5 Principles to Living a Wise Life

I recently read an article by Mark Murray, “’Downhill’, ‘Divisive’: Americans sour on nation’s direction in new NBC News poll”.  The article chronicles the general pessimism and gloom across the country regarding the future of the United States. 

I understand that the article was trying to capture the current political mood of a nation.  However, the article did not reveal anything new to my understanding of the general attitude that I have observed for the last decade. 

If my observations are correct, there is a consensus that there is something deeply wrong within the society of the United States.  The cause of the problem is vigorously disputed but I see very few claiming that there is not a problem.  

I see a lot of fingers pointing to problems that are “out there”.  I hear the shouting of insults from one group at the perceived source of “the problem” and the vitriol response of “the problem” back at the origin of the original insults.  Around and around, we go with hope and optimism the victim of every cycle.  We have ridden this merry-go-round of mutual destruction to the point that we sit in our self-dug holes of pessimism and gloom. 

What are we to do?

This is not the world that I want to live in.  I want this destructive discourse to stop but the question is how.  I believe that the solution that plagues is not out there.  The true problem that inhibits us is within you and within me.  The true problem is that we all lack wisdom.  We lack wisdom and we are being played as suckers because of it.

I follow a simple definition of wisdom:

Wisdom is the application of knowledge and experience to address real problems. 

The solution to our problem lies in being intentional about who we listen to and who we are led by.  We are awash in content.  Most of that content lacks wisdom.  Therefore, we are being blown all about by non-sense. 

The following are four principles of wisdom that I apply in my attempt to stop being played.

Knowledge without Experience is not Wisdom

There are a lot of individuals with credentials telling us what we should do and how we should respond.  Yet, they have never had to implement any of their own ideas.  This is not wisdom.

I was given an article of the Harvard Business Review with a recommendation to read an article.  I immediately flipped to the end of the article, which is my practice, to read about the authors of the article.  The authors were university business management professors who, according to LinkedIn, have never held a job outside of academia.  Also, they had just released a book on the same topic of the article. 

I still read the article, but I read it with a degree of pessimism as to actual practicality of their ideas.  Clearly, they have not implemented their own ideas with the consequences due their own business.  As Nassim Taleb has stated in his book “Skin in the Game”, they have no skin in the game; they bear no risk of the implementation of their own ideas.  At least, they have no skin in my game.  Their game is to sell books and/or meet the academic objective of publishing an article. 

This article provided me knowledge, but not wisdom.

In the same publication, there was another article.  It was written by the President/CEO of a mid-sized organization.  He wrote about his management approach and his experience in implementing that approach with the associated results.  He had “skin in the game”.  He has experience running a complex organization and understands how to apply knowledge to his organization to solve actual problems.  That is wisdom. 

I saved that article because it was written from the point-of-view of wisdom.  I will allow this author to influence me.

We need to be discerning about who we allow to influence us.  The reality is that we all cannot be wise regarding every topic.  However, we can be wise regarding who we will allow to speak into our lives and provide us the basis upon which we make decisions.  Our decisions should be based in wisdom.  If it cannot be based on our own wisdom, then make sure the advice that you are acting upon is coming from wisdom.  Make sure that those you listen to have “skin in the game” and actually have experience in bearing the risk of applying their own advice.

Experience without Knowledge is not Wisdom

I am an engineer.  I have heard the slur on more than one occasion that “I am an educated idiot”.  The premise of this insult is that engineers have the knowledge of engineering but no understanding how things work in the practical world.  There is some truth to this insult.  Many engineers, particularly early in their careers, don’t have the experience to know how things actually work.  They lack wisdom.  They have knowledge but lack the experience.  The career goal of an engineer is to become “wise” in their profession.

The problem with the insult is a diminishment of the need for knowledge.  There is a fundamental difference between being aware of a cause-effect relationship and an understanding of how the cause results in the effect and how to predict or avoid such a relationship.  That takes knowledge; typically, a deep knowledge.

