“Then they will call on me, but I will not answer;
They will seek me diligently, but they will not find me.
Because they hated knowledge
And did not choose the fear of the Lord,
They would have none of my counsel
And despised my every rebuke.
Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way,
And be filled to the full with their own fancies.
For the turning away of the simple will slay them,
And the complacency of fools will destroy them;
But whoever listens to me will dwell safely,
And will be secure, without fear of evil.”
Proverbs 1:28-33 (NKJV).
There is such thing as "running out of time", as "too late" when it comes to choices you make in this life. Even if you later learn what you were supposed to have done differently, you cannot go back in time and "try again".
You get one shot and after that you've set history and every action you take will exist in the context of that decision having been made the way it was. This is why understanding that your life matters, that your decisions carry weight you may not ever understand, is so important.
Think briefly of the chain of decisions that were made by the people which led to Pontius Pilate taking the station he had, and being in it when Jesus was brought before him. For Pilate to have been in the position he was, with no more or less authority than he had, it relied on scores of decisions prior to him ever being born.
The establishment of Israel, the founding of Rome, the specific laws to which the expansion of Rome would follow, the resistance (or lack thereof) in Israel to Roman rule, all of these things were driven by human choices, and at each choice someone could have accepted or rejected wisdom. A different choice would have resulted in a different outcome, yet in concert all the decisions up to that point produced that interaction, and then even it would play a supporting role in what came after.
Wisdom is not mandatory to survive. You can live without it, and especially if you are lucky, you may even think you're better off without it. Take note in this passage that rejecting wisdom does not occur in a vacuum, there are consequences and they at the superficial level, appear to be desirable as well.
Who wouldn't want to be filled to the full with their own fancies? Who doesn't want to get what their heart desires? How is this supposed to be a "negative" outcome for ignoring wisdom?
For the same reason that the United States of America is dealing with school shootings, near 40% of the population is obese, divorce rates are 40-50%, and so on, what we fancy is rarely good for us, whether in the physical or philosophical sense. We crave unintelligibly, not understanding the consequences of our choices, only that satisfying them makes us feel good in that moment.
Thus why wisdom is so valuable, and so universal, because it provides a reliable mechanism by which we can distinguish between healthy choices and poor ones. We have the option of making good choices, or making bad choices and hoping we learn enough not to repeat the same mistake again.
Why would anyone insist on inviting destruction upon themselves through bad decisions to "learn" when the knowledge they seek is available already if they'd just accept it? Such stubbornness is not a sign of intellectual enlightenment, but of a deep immaturity and blind arrogance.
Make good choices the first time, and then build upon that, instead of constantly going back and trying to re-make a poor decision to get a better result.
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