GLEANINGS — March 2, A.D. 2014                                                                                                              "Tools"

Today's "Gleaning" is NOT a tirade about gun control legislation, certainly a hot topic of our time. It is about implements...devices...helps we employ to accomplish goals.

A keyboard is a tool. It can be used to write an email to a friend, or to call down curses on a perceived enemy. In other words, like pens and pencils it can be used for good or for evil.

A hammer is a tool. One kind can be used to build a sturdy house, another to do artistic work in sheet metal (Exodus 25:18). In their song Maxwell's Silver Hammer, the Beatles crooned about how the hammer of "a dirty one" (who was finally caught by P.C. 31*) was used to commit murder. In other words, a hammer can be used for good or evil.

Logic is an intangible tool of the human mind which we can use to predict (not infallibly) an outcome. EXAMPLE: "This crystal stemware is fragile. If I hold it above my head and let it fall onto the hard tile floor, it will break." It also can be used to urge another to action (not always). EXAMPLE: "You were able to walk on the ice covered pond a week ago. The average daily temperature has been well above freezing since then. Do not try to walk on the pond today, or you probably will fall in."

One wine glass in an hundred might land in such a way that, amazingly, it does not break. A foolhardy thrill seeker might take such a logical warning as a dare and, amazingly, not fall through thin ice into cold water.

This intangible, limited, but worthy tool called logic, very useful for grasping truth and acting according to truth, cannot be the ultimate SOURCE of Truth, no more than a keyboard is the source of the human capacity to write or a hammer the source of the human ability to build. Such honor belongs to God and to Him alone. The Lord Jesus said both "I am the Truth" (John 14:6) and that He "came to bear witness of the Truth," (John 18:37). So truth is eternal; it is an attribute of the personal God and a quality inhering in all that He says and does. (Exodus 34:6, Psalm 33:4, 119:160, John 1:14).

As with other tools, it is proper to consider how we use logic. Do we use it righteously, or dare to take it in hand without reference to ethics? It is only a tool, and like others can be used for good purposes, such as deducing from the whole counsel of God in Scripture a concise statement about His nature and works that gives Him glory. EXAMPLE: 

"There is but one only, living, and true God, Who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure Spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; and withal, most just, and terrible in His judgments, hating all sin, and Who will by no means clear the guilty."

Logic also can be used for wicked purposes, such as arguing against the very existence, righteousness, providence, or purposes of the living God, hence dishonoring Him. EXAMPLE: "I cannot by any kind of observation discern that there is a god, I conclude therefore that no god exists." Consider Psalm 14:1...

An assertion was made at the outset that this is NOT a tirade about gun control legislation. Although that issue is of lesser weight than that of how accurately and Biblically we grasp and articulate theo-logical truth, the argument logically applies. We might say that it intellectually disarms those who would illogically forbid the lawful use of certain tools.

* P.C. 31 would be a way of referring to a particular officer or station of the Police Constable in the U.K. While the song was being recorded Ringo Starr included an anvil, a blacksmith's tool used in conjunction with a hammer, as a musical instrument.