That is knowledge that cannot be learned from a few hours of research on the internet or through watching a couple of YouTube videos.  The knowledge associated with someone who has spent years studying a specific subject in depth should be respected.  There is value in that knowledge because it works in harmony with experience to produce wisdom.

We are often too quick to ascribe knowledge to someone who can recite fundamental facts and statistics, when we need experts.  We need individuals who have devoted themselves to a field of study that results in a deep understanding of their topic.  This doesn’t have to originate from the academic world and there are reasons to be skeptical that the academic world is still providing this knowledge.  True knowledge is still essential; however it is obtained.

I find it shocking how much of the content on the internet fails this test.  There are many people spuing out content that they have derived from their own limited internet searches.  They have no true knowledge.  They find a few articles, re-package them, and publish them as a list of essential recommendations that we either need to start or stop doing.  This is not wisdom.  Why would we allow it to influence us?

The same principle applies to knowledge as with experience.  The content that you are consuming should be based in true knowledge of the subject.  Do not let Google determine the “expert” that you allow to influence your opinion and decisions.  Research the knowledge base of those you listen to.  If they have no deep background in the subject that they are pandering, then don’t accept it as wisdom.

Solving Created Problems is not Wisdom

I don’t need to go looking for problems.  Enough problems have found me.  Yet, I am regularly accosted by solutions to problems that I did not know even existed.  I continually feel the anxiety of needing to have an opinion about a crisis that has no basis within my own life or to express outrage about things, which are beyond my control.  These are problems that are not relevant to my life or for which I have no power to effect.  

Therefore, the first step of wisdom is to determine whether the problem is real or as bad as it is portrayed.  There is a lot of truth in the statement of Rahm Emanuel:

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.

Rahm Emanuel

The reality is that most of the discord in our society are solutions looking for a problem that can be exploited.  There are many pushing a political, social, financial, environmental agenda that need a problem to achieve their goals.  All one has to do is follow the news for any length of time.  An existential problem will arise that needs immediate action otherwise there will be dire consequences and then it just goes away into the wake of the next crisis.   It is not wise to expend your energy on those manufactured problems.

Wisdom is recognizing that all problems are not real.  The question of who benefits should always be asked.  If there are people getting rich by expounding a problem and/or its solution, then you should be hesitant about how much credence you give to them in your opinions and decisions.

There are other problems that are real, but you have no practical way of addressing them.  Wisdom is understanding that you cannot solve the world’s problems.  They can grieve you, but everyone has limits to the power they possess to change their world.  We need to apply our wisdom to the community that we live within.  The level of energy we expend solving problems should be greatest at the personal level and diminishing as you expand outward.  We all have personal, family, work, city and county problems.  Those problems need wise solutions.  You have the best perspective of understanding whether those problems are real. 

The reality is that if we spend time applying our knowledge and experience to solving the problems in our personal and family lives, we will be going a long way to resolving the real problems in our greater community and not those manufactured problems designed to capture our attention.

The Lack of Virtue nullifies Wisdom

As has already been stated, the purpose of wisdom is to solve real problems.  Inherent within this definition is a necessity that one can trust the application of knowledge and experience of the wise in forming the consensus to solve the real problem for the benefit of the whole community.

The reality is that there are “wise” individuals, who are willing to use their “wisdom” to manipulate others to get them to do what they want them to do.  They are willing to manipulate their knowledge, the information that they possess, so that they can achieve a pragmatic result. 

The result of this manipulation is that these individuals cannot be trusted.

The collapse of trust in our society’s institutions is well documented; just look at any poll.  These institutions have long been the sources of wisdom that we could rely upon.  However, consider the collapse of trust in the institutions of government, media, academia, religion, etc.  The fundamental cause of these institutional collapses has been that those within them have lacked virtue, specifically individuals within them have a pattern of lying, cheating, stealing, and pursuing their own interest at the expense of others.

