What a wonderful creature man is! God has created him with such high endowments that his inventiveness alone constantly redounds to the praise of his Creator. It is popular to attack the inventiveness of Hollywood with its perverse excesses. We can easily crab about the toxic flow of our culture against which we must fight upstream as rational and virtuous creatures. Perversity is being fed to our culture in greater and more exciting doses in literature and the visual arts. Yes, that is true. But it is a sign merely that God's endowment of humans with great minds and talents of many kinds, is able to be turned away from the purposes for which God created those humans. It does not mean that those talents and skills have been taken from us. Whether the mind is used to cure multiple sclerosis to help millions or build a chemical bomb to terrorize thousands, the gift of human aptitude is used in both cases; an aptitude that is a gift from God.

The production of this devotion would literally have been impossible twenty years ago. I could not have done the research and reading quickly enough given the resources that were available to me then. I would not have had a powerful notebook computer on which to research, read, write, edit, find art, manage and send these daily devotions. You would not have been able to read them free of charge twenty years ago. Yet, this same powerful notebook with its connection to the internet can easily become a tool of perversity by pouring filth into my life and soul through viewing the pornography that is available on the web. Pornography is still the most lucrative internet-based business. The human mind still needs to be focused on the virtuous and the good so that its powerful inventiveness might be used for purposes pleasing to God and of benefit to our fellow human beings.

We are correct to be critical of the perversion of God's great gifts by human beings everywhere, in entertainment industries, scientific laboratories, government buildings, churches, and schools. But this should not blind us to the power of the human mind. I was in my first college philosophy class when the professor asked one of my classmates a question about the views of the ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates. In reply the student said, "Socrates was not a Christian, so I don't care what he thought about anything." Needless to say, this raised the considerable ire of the professor who was attempting to stiffen the mushy brains of those undergraduates with whom he was forced to grapple in Philosophy 101. He wanted the students to see the brilliance exhibited even by those minds not enlightened by Christ. This too is a gift of God.

"God has given to the human soul a mind, in which reason and understanding lie as it were asleep during infancy, but not as if they were not destined to be awakened and exercised as years increase, so as to become capable of knowledge and of receiving instruction, fit to understand what is true and to love what is good. It is by this capacity the soul drinks in wisdom, and becomes endowed with those virtues by which, in prudence, fortitude, temperance, and righteousness, it makes war upon error and the other inborn vices, and conquers them by fixing its desires upon no other object than the supreme and unchangeable Good. And even though this is not uniformly the result, yet who can competently utter or even conceive the grandeur of this work of the Almighty, and the unspeakable boon He has conferred upon our rational nature, by giving us even the capacity of such attainment? For beyond those arts which are called virtues, and which teach us how we may spend our life well, and attain to endless happiness, arts which are given to the children of the promise and the kingdom by the sole grace of God which is in Christ, has not the genius of man invented and applied countless astonishing arts, partly the result of necessity, partly the result of exuberant invention, so that this vigor of mind, which is so active in the discovery not merely of superfluous but even of dangerous and destructive things, indicates an inexhaustible wealth in the nature which can invent, learn, or employ such arts?

"What wonderful-one might say stupefying-advances has human industry made in the arts of weaving and building, of agriculture and navigation! With what endless variety are designs in pottery, painting, and sculpture produced, and with what skill executed! What wonderful spectacles are exhibited in the theatres, which those who have not seen them cannot credit! How skillful the contrivances for catching, killing, or taming wild beasts! And for the injury of men, also, how many kinds of poisons, weapons, engines of destruction, have been invented, while for the preservation or restoration of health the appliances and remedies are infinite! To provoke appetite and please the palate, what a variety of seasonings have been concocted! To express and gain entrance for thoughts, what a multitude and variety of signs there are, among which speaking and writing hold the first place! What ornaments has eloquence at command to delight the mind! What wealth of song is there to captivate the ear! How many musical instruments and strains of harmony have been devised! What skill has been attained in measures and numbers! With what sagacity have the movements and connections of the stars been discovered! Who could tell the thought that has been spent upon nature, even though, despairing of recounting it in detail, he endeavored only to give a general view of it? In conclusion, even the defense of errors and misapprehensions, which has illustrated the genius of heretics and philosophers, cannot be sufficiently declared.