Participants:
Series Code: AU
Program Code: AU000038S
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00:00 - Today, we're going to revisit
00:02 one of the most influential writers of the 20th century 00:04 and ask ourselves how in the world 00:06 she could possibly claim to know anything for sure. 00:09 How do you know that you know anything for sure? 00:12 This is a question you're going to want to ask yourself 00:14 at some point in your life. 00:16 So don't go away. 00:17 We'll be right back to explore it. 00:20 [light stringy music] 00:40 Over the last year or so, 00:42 you've probably noticed that I end up complaining 00:43 at the end of the show that I've run out of time. 00:45 And sometimes I promise I'll come back 00:48 and revisit the subject. 00:50 And most of the time that never really happens. 00:53 But today it does, 00:55 because today we're going back to the subject of Ayn Rand, 00:58 the high priestess of atheistic individualism. 01:02 And I guess I'm going to come back to her 01:04 for a number of reasons. 01:05 First of all, she was a bit of an influence 01:08 in my younger years, 01:09 as she is for a lot of college students 01:12 who are trying to discover who or what they are. 01:15 And so I guess I need to admit her influence 01:18 and maybe talk about where I might agree with her 01:21 and where I absolutely do not. 01:23 Secondly, she wrote thousands and thousands of pages 01:27 and to try and address even a fraction of the issues 01:29 in her philosophy with only like 30 minutes 01:32 is something nobody can really do. 01:35 Thirdly, and this is probably the biggest reason. 01:38 It's really hard to deny Ayn Rand's considerable influence 01:43 on modern Western culture. 01:45 In fact, she's probably the biggest unnamed influencer 01:49 of the 20th century. 01:52 I mean, you'd be surprised 01:53 at the number of well-known people who have admitted 01:56 that she was a formative influence for them. 01:59 Jimmy Wales, for example, 02:00 the co-founder of Wikipedia had a real liking 02:03 for Ayn Rand. 02:05 In a 2005 interview on CSPAN, here's what he said. 02:08 "But I think for me, 02:10 one of the core things that is very applicable 02:12 to my life today is the virtue of independence, 02:15 is the vision, you know, 02:17 if you know the idea of Howard Roark, 02:19 who is the architect in 'The Fountainhead'" 02:21 now that's an Ayn Rand book, 02:23 "who has a vision for what he wants to accomplish 02:26 and, you know, there's some time in the book 02:28 when he is frustrated in his career 02:30 because people don't want to build the type of buildings 02:33 he wants to build. 02:34 And he's given a choice, 02:36 a difficult choice to compromise his integrity 02:38 or to essentially go out of business. 02:41 And he has to go and take a job working in a quarry. 02:44 And for me, that model has a lot of resonance. 02:47 When I think about what I'm doing, 02:49 what I'm doing and the way I'm doing is more important 02:53 than any amount of money because it's my artistic work." 02:57 So there you have it, 02:59 one of the biggest internet innovators of the 21st century 03:01 and there's Ayn Rand right in the middle of it. 03:04 And Jimmy Wales is just the tip of the iceberg. 03:09 Now this is probably going to be obvious, 03:10 but a lot of conservative political pundits 03:13 also lay claim to her influence from Rush Limbaugh, 03:16 to Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. 03:18 She also appears to have influenced people 03:20 like Penn Jillette, the magician and well-known skeptic 03:24 as well as a number of prominent CEOs 03:26 like John Mackey of Whole Foods 03:29 and Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, 03:32 Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve 03:35 used to be one of Ayn Rand's close acquaintances. 03:38 And Ronald Reagan's private letters 03:40 also seemed to indicate he'd been reading her books, 03:43 even though Ayn Rand openly professed 03:46 a deep hatred for Ronald Reagan. 03:49 Some of you might remember that vice presidential candidate, 03:52 Paul Ryan was a fan of Ayn Rand 03:54 and apparently so is Clarence Thomas 03:57 that Supreme Court Justice. 03:59 Her influence in America runs deeper 04:03 than most people suspect. 