Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths~ Proverbs 3:5-6 NKJV

 

Like most human beings I have my fair share of weird quirks.

 There is only one brand of socks I will put on my feet. I obsessively track all things news related and possess an almost unnatural affection for the color orange. But perhaps my quirkiest quirk is the love-hate relationship I have with GPS.

 I freely concede there are countless reasons to love GPS.

 GPS can be used by anyone with the brainpower roughly equivalent to that of a chimp from any civilized locale on earth. It operates at all hours of the day and night and will direct even the most navigationally challenged person anywhere they wish to go. The voice guiding the driver never sounds surly, irritable or critical, no matter how many times the computer is forced to recalculate due to the stupidity, stubbornness or inattention of the driver.

 However.

 I secretly view dependency on GPS as a form of weakness. A weakness that is essentially equivalent to that of a porn addiction. I live in a mid-size city that’s laid out fairly well and believe I should be able to find my way without a machine telling me what to do. I am above being bossed around by a computer chip.

 The sad result of this (clearly) faulty worldview is that I typically waste a great deal of time before I pull over, confer with SIRI and get headed in the right direction.

 Sigh.

 Just last week I found myself in a parking lot programming the GPS on my phone after ten minutes of meandering in an unfamiliar area of town. As I merged back into traffic it struck me that anytime we insist on willfully leaning on our own wisdom, intellect, or sense of direction we run the risk of looking and behaving like fools.

 Our culture has been busily proving this point for the better part of a century.

 Children educated through our taxpayer funded school system have been taught they are nothing more than pointless blobs of protoplasm and the result of millions of years of happenstance. The same system has done its level best to convince our kids that morality and religion are nothing more than the archaic consequence of millions of years of evolution and human futility. Like fools, we throw our hands up in baffled outrage when the children force-fed this worldview behave exactly like the animals they have been told they are.

 Years ago it was decided that the best sex is “value-free” and “responsibility-free” and the only human life worth defending is life that is “planned” or “wanted”. Many have ridiculed, mocked and even feared the whole notion of growing-up and taking responsibility. Now we can’t understand why more folks aren’t settling down, getting married and having children or taking better care of the kids they do have. Like fools we wonder why so many grown people are stuck at an adolescent level of maturity.

 Decades back society concluded that integrity and decency were unnecessary character qualities in elected officials. Getting the job done and keeping the economy rolling along were the only priorities anyone really cared about. Today the current crop of political candidates is for the most part, a group of people who would have been considered unfit for any office just a few years ago. The government is permanently gridlocked and the economy is stuck in second gear. And we shake our heads in dismay at the corruption, ineptitude, and double-dealing that has become systemic in politics.

 “Society” is not entirely to blame for the mess we find ourselves in. Many Christians have done their best to rewrite the guidelines God laid down. We have lifted the prohibition on divorce, relaxed our views on fornication and adultery, and turned church attendance into a strictly optional activity. Church discipline is no longer tolerated and morality is no longer a fixed set of standards established on the unchanging character of an unchanging God. Morality is now a messy muddle based entirely on our feelings at the moment and the situation we find ourselves in.

 We have to stop trying to find our way without God.

 Christians cannot nor should they attempt to control what non-Christian people do. However, I am convinced we can lead the culture back to a more biblical way of thinking and behaving. In this case, leadership begins with repentance and repentance begins with a complete turn around in our thinking about how we educate our kids, think about sex, choose our leaders, demonstrate our obedience to God and do church.

 Anything else is just leaning on our own understanding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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