These are my attempt a writing in the genre of proverbs from what I am learning by reading Wisdom In Israel by Gerhard Von Rad. Please see Proverb-ish #1 for all my caveats and excuses.
You will never have peace of mind
while someone else owns a piece of your mind.Living publicly is living for the public.
Beware of anyone with the audacity to change a definition.
Wisdom is developed only in experience. No matter how hard they study, the graduate of medical school, law school, and business school will become truly wise in their fields only out in the open, that is, in real-life experince.
Tim Keller, God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life
This explains well the reason that I have a difficult time listening to the “wisdom” of someone in their twenties and maybe even their thirties. Wisdom comes from experience and experience is hard-earned and expensive.
This is the time of year that Spotify provides the summary of your listening habits for the year. I have started to see these posts from friends and family Instagram. Therefore, the timing was perfect to run across this quote by Epictetus.
I look at the hours devoted to specific podcasts and muscians and I wonder if we haven’t just handed over our minds. I have not gotten my Spotify summary yet, so I am not judging or confessing. I am making a plan. I know what I will be looking for when my summary comes in.
Have I had a promiscuous mind?
I am not against intellectual inquire, but let’s be honest, that is not what Spotify is primarily about. It is mostly about entertaining, amusing, distracting, and simply filling the time. Consider who you have handed your mind over to? Consider who has become your primary influencer? Before we ever offer the parts of our body to sin, we offer up our minds.
I have been reading Wisdom In Israel by Gerhard Von Rad and have been inspired to see if I might be able to write something in the same genre. I have learned a couple things.
First, it is a little embarassing to blatantly admit that you’re trying to write something wise. In other writing, you can hide behind the interesting phrase or poetic license. There is no hiding your intentions when putting a pen to a proverb. Your intellect tends to be on display. I have found that disconcerting. My intellect is not the worst, but it is not the best. I land comfortably in the middle of the bell curve. Yet, I am still susceptible to the praise of men and the fear of being considered simple or even stupid. However, I have learned that intellect and wisdom are not the same. Wisdom is the application of knowledge to the real world. Therefore, my attempt is to share what I have learned through the years (knowledge) to my understanding of how the world works. I am more confident with this.
Second, this is hard. The whole point is to write a thought-provoking saying that conveys a world of truth in a few words. That is difficult to do. Good or bad, the process is rewarding. Attempting to write a proverb will force you to write in a concise manner. That is a good excercise for anyone working on the craft of writing. So, I will keep at it. Hopefully, they will improve with time.
I have delayed long enough. My disclaimers are hopefully sufficient. There are a variety of proverb styles. Here are my first attempts at proverb writing, presented as opposites:
Opinion rough hewn, set aside as complete.
Thinking continually crafting, refined through time.Quick retorts, snide remarks, talking points, pass for understanding.
Accurate articulation of an opposing view, true knowledge.Division and hurt excused by single-minded purpose.
A wake of kindness, people as primary, purposed defined.Curiousity satisfied by a tweet.
Always more to know, curiousity grows.
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
I have had several conversations with young(er) people who can’t afford a home and are not optimistic about the future. They are struggling with hopelessness.
My tendency is to feed and confirm that skepticism. The messaging of doom and gloom is not unique.
I have been wrong for my part in those attempts at predictions. We are making bets on the future through our words, with no skin in the game.
It is a form of pride.
It is harmful when we as leaders make predictions of forbodings without remedies of hope. The predictions might be right. I don’t know. What I do know is that it is not kindness to tell someone something they already feel and add to their hopelessness.
We should help them. The help might be as simple as reminding them that they are not alone. It might be helping them practically navigate a chaotic world to find that bright day. Hope comes with the discovery of their plan. Their unique plan for a bright future, a hopeful future. The kindness comes in assuring them that they are not alone.
That is kindness. That is the golden rule.
Most of the time we over-complicate our relation to the absolute (God). Now, over-complicate does not mean that we are making our relationship harder than it needs to be.
Dying to self is a difficult task requiring endurance and perseverance. Over-complicate usually means misalignment; doing things for the wrong reasons.
I have recently engaged in an enlighting task for myself. I applied a tool of my profession, a logic diagram, to the analysis of my spiritual life. I want my “what” to correspond correctly to the appropriate “why”.
A logic diagram flows purpose (why) into actions (how). A well constructed logic diagram readily reveals the reason for every contemplated activity and allows for each activity to be crafted to achieve the true purpose.
My logic diagram resembles an Oreo cookie.
One wafer is to glorify God & enjoy Him / Love God; my purpose. The other wafer is faith; my how. Everything between those cookie wafers is my life.
Not very complicated.
It is very easy to allow our relationship with the world around us to dictate out relationship with God or have no relationship with God. That means we have replaced our wafers and if you’ve got wrong wafers them you’ve got inappropriate relationships.
That is the sweet work of a faithful follower of Christ; getting the sweet filling of life appropriately positioned between the absolutes of God and faith.
“But to preach the Gospel is not just to tell the truth but to tell the truth in love,and to tell the truth in love means to tell it with concern not only for the truth that is being told but with concern also for the people it is being told to.”
~ Frederick Buechner, “Telling the Truth”
A DEVOTED LIFE 