Do you ever have someone quote you back something that you told them as if it were their own?  I’m sure we all do it but it but it’s hard to maintain any intellectual respect for someone when they do this often.  It get’s to the purpose of even lose citation.  There are many currents of thoughts, which we are all swept up in, but it is a good practice to be aware of where your ideas are coming from.  Both for the integrity of your own thought as well as so others can follow up.  As Christians we are told to take every thought captive(2 Corinthians 10), and for good reason.  Many of these ideas floating around, are not simply interesting, they are sinister.  He who is not for Jesus is against him Matthew 12:30.  How many of your teachers hate God?  How many movie creators, authors, musicians that you patronize hate God?  To say nothing of architects, artists, and other cultural and political speakers.

Come on, click it.

The same situation which applies personally with individuals also applies to groups, society, and culture at large.  When you hear people repeating mantras of our day or focusing on popular aspects of broad topics, it’s hard to take them seriously.  Especially when they demand to be taken seriously.  Or they insist that they are an intelligent individual thinking for themselves.  But it’s hard to recognize a fad, if that’s all you know.  Like a fish in water may not realize there is a state apart from being in water, until they are taken out of water.  Which is why history is so important, or the reading of old books as C. S. Lewis said.  By seeing how other people in other times thought and acted, it makes the trends in your own time more evident.  Then you can step outside of yourself and see your world as in a snow globe, get some perspective as they say.  And perspective is very helpful.  It is hard do see yourself accurately, we don’t like doing it, because we are sinful.  We like to smooth things over, pretend that our unique flaws are “just how it is”  or that “everyone is doing it”.  Everyone is doing it, that’s the point and that’s the problem.  You can see this with Lot and his wife.  We are appalled at Lot’s treatment of his daughters, but he was so used to it that he hardly noticed.  His wife loved that sinful place because she didn’t know anything else.

Of course this requires respect for ones elders even if they are no longer alive on this Earth.  Not something we are given much to.  We can’t just write off everything that went before us as wrong.  We have to honestly try to understand what it is that they were trying to do.  Often we find that they faced very similar situations, and attempted the same remedies that we try.  It seems like an argument for looking harshly on the men of the past is an argument for more perspective.  If you are justified in judging them harshly, beware of your own flaws that similar men in the future won’t judge you the same way.

And so we can actually learn a lot about someone, without walking a mile in their shoes.  When their actions align like the planets in an Indiana Jones movie, with the culture, we can know where their ideas come from.  We can know what spirit they are of.  When their actions align with Biblical Orthodoxy, even when it’s difficult, we can know what Spirit those people are of as well.  Its hard to conceive of anything more ridiculous than someone standing in front of you demanding you respect them for their individuality as they repeat the day’s CNN headlines or the liberal theologian’s talking points, or even Karl Marx’s complaining.

And so this may be the most telling aspects of our time.  A propensity to dislike all historical figures and a propensity to demand our rights as an individual.  A toxic mix to truth. We don’t like to be seen in terms of any group, especially a cemetery.  We want to be free to remake ourselves however we want, change our gender, change your hair, change your skin with bleach or ink or metal.  Just like everyone else.  The interesting thing is that when you are going the right way.  The only unique posture is to go the wrong way.  And like those women and their cats, only one man is going to St. Ives and the rest are all going to hell in a hand-basket.  The size of the crowd is just a distraction from the facts.  But the fun of the human propensity to rebellion, is that when everyone is going insane, being sane is rebellion.  Not getting the tattoo is now counter cultural.  But strangely this type of rebellion seems to offend people more profoundly than the other.  How dare you judge me, unless you are a fellow handbasket traveller.

So dare to be a rebel, or not.  Take a step back and survey the historical mountain you are on.  Only then can you draw a respectable path for yourself.  But don’t be afraid to respect the wisdom of the past so you don’t repeat their mistakes.  And don’t be afraid to admit that most of you is borrowed or stolen.  And what do you have that you were not given?  Because of the angels.  They are watching, and you look as ridiculous as Chazz Michael Michaels.