We need to demand more from the “wise” in our society. 

We need to stop being influenced by persons with knowledge and experience when they demonstrate a lack of virtue.  We need to refuse to vote for them.  We need to refuse to buy their products.  We need to refuse to continue to support them.  We need to refuse to give them our most precious commodity, our attention.  We need to demand virtue in all those we allow to influence us.  Otherwise, we will continue to get corrupted “wisdom” and we will continue to be played as suckers.

It might be strange to place so much emphasis on virtue at a time when there are so many unresolved moral ambiguities.  Therefore, I will keep my premise of virtue as simple as the Silver Rule.  Nassim Taleb, in his book “Skin in the Game”, defined the Silver Rule as:

Do not treat others the way you would not like them to treat you.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, “Skin in the Game”

As Taleb points out, “we know with much more clarity what is bad than what is good”.  A virtue becomes the opposite of that bad act that you do not want done to you.   Gerhard Von Rad, in his book Wisdom of Israel”, noted that the ancients were much more pragmatic in the definition of what was good or bad (evil). 

Both good and evil create social conditions; in a completely ‘outward’ sense they can build up or destroy the community, property, happiness, reputation, welfare of children and much more besides.

Gerhard Von Rad, “Wisdom in Israel”

Therefore, the person who uses their wisdom to build up our community, property, happiness, reputation, and welfare for everyone is acting with virtue.  The person who uses their wisdom to destroy our community, property, happiness, reputation, welfare is acting without virtue. 

We need to stop allowing ourselves to be influenced by those who divide rather than unite; those who create the “us versus them” scenarios; those who gain an advantage at the expense of someone else.

Choose Your Team

We all make individual choices about what team we are on.  How about we reject all those teams and make a new team?  A team dedicated to wisdom guided by virtue.   To join this team, you must start by pointing your accusing fingers at yourself.  It is the only way that I can see to get off the merry-go-round of gloom and pessimism.  It will give us the best hope of being able to address real problems as a true community.  

That is a world I want to live in.

QUOTE (Tim Keller) – Troublemakers

I have been listening to Tim Keller’s sermon series on wisdom. He referred to his devotional book during his sermon Knowing God. So, I bought God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life. Yesterday’s devotion struck me as so relevant to today’s issues that I wanted to share it. It is hard to make a case that our culture is getting wiser.

THE TROUBLEMAKER. Another kind of fool is the troublemaker. The mark of this person is constant conflict (Prov. 6:14). This is the opposite of the peacemaker (Matt. 5:9), the bridge builder whose careful, gracious answers (Prov. 15:1) disarm and defuse tensions. The troublemaker instead stirs them up. This is not the person who disturbs the false peace with an insistence on honesty. Rather, this is someone who always feels the need to protest and complain rather than overlooking a slight or wrong (Prov. 19:11). When troublemakers do contend, they do not present the other side fairly. Their corrupt mouths produce deceptive omissions, half-truths, and innuendo. Their body language (winking, signaling) creates a hostile situation rather than one that leads to resolution.

Troublemakers tell themselves and others that they just like to “speak truth to power”. But disaster will overtake the troublemakers (Prov. 6:15). As time goes on, it becomes clear that the troublemakers themselves are a reason that conflict always follows in their wake. They can be permanently discredited by events that expose them for what they are. But the ultimate reason for their downfall is that “the Lord hates…a person who stirs up conflict in the community” (Prov. 6:16, 19).

Tim Keller, God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life, Page 11

“ENSLAVED” – Feb. 24

“Then He said to them, ‘Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.'” Matthew 22:21

Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

I am a slave,
but I am not unique.
I am a slave,
but so are you.
We are slaves but
not in the way you think.

We are slaves of many masters.  We serve them all, typically without title but all hidden while still in the open.  Yet, their authority is enforced when the bounds of their reigns are transversed or challenged.  We were born into the bondage of our initial master, whose realm was established at the beginning, when it demanded our lungs to accept this new product called air.  Next, the bounds of nutrition were delineated through pangs in the belly.  The bounds of consciousness were defined by the needs of sleep.  As we mature, new bounds were yearly discovered.

