rMag

Ignorance Isn’t Bliss

Sarah Modene

“Ignorance: It’s amazing how much easier it is for a team to work together when no one has any idea where they’re going,” reads a spin-off of a motivational poster. And though the dismal humor makes you laugh, on second thought you realize that the poster is correct if applied to the current intellectual state of our society.

Ignorance abounds within the United States. The rate of high school dropouts is increasing with alarming rapidity,¹ political elections are often decided based on candidates’ charisma and oratory skills rather than on their ability to lead the nation, and “teen-speak” is the common tongue shared by millions of adolescents. Truth is rejected as being “out-dated” and “intolerant,” while political correctness is now the mode, despite its absence of rationality.

Through a lack of education and learning, this process of intellectual degradation has certainly taken a toll on our generation. In rejecting biblical truth, ignorance debases a nation’s standards of morality and inhibits its economic, political, and social growth. It is altering our nation’s future and is causing us to deviate from the path our founding fathers laid out for the United States as a nation.

How have we managed to reach this point as a nation? And what has been the direct result for our culture? The answers to these questions are readily found when our nation’s history is viewed with close attention paid to differences in intellectual movements and cultural shifts.

What Exactly is Ignorance?

First, examine the word “ignorance” for a moment. It is defined as a “lack of knowledge, education, or awareness.”² Another derivative of the word, “stupidity,” is defined as “willful ignorance or unintelligence.”³ In other words, ignorance is a willful lack of education, awareness, and intelligence. Note the word “willful;” it communicates an intentional, deliberate action. The phrase “willful ignorance” provides an accurate assessment of our generation’s intellectual state. All throughout the Bible – Proverbs especially – wisdom and understanding are mentioned together. Without wisdom, you cannot gain knowledge.

A Promising Beginning

Take a look, four centuries back in time, to the year 1620 A.D. Of course, this was the year that English Separatists, commonly known today as Pilgrims, immigrated to New England in order to escape the religious persecution and intolerance promoted by England’s government and society (sound familiar?).

The leaders and educators among these first colonies founded in New England knew that a society without basic intelligence would not be properly equipped to serve God. In fact, a family’s main goal in educating their children was often to ensure that they could read through the Bible. Thus, education became a top priority. Public schools were built almost immediately, and as Puritans and hundreds of other colonists settled on the East Coast, many colleges, such as Harvard and Princeton, were founded by local churches.

Puritans and Separatists believed that all truth is God’s truth; thus, they were strongly in favor of establishing schools that offered a thorough liberal arts education as well as spiritual instruction. These Puritans and Separatists were instrumental in establishing our country’s educational system.

What is most remarkable about this achievement, however, is the fact that Puritans placed the Word of God at the center of education. If any theory or philosophy did not line up with the Bible, it was not worth learning. Thus, a high esteem for truth and biblical principles was established within the culture early on.

As the thirteen colonies continued to grow and thrive, spiritual values were often at the forefront of many new ideas and beliefs. Thus, a large percentage of Americans were intelligent, literate, and moral. This is not to say that America was a spiritual utopia – far from it, actually. But if you compare the moral temperature of 18th century America to that of our current society, you’ll discover that things were rather different.

Events followed in rapid succession: the beginnings of revolution, the following war, and the resulting independence from England. With the new government came a great need for stability, and our founding fathers knew that wisdom was needed with this demand. George Washington couldn’t have said it better himself: “It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.” These words represent the typical mentality of many of the men who drafted and modified the Constitution. Though God and the Bible are never mentioned within its articles, the Constitution resonates with a wisdom that cannot be achieved without a thorough knowledge of biblical principles. The United States was built upon a solid foundation of truth.

But would it remain that way? Despite the safeguards instated by the writers of the Constitution, new developments within learning and education would complicate matters in the coming century.

Deism, Subjectivity, and Despair

Anti-Christian thought has always existed, but during the late 17th and early 18th centuries it became more predominant with the progression of the Ages of Enlightenment and Reason. Philosophers began to promote theories that circulated around the idea that man is able to achieve anything without divine intervention. The result was a new “religion” for those who considered themselves intellectuals: deism, a philosophy that held up well among the American intelligentsia and several of the founding fathers.

Society grew less stable and left much of its spiritual roots with the coming of the 19th century. Romanticism replaced the Age of Reason with an even more radical presupposition: God does not even exist, and man can progress as far as he pleases. Basically, man became a kind of demigod: a god unto himself. Of course, this philosophy could only cause destruction among moral values. America began to turn from God with an alarming swiftness; a spiritual drought began to sink in.

With the aftermath of World War I came the despair and humanistic beliefs of Modernism, while the science community quickly accepted Darwinism and evolution. The Great Depression only complicated matters, as education was no longer a top priority among lower and middle class Americans. Surprisingly, entertainment was placed at the top of Americans’ needs, right next to food, shelter, and money.

The 1960s counter-culture became a driving force in society’s gradual embrace of political correctness. With the feminist movement, abortion rights, promotion of homosexual “freedom,” and anti-war efforts, society began to alter its standards and ease into a mentality of acceptance. However, when it came to morality and Christianity, the same proponents who promoted diversity and tolerance were fiercely opposed to traditional values. An anti-Christian outlook had been firmly ingrained in the culture.

In the coming decades, things only grew worse. Schools no longer taught creationism, and rabid anti-Christian policies inside the public school system became the norm. The news media took the reins of public opinion and steered it towards the left, while politicians grew increasingly corrupt and far from the caliber of men like Washington and Jefferson. Although the presidency of Ronald Reagan provided a brief breath of fresh air, the Moral Majority quickly became a minority once again with the coming of the 1990s.

Today, things are, of course, much worse than they were just a few years ago. Look around you: the evidence presents itself within every aspect of our culture. Truth is no longer of value, but has been replaced by Post-Modernism’s ignorant values (as 1 Corinthians 3:19 says: “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness…”). This is hardly how our founding fathers had hoped our country would end up.

But how is ignorance linked to this moral and structural degradation in our society? After all, we’ve been talking about purely spiritual and moral values, right? And haven’t these previous intellectual movements been comprised of highly intelligent individuals?

Actually, no. The “intelligence” possessed by these individuals was never truly intelligence, as their values were invalid and unfounded. Why is this?

The Indispensable Link

The only way to gain valid intelligence is through wisdom, which is found in Scripture (Proverbs 9:10 (KJV): The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.). Because society has rejected God and the Bible, the result is that it has also rejected truth. And without truth, the only intelligence that can be gained is false, blanketed by a façade of humanistic philosophies and self-serving theories.

You don’t need to be intelligent in order to be wise. But you do need to be wise in order to be intelligent. Proverbs 1:7 hits the nail on the head: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Learning and true intelligence cannot be obtained without wisdom: “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding” (Proverbs 4:7 KJV). 

Action Comes Before Change

In order to affect change, we, as Christian young adults and teenagers, need to set an example. By promoting true learning instead of gorging ourselves on video games, computers, and TV, we are setting an example for the members of our generation. We can encourage the pursuit of the written word, become active in our local and national government, write and blog on issues and current events, and shamelessly promote true wisdom via the pages of the Bible.

The truth is that if we don’t take immediate action, our generation is going to continue on its route of intellectual suicide.

But we don’t have to just sit back and watch.

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1 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/09/AR2007050902411.html

2 Merriam-Webster Dictionary

3 Wikipedia.org