Psalm 111:10: “The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom.”

“In our view, the student statement aims to recontextualize the events of October 7, 2023, pointing out that it was a military response by a people who had endured crushing and unrelenting state violence from an occupying power over many years. One could regard the events of October 7th as one salvo in an ongoing war between an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation.”

What happened on October 7^th? Was it, as described above, a “military response”? To remind us, 1,400 innocent Israelis, many being women, children, and elderly, were murdered in cold blood by Hamas. Many of them were murdered in their homes, some were paraded in the streets. 240 were also taken hostage.

From where did the opening quote originate? Columbia University Faculty members, in a letter entitled “An Open Letter from Columbia University and Barnard College Faculty in Defense of Robust Debate About the History and Meaning of the War in Israel/Gaza.” You guessed it – intellectual elites.

The faculty urge the protection of students who authored and signed “a statement that situated the military action on October 7th within the larger context of the occupation of Palestine by Israel.” Wow – the planned murder of babies was a “military action”? Marxists have infiltrated Columbia University academia.

But it is not only professors. Marxist groups at Columbia – especially “Students for Justice in Palestine” and “Jewish Voice for Peace” – issued this statement: “The weight of responsibility for the war and casualties undeniably lies with the Israeli extremist government and Western governments, including the U.S., which fund Israeli aggression, apartheid and settler-colonization.” Columbia is indoctrinated with Marxist ideology.

Dennis Prager, a graduate of Columbia, warned us in his 2003 article “How I found God at Columbia: “One day, as a graduate student in international affairs at Columbia, I had an epiphany. Since entering graduate school, I was preoccupied with this question: ‘Why did so many learned and intelligent professors believe so many foolish things? Why did so many people at my university believe nonsense such as Marxism?

I was a fellow at the Russian Institute where I specialized in Soviet affairs and Marxism, and I encountered professor after professor and student after student who truly believed in it.

And why were so many professors morally confused? How could people so learned in contemporary history morally equate the Soviet Union and the United States or regard Israel as the Middle East’s villain?

One day, I received an answer to these questions. Out of nowhere, a bible verse – Psalm 111:10 – entered my mind: ‘Wisdom begins with fear of God.’ It could not be a coincidence that the most morally confused of society’s mainstream institutions and the one possessing the least wisdom – the university – was also society’s most secular institution. The Psalmist was right – no God, no wisdom.”

Yeonmi Park is a recent Columbia graduate with an inspiring story of survival and courage. In her 2015 book ‘In Order to Live’, she tells her journey to freedom from Communist North Korea, escaping at age 13 with her mother by crossing into China, where sex traffickers then sold her and her mother into sex slavery.

With the help of Christian missionaries, she escaped and made it to Mongolia by walking across the Gobi Desert on foot. They then made it to freedom in South Korea. Finally, she came to America.

Entering Columbia in 2016, she could not believe what she was taught: “The things I learned at Columbia University shocked me because it was the exact same thing my North Korean teachers brainwashed me with. At Columbia, they force you to think the way they want you to think. They teach that all the problems are due to capitalism and white men, and the solution is a communist revolution in the name of equity.”

She had to laugh at how teachers and students think they are so “oppressed”: “Their idea of ‘oppression’ is that we cannot catch up to their ever-growing non-grammatical pronouns. That is the biggest oppression they face. They believe that we need to destroy this country and rebuild it in the name of equality of outcomes. That is the same ideology that drove my home country into what it is today – North Korea.”

All four voices in this article – Dennis Prager, Yeonmi Park, the Columbia faculty, and Students for Justice in Palestine – testify to the truth of this week’s verse: “If you do not fear God, you have no wisdom.”

“The Evidence of Faith’s Substance” _ Article #579