More Troubling Effects of Ignorance

I would also like to add another point about ignorance. Here are some things that even the Harvard grad seems to have missed in his education:

Lust is a bad thing. Lust means wanting something really badly, and deliberately subjugating any regard for the consequences to you, other people, and society if you go out and grab such thing. It is the opposite of love, which denies one's own selfish desires for the sake of the well-being of the beloved.

Lust is a destroyer of lives, virtue, innocence and civilization.
Lust does not think, it just consumes victims and perpetrators alike. Just look at all the famous, otherwise gifted and talented men who have been put to public shame and have lost their positions in society because they gave full vent to their sexual lust. And what does that do to their families?

How about the government sanctioned lust for material goods and other people's wealth? Virtually all but the eldest among us have not been taught that buying on credit for all but emergencies is immoral.

When you whip out the plastic you are saying that you lack the sufficiency within your own means to obtain that product or service (a fancy way of saying you can't afford it) and so must borrow other people's money, in effect, to attain these things. You borrow against your own future, which is rather presumptuous at best, and you exhibit an immaturity and lack of self-control when you simply must have that something right now, instead of doing without it or saving up for it.

The situation is made exponentially worse when one goes out and "buys" a house that he knows he is not financially qualified to own, just because bankers have become ninnies and are willing to throw money at anybody. Remember how the wretched twin Ignorance (see previous post) had the word Doom written on his forehead? Who would have thought we could doom this economy so quickly by lending and borrowing money all over the place with no regard for how it might be paid back? A person with knowledge and the wisdom to apply that knowledge would have known that and restrained himself.

Of course there are the situations where the washing machine dies two days before Christmas. Ideally, we would have money saved against such emergencies, but with inflated prices (which has a lot to do with families becoming double-income households) and deflated paychecks I think using the credit card to replace the machine is understandable. Or if there is a sudden death or family emergency, then it is a mercy that we have access to quick credit. But I am talking here about everything else, from venti anything to big screen tv's.

My point in all this consists in the way modern man has forgotten that prudence, self-control and self-sacrifice are virtues, and that what we have been encouraged to do (from the halls of leadership on down to the Walmart) these last several years is to satisfy our lusts by accumulating that which does not belong to us. Accumulating that which does not belong to us, for you academic elites, is called stealing, or theft, and is actually criminal. This also applies to many government entitlements and those that are in the planning stages now.

There is an old-fashioned term for what we have engaged in and what looks to be our undoing. It is called the love of the world.

"For all that [is] in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." I John 2:16

Beware the love of the world, for if you love the world, then the Father is not in you, so says the Apostle. He also adds,"And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."