Today I'm thinking aloud about a quote I ran across during seminary days. I liked it so well, I actually cross-stitched and framed it. Gender neutral concerns now prevail, so I'll reword it a little; but I find it an especially relevant insight for our day and time (and especially in this election year):
"Education is our moving from cocksure ignorance to thoughtful uncertainty."
Take that, all you who think you know it all!
There is a lot of "cocksure ignorance" at both ends of the spectrum on most controversial issues. Some are good at hiding ignorance, and some are good at exploiting it.
If education is moving from cocksure ignorance to thoughtful uncertainty, then faith is moving from thoughtful uncertainty to confident trust--sometimes in enormous strides and sometimes in a multitude of baby steps.
ELECTION REFLECTION
When I was growing up in Alabama, you didn't see many political signs in people's front yards, but you still could always tell those who were voting for the incumbent--the roads in front of their houses had recently been paved. And the owners of the paving companies and all their employees were especially loyal supporters of the candidate who sent those paving contracts their way. Back then a candidate "earned" votes by delivering perks to the constituents.
Today, everything has been reversed. Now the corporate executives decide who can deliver the most perks to them and choose who ought to be elected. They pour millions of dollars into the candidate's election campaign (or into attack ads against their candidate's opponents). In this way they ensure that their best interests will be protected.
So where candidates used to "buy" votes, we now have the wealthy "buying" candidates. Somehow to me, neither of these seem to represent the best of a true democracy.
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