04:05 And I will openly admit, 04:07 as I already have that some of her books 04:10 were part of my own ideological development 04:12 before I became a practicing Christian. 04:15 And so today, because of her broad influence, 04:18 I want to take the time to explore 04:19 just a few more of her ideas 04:22 and maybe compare them to a biblical worldview. 04:26 Honestly, from where I sit, 04:28 I still think she might've been right about some things, 04:31 but I've come to the conclusion 04:32 that she was right about those things 04:34 for all the wrong reasons, 04:35 if that makes any sense to you. 04:37 It's entirely possible to come to the right conclusion 04:40 without actually being right about how you got there. 04:43 I mean, just witness the poor high school student 04:46 who lands on the right answer in math class by accident. 04:51 Ayn Rand was a keen student of human nature. 04:54 And a lot of her observations were really quite astute. 04:58 There is no question for example, 05:00 that people are deeply self-interested 05:02 and people are motivated to protect and advance themselves. 05:06 She's right about that. 05:08 She's also quite right that a policy 05:10 of non-violence and voluntary mutual exchange 05:13 are the best system we've come up with so far 05:17 to keep our natural passions in check. 05:20 But she gets to those conclusions 05:23 by taking some rather unfortunate shortcuts 05:26 and by leaving the possibility of a God 05:29 completely out of the picture. 05:31 And that's what I want to talk about. 05:34 Ayn Rand was a little bit like the English philosopher, 05:37 John Locke, 05:39 in that she advocated something known as tabula rasa. 05:43 Tabula rasa is an idea that suggests 05:45 that you and I come into this world 05:47 knowing absolutely nothing. 05:50 There is no innate human knowledge when you're born. 05:53 It's almost like you've got a dial tone in your head 05:56 and our perceptions and understanding of the world 05:59 come entirely from the data we collect through our senses. 06:03 Here's the way that John Locke puts it in his famous work, 06:07 an essay concerning human understanding. 06:10 He writes, "All ideas come from sensation or reflection." 06:16 In other words, everything you know 06:17 comes through your senses. 06:19 "Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper," 06:23 tabula rasa, "void of all characters without any ideas, 06:29 how comes it to be furnished? 06:30 Whence comes at by that vast store, 06:32 which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it 06:36 with an almost endless variety? 06:38 Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? 06:42 To this I answer, in one word, from experience: 06:45 in that all our knowledge is founded; 06:47 and from that it ultimately derives itself." 06:51 So in other words, in plain English, 06:54 John Locke said that we enter this world 06:56 knowing absolutely nothing. 06:59 And then our senses begin to gather data about the world 07:02 and that data gets clumped together 07:03 in categories in your brain so that you and I 07:06 can start telling different things apart. 07:08 So from that perspective, 07:10 the world is nothing but a big blur of colors and noise 07:13 until your brain starts putting your perceptions 07:15 of the world into organized categories. 07:17 So that for example, 07:19 you could tell your mother apart from an alarm clock, 07:22 then you can start reflecting 07:25 on what you've seen and develop theories 07:27 about the nature of the world. 07:31 Now, back in the 17th century, when John Locke wrote this, 07:34 it was such a novel concept that it was almost scandalous. 07:39 Most people in his day assumed 07:40 that human beings come into the world with inborn 07:42 or innate knowledge, 07:44 things you know the moment you're born. 07:46 Not the least of which they would say 07:48 was a rudimentary knowledge of the existence of God. 07:52 To suggest that your brain was completely empty at birth 07:55 was a new idea that really upset the status quo. 07:59 Of course, today that's hardly a novel concept 08:02 and the idea has been largely debunked since, 08:05 but Ayn Rand persisted in using it. 08:08 Here's what she said on the same subject. 08:10 She wrote, "Chronologically, man's consciousness 08:13 develops in three stages: 08:15 the stage of sensations, the perceptual, the conceptual, 08:20 epistemologically, the base of all man's knowledge 08:22 is the perceptual stage. 