During my exercise
walks I watched, over period of weeks, as young vandals demolished one of the stick
built dugouts on the elementary school ball field. Even though the destruction was
reported to the authorizes, it didn’t stop the vandalism from escalating to arson
and the dugout was recently burned to the ground. I can’t help but wonder at
the lack of parenting, but I’m having a hard time understanding why these young
vandals would destroy something that was built for them and their peers. Paul reminds
us to, “Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love
and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Tim 2:22 NIV).
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Among the evil desires of youth are evil, mental processes. For desire is nothing more than a mental process aimed at a target. Moreover, the basic nature of evil is to twist what is right. Satan did not introduce a completely new and unrelated concept to convince Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. He twisted the purpose God did not want them to eat that fruit. Instead of presenting God’s real reason of concern for them - for their life and safety as He had stated - Satan convinced her that it was out of concern for Himself He forbade them to eat, to keep them from becoming as smart as He was. Evil is righteousness twisted, often contorted outside its bounds of propriety. This is why evil is so pervasive: thou shalt not murder becomes thou shalt not hang murderers. Yet what should be done to murderers is legally done to innocent children in the “security” of the womb. Worship meant for God is twisted unto the self, Satan, or anything other than God. Imitating the good behavior of parents and good people contorts into imitating behaviors of confused friends, angry gang members, and hostile bullyhoods even though the process of imitation was meant by God to spread righteousness, peace, and joy.
-----Imitation is a vital process. Every duckling is born with a certain amount of hardwiring within its brain. But where that hardwiring ends following the duckling in front of it following the duckling in front of it following mommy duck into the safety of the pond begins, and it prevents any one of them from becoming Little Friskies for the neighbor cat. Then following where mommy swims in the pond helps them avoid becoming fish food. Imitation is a vital process hardwired into all brains, except maybe that of the dodo.
-----But as twisted up and contorted as this life has become, we of the “higher mental powers” are better off applying some frontal lobe function to our followship. Mindless imitation leads to destruction as sure as does driving blindfolded. So God tells us to judge (I Cor 6:1-3), but not to judge (James 4:11), because judgment is good only in its God given place, and good judgment is for choosing whom to follow and what to imitate and whom not to follow and what to avoid.
-----Friendship and belonging are too much built of imitation. You can see it work in a pack of dogs. You can see it work in a pack of kids. One kid does one thing, the next repeats it to demonstrate solidarity. The next, to show one-upmanship, doubles the deed. Even across the boundaries of friendship groups, kindred souls relate with unknown others by doing what they see having been done. Thus the stick-dug-out gets destroyed, the nearby fence gets graffitied, the awkward, little neighbor girl gets tormented into loneliness, and Christ's body gets fractured into a thousand denominations.
-----Our minds were made for followship. Followship, kids do well. But our minds were also made for discernment. This is less fun and more difficult, so much so that more fail to discern what they follow, overpopulating the road to destruction while under populating the one to life.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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