpose of church outreach are best summarized by Christ in the commission that he gave his church: to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all of his commandments. These marching orders tell us that by reaching out to the world, we are to draw them into the covenant communion of the Church. Discipleship does not end at the water cooler at work or wherever the gospel is first believed. It follows the road that brings us into communion with the people of God.
Unfortunately, many churches and denominations have adopted a policy of outreach that involves conforming the church to the image of the world in some way, thus making the church more palatable. For instance, if the church is seeking to draw in more young people the worship becomes more youthful and energetic. On the other hand, if the church is targeting another niche group, such as “cowboys,” the service will take on a more western theme.
Now it might be good to offer a little conviction on this matter. This is something that churches can do without even realizing it. In 2016, I know of many members of Presbyterian churches who voted for Donald Trump that were made to feel as if they had done something immoral and hurtful by things said from the pulpit. I know of others whose experience was the reverse. They had not voted for President Trump and were anxious about what was to come from his presidency, only to find in their churches, rather than Christ centered worship that left political concerns in the parking lot, a political victory parade in the guise of Christian fellowship. We must ask the question and be serious in answering it, “Do our church services, how we decorate, or how we preach focus on attracting only certain kinds of people with specific political affiliations to our congregations?”
I bring this up to make a point. If our worship of Christ is made contemporary to our present time or culture, our worship becomes enslaved to current events and proclivities. By allowing the secular to invade the sacred, we have tragically, and perhaps inadvertently, made the sacred less appealing to those who have grown weary of the vanity of the secular. This is precisely what we see taking place in our world. More and more people are beginning to wake up to the fact that they have been sold a lie by those who seem influential in the world. Atheism has not offered them the hedonistic utopia that they were promised. Guilt and shame did not disappear with their belief in God, and now, rather than having a compassionate and merciful God to go to with their sin, they have nothing but a blind, pitiless, and indifferent universe of stuff. These people have judged the secular and have found it to be wanting.
How unfortunate it is that all some churches have to offer these people is more secular art, music, motivational speeches, and politics all rebranded with a Jesus FishTM slapped on it. We, as Presbyterians, must have something to offer the world that is not of this world. Something like the Kingdom of God! (John 18:36)
There is nothing more peculiar to the Church of Christ than the sacraments that He has given to us, through which he gives us the grace that sets us apart from the secular world. These sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are things that are not given to the world but only to those in the household of faith. Baptism is given to those who have believed in Christ and their children, whereas the Lord’s Supper is given to those who are able to feed upon Christ as he is offered in the elements of bread and wine by faith alone.
The exclusivity of the sacraments, however, does not make them unserviceable in our outreach to the world. Christianity is not a gnostic religion, whereby we hide secret knowledge from outsiders. There is no “inner sanctum” of knowledge or revelation that the church has been commanded to keep out of the sight of the unenlightened.
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