Remember The Wisdom Learned In The Past
Word-of-the-Day: ’(26) Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways. (27) Do not turn to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.’ (Proverbs 4:26-27); ‘<Jesus said at His Sermon on the Mount,> “(13) Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. (14) But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”’ (Matthew 7:13-14)
There are several videos of a young Parisian woman, during the course of the riots throughout France, who attempted to stop a mob of Islamic, foreign-born immigrants from ransacking a store. She claims, standing in front of the doors, that she ‘is for their cause’, whatever their cause is, before one of the kinder miscreants gently grabs her and sets her away from the doors and then joins his fellow looters in taking whatever is in the store.
The video then pans into a close-up of the young Parisian woman’s face, and the look is one that appears to realize she has received exactly what was warned by others her suicidal empathy for illegal immigrants would bring. Like others in Europe and France in particular, including many members of their government and fellow citizens, she did not give careful thought to what she had asked for and supported. Instead, the young lady was led by her feelings and by what her friends and society were telling her was right, and what was wrong.
In history, when feelings overrule facts, and when untested theories are given credence over established practices, we have times like these that we see today. The cycle of societal times is well into ‘weak people create hard times’. People have forgotten the lessons of the Great Depression, World Wars, and life before technology that has given us instant communication with others and access to knowledge.
A great example is GPS mapping, the program on most smartphones that will tell someone step-by-step directions where to go. It is a great tool to use, but it has removed from many the ability to read a map or understand directional routes. I always try to get the ‘Road Atlas’ out and prepare myself to know the route I am taking when going on a long drive, and look for alternate routes should there be a traffic stoppage. People are ill-prepared to move around should GPS suddenly become unavailable, or if it leads them astray from where they actually want to go.
Though that is a light example, more troubling is the loss of common sense, critical thinking and analytical skills people need to avoid pitfalls. This corresponds to the growing loss of Faith in the Lord, the turning away of His precepts and His Word and open disobedience and repudiation of Godliness and Righteousness. It was assumed the immigrants, predominantly Islamic, would be pacified and adapt to French culture without any attempts to prepare the immigrants for this assimilation. Instead, the French are finding the immigrants are changing, rather violently, France to their cultural and standard norms.
Remembering the wisdom learned in the past, and using established practices as ‘lessons learned’ to first test theories before implementation, is essentially what the book of Proverbs provides. The collection of Proverbs is considered to be the writings and recordings of the wisdom of King Solomon, who is considered to be the wisest of all men, having God providing His wisdom to David’s heir (1 Kings 4:29-34).
Solomon thus provides the wisdom of God that should have been followed by the young woman, her peers, and those they followed instead; give careful and thoughtful consideration to all that you plan to do, and consider the rewards and the consequences of your actions before moving forward in your plans. Ensure those plans correspond and align with God’s Word and precepts, as if they are not then they will lead one astray and to ruin.
This aligns with Jesus’s statements at the Sermon on the Mount. Before He closed His oration to the crowd, in Matthew 7 He gave the crowd a verbal illustration of the ‘wide’ and ‘narrow’ gates. The wide gate is easy to get through and requires no effort to fit through it, so most people take that path – the ‘path of least resistance’. The narrow gate is more difficult, and may require items be left behind or the need to make several trips to bring everything through it. The narrow gate requires understanding and a realization that perhaps the narrow gate, while taking more effort, is the best route to take.
Jesus is of course using the metaphor of the width of the gates as the paths all people choose. It takes no effort to follow what the majority of people will do, which unfortunately is a life without submitting to the leadership of Christ. But there may be personal sacrifice, leaving things behind, in order to pass through the narrow gate and submit to Jesus and His Lordship.
What is popular and trending is not always what is best, and often those in the majority will ridicule the minority as being to set in thought or too old to adapt. But tried and true practices, especially in the worship and obedience of Jesus, never leads someone astray. At some point, it is hoped that the societal cycle will see the ‘hard times creating strong people’ once again, to attempt to right the wrongs that were made and for the people to return to the Lord and His ways. If not, our society will continue to go through the wide gate and down it path of destruction, while we who are Faithful continue with our walk with Jesus through the path of the narrow gate.
