Wise fools

In North America, and maybe elsewhere, the four years spent in high school are called by these names (in order of years of attendance): freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. The name for first year students, also shortened to ‘frosh’ when I was in school, is obvious in its derivation.

First year students are ‘fresh’ out of primary or middle school. The names for third and fourth year students are also not hard to figure out. It still irks me to hear people in my age group (55 and older) being referred to as ‘seniors’ because I just can’t get it out of my head that seniors are grade 12 students. I feel most of us have progressed beyond that stage. The name for second year students, though, has got classical language roots, Greek: ‘Sopho’ from sophos, ‘wise,’ and ‘more’ from moron, ‘fool.’ Hence, those not quite green anymore, but still not very accomplished are, in point of fact, wise fools. They may be charming and appear quite clever, but they still have a long way to go.

C. S. Lewis in his brief resumé of the Christian faith, Mere Christianity, calls the plethora of opinions about Christ and God which are espoused by those for whom biblical Christianity is either too complex or too simple, ‘boys’ philosophies.’ Though boys’ philosophies they may be, many of them have gone a long way to ensconce themselves in popular culture, some of them even evolving into religions of their own, man-made and reasonable within their prescribed limits. Talk to them you may, and you may get answers to questions, but only to the questions they allow you to ask. Go outside their scripted dialogs and you get blank stares, you get nowhere. This is what I have discovered for myself, anyway. You simply cannot ask them any real questions, because they have no real answers. This is true of religious boys’ philosophies, but it is also true of irreligious, that is, atheistical, boys’ philosophies.

Christians and secular humanists alike who oppose the islamification of Western society are delighted to hear the Islamic ‘faith’ ridiculed and refuted with wit and irony by British writer and speaker Pat Condell. He has a particularly attractive way of talking, full of pluck and self-confidence, and he smiles even when mouthing the harshest criticisms. I wonder if it makes his opponents any more susceptible to hearing what he says when he verbally lashes them wearing that smile. In one of his latest monologs he exposes the utter hypocrisy and hopeless defeatism of the new Europe’s leaders as they continue to plummet into the abyss of capitulation to Islamic demands. Everything he is saying is quite true. We cheer him on and feel somehow more confident ourselves, hearing his arguments delivered with such gusto, and we forget that this man is just as exuberant in his verbal assaults on Christianity as he is on the Islamic ‘faith’.

Hearing him speak about religion and God in general, it becomes obvious that what this man lacks in experience and maturity of thought he makes up for by his entertaining and bold manner of speaking. Like those sophomores I was describing earlier, he may be ‘charming and appear quite clever, but he still has a long way to go.’ He champions reason and personal liberty, but he still lays out a very scripted version of reality in which he rejects out of hand ideas and possible realities that do not fit into the plot of his play. Even when he is lampooning Christianity and religion in general, I can agree with him on many points, but when he abuses God, his childish attitude surfaces as boldly as does his audacity in defiance of injustice. After we get over our first flush of admiration for his ridicule of things we also oppose, we would do well to realize that here we have a brat flaunting a boys’ philosophy in the face of a world he cannot face, something of which he accuses Christians and other people of faith.

But boys will be boys, and though they may love to scuffle, to shoot off their mouths at one another and especially at those older, bigger and wiser than they, either they grow up, join the ranks of juniors, then seniors, then graduate and go on to higher education, or else they stay sophomores, wise fools, for ever. In the real world of my parents, they were called ‘high school drop outs’ and amazingly, most of them did drop out after a mediocre effort in their sophomore year. The same pattern seems to run through reality from stem to stern. There are notions in Judaism, mystical speculations to be sure, that what the demonic forces represent are once-rational beings that God created before our present universe, but who failed somehow to live up to what He made them to be. True to the envious wraiths that they now are, they hang around the fringes of His present creation to ambush with their accusations those whom He has made to become what He is.



Thinking back to Pat Condell, all this eloquence and nerve seem to mask the same puerility and smugness of the eternal sophomore, which can be turned this way and that.

Anything to grab your attention.