Wednesday, January 23, 2008

ignorance

ignorance: lack of knowledge, education, or awareness

i hear this word so often used as a thrown insult or to describe the today's youth or as a synonym to bliss. while i highly disagree with the latter, i had always hoped that today's youth had moved far away from this state as we fully submersed ourselves into the technological age. how sad i was to find how wrong i was.

through conversations, i came to meet people who did even know who was running for president, and while it is hard to keep track of these days, it is truly sad to think that persons on their way to achieve higher education don't spend time somewhat familiarizing themselves with fairly pertinent current events. please don't misunderstand me-i by no means read the paper daily or watch the news nightly, in fact i hate doing these slightly, shall we say, boring tasks.

another point i'd like to make is that when we as followers of Christ go to talk with people about our God, we should be informed about the world and its events. the church looks ignorant enough to the rest of the world and we have the responsibility as the next generation to change that status as we engage our culture in simply conversation. i'm not saying we have to talk about Jesus and stem-cell research in one conversation, but as we build relationships, maybe it will start with "surface" things, like football. to be honest, i have paid little attention to what is going on in NFL lately, but it matters to a who lot of Americans.

ok. now what? do something! let's all actively engage our culture by throwing ignorance aside and spending five minutes of our self-soaked days to learn about what's going on around us. maybe read the headlines of the paper or the front page. go to msn.com and read the headlines and, if you really want a challenge, one of the articles. plug in fives minutes of news; news is on 24/7 and most of watch a minimum of an hour of tv a day-i'm sure five minutes of the news could fit in somewhere.

antonyms for ignorance include cultivation, experience, intelligence, literacy, and wisdom. i'd rather identify with literacy and wisdom than ignorance and inexperience.

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