God Challenges Men – The Hidden Wisdom

God Challenges Men – The Hidden Wisdom

The Bible further claims that although God has revealed His will and purpose, most have not heard or really understood what He has said. They either do not know, or hear and reject the word or replace it with a modified version that they are more comfortable with. The apostle Paul speaks of these things in in the New Testament, in the following words -

1.Cor.2:6-8  However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

This hidden wisdom is speaking of the things of God that have been revealed but are not widely understood or believed by the rulers (leaders) of this world. He is primarily referring to those who are in positions power and influence, whether they be political or religious leaders. There are reasons why this is so, and this has to do with some of the core teachings of the Bible.

The rulers of this age are primarily focussed upon consolidating their position in this life, which involves leveraging and profiting from what this gives them. All men seek for power and the trappings and benefits this brings. Whether money, fame, respect, material possessions, travel, entertainments and other carnal and sensory pursuits. These are all forms of power, and they are driven by our natural instinct to survive and prosper.  Similar instincts drive the lesser creatures, but man alone has the intellectual capacity to leverage his desires well beyond his natural environment in ways that can have a larger, even global, impact. Man also has the ability to challenge God, that is, to challenge God’s will and purpose and replace it with his own.

The leaders of this age have the most to lose from the things of God, as the basis of their livelihood is challenged by the truths of God. The ways of God challenge the very foundations they base their authority upon and all that they stand for. If they were to fully submit to God, they would need to change their thinking and their ways. The personal cost would be very high, whether in monetary terms or in ways that will affect their standing and status. For this reason, those with vested interests rarely respond positively or wholeheartedly to the message of God.

As a direct consequence of the inability of societal leaders to respond positively to God’s message, they have negatively influenced society at large by actively supporting a distortion of the meaning of the word of God. As a result, mankind in general rarely comes to see and hear God clearly. We humans have a natural bias to follow our leaders and to fit whatever we hear and see into our existing world view and experience. When new ideas come we quite naturally resist them or massage them to fit our own world view. We do this is because uncertainty makes us uncomfortable.

This process is called ‘Cognitive Dissonance’, and is a well-known and documented human experience or phenomena. Our in-built ‘Normalcy Bias’ is to default to what we are comfortable with, as we perceive this as safe territory. We have been safe till now following this process, and we subconsciously feel that we will remain safe following what we already know. It is a natural process or function of surviving, seen in all the lower creatures as well.