08:25 As far as can be ascertained, 08:26 an infant's sensory experience is undifferentiated chaos. 08:30 Discriminated awareness begins on the level of precepts." 08:34 Now let me see if I can translate that. 08:37 What she's saying is that human beings 08:39 acquire knowledge in three distinct steps. 08:42 First, you sense things with your senses, 08:45 which is how your brain gathers data. 08:47 Then your brain goes through the perceptual step 08:49 where it perceives what it's looking at or listening to. 08:53 Then it takes that information 08:55 and sorts it into different categories 08:56 so you can think about those things. 08:58 That's the conceptual stage. 09:01 And it seems to make some good sense, 09:02 at least when you first look at it, 09:05 but it does have a few serious problems 09:07 and I'll be right back to talk about those. 09:11 - [Narrator] Dragons, beasts, cryptic statues. 09:16 Bible prophecy can be incredibly vivid and confusing. 09:20 If you've ever read Daniel or Revelation 09:22 and come away scratching your head, you're not alone. 09:25 Our free Focus on Prophecy Guides 09:28 are designed to help you unlock the mysteries of the Bible 09:31 and deepen your understanding of God's plan for you 09:34 and our world. 09:35 Study online or request them by mail 09:37 and start bringing prophecy into focus today. 09:42 - Epistemology is a $10 word for the philosophy of knowing, 09:45 and it's really the basis of all other philosophy. 09:48 How can you know that you know things for sure? 09:53 How can we be sure that our perception of the world 09:55 is accurate? 09:56 If you can't solve that problem, 09:58 you run the risk of having everything else 10:00 you think about being completely wrong. 10:02 For example, if you try to describe a moral 10:05 and ethical lifestyle, 10:07 you're going to get it completely wrong 10:08 if you can't actually know anything for sure. 10:11 For most people, murder appears to be wrong. 10:14 We all seem to know that it is. 10:16 How do you know that? 10:17 How do you know that life is actually valuable? 10:19 That there's something sacred about it? 10:21 How can you know that violating someone else's right to life 10:25 is actually wrong? 10:27 What standard are you going to apply? 10:29 And how do you know it's the right standard? 10:31 This is a really sticky problem. 10:34 Here's another question. 10:36 How do you know you're not alone in the universe? 10:38 I mean, you think you see other people, 10:40 you think you're interacting with real people, 10:42 just like you, but how do you know that? 10:45 How do you know that other people feel 10:46 and experience the universe the same way that you do? 10:50 This is a really important question. 10:52 And if you can't solve the problem of knowing, 10:54 there's nothing else you can study, 10:56 at least not with certainty. 10:58 This is perhaps the biggest problem in philosophy. 11:01 And like any self-proclaimed philosopher, 11:04 Ayn Rand took a stab at this question. 11:07 She agreed with John Locke 11:08 and she said that you know nothing 11:10 the day you're born and your senses 11:12 begin to gather information about the world. 11:14 Then your brain starts to sort through the information 11:17 and it gives you the ability to contemplate it, 11:20 think about it. 11:21 It also gives you the ability 11:23 to think about your own place in the universe 11:25 and even contemplate the meaning of life. 11:28 But there's a huge gap in her thinking. 11:30 I mean, who in the world told your brain to do these things 11:34 and why does it do it? 11:36 And how do you know your brain's doing a good job? 11:38 We all know that our senses are notoriously unreliable. 11:42 I mean, ask any lawyer or judge 11:44 what happens during a trial and you'll see it. 11:47 No two witnesses ever see the same thing 11:50 exactly the same way. 11:53 And how many times have you thought you saw something, 11:55 maybe off in your peripheral vision 11:56 only to find out later you were wrong? 11:59 Most of us are prone to seeing things 12:01 that aren't really there 12:03 and we're especially prone to missing stuff that is there. 12:07 I mean, think about all the time somebody suddenly says, 12:10 Hey, did you hear that? 12:11 And you didn't, everybody else heard it, but you didn't. 12:15 In his rather detailed critique of Ayn Rand, 12:18 author John Robbins points out some of the flaws 12:21 in her epistemology, the study of how you know things. 