Life Matters - March 6, 2024
God, “making wise the simple,” is not merely a one time happening but is ongoing, as wisdom builds upon itself by experiencing God’s grace in ever multiplying life experiences. Whereby our belief in God’s provision becomes more settled and our faith grows as its roots grow deeper into the fertility of God’s Word. In an ideal world, then, there is indeed wisdom in the “hoary head” to which the younger generation can look up to, in keen awareness of their own lack, for a guiding principle, a word of wisdom, to speak into a present circumstance, situation, or need. But we don’t live in a perfect world, right? No, we don’t. And, unfortunately, the elderly have not always been walking with God and therefore have not attained to wisdom, are at times even downright foolish as they join the multi-letter gendered mob, or etc. in a foolish attempt to stay relevant to the younger set whose enthusiastic approach to life lacks experience even while their brains are active with ideas. The elderly need that lively enthusiasm of ideas even as the young need the enlightened infusion of wisdom from their elders.
In a perfect world, the enthusiastic ideas of the young fuse with the stabilizing wisdom of those older and the benefits are encouraging to both. Admittedly that scenario has never played out perfectly in real life here on earth, flawed as it is by the failures of human nature. It has however, whether conscious of it, or no, been a goal of what is good to strive for, an observation we readily deduce from ancient literature to instructive literature of the present day. And no, that does not include the Berenstein Bear Books! Although I have heard those are changing as Papa Bear is becoming a more competent leader and no longer the accident waiting to happen whenever he took it upon himself to teach a life principle to his cubs by demonstrating how to do it. The demonstrations have been quite entertaining, yes, but the resulting lessons, blending in well with today’s anti-patriarchal attitudes, have been to hear Dad’s advice with suspicion, at best, or to reject it up front, at worst. I have not perused the later editions sufficiently to say for sure but praise the Lord if stable family structure has found its way into these children’s books. Via the son of the original author, I hear.
In the making of dad-mistakes, I at times feel like I’m leading the pack. Any success has definitely been the grace of God, as my family would agree, and it is that grace which we parents, father and mother, do and must adhere to. As we reflect back on our life here, remembering the many circumstances, situations, and needs wherein God showed Himself strong by His grace, it strengthens our faith in Him and in His ability to guide us through storms ever threatening to break upon us, and in some cases, have already done so.
One of those “storms” is the way knowledge at our fingertips is replacing cognitive knowledge except remembering fluently the right buttons to push to cause the right knowledge to appear on the screen at the right time. I call it a “storm” because for so many it literally has been the antithesis of a calm and sunny day with people just enjoying each other’s company without someone looking into a deluge of information to find a tidbit relevant to the conversation. Is it helpful? It can be very much so. Information-wise, that is. But friendship wise? Not so much. Think about it. We get closest to people we share interests with and with whom we communicate the most about those common interests. Or we work together on a project that we both know something about, but together we know more and find it easier to complete the task together. Is it not the epitome of irony that in this age of instant connection with hordes of friends all at one time, statistics tell us that loneliness has reached the proportions of an epidemic? A testament to the very human need for communal interaction with each other.
When that communal interaction becomes, in effect, replaced by a machine, then we may love it with its artificial intelligence but it will never love us in return. In the old days we learned that when we loved the sources of wisdom sharing knowledge, whether it were parents, grandparents, teachers, or any of those old people we wished to become like, we were loved in return. Love was reciprocal.
Let us keep those “old days” new. God made us to need each other. He made us to love and to be loved. God’s way is best.
Life Matters!