We all labor to serve the Master of Flesh.  Our bodies demand obedience to biological needs, requirements for the preservation of life.  This realm redefines slavery as “self”.  You may say, “my body is not a master,”  I say, “are you free from it?”.  Try not obeying the Master of Flesh.  Try to exert your freedom from hydration.  Try to exert your freedom from food.  Soon, your flesh will punish your liberty with pain until you yield or die.  The Flesh is an unyielding task master.

Many live their entire existence solely under the tyranny of Flesh, laboring to satisfy its demands.  Some even cede more authority to the Flesh through addiction and/or neurosis.   Yet, all yield to the essential demands of the Flesh from the dawn of every day to its setting.

However, the flesh is not our only master.  As we mature, we enter the realm of another, the Master of Work.  Work’s realm includes all those activities mitigating Flesh’s tyranny.  I want leisure.  Therefore, I must work to be able to take a vacation.  I want amusement.  Therefore, I must work to be able to have a hobby, go to a movie, eat gourmet food.  I want more comfortable housing.  Therefore, I must work to be able to have a better home.  I want to be happy.  Therefore, I must work to be able to consume and feed my craving for happiness.

Work is not a private affair.  Work is a public engagement and therefore ruled by the cultural and governmental masters.  This realm redefines slavery as “citizenship”.  You may say, “my government is not a master.  I live under a constitution.”  I say, “are you free from it?”.  Try not obeying the Masters of Work.  Try exerting your freedom from taxation.  Try exerting your freedom to take another’s property.  Try exerting your freedom to live without clothing.  Try exerting your freedom to cry ‘fire’ in a fireless theater.  Transverse the bounds established by the Masters of Work and you will find your time relegated to satisfying the Master of Flesh.  You will become preoccupied with the necessities of existence because the means to mitigate the tyranny of the Flesh will be removed by the tyranny of Work.  Work is an unyielding task master.

We all yield to the essential demands of society in order to have a slice of the prosperity ensuing from our obedience as cogs in the economic mechanism of Work’s realm.  Even if Work could be freed from the Masters of government and culture, it can never be truly free because it resides in the realm of a third master.  Work cannot be free because work is not an end in itself.

The extent and quality of freedom in the flesh and work can only be experienced through obedience to the Master of the third realm in which we all reside.

The Master of the Divine inhabits a realm that was before the Flesh and before Work.  This realm defines the freedoms of those realms and our allegiance to those Masters.  God created the realm of the Divine.  He is the Master of all.  Yet, Satan rebelled against Gods’ rule and when he fell so did all of humanity.  You and I have been born into rebellion against the Master of the Divine.  Yet, we were not born free.  We were born under the tyranny of Satan, who bent the Masters of Flesh and Work into wicked task masters.  It was never meant to be this way.  The Divine has been redefined as “enlightenment”, “science”, “atheism”.

Our inward desire for liberty is an echoing call of creation.  We misunderstand it to be an inherent right of mankind.  It is actually a memory of creation, longing for a world ruled by the true Master; longing for a world where the flesh and work have no power to harm.  Our desire for freedom is incomplete.  It actually is a desire to be completely free to serve the Master as we were created to serve.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Freedom is the freedom to do what we want.  When we are truly free, our nature takes us fully to God, the Master of the Divine.

So, I am a slave.  I am a slave to the Master of the Divine.  I live as an ambassador in the realms of the Flesh and Work.  I pay the requisite requirements to inhabit these realms, but they are not my Master.  I owe them no allegiance.  I will readily say my farewells to the Master of Flesh when the Master of the Divine bids me to return.  I will readily give what is due the Master of Work and give unto God what is His.

I am a slave to only one Master and He is good.  I will serve no other.

