And your people will rebuild the ancient ruins;

You will raise up and restore the age-old foundations [of buildings that have been laid waste];

You will be called Repairer of the Breach, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

Isaiah 58:12  (AMP)

For twenty years I lived a few miles from a research university, and attended public talks from time to time on campus touching various domains of knowledge. One winter evening I heard a lecture by a woman defending the teaching of Darwinian biology in United States schools. She spoke in a large auditorium. To my surprise there was standing room only. No closed-circuit broadcast was available in satellite rooms, so I spent a cramped hour kneeling in a crowd on the floor. The speaker made cogent points with nice illustrations, however most of what she said could have been predicted and condensed into a tiny collection of sentences.

I saw no Fundamentalist protesters anywhere; not on my way in — not inside the lecture hall — and not on my way out. However when I reached my automobile, I found its windshield bursting with literature protesting (indeed excoriating) the very idea of Evolution; there were brochures, pamphlets and single sheets of what looked like advertising flyers all over the windows. Young-Earth Creationists had papered my car with Charles Darwin cartoons (the old naturalist depicted as a hairy ape), childish drawings of dragons (aka Dinosaurs); and many simple-minded, shallow rantings devoid of intellectual content. I scanned the page above from one of the cheaply-produced propaganda booklets left for me that night.

You do not need a theological education or a baptism in the Holy Spirit to understand most scripture. It is actually written to communicate. Isaiah 58:12 speaks plainly, especially if you know a bit about its background. In all of Isaiah Chapter 58 you will find no suggestion — certainly no commandment — for God’s people to violently attack another group’s property, religion, ideological orientation, or social practices.

A rift had developed in ancient times between God and the Jewish believers. The gap referred to in 58:12 is not something modern (as implied in our cartoon); it does not refer to contemporary warfare between Infallible Bible Believers and Humanist Atheist Materialists. The breach existed between God and the old Hebrews — God’s own people. It has nothing to do with Humanism, Darwinism, Secularism; it has no connection whatsoever to modern jurisprudence or scientific theories.

The Jews living in 700 BC had abandoned righteous ways. They drifted away following un-redeemed desires, neglected their own foundations, and as a result suffered “terrible losses engineered by brutal enemies.” Isaiah exhorts them to rebuild their own edifice of faith, not attack and destroy the rest of the world. Calling the Christians in this illustration Repairers and Restorers makes no sense and furthermore is misleading and deceitful. On the contrary, they seem to be gleeful idiots. Only one of them — the guy at bottom in the ball-cap, wrestling a wheelbarrow — makes actual repairs. The rest shoot off toy cannons, scattering their cowardly fear-stricken enemies, leaving them to die by drowning.