12:24 And I'm going to admit, 12:25 I'm pretty indebted to Mr. Robbins 12:27 for a few of the things we're going to explore today. 12:30 Here's what he says. 12:32 "Unfortunately for this schema," 12:34 that's Ayn Rand's way of thinking, 12:36 "Rand failed to explain any of these stages satisfactorily. 12:40 She claimed that at the conceptual level, 12:42 the unit is not an arbitrary creation of consciousness, 12:46 but she did not make the same assertion about the identity. 12:50 She did not offer a solution 12:51 to the problem of individuation, 12:53 which is a problem of the first importance 12:55 to the empiricist. 12:57 By what data furnished by undifferentiated chaos 13:01 does the mind identify individuals?" 13:04 What he's pointing out really is this, 13:06 there are a lot of assumptions 13:08 in Ayn Rand's way of thinking. 13:11 If the mind is a blank slate 13:12 the day you're born and there's nothing in it, 13:15 how does it know how to start sorting out the information 13:18 your eyes and ears receive? 13:20 What standard is your brain going to apply 13:23 when it differentiates between light and dark 13:25 or red and yellow, 13:27 and how in the world does your brain even know 13:29 how to do these things? 13:31 This is really a problem of consciousness, 13:33 which is still one of the biggest problems 13:36 that scientists and philosophers face. 13:39 How did human beings become self-aware and self-reflective? 13:43 How do our brains know how the world should be perceived? 13:46 And what criteria are you going to use 13:49 to interpret the data that your senses feed you? 13:52 Ayn Rand talked a lot about using pure reason 13:56 to understand the world, 13:57 which is why her system of belief is called objectivism. 14:01 And to a small extent, I can probably agree with her. 14:05 I do think you can objectively assess the world 14:09 and apply reason to it, 14:10 but then how do you assess your own reasoning skills? 14:13 How do you know you're any good at this? 14:16 If human reason was a purely objective thing, 14:18 then why do talented reasoning people 14:21 come to such wildly different conclusions 14:23 from each other? 14:24 On the one hand, 14:25 you've got Soviet planners in the 20th century 14:28 who attempted to build a rational society 14:30 based on empirical data and central planning. 14:33 Then on the other hand, 14:35 you've got philosophers of liberty like John Locke, 14:37 who pointed the Western world in a different direction. 14:41 Which one of them's right? 14:42 Whose rationality do you use? 14:45 Pick up any two books written by any two philosophers 14:48 and you get different conclusions, 14:50 but everybody used their reason to get to those conclusions. 14:55 So obviously, unaided human reason has some limits. 14:58 And if you want to use your reasoning skills perfectly, 15:02 you'd have to be on mission. 15:03 You literally have to know everything 15:06 and anticipate every possible outcome 15:09 and no human being can do this. 15:11 And the fact that two different reasonable people 15:14 can look at the same object or incident or subject 15:17 and see two different things, 15:19 that should tell us something 15:21 about the limits of human perception and reason. 15:26 Personally, I think your senses and your capacity 15:28 for reason are mostly reliable. 15:31 They're not perfect, 15:32 but you can mostly count on it most of the time. 15:35 And the only way you can know this for sure 15:38 is to have some kind of external standard 15:41 by which you can judge your conclusions. 15:44 For example, I can't tell you that my vision is accurate 15:47 just because I think it is. 15:48 That's like a drunk man insisting 15:50 that he's fine to drive, 15:51 something that happens all the time, 15:54 but it happens because his senses are impaired 15:57 and he doesn't know he's impaired. 15:59 So how do I know I'm not impaired all the time? 16:02 To figure that out, 16:04 I need a perfect external standard. 16:07 And the biblical worldview puts that objective standard 16:11 outside of me and places it with God. 16:14 I mean, I can sense that murder is wrong 16:17 and I can develop a deep hatred for murder. 