Earthbound Complacency

A well-known columnist refused to attend a reunion of his college class.

“I refuse to eat with dead men,” he exclaimed.

“When they were young students, each a bundle of potentialities, they were strong in their will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield to the thinking of the organization man. They were full of life…yet they died quietly. In their place has come earthbound complacency.”1

Jeremiah said, “Moab, at ease from his youth, has settled on his dregs… not emptied from vessel to vessel” (Jeremiah 48:11).

The picture he presents is that of a jar of vinegar that has set until it is covered with scum, or settled sediment in the wine vat, or a vessel of milk that has curdled. We can get this way, and need to be shaken out of a spirit of apathy.

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of bad people, but for the appalling silence of good people” (Martin Luther King Jr.)2