A question I often ask myself is “what did I learn?” I spend a lot of time as a pastor, as a theologian, as a very curious person reading, listening, watching, and I always try to learn something. I don’t mean this glibly or flippantly. I know that there is a tendency in our culture to mock the desire to draw moral lessons from life experience, but I think it’s an important lesson, if for no other reason than that experience is probably the most influential source of revelation for human beings. Everything we know or think we know or feel or sense is filtered through our own experience. And the ability to gather and garner life lessons from life experience is one of the basic skills of any person who wants to acquire wisdom. Again, I know that this approach to life is subject to mockery and flippancy, but those who mock and are flippant are rarely people worth paying attention to. The glib, ironic, cynic, dripping with sarcastic flippancy might be able to collect a few laughs, but such people are never the folks whom we truly look to for advice, because in reality, despite what cheap novels and B-movies would have you think, the ironic, sarcastic, cynic is not a once-bitten-twice-shy world-weary man or woman of long experience, but normally a fool who takes nothing seriously and seeks to mock at those who do.
Lewis said in The Screwtape Letters that:
Flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practise it.
It’s easy to be glib and flip, but it’s hard to take life seriously enough to work to learn lessons from it.
And yet.
And still.
And even I, a man who prides myself on seeking to learn lessons sometimes cannot resist the urge to irony and sarcasm and cynicism. I, who constantly ask myself, “Okay, Lukey, what did we learn?” Even I sometimes walk away from a situation and have to admit to myself that some experiences don’t really teach anything. We don’t actually learn anything other than what we already know. Sometimes in life there isn’t anything to learn because the lessons inherent in the experience are the same lessons that we should already have learned and possibly learned to our sorrow over and over and over again.
Sometimes the only lesson to be learned is that we should have learned our lesson by now.
And there are several pieces of news that fit into this category this week. I could point out that, Shock! Horror! If you have pearls prepare to clutch them now! WPATH, the organization that tells people how to commit genital mutilation on children, you know, the demonic, ghoulish, nightmares of human beings whose mad science makes trans-orbital lobotomies seem tame, yeah those guys, we “learned” this week that these people already know that the children whose bodies they mutilate do not have informed consent—which is, you know, kinda important to have when you’re castrating, sterilizing, and mutilating children. Yes, I know, the newly discovered reality that the Transgender Science lobby is both unethical and immoral may come as an almighty shock to many. And, forgive me for being a bit ironic, because this is really good reporting by Michael Shellenberger who continues to demonstrate that being a journalist can still be a noble and lofty calling.
And I do recommend looking into the WPATH files, because if this is a subject that interests you then it is good research to have for debating purposes and trying to convince those who somehow haven’t made up their minds on this issue. But my point is that if you thought that the doctors and psychologists who are actively engaged in child genital mutilation are honest and ethical people then I’m not sure how to help you! Learning that their medical standards don’t meet traditional best-practices should not be a surprise because everything they do is a violation of the Hippocratic Oath. Those who have paid even the slightest bit of attention and who don’t just believe what our society’s influencers tell them to think, already knew all this.
Or, as a crazy bit of news, believe it or not (and again, if you have pearls, prepare to clutch them!) letting enormous numbers of people cross the border illegally and releasing them immediately from jail after they commit violent offenses will lead to them going on to commit more violent offenses! It’s almost as though criminals don’t obey laws? I know, this is earth-shattering, mind-blowing stuff here! The idea that a person who commits violent felonies who is released from jail without facing any consequences at all will go on to commit more violent felonies is a complex piece of logic that Aristotle, Solomon, Paul of Tarsus, Newton, Thomas Aquinas, and many other great and wise logicians and ethicists throughout history would find incomprehensibly complex. Great minds like Ockham and Bacon would marvel to see the unpredictability of this connection that Americans have just now discovered. We have identified, for the first time in history, that violent criminals, when not punished and allowed to enjoy total personal liberty, will continue to engage in violent crime! Gasp in whatever language is your native tongue! It’s inconceivable. And yet. This entirely novel and heretofore unheard-of realization has come upon us. New York, San Francisco, and other major cities are now implementing policies they previously said were racist and unconstitutional because they have hade a eureka moment and come to the conclusion that letting criminals go free leads to more crime!
It would appear that when feel-good ideology results in feel-bad reality this results in regret...and if there is sufficient regret it results in repentance and reversals. Bad ideology always has a cost, sometimes that cost comes immediately and sometimes it takes a long time to manifest, but it always has a price, and it’s almost always vastly higher than what anyone could have imagined.
And the final piece of news that taught us nothing was the State of the Union address. In it we learned, if you didn’t already know it, that the State of the Union address is a complete waste of time. It’s a phony, time-wasting, preening, pea-cocking cavalcade of lies, obfuscation, avoidance, and braggadocio. This ludicrous governmental gasconade makes us none-the-wiser, none-the-richer, and none-the-happier. We’re sadder, but not wiser, which is almost the worst of both worlds—had it made us more foolish it might just be.
