Manifest Foolishness, #1

Whimpering in the Dark

When men turn away from God they become stupid, worse than dumb animals.  Sense departs to be replaced by a degraded sensibility.  Here is an example of what we have in mind:

A school plans a father-son bonding session, but cancels it because a solo-mother insists upon attending.  Here is the account  from Stuff:

A father-son bonding session planned by a North Island primary school was cancelled after a single mother demanded to be included. Two "Band of Brothers" seminars were arranged by Matakana School to help fathers get more involved in their sons' lives, and as a forum for dads to share their issues. One session was for dads and another was for fathers and sons. A solo mum wanted to attend but was told she couldn't because her presence would inhibit discussion. She was told a mother and son seminar was planned for later in the year.

"We really just wanted an opportunity for the guys to open up and chat, and they wouldn't particularly want to do if there were females around - which I think is understandable," said principal Darrel Goosen. The woman's son was welcome at the second seminar and the guest speaker offered a specific session with her and her son but she continued to insist on attending, Goosen said, so the school board decided to cancel the event. "In hindsight we realise we may have offended some single parents, for which we apologise, as this was never our intention," said a school note to families.

The mother's foolishness is clearly on display.
  Whether she is riven by personal insecurities, pride, bitterness, grievance, "victimism", self-pity, anger, and/or narcissism is not clear, but the symptoms of "all of the above" are evident.  That is not the point.  People fall into such patterns of sinful degradation and enslavement.  They need to be helped--if they are willing to accept it. 

The real folly on display is the institutional idiocy in the school board cancelling the event because they did not want to cause offence.  This is a far greater manifest foolishness than the errant mother.  It displays cowardice, an unwillingness to confront wrong head on.  It punishes the many for the arrogant selfishness of the one.  It shows that the School Board does not really believe in anything, so it succumbs to everything. 

Every common sense parent knows that if the children are being taken to the zoo and one child protests that they do not want to, the parents have a choice.  They can either constrain and discipline the thoughtless recalcitrant and proceed to the zoo, or they can submit to the child.  They can either act justly, or unjustly.  They can either lead or follow.  If they choose the latter, they are denying their duties and responsibilities, not just to the errant child, but to the family.

But Unbelief removes all compasses from the community.  Any directional moral or ethical sense is lost.  Justice cannot be discerned from injustice.  The only guiding canon is, Don't upset or offend.  The world ends not with a bang, but a whimper. 

But it is only the world of Unbelief which comes to an end--exhausted and confused, imprisoned finally by a thousand sensibilities, yet without sense.  This is why Christians persevere and in the end become culturally powerful.  By the grace and power of God they are able to turn the world of Unbelief upside down (Acts 17:6) because they are clear and certain about what is right--that righteousness which has been revealed by Him Who is the light of the whole world.