Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
    the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

• 1 Corinthains 1:19-21

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.

• 1 Corinthains 2:14

At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.

• Matthew 11:25

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.

• Proverbs 9:5-6

This is what the Lord says:
“Let not the wise boast of their wisdom
    or the strong boast of their strength
    or the rich boast of their riches,
but let the one who boasts boast about this:
    that they have the understanding to know me,
that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,
    justice and righteousness on earth,
    for in these I delight,”
declares the Lord.

• Jeremiah 9:23-24

“Philosophy is life’s dry nurse who can take care of us – but not suckle us.”

• Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations (from Thoughts that Radically Cure)

The next to last word in the quote might seem crude, but it gets our attention.  But let’s look at what Kierkegaard knew of nursing in his day.  Maybe he might have lived longer than his 42 years if he had better doctors and nurses.  His life was a constant suffering due to a fall in his youth that was never properly corrected.  There was even a disruption at his funeral arguing over the cause of death but written in the records as a spinal disease.

Nursing has been around since ancient Egypt other than wet nursing, which has been around since there were babies, but not long before surrogacy in that regard became necessary.  Note that Rachel died just after Benjamin was born, and one of the other ladies would have to perform the duties as wet nurse,

But the word nurse comes from the Latin root for nourishment, thus the concept of wet nurse defines the term.  But by the 1800s dry nurses were often used to do what practical nurses do today.  They saw to the immediate needs of the patients – bed pans, bathing, etc.

It was about the time that Kierkegaard died that Florence Nightingale rewrote the book on “dry nursing.”

But what is Philosophy?  Literally by its Greek roots, it means love of knowledge or love of wisdom.  My professor in Freshman Philosophy said to us engineers in the room that Philosophy was the science of argument.  You argued intellectually on one point or another.

Philosophy then is nothing but what is in the mind.

I have heard so many street evangelists who say that the farthest distance that is hard to travel is the eighteen inches between the mind and the heart.  Of course, I grew up in the South and whether you believed or not, you had the head knowledge of who Jesus was and why He came to earth, to die in our place so that we could be saved.  But sadly, that was the South of my youth.

Knowing that does not save you.  Trusting in God for everything saves you.  It is free, but it costs you everything.  Yet, so many people leave Jesus in their mind and never open the door so that He can travel those eighteen inches to the heart.

So, a dry nurse can take care of us.  But to nourish us, to give us that rebirth to become a new creation, that takes being nourished in the heart – the soul – so that Jesus enters us and the Holy Spirit starts doing the wonderful work that He does to sustain us and help us grow.

Without that nourishment, we can never know God spiritually – only intellectually, the philosophical way.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.