But people watched the SotU—I did. And it wasn’t enlightening; it wasn’t instructive; and it wasn’t even entertaining. It was a corrupt old liar being effusively applauded but a bunch of other corrupt liars and booed by some people of dubious character themselves. The bit of commentary I’ve heard as of recording time is focused on fact-checking, which has never favored Joe Biden, people on the left trying to convince people that this speech makes any kind of difference whatsoever to the public perception of the president—it does not, and people on the right speaking about how this is norm-breaking as he criticizes SCOTUS and attacks his political rival. None of these things should shock or surprise anyone who even casually pays attention. Joe Biden lied! Oh my goodness gracious golly jeepers, we only have 5 decades of him lying openly, publicly, and badly. The mainstream media trying to convince people that “the democrats are doing well, you’re just too stupid to realize it” isn’t new! that’s been the default since before I was born. Joe Biden breaks norms? What? Put on your shocked face?! The guy who talked about packing the court, ending the filibuster, adding states to the union, and violated all kinds of other norms, you’re shocked that he turned a pro forma address into a campaign speech!? Friends if this is news, then I got news for you, you need to pay better attention.
Because this is what I’ve noticed. We’ve now come to the place in our society where there’s nothing new to learn. We know this dance, we’ve seen this movie, we’ve read the book—we know how this ends. There is nothing new to learn! Spoiler Alert, Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s Dad! This isn’t news. We’re no longer trying to learn anything; we’re just waiting for all the slow ponies to cross the finish line so we can clear the track and run a new race!
But friends, this is what happens when a society, when a culture, when a nation hates God. When a nation rejects Christ, then there are no new lessons to learn, just new people learning the same old lessons. And there aren’t many old lessons to learn either! They come down to what Deuteronomy 28 teaches—if you reject Christ, you will be cursed and everything will go badly for you. Or if you prefer the New Testament, how’s about Galatians 6:
7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. (NIV)
God is not mocked! That’s point one. And that’s the theological conclusion. Paul leads with the conclusion and then follows with the justification of the conclusion. God is not mocked—every man reaps what he sows.
Now, if you follow the logic here, it’s actually quite simple, but its conclusion validated by the premises. Let’s reverse it. Let’s have the premises followed by the conclusion. Paul is saying that in God’s universe in a pure biological, agricultural sense, whatever kind of seed is sown can only germinate and grow up into that kind of plant. Wheat begets wheat, maize begets maize, rubber-tree plants beget rubber-tree plants. And everyone knows it. I’ve never talked to a farmer who was surprised that his wheat field had wheat spring up. And we know that this law is not limited to kingdom plantae. It’s true in kingdom animalia as well. Lions have baby lions and elephants have baby elephants and spiders’ eggs hatch into spiders. You don’t get cattle being hatched out of chicken eggs. And this extends to humans. When my wife was pregnant, I never crossed my fingers and hoped and prayed it would be a human and not a labradoodle. Humans make humans. What Paul is saying is that like begets like, things produce after their own kind in the biological world.
And this is also true of the spiritual world. Evil deeds bring about evil. Righteousness begets righteousness. Paul is saying that there is a fundamental consistency to the way God has created the universe so that like always produces like. And this is the reality in every sphere of reality. Biological, psychological, spiritual—it doesn’t matter like begets like.
And Paul is saying that if this were not so, if wickedness could beget righteousness that God would be mocked—if evil could beget blessing instead of cursing that God would be made a laughingstock. But God is not mocked. And so if you do good you will receive good and if you do evil you will receive evil. If you sow the wind, you’ll reap the whirlwind!
And everyone knows this! Paul in Romans 1 SAYS WE KNOW IT! Everyone knows that when they violoate God’s laws that they deserve death, but they do evil anyways because they wanna do evil and they’ve suppressed the truth of God in unrighteousness. Friends it is entirely possible to know something and not know it at the same time—this is what being a fool is! To know God’s truth and suppress it so that you are not conscious of it is folly. And we have a nation of fools!
And so, when I say that everything in the news teaches us nothing we don’t already know, I’m correct insofar as the wise are already aware that mutilating children, setting violent criminals free, and letting politicians congratulate themselves will all lead to negative consequences. The wise are already aware. The wise have learned nothing new. It’s just the same-ole same-ole…second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a whole lot worse!
But, to use the horse-race analogy, and combine it with the fact that reality does eventually force people to come to terms with their beliefs, then there may actually be some small place for hope and these things may actually function as instructive for many.
And part of this is because, like I said, if gaining wisdom is like a horse-race, some ponies are further ahead than others. But there are also young people who don’t have as much life experience who are wise for their age. The problem with individuals is that they have to learn the same lessons every other individual had to learn. Wisdom isn’t passed on through mother’s milk. So, there ARE lessons to be learned to those who are wise but young.
But, as reality reasserts itself there is an opportunity for the erstwhile foolish to repent of their folly and become wise. For some strange reason there is no standard strength rating for camels’ backs and they all need a different straw to break them. I’m not sure WHY for some people internal memos and conversations among child mutilators changes anyone’s mind, but sadly, and happily, it does.
And so brothers and sisters, here’s the point of this sermon. People can still be persuaded. You may think that the unconvinced are inconvincible. But you don’t know that. We never know what will be that final straw, what will get the horse across the finish line, what piece of reality will destroy all the gossamer fancies of all the gossamer dreams. We persuade, we convince, we preach, we teach—we evangelize. This is what it means to be ambassadors of Christ: to help others learn lessons you’ve already learned! It’s long work; it’s hard work; but it’s good work—it’s God’s work!