The Load-Bearing Wall

We live in an age that is quietly intoxicated with intelligence.

Not wisdom—intelligence.

We live with the assumption, often unspoken but deeply embedded, that if a problem can be solved, it will be solved by someone smarter than us… or by a system smarter than them. We trust models. We trust data. We trust expertise. We trust the accumulation of knowledge the way earlier generations trusted providence.

We are the most informed generation in human history.

We carry more information in our pockets than entire civilizations once possessed.

We can ask a question and receive an answer in milliseconds.

We can simulate futures, predict behaviors, optimize outcomes.

And now, with artificial intelligence accelerating beyond anything we imagined, we are beginning to push even further—beyond the limits of the human mind itself.

And yet, something feels wrong. Because for all our knowledge, we are not calmer. For all our expertise, we are not more humane. For all our systems, we are not more secure.

If intelligence were enough, we should be at peace by now. But instead, we live in a strange contradiction: A world of expanding knowledge and shrinking meaning. A world of unprecedented capability and deepening anxiety.

The Age of Reason promised clarity. What we are experiencing instead feels like regression—not into ignorance, but into cynicism. A quiet, pervasive sense that despite all our advances, we may be doomed anyway. That the problems are too big. The systems too complex. The damage irreversible.

We are no longer asking, “What is true?”

We are asking, “What’s the point?”

When reason loses confidence, it doesn’t collapse into humility.

It collapses into exhaustion.

Many of us didn’t abandon faith because we became rebellious. We didn’t stop trusting God because we were angry. We stopped because we became competent. We learned how to manage. How to analyze. How to plan. How to protect ourselves.

Somewhere along the way, without ever deciding to, we began leaning our full weight on our own understanding.

Tonight, I want to explore a simple but unsettling question—one I don’t want you to answer too quickly:

Why hasn’t being smart solved more than this?

Not just in the world. In us.

Why do people who have done the math… made the careful choices… followed the responsible path…

still feel unsteady inside?

The Bible has a name for this problem. It uses an image we rarely think about. It calls it leaning. It warns us—not that understanding is bad—but that it was never meant to carry the weight of a life.

--- PART ONE — The Honest Problem (Recognition)

We need to start by naming something honestly, without shame and without exaggeration.

We live in a time when being smart has become a form of safety. Not wisdom. Not humility. Intelligence.

We have been trained—explicitly and implicitly—to believe that if we gather enough information, ask the right questions, consult the right experts, and think carefully enough, we can reduce life to something manageable. Predictable. Containable.

We know more than any generation before us.

We diagnose disease earlier.

We prevent disasters more effectively.

We solve problems faster.

There is real good here. This sermon is not an attack on intelligence. Intelligence is a gift. Scripture celebrates understanding.

The book of Proverbs is filled with it. But something subtle has happened alongside this progress. We have begun to lean on intelligence in places where it was never meant to support weight.

We use it not just to navigate the world, but to justify ourselves within it. Not just to solve problems, but to calm our fears.

Not just to plan wisely, but to assure ourselves that everything will be okay. That’s where the trouble begins.

Intelligence is very good at answering how questions. But it is almost helpless with why questions.

It can tell you how a system works. It cannot tell you why a life feels empty inside a functioning system.

It can explain patterns. It cannot confer meaning.

It can optimize outcomes. It cannot promise peace.

Many people today are not confused because they lack answers. They are confused because they have too many answers and no resting place.

We are surrounded by explanation but starved for orientation. And the result is not rebellion. It is exhaustion.

This is why so many thoughtful people feel quietly unsteady. They’ve done what they were taught to do. They’ve thought carefully. They’ve avoided recklessness. They’ve been responsible. And yet, beneath the surface, something feels fragile.

It’s not that their thinking is wrong. It’s that their thinking is being asked to do too much.

We’ve made intelligence load-bearing. We’ve leaned our full weight on our ability to understand the world, predict outcomes, and protect ourselves from uncertainty. And when uncertainty inevitably breaks through—as it always does—we feel shaken in a way that surprises us.