Strange things in this worldview subject matter

A striking thing that came directly at me reading Pearcey's Finding Truth, and that has stayed at the forefront, is the scale aspect of what is going on in the book.

What I mean by that is these historic worldly things, these dominating worldviews, whether philosophies or theories or actual religions, are *so easily* cut down and destroyed when you analyze them. I.e. they seem *so small.* Once big and powerful and dominating to puny and insignificant and silly even. I used the parallel from the Bible of how Satan at the end gets marveled at regarding how pathetic and small he looks when it's all over. "This is the force that controlled nations and sowed planetary level confusions and evil and held countless souls and entire empires in his grip?"

But once the delusion is broken you see it for what it is. Yet, still...

Yet still, it is striking *how easy* these strongholds can be 'pulled down.'

These false - or partial - intentionally anti-God worldviews controlled politics, academia, the arts, social behavior of millions of human beings, war, life, death, in different eras, different cultures. That is *real power.* That is making history in a real way. You can't discount the reality and the power and the large scale of the phenomena.

And yet (and I'll use Pearcey's steps, but we could find similar formulas), 1. identify the idol involved. 2. see the reductive nature of it. 3. see how it denies universal truth and leaves out aspects of the world all humanity experiences. 4. see it's internal inconsistencies. 5. see how small and false and worthless it is compared to the worldview derived from the revealed word of God and the plan of God overall.

This is real power. This is pulling down real strongholds with understanding derived from fearing God alone, which is the source of real wisdom.

It's almost a glimpse of something supernatural.

In the deep background of this for me is something I've always rebelled against which is the notion that philosophy, or what philosophers talk about, has in any way any real power to effect how human beings think and act, let alone have power to define historical eras. I've always scoffed at that. It always seemed to me to come with a view of human beings as being very hollow and easy to indoctrinate. Robot-like, if you will. I never had that view of people and humanity.

And part of the above paragraph is the naivete of thinking I was immune from such influence when I never was. We get influenced and indoctrinated by all this garbage without being aware of it. Admitting that hurts our pride and vanity. But we can see it looking back on our life. Like it or not those philosophers we now, from the vantage point of having attained some understanding, can see to be so inane and who seem so shallow and hardened in village idiocy...*they* actually *have influence* on us all. Maybe not directly but through various levels of education and media and politics and fashion of all kinds (including mental fashions) and all the rest. That's disgusting to concede, but it's real.

We're born into a fallen world, with fallen human nature, surrounded by people with fallen human nature, in an actual Kingdom run by a fallen angel with real power derived from Adam's failure in the Garden. We are born guilty, yet ironically our only real innocence might be our innocence on the spiritual battlefield. We are naked and naive on this spiritual battlefield until we, piece by piece, don the real armor of God and get our bearings and are then given ability and understanding to pull down strongholds that previously had us in darkness and bondage. - C.