PRAYER: Lord, forgive me for serving other Masters.  Forgive me for forgetting that you have set me free to serve you fully as I was intended.  Thank you for binding me to yourself.  Lord, you know that I am prone to wander.  Let your grace, like a fetter, chain my wandering heart to you.  Take my heart and seal it in servitude for your courts above.    I pray this in the precious name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen

 

“LIMPING ALONG” – Feb. 19

“And Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.”  1 Kings 18:21

A while back I strained my knee.  I was training a little too hard and my knee was informing me that I should tone it back a bit.  I don’t like being injured.  It makes you tentative.  While my knee was sore, I did not trust it.  I limped around and tried not to put too much weight on it.  It was weak and I was afraid that it would fail me if I put my full weight on it and forcefully pushed off.  I did not fully trust my sore knee so I limped around.

I wonder how many of us are limping around in our faith. 

Elijah got after the people of Israel because they were limping between two faiths.  They were hedging their bets.  They were not committing fully to either the God of Jacob or the gods of Baal.  They were limping between two opinions.  How many times have we been caught doing a similar thing?

How many times have we avoided the hard things in our faith?

How many times have we moved tentatively for Christ?

How many times has fear prevented us from giving what we are moved to give?

How long have we just limped along in our faith?

I think that one of the main reasons why we limp is due to trust.  We don’t really trust God so we move tentatively.  We are afraid of putting all of our eggs into God’s basket and pushing off.  What if it goes bad?  What if I have read the signs wrong?  What if …?

Ask yourself, “If the Lord is God, can He handle your what if?”  If the Lord is God, there is nothing that we need to be afraid of.  There is nothing that should make us tentative.  If the Lord is God, we can courageously and actively do God’s will.

I read a quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

“Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God’s will.”

Avoiding sin is a very important part of our faith.  Avoiding sin is a commendable and indispensable part of every believer’s faith.  However, I wonder how many are limping along in a faith that is entailed entirely of sin avoidance.  We can become preoccupied with the nurturing of our own souls.  We move cautiously through this life for fear of our soul being damaged or challenged.

God has called us to a faith that is more than sin avoidance.  God has not called us to a tentative faith.

God has filled us with His Spirit.  His Spirit is our source of strength, confidence, and power.  Through His Spirit, we can follow Him actively and with courage.  There is no need to be tentative.  We can put all of our weight, all of our hopes, all of our concerns, all of our cares, all of our dreams on Him and through the Spirit, we can forcefully push-off in full confidence in God.

We can do that because the Lord is God.

Since the Lord is God, there is nothing we have to fear.

PRAYER: Father, thank you for showing me through your word that you are God.  Thank you for being faithful and trustworthy.  Lord, I know that I can rely upon you in all circumstances and that there is nothing that I have to fear.  Forgive me for losing sight of that at times.  Forgive me for being tentative because I misplace my trust.  It seems so foolish to place my trust in myself when I have you.  You are so much better than I am.  Father, fill me with you Spirit; enable me to walk in your Spirit.  Give me the confidence to boldly and courageously follow your will.     Amen

“SIN, Light” – Feb. 18

“And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him.  And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of  Nebat, he took for his wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal King of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshiped him.”  1 Kings 16:30-31

What does it take for actions that are “evil in the sight of the Lord” to become a “light thing”?

How does sin become common place?

There are some who think that the Church harps far too much on sin.  “Fire and brimstone” is from a bygone age.  Christians who point out the sins of other people are often ridiculed for being up-tight or backwards.  They  are way too concerned about other people’s private lives.  They don’t understand the modern world.  Those types of Christians are regressing to the dark ages by focusing so much on sin.

The world that we live in does all that it can to normalize what is evil in the sight of the Lord and to make it a light thing.  Sin is not a light thing.

It is sin in the life a person that earns them God’s condemnation. That is a big thing.

The result of living in the flesh (sin) is death.  No one who is in the flesh can please God.   That is a big thing.

