this post is kind of serves a dual purpose. the first is to talk about what i believe will be the fall of our society. the second is an example of that.
for awhile i've been frustrated about how much people are against learning. its bad enough that the jr highers complain about learning, but its reflected even more so in their parents. if the parents show an eagerness about learning and growing, their children often will. if you approach an adult about learning or about challenging themselves, their reaction is probably going to be, 'oh, i'm done with school' or 'i'm too old to learn new tricks'. one problem with our educational system is that it does not teach people to be students for the rest of their lives. it is too focused on present tasks and assignments rather than the learning process where you teach your mind how to think and how to learn.
this problem is just magnified in the church community today, but it is even more ridiculous for it to be like that. People are done being challenged after their 'formal' education, and the rest is seen as a coast ride. forget the fact that christians have the Holy Spirit that reveals things to them. A deeper knowledge of Christ isn't about being hard on the mind, its about growing closer to God as He reveals Himself to you. it is hard to get a lot of people interested in things like a church institute because they don't realize what they should be doing. they only realize what the culture expects of them and tells them what they are capable of.
This is one area in which our culture has been much more damaging than we have cared to notice. our culture tells us that we are done 'learning' when we enter the real world. many people will either graduate from high school or college, attain a position they are content with, maybe still learn more about their specific field, and then be content with that. they don't see a need to broaden their knowledge because they've made it to where they wanted to be.
what they don't realize is that God commands them to glorify Him with their mind and that means in all sorts of pursuits. too many christians are growing fat on the sidelines, being content to snack on little sugar coated candies instead of feasting on the steak dinner.
but recently i got thinking more about it, and i noticed something. it isn't that people have decided to stop learning. it is that they have decided to stop learning anything meaningful. Instead, they have replaced it with what you see at the aisles at the grocery store. the world is telling you you HAVE to know about Brad and Jen and whatever Madonna is doing. You watch tv and they tell you your life won't be the same and you won't know what everyone is talking about if you don't watch their show. meanwhile, there are people worth knowing about, events worth learning about, facts worth discovering and we don't want anything to do with it.
the same has been true in the christian camp. you walk into a christian 'book'store and you have to pass through all the simple little junk that babies feast on before you get to anything good, if its even there anymore. it is reflecting itself in the sermons being preached. people want to come to church, get the few things to hear and laugh at and then leave never feeling too challenged to think too hard. instead of encouraging people to think higher, preaching has lowered itself in order to feed the people on the level they are content to wallow in.
the illustration of this is the life of Peter Jennings. throughout my youth, i always watched Peter Jennings bring the news. he was a part of my formative years and that is why i was really struck when i learned of his passing last sunday night. it was just a huge moment in my life. i couldn't believe that he had died. i knew that he had lung cancer, but he seemed like the type that would beat it. and in the recent times, when all news is basically liberal and slanted, he always seemed like he at least was trying to present it in a nuetral light, unlike his contemporaries.
so when i learned that ABC would do a program on the life of Peter Jennings, i figured i owed him the decency of watching. I had never realized that this man had never graduated from high school! If there was ever a man who reflected the way a mind should work, it was Peter Jennings. he never wanted to get involved in petty stories like OJ Simpson or Michael Jackson. Instead, he knew his responsibility was to bring the real news to the people. that is why he took it upon himself to learn things instead of inventing them (cough Rather cough cough). When he went to a place, he'd go to the countryside and find a story about normal people and the normal life. when he went anywhere, he had a couple books to educate himself on the various subjects that interested him.
Like any good student, he had topics that interested him more than others, and one glance at his library and you could tell that it was the Middle East and the culture there. He was an incredibly humble man who never wanted to make more of himself. he would calmly talk to people who disagreed with him and let them be heard. he would seek out the true problems in society and take them on alone. there were so many things that he would do behind the scenes that people wouldn't know about. he loved doing local town meetings and just talking with people. at political conventions he would have to be dragged off the floor from talking with people and back to his chair.
he was also a tireless worker. he wouldn't over work himself, but he always wanted to make sure that the work he did or was around was top notch. all the stories on the news would go to him first and he would rearrange them and edit them and give them back to the reporters, encouraging them to pursue excellence. that is a far stretch from the time i spent at the local ABC affiliate in NH where tom griffith would just sit there until his time was up and then he'd put a load of hair spray in his hair and sit and read the news. Jennings saw himself as a reporter who was in charge of educating people and spreading the stories that needed to be told.
but as i went through the grocery store the week following his death i saw the best example of why our country is going to hell in a handbasket. On the cover of 'US Weekly' was a big picture of brad and jen and some stupid thing about their stupid relationship, and then a small picture of peter jennings up in the corner. Here was a man that gave his life for the U.S. and US can't even give him a cover, instead follow an old story about some stupid relationship that has no consequence. But that is what people want to learn. That is what people want to read. That is why Peter Jennings is one of my heroes.
