Who Will Save the Children?

Cry for all the innocent
ones, born into a world
that's lost its heart...
 Randy Stonehill

One characteristic of our contemporary world is that whilst we fanfare that our children are our future we blithely ignore them in the present. Oh, I don't mean that we don't feed them or clothe them or give them things if we have the resources and the means; I mean that we fail to give them ethical and moral direction; we fail to cultivate wisdom.

   

One of our contemporary ironies is that we trumpet living in an 'Information Age' but fail to recognise that knowledge is a tool: it's not the having it that is so important, but rather what we do with it. 

Knowledge can, of course, be useful: knowing what a toaster is should effectively discourage us from using one as a hairdryer; but we can disregard knowledge. We could, for example, (some people in fact do) use a spade to murder a rival but that would be a misuse of the tool, using it for a wrong, immoral, purpose.

In the late 1980s a high-powered delegation of African-Americans arrived in South Africa on a fact-finding mission. They wanted to know something of what was happening in the new apartheid-dismantled nation. As soon as they got off the plane, they were met by a group of ANC officials; one of the group offered his hand to shake and said, "Hey, what's up, my niggas?" The delegates were horrified. They said, "We've fought for decades to get rid of the 'n' word! Is this all that we've exported?" During the rest of their trip, they visited areas like the Cape Flats and were equally horrified by what they discovered had been imported.

In his seminal book, It's bigger Than Hip Hop: the Rise Of The Post-Hip-Hop Generation, M K Asante points out that the three pillars of traditional African-American society, the ones that raised the delegates who were shocked by their visit to South Africa, have now largely gone. Instead of church, family, and community, young blacks are now raised on a heady brew of mostly MTV, news from the streets, and what they listen to. Today's role models aren't Jesus or Martin Luther King, nor even Miles Davis; their role models are Rick Ross, Lil' Wayne, Niki Minaj and Lil' Kim.

A thirteen-year-old girl recently asked me, "Sir, why are all the films today full of sex and violence?" I replied, "So are the newspapers. So are the news reports on TV. The world system feeds on the twin emotions of lust and anger."

I was reminded of 1 John 2:25, 26:

[Letters to Street Christians translation]

Who will save our children? It's a valid and urgent question.

Our youth, like Adam and Eve, have discovered the world and lost their innocence.

[Gospel of Thomas 56]

How can wisdom be cultivated and transmitted to our youth?

The answer, you've guessed I hope, is that saving our children is our responsibility; it's down to us. As Randy Stonehill's song puts it, we are the hands, we are the voices that must act to save our children.

Wisdom & Light

Paul: Where is the wise man? Where is the arguer of this age? Has not God made the world's wisdom foolish?
[1 Corinthians 1:20]





Jesus: There is light within a man of light, and he enlightens the world.
[Gospel of Thomas 24]



Paul, as an evangelist, spent much of his time trying to spread his faith and discovered that the Jews would only believe if they experienced signs and wonders -- miracles, undeniably extraordinary events; whilst the Greeks and Romans expected clever arguments and persuasive logic. He therefore came to the conclusion that to the world of men the gospel was dull in its ordinariness and foolish in its message.
  Yet, as we know, the faith spread and thrived. Time and time again as we read the New Testament texts, a picture emerges of a community that is at odds with the world around it; on important points this community is  literally extra-worldly: a fact crystallised in Paul's insistence to the Roman community that they don't conform to the world system but think differently and a consequence live different lives. 
  And so they did. Their economic approach arose out of Jesus' parable about the generous capitalist in Matthew 20. They taught that a woman's beauty is not in braided hair and fashionable clothings but in good deeds and character; they stressed that a man should be known for his gentleness, not his aggression; they avoided political debates and didn't follow the latest celebrity gossip of the day. In gently correcting each other, they taught by example that love is not an adjective but a verb; not a feeling, but a doing; and ultimately they eschewed talking the talk, promoting walking the walk instead.


In writers' language, this is show, not tell. Saying "Lord, Lord" and "God bless you" doesn't fill an empty belly or help repair a dilapidated dwelling. These communities didn't discuss wisdom but lived it. In short, they became wisdom; that is, their lives revealed the extent of their transformation by God and their difference from the world. As Jesus expressed it in the Gospel of Thomas 24: people of light enlighten the space around them.

In short, you don't possess wisdom; you become wisdom, as demonstrated in the way you live your life.

This is important to understand, especially for us, we dwellers in a world of seemingly unlimited knowledge -- the so-called Information Age. Knowledge is not wisdom. Increasingly we see this confusion proliferating in students' and researchers' work: someone will google a search topic, find a relevant article, and simply present that article as an answer; yet the topic will not have been understood. Jesus was wisdom, just as a skilled carpenter understands intuitively how to craft a piece of furniture. Wisdom and Light; qualities expressed from the core of being.