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
“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”
I read this quote from “The Kierkegaard Collection” by Soren Kierkegaard –
“I do not however mean in any sense to say that faith is something lowly, but on the contrary that it is the highest thing, and that it is dishonest of philosophy to give something else instead of it and to make light of faith. Philosophy cannot and should not give faith, but it should understand itself and know what it has to offer and take nothing away, and least of all should fool people out of something as if it were nothing.”
So often, we tend to apologize for living by faith and not by philosophy. As if philosophy were the higher of the two alternatives. Philosophy assumes an understanding of reality’s rules that cannot be realized and therefore must always be in subjugation to Faith based on reality revealed.
Start reading this book for free: http://a.co/eVajECF
“This hill, though high,
I covet to ascend;
The difficulty will not me offend.
For I perceive the way to life lies here.
Come, pluck up, heart;
let’s neither faint nor fear.
Better, though difficult,
the right way to go,
Than wrong, though easy,
where the end is woe.”
― The Pilgrim’s Progress
In honor of John Bunyan, whose Pilgrim’s Progress was published on this day in 1678.
Resources:
A DEVOTED LIFE 