Proverbs was written, reportedly, as a catch-all primer from a father to a son. The one or two sentence “proverbs” are colorful, and easy to remember–and dead on.

One topic returned to again and again in Proverbs is the concept of Pride or Vanity. I think this is what you’re talking about, man. How Vanity puffs us up, to disasterous effect. The author of Proverbs exhorts his son continually to “seek Wisdom” instead.

How true and how easy it sounds, but how difficult to practice. Our modern American culture is all about Vanity and not about Wisdom. The Cult of ME! reigns supreme on these shores. And there’s probably nothing that can be done about it except to hope that individuals will figure out that our excessive, me-focused American culture is pretty much a death-sentence. Our values suck. And we seem hard pressed to fix them.

The only consolation I have is this thought: every generation of American recognized the pollution in our national soul and agonized about it, called for REFORM! It’s an old tune. Somehow, we muddle through, even though that golden Reform moment never comes in a mass sweep of the country.

Or does it? 9-11 woke alot of us up. The current economic crisis has gotten our attention too. I dunno, maybe we need “turning points” like this to get us to wake up and smell the coffee.

I believe that if more people stopped for an hour a week to reflect on philosophical things like this—we’d get better. Well, maybe that’s what’s called “going to Church.”