The article which follows was submitted to “The Caribbean Pioneer” as a tribute to Bro. Aaron (Glen) Isaacs on the anniversary of his assassination this time last year. Anyone who knew Bro. Glen will recognize instantly his characteristic spirit, with its mixture of powerful wisdom and humor, shining through in his writing. The article has been adapted by the editors for this issue of our magazine. A.E.
This is a faithful saying: “The things we want to believe often keep us from learning the things we need to know.”
Star wars
In 1984, United States President Ronald Reagan startled the world by announcing Star Wars. A nuclear powered X-ray laser system called Super Excalibur had been developed by a friend of his, Edward Teller. It was supposed to destroy any and every missile aimed at the U.S.A. before reaching its target.
At the historic Reykjavik Summit, Teller’s friend, Paul Nitze, boasted to the whole world that America was now invincible. In reality there never was an X-ray laser. It was all a giant exercise in self-delusion. The one and only test of the device, in the Nevada desert, was a total failure. All the test equipment was blown to smithereens. But it was a costly delusion: the bill to the long-suffering taxpayer was thirty billion dollars. Teller and all his team should have been discredited as charlatans. Instead, they were all promoted.
Fusion power
Indeed, Teller became involved in another extraordinary exercise in mass self-delusion. In 1989, the world’s media announced that two prestigious European scientists would soon be able to provide the world with unlimited electricity at virtually no cost. The key was in using fusion power, just like our sun does, but without the heat. Every first year student at my Science Institute knows that fusion power on earth is simply impossible. It defies every law of the universe. Yet at a meeting in Dallas, the two scientists were given a standing ovation by thousands of scientists and political sycophants. Governments and universities across the world spent billions of dollars of your money for “research and development” of fusion power. All in vain, of course. There never was any fusion power, and never will be. It was all a gigantic delusion. However could it have happened? Intelligent people wanted to believe it, because it offered unbounded prosperity, which is what they really wanted. Remember? The things we want to believe often keep us from learning the things we need to know.
Vitamin O
Hundreds of thousands of people have testified to the benefits of taking Vitamin O regularly. The manufacturers of Vitamin 0 claim that they use the newest generation of super oxygenation technology. The label on the bottle is truthful: “stabilized oxygen molecules in a solution of distilled water and sodium chloride.” The bottle contains salt water. Nothing less. Nothing more. Vitamin 0 is a total delusion. So why have multitudes spent millions on bottles of salt water and testified to its value as a cure all? Because, The things we want to believe often keep us from learning the things we need to know.
Dogma of delusion
Fifty years ago there were tens of thousands of Marxist scientists all over the world. They were convinced by “science” that God didn’t exist, and that a man-made communist utopia was “the wave of the future.” Where are they now? It was all a delusion, a total fantasy without a shred of reality.
As another example, perhaps a billion people give unthinking assent to a patent mathematical contradiction — that God can be one and three at the same time.
Magic sugar
Cluistadelphians are as prone to self-delusion as other mortals. In 1887, two leading Christadelphians persuaded many brothers and sisters to invest in some magic process for refining sugar which, like fusion power, defied the laws of nature. It would produce everything for nothing. Instead of vast profits and a new technology, the promoters were covered with shame and disgrace. The degree to which this was a setback to our missionary effort is a matter for speculation as much available money was lost to the community.
Why?
If scientists would only read their own textbooks, they would not be sucked in by Teller and over-enthusiastic inventors. If we, too, are to avoid cruel delusion, we must read with understanding and honesty our own textbook, the scriptures of truth.
The twelve apostles
The apostles of Jesus were prime examples of the dangers of self-delusion. They wanted the kingdom of God to come so badly that they misread every sign of their times. They should have realized that riding a little colt into Jerusalem was no sign to expect immediate conquest. But they joined in the excitement and were devastated when their Master wept over the city instead of demanding its surrender. If only they had believed their own cherished, well-loved Bibles, they would not have been so cruelly deluded. Fortunately for us, the risen Lord mercifully removed the scales from their eyes.
Our own agenda
Jeremiah tells us about some people who asked him for advice. Should they stay in Judah, which lay in ruins, or go to Egypt? (A bit like West Indians asking for advice about staying in the islands or going to America!) He gave them the answer ten days later: stay in Judah. They went to Egypt. They had their own agenda.
When we have committed ourselves to an agenda of our own, we are impervious to any reason. A scientist who has convinced himself that there is no God will soon come to believe that chance is the blind watchmaker of all created things, and that bacterial slime had the intelligence to make the world.
Christadelphian fire-eaters
We have in the brotherhood sincere brethren who want to believe that they, and their work, are essential in keeping the truth pure and preventing apostasy. Despite Jesus’ warning, they feel that it is their duty to do his work in eliminating the chaff from the wheat. What they need to know is that our Lord has all the plans and help he needs for threshing the grain and burning up the chaff in his own good time. He has made that much very clear. A divisive, catastrophic policy of fire-eating and heresy-hunting goes against everything we learn from the word of God about how Christ’s community should be run.
Pride is the problem
In the fusion case, a court eventually ruled that the two Nobel aspirants were “separated from reality.” The problem was pride. For decades scientists proclaimed the dogma that people manifesting violent tendencies have “low self esteem,” in other words, no pride in self. Millions have swallowed the delusion and encouraged ego-inflation with, to my way of thinking, predictable consequences.
Recently a very famous scientist has questioned the received dogma and proposed that violence stems from pride and arrogance: “Conceited, self-important individuals turn nasty toward those who puncture their bubbles of self-love.”
I think the Bible backs him up totally. The only way any of us, scientist or saint, can avoid self-delusion is by accepting open discussion, peer review of our ideas, and a ruthless humility which is prepared to reconsider cherished beliefs and findings. It does not mean lack of conviction. Whether in theology, science, history, linguistics, prophecy, morality, or whatever, surely we must never be guilty of being “separated from reality.” Let us be warned by that maxim: The things we want to believe often keep us from learning the things we need to know.
At the Lord’s table
There is profound irony in the fact that, as disciples, we are most at hazard of self-delusion when we are at the Lord’s table. At the last supper, Jesus told the twelve that a traitor was in their midst. But they just could not come to terms with the idea. So they deluded themselves that Judas must have gone to the grocery store. At the well-respected ecclesia in Laodicea, this table was obviously no more than an opportunity for self-congratulation and monumental self-delusion. In Ephesus there was purity without love. At Sardis, Jesus said that it was mostly living corpses who shared the bread and wine.
Some words of Justin, one of the early Christians, appeal to me and really make me feel strengthened when I am at this table. God has announced that He has joy in the meal of thanksgiving of the bread and the cup, which is celebrated by Christians in all places throughout the earth. They offer prayer and thanksgiving when they celebrate the meal of remembrance. In this way they commemorate the suffering which the Son of God enduredfor their sakes.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One