Inherit Nothing But Wind - Damon J. Gray

In 1960, just one year before I was born, Hollywood produced what was at that time one of the most widely (internationally) distributed motion pictures in the history of film. Inherit the Wind, based on the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, is a black and white film depicting Spencer Tracy as the famed atheist lawyer, Clarence Darrow, in a fictionalized version of the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” Trial.

The trial, formerly known as “The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes” involved the prosecution of high school teacher, John T. Scopes, who had been accused of violating Tennessee’s “Butler Act,” which had made it unlawful to teach Darwinian evolution in any state-funded school. What most people do not know is that the trial was a deliberately staged publicity stunt designed to attract attention to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee. Scopes could not even say with certainty that he had ever taught evolution, but he intentionally incriminated himself so the case could move forward with a defendant.

Whoever troubles his own household will inherit the wind, and the fool will be servant to the wise of heart.
– Proverbs 11:29, ESV

The film, which borrowed its title from the verse above, was an agenda-driven, gross distortion of historical events. The film has twice been remade in a television adaptation, once in 1965, and again as recently as 1999. Despite being historically inaccurate and a financial disaster, the film continues to garner wide acclaim as damning evidence against the faith I hold dear, as its proponents continue in their fallacious attempts to set up science and truth as mortal enemies.

The actual Scopes trial featured a marked absence of any real scientific evidence for evolution, yet it is repeatedly cited by current-generation evolutionists in their misguided zeal as evidentiary testimony against creationism.

O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge,”
– 1 Timothy 6:20, ESV

When genuine evidence is missing, the world will resort to noise – distortion, shaming, repetitions of nothingness. The Christ-follower must stand firm, resolute, steadfast. Indeed, it is the world, the atheistic evolutionist who will “inherit the wind.”

Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
for the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

– Psalm 1:1-6, ESV

The world is arrogant and rebellious. “Claiming to be wise, they became fools”¹. They have abandoned the truth of God for lies, worshipping and serving “the creature, rather than the Creator.”².

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
– Psalm 53:1a, ESV

Inherit the wind? Yes, the evolutionist, humanist, atheist will inherit nothing but wind. You, Christ-follower, have a much different destiny.

The wise will inherit honor,
but fools get disgrace.
– Proverbs 3:35, ESV

1. Romans 1:22
2. Romans 1:25