One of the great struggles of my life is humanity. Not the question of, 'why are so many so bad?', but rather, 'why are so many such idiots?' I really do struggle with this question...it's not simply that I mock politicians or get a great chuckle out of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (which, via the internet, I've been plowing through in recent months again). It's that I'm increasingly amazed that more people can even feed themselves or keep from drooling when they walk down the sidewalk. I'm more and more convinced that people's intelligence is making it where they will have trouble surviving. When I heard about the study recently that people really are getting dumber, I thought, yeah, that explains it. That dumb people no longer have to face Darwin's wrath because they were too stupid to survive has now been replaced by a social safety net in which the dumbest among us are surviving just nicely and procreating at a terrific rate seems obvious. It's just that now there is scholarly proof.
My issues with the vapidity of others is much less significant, of course. Today I tried to give blood and was doing just fine (though the tech had problems finding my veins) and then when they tried to fill one of their tiny little test tubes off of it, it clotted because the people who were supposed to be careful about this were not, and now my entire blood donation was shot. The fat guy in charge several times reminded me that I could use my other arm and do it again, but by this time I was annoyed enough that I just got cleaned up and left. This was the third time in a row in which I have been suspicious of the competence of the blood donor employees because of actions they have taken, but this is the first time it has really backfired. Not sure I will bother again.
So many other issues come to mind when I think about them...the newest one is that for years I have heard that many of my fellow Christians hate on all reality TV (rightly so) and but now think Duck Dynasty is a model for their lives. I guess it's not just stupidity, but inconsistency, but part of stupidity in my mind is when you loudly and publicly speak inconsistency.
It's a wonder that I can survive, how annoyed I get at my fellow human. But then, I am a preacher. Sometimes I speak of this great and wonderful thing called grace. I tell the stories of Jesus when he speaks about being humble, meek, and not so annoyingly self-righteous. And I like it...in a religious movement in which legalism has often prevailed against grace, it's an amazing truth that needs to be heard again and again. We are all sinners. We are all stupid. We do dumb things all the time, and God loves us anyway, for some crazy reason. But I do a terrible job living it.
I have always known on some level that much of my problem in life has been patience, but now I've come to see more of what that means...I am not a humble person, in that I think myself wiser and smarter than everybody else. This is a great sin, and I need, as somebody once said, 'one good humiliation each day'. Maybe that would knock me off my perch. And I've also seen that I am not very good at showing grace to others as I have been shown. Maybe that's not right...I do to people, but then in my mind I'm thinking, what a dope. That, too, is wrong. They aren't dopes, they are beautiful people made in the image of God. And if they aren't as bright as they ought to be, maybe it's my job to help them be better tomorrow than they are today. Isn't grace something that has to be realized in each of our lives?
Father, forgive me, for I know what I have done, and I know that it is wrong. Give me the heart of a graceful, humble, and patient man.