16:19 But the only way I can know for sure that murder is wrong 16:22 is to have an external objective standard 16:24 that I can compare my thinking to. 16:27 The reason I trust my senses 16:30 is because the one who gave me the gift of vision 16:33 and the gift of hearing tells me 16:35 I can use my senses to gather actual wisdom. 16:38 Here's how the book of Proverbs puts it. 16:41 It says, "My son, 16:43 if you receive my words, 16:45 and treasure my commands within you, 16:46 so that you incline your ear to wisdom, 16:49 and apply your heart to understanding," 16:52 you see it, the Bible insists you really can know things. 16:55 And it tells us that we can reliably 16:57 use our sense of hearing to accumulate wisdom 17:01 and understanding. 17:03 Proverbs 18 says it again. 17:06 "The heart of the prudent acquires knowledge 17:09 and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge." 17:12 Now, of course, 17:14 you still have to practice the art of discrimination 17:17 because not everything you perceive with your senses 17:19 is going to be true. 17:21 There are people who lie to you 17:23 and systems of belief out there that make no sense. 17:26 So just the fact that you absorb some information 17:29 doesn't mean you really know something valuable. 17:31 You can't actually call it wisdom, not by yourself. 17:35 All right, I got to take another short break 17:37 and then I'll be right back 17:38 to share one really vivid example 17:40 where Ayn Rand's faith in her own reason and senses 17:44 really fell apart one day. 17:47 - [Narrator] Here at the Voice of Prophecy, 17:48 we're committed to creating top quality programming 17:51 for the whole family, 17:52 like our audio adventure series, Discovery Mountain. 17:55 Discovery Mountain is a Bible-based program 17:58 for kids of all ages and backgrounds. 18:00 Your family will enjoy the faith building stories 18:03 from this small mountain summer camp [indistinct]. 18:06 With 24 seasonal episodes every year 18:08 and fresh content every week, 18:11 there's always a new adventure just on the horizon. 18:17 - Barbara Brandon had a lot of reasons 18:19 to really hate Ayn Rand, 18:21 not the least of which was the fact 18:23 that Ayn Rand and her husband Nathaniel 18:24 were openly having an affair with each other. 18:28 In fact, Ayn Rand and Nathaniel openly told their spouses 18:32 they intended to cheat. 18:33 So I guess you've got to take 18:35 what Barbara wrote about Ayn Rand with a grain of salt, 18:37 because she definitely had an ax to grind, 18:40 but still there's one incident she reports 18:43 that blows apart Ayn Rand's belief 18:45 that her reason coupled with her senses 18:47 was all she needed to accurately perceive the world. 18:51 She talks about a surgical procedure 18:53 that Ayn Rand had to endure. 18:56 And when Ayn Rand woke up, 18:57 she found herself in excruciating pain. 19:00 Here's the way Barbara describes what happened. 19:03 "One day, after Ayn had received 19:05 a heavy dose of pain medication, 19:06 she said that she could see the branches of a tree 19:09 waving across the window pane. 19:12 'How could it reach so high 19:13 when she was on the ninth floor,' she asked, 19:15 disturbed by this mystery. 19:17 Joan realized she was seeing a reflection 19:19 of the pole holding her intravenous equipment. 19:23 She explained it to Ayn, adding that it was not uncommon 19:25 to have mild hallucinatory experiences 19:28 under heavy medication. 19:30 Ayn Rand refused to believe it. 19:32 She continued to insist that it was a tree. 19:34 She knew it was a tree. 19:36 A number of months later, Joan recalled, 19:38 she called me in to discuss what she said 19:40 was a serious matter. 19:41 When I arrived, 19:42 she shouted at me over the issue of the tree. 19:45 'How could I have tried to make her doubt her mind,' 19:47 she demanded. 19:48 'How could I have attempted 19:49 to undermine her rationality?'" 19:52 Ayn Rand was so devoted to the idea 19:54 that you and I are perfectly rational 19:56 with perfectly reliable brains 19:58 and perfectly reliable sentences 20:00 that she actually refused to accept the fact 20:02 that she'd been hallucinating. 20:04 And from what I can tell this episode 20:06 was part of her descent into paranoia 20:09 and what I consider to be at least partial madness. 