When care for commitment is gone, someone somewhere will take,
what we are too bored or too apathetic to protect.
Find out why by watching our Truth in Two.
#7 in our Summer 2024 series, “With What Will You Replace It When It’s Gone?”
Dr. Mark Eckel is Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration at Liberty University. Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website) and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video).
Pictures: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat
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In one of Cormac McCarthy’s last books, The Passenger, he makes an important point for any individual, for any culture, [Quote] “Real trouble doesn’t begin in a society until boredom has become its most general feature. Boredom will drive even quiet-minded people down paths they’d never imagine.” [End quote] I will offer one small addendum to his good thought – watch out when bored people become apathetic people. It is then that loss and defeat are right around the corner. Vigilance is born of commitment, to whatever we have been given to do. But when care for commitment is gone, someone somewhere will take, what we are too bored or too apathetic to protect.
Our summer series “What will you replace it with when it’s gone?” has grave concerns about boredom leading to complacency leading to apathy. God through Moses issues a warning to His people Israel before Yahweh leads them into the promised land. In Deuteronomy 6 God said He was giving His people cities they did not build, houses they did not fill, wells they did not dig, orchards they did not plant. The warning? “When you eat and are full, take care that you do not forget the Lord” adding later in chapter 8, “You shall bless the Lord your God for the good land He has given you.”
All the way through my K-12 teaching I would remind my students of this truth: whatever we have, has been given to us. Every good gift is from God. And He delivers those gifts in multiple ways, including the gift of bounty, both of goods and freedoms in the United States of America. McCarthy and Deuteronomy are right: boredom leads to complacency, and apathy. Woe to the nation which forgets to give gratitude for the gifts given. For the Comenius Institute, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration at Liberty University, personally seeking truth wherever it’s found.
Whew! This building a wedding venue structure includes digging trenches by hand, lifting siding panels, hoisting roofing materials, painting nearly everything. Thus, it is a Biblical training ground, so I won’t be apathetic? 😉 At six in the morning when I put on my work pants and shoes and meet the sun, I say to myself, “may I never forget the cost it took to get to this.” (yes, I do that)