Stairway To Heaven

Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse, and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury. -- Proverbs 9:7

If we find ourselves wondering occasionally why our country is in such a sad state, the above verse highlights at least one of our problems.  The next verse in Proverbs says that reproof results in hatred in the heart of the scoffer but love in the heart of one who is wise.  It is hardly surprising then that those who seek to follow delusions are angered when reality intrudes.  All of us make mistakes, either through willfulness, arrogance, or ignorance.  Even the wise may succumb to hubris.  The difference is that when a wise person is checked by reality and suffers the consequences of his error, he does not attempt to reject the truth or alter it; rather he alters himself and adapts to it.  He learns and grows and matures. 

The fool and the scoffer are those who believe that truth is nothing more or less than what they believe to be true.  If reality does not conform to the scoffer’s state of mind he disdains and despises it.  A fool’s delusions may be mild or severe, trivial or dangerous to those around him.  Christians tend to think of atheism as a foolish view, yet there are atheists who are wise with regard to some things -- Penn Jillette comes to mind, and many people who consider themselves religious that are quite unwise in areas of their lives. 

It is no mere accident of geography that people in urban areas tend to be more left-leaning and government-oriented than those who live in more rural areas.  The City testifies of the power of the imagination, of man’s unique ability to mold and control his environment.  Every city is a child of Babel, a new Babylon.  Every once in a while the natural world shakes itself and the illusion is shattered for a time by flood or fire, earthquake, hurricane, or tornado.  Still the mirage remains convincing.  We rebuild with dressed stones amid the bricks broken to ruin.  Human technology enables us to do that which my great-grandfather could not have dreamed.  Surely all things can be conquered.

The tricky part of it is that so long as our work is guided by truth what we build has a life to it.  That which deviates too much, which builds not upon reality but against it, dies.  Fools promise foolish things, tickle the ears, and build to destruction.  They kill and devastate that which possessed veracity and authenticity because it is a rebuke to their misconceptions.  After they have choked the life out of it, they point to the remains and deny that it ever lived.  How then, they ask, could we have killed it?

Consensus does not make it so.  Everybody who worked on the Tower of Babel said the same thing, but as it got higher and higher, they agreed less and less.  If the founders are scoffers and fools, why are they surprised to find the slothful and malcontents numbered among them?  Conflict, confusion, and chaos wait patiently at the top of Escher’s steps.  There is no getting past them, and it is a very long, rough tumble back to the bottom.  Utopia’s first name is Babel.