It was for sin that God sent His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, to condemn sin in the flesh.  Jesus, the Son of God, came to this earth for the purpose of condemning sin.  That is a really big thing.

Sin is a very big deal.  It was for your sin and my sin that Christ died on the cross.  What could be bigger than that?

I don’t like the fact that I can see some of my own attitude toward sin in a man like Ahab.  Ahab considered sin a light thing.  I have a tendency to down-play the magnitude of sin in my own life and the lives of other.  I think that it is a common attitude in the Church.  In comparing the Church to the rest of our society, I don’t see much difference.  I am disturbed by our comfort level with that which our Lord calls evil.

Ahab’s attitude toward sin did not originate with him.  Ahab came from a culture where sin had been normalized:

King Jeroboam – “but you have done evil above all who were before you and have gone and made for yourself other gods and metal images, provoking me to anger, and have cast me behind your back,…” (1 Kings 14:9)

King Nadab – “He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father, and his sin which he made Israel to sin.” (1 Kings 15:26)

King Baasha – “He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of Jeroboam and his sin which he made Israel to sin.” (1 Kings 15:34)

King Zimri – “because of his sins that he committed, doing evil in the sight of the Lord, walking in the way of Jeroboam,..” (1 Kings 16:19)

King Omri – “Omri did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and did more than all who were before him.” (1 Kings 16:25)

Israel had a culture led by one king after another that treated sin lightly.  They disregarded what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

We live in a culture that is working very hard to normalize what is evil in the sight of the Lord.  I see so many professing Christians who are daily feeding on a buffet of content and entertainment that is seasoned throughout with what our Lord calls evil.  We willingly consume it without a second thought.  We are fools to think that a steady diet of evil does not affect what we consider to be normal.  Just consider the allowable topics in many Sunday sermons.  It is a sad reality that many actions, which the Bible clearly calls sin, cannot be taught in many pulpits and youth ministries because it is no longer considered that bad.  We don’t want to offend people with the magnitude of the evil in their lives. That is the result of years of evil being normalized into our lives.

Sin is a big deal.  When I down-play the magnitude of sin in my own life, I am equally down-playing the magnitude of the gospel.  I am undervaluing the supreme worth of the sacrifice of my Savior.  I am treating the greatest gift ever given as a stocking stuffer.

It is when we remember that sin is a really big deal that our passion for the lost is revived.  It is the greatest of tragedies to make a person comfortable in their own condemnation.  It is when we treat sin as a light matter that we can become indifferent to the eternal destination of those who are not in Christ Jesus.

I look at my own life and know that I take sin a lot lighter than I should.  I hate that.

I look at the lives of other professing Christians and see them taking sin a lot lighter than they should.  I hate that.

I hate that we flirt along the edges of what is evil in God’s eye and don’t think it is that it is a big deal.  I hate that we are numbed to the flagrant proliferation of evil in our society and we just take another bite.

Sin is a big deal.

The good news is that the Gospel is a bigger deal.  We have been saved.  Christ has condemned sin in our flesh.  Let’s take a big bite of that.  Let’s set our minds on the things of the Spirit.  Let’s reject all of those things of the flesh; all those things that the Lord calls evil, don’t allow your mind to be settle on all that this world is telling you is normal and natural.

All of that is not normal for a child of God.  Those who set their minds on what God calls sin will die.  Those who live according to the Spirit will set their minds on the things of the Spirit.  They will have peace and life!

What will you set your mind on today?

PRAYER: Lord, thank you for saving me from the condemnation of my sin.  Thank you for sending your own Son to do what I could not do.  Forgive me for under-appreciating the magnitude of my sin.  Forgive me for treating sin lightly.  Father, give me your eyes to see sin as you do.  Lord, I pray for your Church.  May we take what you call evil as seriously as you do.  May we never be comfortable with what we have been saved from.  Lord, give us an understanding of man’s condition apart from you and motivate us with hearts of compassion to be your witnesses to the end of the earth.     Amen