Forsake Foolishness

I started this blog out of the urge to first express my love and desire of Christ and the Church which is my faith. My premise is that the world has changed in my nearly 60 years of living here. It is my belief from personal observations and experiences, from reading literature and cultural writings, from worshiping, from talking with and teaching youth that the world has turned to foolishness.

Here are just a few of my beliefs on the matter:

Most people are not introspective, their worldview is driven by economics - how do I make money and what can I spend it on. The biggest culprit in this mindset is the skepticism and relativism that prevails throughout society. People believe that there is no such thing as an absolute - like for instance God, His existence, His interaction with man since creation, and His love for man. Without a foundational belief in creation and salvation history, man is left to his own demise and thus anything goes. And in our society - the big three significant ideas that dominate peoples lives and consumes the greatest amount of their time is power, sex, and money. An individual's purposefulness is defined by what degree one pursues these. Celebrities, politicians, the wealthy and the famous are worshiped and glorified. Most of what I have heard from them does not subscribe to the precepts of true charity and few desire to emulate the message of the Gospel.

On the whole people have been dumbed down. This is especially relevant to younger people. I see an overall lack of desire to understand the world from a broad perspective. Schools do not teach or require reading of classical literature. Reading is a complete thing of the past - information is garnered without subject to critique or review and wholly believed straight from cyberspace Never mind Shakespeare, many people have never read the likes of Steinbeck, Robert Frost, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hemingway, or Sinclair Lewis. Philosophy is absent from many universities, mindless drivel in the form of rap music which promotes violence, sex, lawlessness, vulgarity, and is demeaning to women and family values rules the day and the airwaves. Geniuses and their works from the likes of Handel, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Vivaldi,Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky lie silent, never heard or understood.

Incompetency is rampart in world of goods and services - and please don't get me started because I could fill a book with the idiotic things that have occurred while attempting to purchase a particular good or service.

Mediocrity - people are satisfied with being mediocre, there is no sense of the pride and doing a good job, going the extra mile, giving of oneself without expecting in return.

Last but not least: people desire the government to take control over their lives. They literally line up to give away their freedoms so they can experience as little risk and pain as possible.

The above elements are present in our society to greater degree. I have of course met people to the contrary, but they are a minority.

The writer of Proverbs speaks to us of Wisdom:

Wisdom has built her house, she has set up her seven columns;

She has dressed her meat, mixed her wine, yes, she has spread her table.

She has sent out her maidens; she calls from the heights out over the city:

"Let whoever is simple turn in here; to him who lacks understanding, I say,

Come, eat of my food, and drink of the wine I have mixed!

Forsake foolishness that you may live; advance in the way of understanding.

For by me your days will be multiplied and the years of your life increased."

He who corrects an arrogant man earns insult; and he who reproves a wicked man incurs opprobrium.

Reprove not an arrogant man, lest he hate you; reprove a wise man, and he will love you.

Instruct a wise man, and he becomes still wiser; teach a just man, and he advances in learning.

The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the LORD, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

If you are wise, it is to your own advantage; and if you are arrogant, you alone shall bear it.