12 February 2024 Mark 8:11-13 Dr. David C. Campbell
Why did it take 40 years for Moses to get the Israelites to the Promised Land? If they had gone straight there, it could have been done in a matter of months – it was only about 380 miles. Why did it take so long?
It took so long because the generation that left Egypt was in no spiritual condition to enter, hold, and occupy the Promised Land. They never would be. They had to die in the wilderness, and a whole new generation grow up who would have the physical and spiritual endurance to do it. Even Moses didn’t get to go in. Even he didn’t have everything it took.
Some things are so hard to do that it takes a generation to make people strong enough to do them.
The Constitutional basis for all the civil rights law in the United States is the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, which were ratified in 1865, 1868 and 1870 respectively. Yet the civil rights movement didn’t shift into high gear until after World War II. Why did it take so long? It took so long because the whole generation that had experienced the Civil War, and their children’s generation had to die first, and their children had to experience the Holocaust before there were enough people who understood that race hatred was a bad idea.
Some things are so hard to do that it takes three generations to make people strong enough to do them.
It was Rene Descartes’ Discourse on Method in 1637 that first introduced the idea that science is the only valid form of knowing, that any other claim to knowledge is at best false, and at worst is deceit in pursuit of tyranny. But now we know that it was scientism itself that gave us eugenics, and the Holocaust. Now we know that science cannot prove logical and mathematical relationships – science assumes them, but it cannot prove them. To prove them it would be necessary to use them, which is the definition of arguing in a circle. Science cannot prove metaphysical, ethical, or aesthetic truths by its own method either. Science cannot even prove itself by its own method. Science is permeated with assumptions that it strictly cannot prove but depends on, assumptions as basic as that numbers exist. Pope Benedict XVI noted, “We have developed a concept of reality that excludes reality’s translucence to God. The only thing that counts is what can be experimentally proven,” only now we know that this concept of reality is demonstrably false, and has been shown repeatedly to be false. In fact, this concept of reality has been repeatedly shown to be at the basis of the worst tyrannies of the 20th century, and that century’s wars, the bloodiest in the history of the world.
We don’t have to wait any longer to figure out these things. We already know that trust is a valid form of knowing. We already know that trusting the insights of Christ and the Gospel gives us a more complete understanding of ourselves, the world, and where we and the world are going. It is this trust that gave us modern science, modern medicine, democracy, the rule of law, the end of human bondage and the beginning of human rights. We have known this for a long time – certainly three generations, now working on a fourth.
There are plenty of people strong enough to resist scientism – over a billion Catholics in the world, over two billion Christians. The only question is whether there are sufficient people willing enough. “No sign will be given to this generation,” Jesus said. We don’t need one. We have all the signs we need. We know what to believe. We know what to think on the basis of what we believe. Are we willing to say all that is true, and live like all that is true?
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