20:13 But there you have it. 20:14 There clearly are cases where your senses are not reliable 20:17 and your interpretation of the world 20:19 also becomes unreliable. 20:22 And in that case, you need an external witness, 20:24 an external baseline to help you make sure 20:27 you've got things right. 20:29 In the Bible's book of Psalms, 20:31 there's an interesting passage 20:33 where the author suggests that morally speaking, 20:35 human beings have a massive tendency to get things wrong. 20:39 The author is complaining about people who live wicked, 20:42 immoral lives, 20:43 and he suggests that these people 20:45 are incapable of accurately assessing their own morality. 20:49 Here's what he says beginning in Psalm 94:4. 20:53 "They utter speech and speak insolent things; 20:56 all the workers of iniquity boast in themselves. 20:59 They break in pieces your people, O Lord, 21:01 and afflict your heritage. 21:03 They slay the widow and the stranger, 21:05 and murder the fatherless. 21:06 Yet they say, 'The Lord does not see, 21:09 nor does the God of Jacob understand.'" 21:13 These people probably know at some level 21:15 they're doing the wrong thing, 21:17 but they refuse to believe that anybody's 21:19 ever going to hold them accountable. 21:20 That's why they say the Lord does not see. 21:24 It's because they're living 21:25 as if there is no God and no external standard 21:28 to which they're going to be held accountable. 21:30 Now listen to the next few lines. 21:32 It continues. 21:34 "Understand, you senseless among the people, 21:36 and you fools, 21:37 when will you be wise? 21:39 He who planted the ear, shall he not hear? 21:42 He who formed the eye, shall he not see? 21:45 He who instructs the nations, shall he not correct, 21:47 he who teaches man knowledge? 21:50 The Lord knows the thoughts of man, 21:52 that they are futile." 21:55 What the Psalmist is saying 21:56 is that the one who made our senses in the first place 21:59 has a much better understanding of the universe than we do. 22:03 By comparison to his thoughts, 22:06 our thoughts are futile. 22:08 Our senses lead us astray 22:09 and the fallen or broken nature of humanity 22:12 leads us to misinterpret the evidence 22:15 that our senses collect. 22:17 Because of pride, 22:18 something that Ayn Rand, frankly, had in spades, 22:21 our logic convinces us that almost everything we do 22:25 is right or justified. 22:27 We might see the suffering we cause other people, 22:29 we might see the damage we cause to the world around us, 22:33 but our brains have this way of reinterpreting it all 22:37 and giving us an entirely wrong, 22:39 entirely selfish perspective. 22:42 The Psalm continues like this. 22:43 Here comes the important part down in verse 12. 22:47 "Blessed is the man whom you instruct, O Lord, 22:50 and teach out of your law." 22:53 How does a rational human being prevent sliding 22:56 into a foolish delusion? 22:58 By comparing his or her thoughts 23:00 against the thoughts of the one 23:01 who created the human mind in the first place. 23:04 We do have the ability to perceive the world accurately 23:08 and we do have the ability to accumulate wisdom 23:11 and real understanding, 23:13 but only when we cross reference our findings 23:17 with the ideas that come 23:18 from the only truly objective mind in the universe. 23:22 Okay, time for another short break 23:23 so I can go and check my assumptions 23:25 against a more enlightened standard 23:27 and then I'll be right back. 23:30 - [Narrator] Life can throw a lot at us. 23:33 Sometimes we don't have all the answers, 23:36 but that's where the Bible comes in. 23:38 It's our guide to a more fulfilling life. 23:41 Here at the Voice of Prophecy, 23:43 we've created the Discover Bible Guides 23:45 to be your guide to the Bible. 23:47 They're designed to be simple, 23:48 easy to use and provide answers 23:50 to many of life's toughest questions. 23:52 And they're absolutely free. 23:54 So jump online now, 23:56 or give us a call and start your journey of discovery. 24:00 - Well, look at that, I'm out of time again, 24:02 and again, I've barely scratched the surface. 24:05 And I know that because I'm saying these things here 24:08 in the United States, 24:10 a place that has been heavily influenced by Ayn Rand, 24:12 I'm probably going to get a few letters 24:14 telling me why I'm wrong. 