Chasing the Wind

J. Robert Oppenheimer, a brilliant physicist, was head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, which developed the atomic bomb. He also directed the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

Yet the year before he died, he said this about his accomplishments: “They leave on the tongue only the taste of ashes.”

We celebrate our dramatic advances in science and technology, and they are breathtaking to say the least. We live in a technologically advanced age, and we truly have become a global village. Still, it seems that all this technology has numbed our souls a little bit more. That’s because we have pursued knowledge without God.

Solomon came to the same conclusion. He wrote, “So I set out to learn everything from wisdom to madness and folly. But I learned firsthand that pursuing all this is like chasing the wind. The greater my wisdom, the greater my grief. To increase knowledge only increases sorrow” (Ecclesiastes 1:17–18 NLT).

If intellectualism alone were the key to purpose and fulfillment, then our college campuses would be bastions of peace and purpose. However, on the campuses of secular universities today we can find the most bizarre, aberrant ideas available. We also can see the emptiness of academic pursuit without God.

I would even say this lack of belief in God, which comes from many of our colleges and universities, has led to the moral breakdown in our country today. Now our young people are taught they are not created in the image of God. And then we’re surprised when people who believe they have evolved from animals go out and act like them.

Of course, the pursuit of knowledge and a good education is noble and valuable. But if in that pursuit we leave God out, then it indeed will be an empty one.

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