Truth will win

Image Source: NASA

Psalm 19:1 – The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.


Romans 1:19-20: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.


Genesis 1:26-28: Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

These are the things that went through my mind this morning as I got up early to watch the International Space Station fly across the sky. It appeared around 5:07, and it lasted just a few minutes, but it was, as advertised, the brightest object in the sky (apart from the sun and the moon).

You can sign up for email updates about when it appears (it actually appears quite regularly; however, the time and the weather are frequently unaccommodating).

http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/

Anyone in the world can see it, as it appears on a regular schedule. It appears as a bright star, yet it moves quickly (“like a fast-moving plane in the sky, but it is dozens of times higher than any airplane and traveling thousands of miles an hour faster”), and my impression is that this is but one small fruit of the God-given ability of man to “have dominion”.

* * *

At the moment [and I use the word “moment” in the sense that John Richard Neuhaus used it, in the sense of “this era in history”] we lament certain laws and judicial statements, and the harm brought by them to people and cultures. But I think we can all agree, that these things are artificial – they have been put into place as the result of coordinated efforts at misinformation that seek to circumvent the truths about God that are “self-evident”.

I don’t recall the precise citation, but I’ve cited the Roman Catholic historian Paul Johnson as saying, in the middle ages, the intention of the rulers was to guide the masses rather than to control their passions – hence events like the Crusades were mighty movements of rabble across seas and continents that frequently got out of control.

Today, we still have “masses” of uneducated peasants in the world. However, these “masses” are comprised of individuals created in the image of God, who have it in their hearts to look up, to seek after Him. As well, in our “moment”, more people than ever before have the availability, on their own initiative, to take advantage of the kind of world-class education that can be gotten for free on the Internet.

Through sources like iTunesU and others, courses in world history and literature and math and sciences and engineering are available, and courses from the finest Christian seminaries and universities are available (via “Massive Open Online Courses”, or “MOOCs”, for example).

In this case, it is the “professional educators” who are concerned:

"No technology has ever developed this quickly in academia; not electricity, not the telephone, not the Internet," Sreenivasan told The Morningside Post, one of the university's student newspapers. "My role is to help Columbia navigate this in a strategic way, without panicking."

It is the shapers of the present mutant forms of misinformation who are panicking.

Nearly 80% of people in China who are engaged technologically “surf the web” via their mobile devices, according to a story that appeared this morning in ZDNet:

China's Internet population hit a record high of 591 million by the end of June driven by a growth in mobile Internet usage, which now makes up nearly 80 percent of all users.

China's mobile Internet user base comprised 78.5 of all users at 464 million compared with 72.2 percent a year ago, according to the government-affiliated research group. Such users have been actively using services like instant messaging platforms such as Tencent's WeChat and payment modes like e-commerce giant Alibaba's Alipay on handsets.

Web applications with strong growth included online music, video, games and literature, according to CNNIC.

Those are massive numbers, and we know those kinds of numbers are being replicated globally on a massive scale. Yes, there is clutter, but the sum of the learning in human history is also contained among those “web applications”, and it is being spread throughout the world.

And one particular seed that is being scattered is the Gospel. “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom.”

One way or another, people will learn the truth.