24:15 And I'm okay with that. 24:17 Just as long as you don't expect me to write back 24:19 because I just can't. 24:20 Personally, I do think she was right about a few things, 24:24 but again, for all the wrong reasons. 24:26 The Bible, for example, does value individuality 24:29 and it does not give other human beings 24:31 a license to commandeer your life. 24:33 So in that regard, 24:34 she does agree with the biblical worldview. 24:37 But I guess I need to push back on the idea 24:39 that human beings can be completely objective 24:41 and rational all by themselves. 24:44 If that was true, 24:46 I wouldn't have a library with thousands of books 24:48 written by rational well-educated people 24:50 who all disagree with each other. 24:52 The more honest philosophers openly admit 24:55 that real knowledge is hard to find 24:56 when you are the standard 24:58 by which you judge reality. 25:00 And honest philosophers admit 25:02 that the question of how we can know things for sure 25:04 has never really been solved. 25:08 For some philosophers, this was a really torturous question 25:11 because not being able to know things for sure 25:13 is an awful way to live, 25:15 especially if you're prone to overthinking like I am. 25:19 This state of uncertainty is something that Paul 25:21 actually described in a letter to Timothy 2000 years ago, 25:25 he described the way human beings 25:27 were going to be living in the very distant future. 25:29 And he gets it remarkably right. 25:31 He says, "But know this, that in the last days, 25:34 perilous times will come. 25:36 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money. 25:39 Boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, 25:42 unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, 25:46 without self-control, 25:48 brutal, despisers of good, 25:49 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure, 25:52 rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, 25:55 but denying its power. 25:56 From such people turn away." 26:00 This what he's describing is a generation 26:03 that lives completely for self, 26:05 they're essentially hedonists living for pleasure, 26:08 which is where some of the disciples of Ayn Rand 26:11 seem to end up. 26:13 Then Paul says this in verse seven, 26:15 which I find really interesting. 26:16 He says, "These people are always learning 26:19 and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." 26:24 That's a pretty good description of unaided human reason. 26:27 Over the last couple of centuries, 26:29 philosophers seem to have come to the conclusion 26:32 that there is very little in this universe 26:35 that you and I can know for sure. 26:37 And these are very intelligent well-educated people, 26:42 but they're always learning and never able 26:45 to come to a knowledge of the truth. 26:48 But what if there is truth? 26:50 What if there is somewhere solid to stand? 26:52 What if the claims of this book, the Bible really are true? 26:57 What if there is an external objective standard 27:00 by which you can compare your own observations 27:03 and know whether or not you're even close to being right? 27:07 What if you could know things for sure? 27:10 The Bible is a book 27:12 that most of you have easy access to it, 27:14 yet it's probably the most neglected book in the world. 27:17 I mean, you might still disagree with me 27:19 when you read the Bible, 27:20 but at least you ought to be giving it a chance 27:23 because I'm guessing that when you read it, 27:26 you're going to get the sense 27:27 that there is something real out there 27:29 and there's something real in here. 27:31 I mean, yes, when you read it, 27:33 some of the claims in here are going to make you squirm, 27:36 but then you should probably ask yourself 27:37 why you're squirming. 27:39 And if you want, 27:40 we'll help you get free study materials 27:42 to get you started in reading this book, 27:44 just go to Biblestudies.com. 27:47 Look, I've read the lights of Ayn Rand, 27:49 and I could admit where she's right. 27:50 Even though it's a school of thought, 27:52 I can no longer accept. 27:53 And I guess today I'm daring you to do the same thing 27:56 with the Bible. 27:57 Read it. 27:58 You might just find an authentic way 28:00 to experience the world around you. 28:02 I'm Shawn Boonstra, thanks for watching. 28:06 [light stringy music] |
Revised 2022-02-01