Season 3 Podcast 165 Complacency

Complacency  Complacency is like a fluttering butterfly balanced on a broken bell. Complacency is a state of being pleased with oneself, a state of agreeableness or compliance or self-satisfaction or conciliation. Synonyms are·      Gratification·      Contentedness·      Quietism·      Tranquility·      Placid,·      Comfort·      Amelioration·      Easement·      Serene·      Tranquil·      At ease·      Smug·      Gratified·      Bland·      Affable·      Compliant·      Conciliatory·      deferentialComplacency sounds so serene and desirable, a kind of tropical paradise where all is well with the world, yet complacency is one of the greatest enemies to freedom. Edmund Burke is reputed as saying, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Though disputed, Thomas Jefferson is reputed as saying, “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.”Those who live life in lazy contentment are like an old plow mule with blinders on plodding, plodding, plodding down the plowed rows of life looking neither forward nor backward, neither left nor right, swishing its tail at flies and learning nothing.Complacency is a kind of sin.  Though it does no evil, it does no good.  It is a silent stupor caught in a sluggish and languid whirl of ignorant regression. The seer John said this of complacency in his letter to the Church of Sardis,I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.2 Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God.3 Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. (Revelation 3: 1-3)To the church in Laodicea he wrote15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.17 Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:18 I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. (Revelation 3:15-18)Those who languish in lugubrious contentment are treading water in a slow-moving stream carried with the lazy current.  Inaction allows the idle currents of the idle day to take them hither and thither downstream. Complacency is the great evil of our day.  Many, though they seek pleasures lively enough, seek truth sluggishly with eyes half closed; they follow the ebb and flow of the fickle tide of man filled with idle laughter, and though they may fuss a little at each new ripple that awakens some dying sensibility learned from their youth, they continue their course in the undercurrent to destruction only a little behind the rest. Even fish know to swim against the current.