[Wisdom calls aloud:] "How long will you simple ones love your simple ways?  How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowlege?" (Proverbs 1:22)

I often have this same question, posed here by Ol' Lady Wisdom.  I remember thinking it specifically at my high school reunion.  I was curious going into things, wondering how people might have changed... What do they look like now?  What are they doing now?  I was interested to see how a decade of real-world living might have shaped the kids I knew in my teenage years.

But when I saw Jeff Baker* at the bar, I knew that I was in for an evening of disappointment.

Back in high school, Jeff Baker was a jerk, a big drinker, a brawler, rather full of himself.  And there at the reunion, 13 years later, it was the same story.  He had the same look on his face, the same perpetual drink in his hand, the same challenge in his eye, and the same sense of condescension to everyone outside of his old clique.  I tried to talk with him and engage him, asking him about the last dozen years of his life, but he just looked past me, vaguely into the distance, seemingly trying to find someone or something more interesting.  It was frustrating.  Fortunately, some of my other classmates redeemed the experience for me -- but the main thing I remember thinking that evening, as I left to go home at the end of the party, was "Seriously?!?  How can you NOT be changed by 13 years of life experience?!?"

It's weird that some can grow and change and develop, while others cannot.  But whenever I see elementary-school techniques being used by adult businessmen in the airports (cutting in line, throwing tantrums to get their way, running to be first on or off the plane), or when I hear grown women gossiping and back-biting like 13-year-old girls, the same truth is verified.  Some people never change.

This is because change doesn't happen until life priorities are adjusted.  As simple as it sounds to say it, it's profoundly true that wisdom HAS to become a priority before someone will really start to get wiser.  As long as a "simple" person (the term in Proverbs basically means a morally-degenerate person) loves their simple ways, they're not going to change.  It's hard to know exactly how long this process of denial and destruction can last -- but I'd say that since the question was recorded in the Proverbs a good 3000 years ago, it's safe to assume that it could be awhile...

* Jeff Baker is not his real name.