Progressing Towards a Biblical Worldview
It was the summer of ‘61 and I was working as a high steel iron worker on the ‘cat walk’ of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge that connects Staten Island NYC to Brooklyn NYC, New York spanning the Hudson River. I was part of a team spinning the cable ‘back ‘n forth’ across the bridge that the massive iron roadway deck would hang from. It’s a very dangerous, difficult and hard job!
One of the reasons I was working on the bridge was because my father ‘Jack Kelly’ was the bridge construction superintendent for The American Bridge Company, a division of United States Steel Company. One day, about the second or third week of working on the bridge, I was standing in a bar with my dad and he hands me a book - Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. That book changed my worldview from being a non-political heathen to being a political heathen!
At the time, my entire worldview focus was on football, boxing, bodybuilding, making money, the Jersey shore, beer, girls and brawling! The book messed me up; it made me think! However, now I realize my total worldview didn’t change. It’s just that I now had a political view added to my hedonistic lifestyle and worldview. Without knowing it - I had become a Libertarian!
Then in my freshman year of college, our assigned reading included Aldus Huxley’s Brave New World which questions utopias. Then George Orwell’s Animal Farm and later, Orwell’s book 1984. Reading these books, then turned me fully against totalitarianism and its many forms and developments.
Then in the summer of ‘62 while connecting iron for the roadway on, yes, the Verrazano Bridge, I read Jack London’s - The Road, a memoir of his early years, which I loved and then I read his book, The Call of The Wild, and I discovered I wanted travel and adventure and wouldn’t be satisfied without it.
Later in my early 20’s, I read The True Believer and later The Ordeal of Change by Eric Hoffer who was a longshoreman philosopher. From him I learned about ‘mass movements’ and their ‘true believers’, I mostly noted the ‘whys’. From The Ordeal of Change, I learned how people who feel weak, can develop self-loathing, and can produce explosive and violent effects.
I read a lot of Hoffer’s other writings leaving me with incredible social insights and sage counsel regarding outrage and massive people movements and dealings with nations. I believe these hold amazing insights for many to this day. There are no records of where Eric Hoffer, the longshoreman was born. No one has ever said they knew him when he was young. There is no recorded past. He appears nowhere until he was estimated to be forty years old working as a longshoreman and writing. No one knows how old he was when he died. His past prior to forty is an unsolved mystery!
I also read all of Alvin Toffler’s books and I especially liked Future Shock and PowerShift. The funny thing about this particular list of authors I note above, is that they were all looking at the past, discerning the present, and writing concerning future possibilities. Futurists study data from history and present trends, but don’t predict or prophesy the future. They write an outline of what could be! Yet I have found these authors from my past to be very prophetic especially for a time such as this!
I read and studied those books prior to experiencing my thrown-on-my-face radical salvation in 1973.
I came to realize the Bible, the Word of God, has them all beat, whether they are futurists secular authors or charismatic prophets. God is looking for those he can prepare and place in leadership positions. He told his people, “Choose wise, understanding, and knowledgeable men from among your tribes, and I will make them heads over you’ (Deuteronomy 1:13).
“A wise man will hear and increase learning, And a man of understanding will attain wise counsel…” (Proverbs 1:5).
“Wisdom is the principal thing; Therefore, get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding” (Proverbs 4:7)
“The heart of him who has understanding seeks knowledge....” (Proverbs 15:14)
I recommend that you ask the Holy Spirit to lead you to Christian and secular books that reveal wisdom, insight, knowledge, and understanding that will help illuminate you to comprehend and make decisions regarding such a time as this.
Remember, the greatest book ever written is the Word of God for in it, you discover God’s purpose for humanity and by the leading of the Holy Spirit you discover your assignment as His ambassador - for such a time as this!
© 2021 John P. Kelly