Stay away from fools, for you won’t find knowledge on their lips. (Proverbs 14:7-8)Several years back I was watching an episode of the Monkees on MTV. This would have been sometime in the 1980’s. At the end of the episode, it came back to a picture of the four Monkees standing together. the announcer began to ask them what they thought about certain things. One of the things was the war in Vietnam. Since this was the late 1960’s, that was on all young men’s minds.
The Monkees began to talk and then to pontificate a bit. Some of the idea was that someone as phenomenally popular as the Monkees had to have greater thoughts than regular people.
They didn’t. they sounded like the vapid young early 20-somethings they were.
About that time, I began to notice other people saying other things in the same basic context. And it dawned on me that many of these people translated their success in singing or acting to special knowledge of other subjects. In other words, I am a good actor or singer so therefore people are going to turn to me for information on world events. It was as if their success in one area gave them special wisdom in others.
And it didn’t and doesn’t.
When we go to actors or singers or anyone in celebrity positions for our information on world events, we will have a lot of trouble. If you look at these people, they have trouble staying married, they are as immoral as anyone can be and still be alive, they are many times almost brainless. And the comments they make are goody.
Yet they become leaders in global warming, or animal rights, or family planning.
I still remember seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger for the first time on the old Mike Douglas show. There was a great looking man with what seemed to be a double digit IQ. I will have to admit that he got better as he got older. But the funny thing is, when they ask people like him, like the Monkees, like other actors or singers what they think and use it for a reference point, they are going to a poisoned well for drinking water.
Listen to these people talk for a while and that will become apparent. If they are allowed to just talk, they say all kinds of weird things. Some grow up, some do not. Some go on to be something better than what they were. Some just trade on their old fame the rest of their lives..
You want wisdom, go to someone who has wisdom. Don’t go to a man or woman who biggest talent in pretending to be someone else or making music.
One of the smartest comments I ever heard from a professional musician was made by Rich Mullins back in the 1990’s, just a couple of years before he died. We heard him in concert, and he made mention of how people came up to him to ask him big scriptural questions. His comment was that he was not a pastor or a teacher. He was a singer. Don’t go to him. Go to someone who knew.
It took a lot of humility and awareness to say such a thing. And for the most part, people in Hollywood do not have that awareness. They really think they know what they are talking about.
In the play Fiddler on the Roof, Rev Tevye, the main character, wants to be rich. If he were rich, he would sit at the city gates and talk all day. People would ask him questions and he would give wise and measured answers. And they would listen because, as the song he sings goes, “When you’re rich they think you really know.”
Being rich or popular or well-established at something else does not give you the wisdom to talk about things you do not know anything about. And going to fools for wisdom is always a losing proposition.
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