R.C. Sproul, though now deceased, was a prominent theologian. He tells an interesting story from his college days in the 1950s. While majoring in philosophy, he took a summer job at a hospital. He later remarked, “When they found out I was a philosophy student, they handed me a broom.”
Next to the hospital stood a large office building with an expansive parking lot. Sproul noticed an older man who regularly swept that lot, and one day they struck up a conversation. The older gentleman asked Sproul about his studies, and Sproul replied that he was a philosophy major. As they began discussing philosophy, it quickly became clear to Sproul that this man knew more about the subject than anyone he had ever met—yet he was sweeping a parking lot.
As it turned out, this man was from Germany and had a PhD in Philosophy and had taught at the University of Berlin.
He then shared his story. When Hitler rose to power, the Nazis removed professors whose ideas conflicted with the values of the Third Reich. As a result, he lost his position. When he began speaking out against Hitler and the Nazi regime, his entire family was arrested. His wife and all but one of his children were executed. Somehow, he and his daughter managed to escape.
With tears in his eyes, he told Sproul he would never teach philosophy again, because it had destroyed his loved ones and ruined his life.
Fifty years later, Dr. Sproul still vividly remembered this encounter and observed, “We live in a culture that gives little thought to its ideas, but here was a man pushing a broom because he lived in a culture that gave great weight to a person’s ideas.”
This man’s family was destroyed because Hitler understood that ideas are dangerous. Hitler feared the consequences of this man’s thinking so deeply that he did everything possible to silence both him and his ideas.
All of us enter the world trying to make sense of life. As we grow older, we develop ideas about how life works. This set of ideas shapes our thinking, informs our understanding of the world, and guides how we live.
The central question we face is whether our ideas are true or false. Many of us rarely consider that our ideas might be wrong. The great mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal observed that people often find life unsatisfying and incoherent over time because they hold false beliefs about matters essential to living well. This is why wisdom is so important. Genuine wisdom requires us to uproot false ideas and replace them with truth.
Jesus warns about the danger of false perceptions in two places in the Bible (Luke 11:34–36 and Matthew 6:22–23). In both verses, He says, “The eye is the lamp of the body.” For years, I found these verses difficult to understand. After studying them more closely, I learned that the “eye,” in a spiritual sense, refers to how we perceive reality—the lens through which we view life.
Jesus reveals that our perception of reality—our ideas about life—can be rooted in falsehood. When that is the case, our lives are filled with darkness. On the other hand, when our ideas are grounded in truth, our lives are filled with light, and we are able to walk in wisdom.
In next week’s second part of this blog, I will explore additional insights on this issue.
Richard E Simmons III is the founder and Executive Director of The Center for Executive Leadership and a best-selling author.
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