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On November 10, 2022 By In Culture, Wisdom

Thick-skinned Wisdom

A fool’s vexation is known at once, but the shrewd covers shame

Proverbs 12.16

Western culture, particularly Americans, has become emotionally fragile. We are thin-skinned. Overprotection from parents who have coddled their children, shielding them from all physical and emotional discomfort, not allowing them to fail, always defending their actions whether justifiable or not, and safety-netting them created this problem. Is it any wonder that governments have seized upon this to empower themselves, promising complete safety from disease to poverty without any discomfort for their children? While seeking protection of self-esteem and the like, our helicopter parents have made us so fragile, that the least bit of force on our emotional state shatters us.

This safetyism, as Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt name it in their book The Coddling of the American Mind, has become a moral code. Anything that is mentally stressful–a criticism, joke, disagreement–is morally wrong. These relativists in sexual and economic morality become fundamentalist preachers when it comes to the moral code of their feelings. Combine that moral code with a weak mental constitution and you have people who are triggered and fall to pieces when the supreme judge, feelings, is challenged. There are no appeals in this court. If you violate this morality, it is the death penalty. Your reputation, livelihood, or even your physical existence is forfeit. There is no genuine forgiveness and, therefore, no justification no matter how you may grovel. Words such as “transphobic,” “homophobic,” and “racist” are not mere adjectives. They are judicial sentences that condemn.

This thin-skinned-ness is not an incidental cultural irritation. It is morally culpable foolishness. Solomon describes one of the fool’s actions as allowing his emotions and impulses to control him in the face of being put to shame or insulted; his “vexation is known at once” (Pr 12.16). Vexation is an inner agitation or anger. Others control his actions through insults. He is a slave to what everyone thinks of him. Negative comments to him or about him on social media or other outlets must always be answered. He is irritated, and everyone must know it so that he can engender sympathy for himself and against his opponents to regain his status of “justified.” Nothing rolls off his back because it penetrates his skin too easily. This man is a fool who will destroy anything and everyone around him because his feelings were hurt. He is a slave to his impulses, and his masters–everyone around him–will use his own impulses to manipulate him.

The wise, on the other hand, are thick-skinned. They “cover shame.” They either couldn’t care less about unjustifiable insults or, if they are agitated, they don’t allow it to enslave them to irrational or time-consuming responses to seek to justify themselves. Those insulting them lose their power over them when the insulted ignores, laughs at, or even embraces the insult.

Being thick-skinned is important to wisdom’s mission. One of wisdom’s goals is to create an environment of peace, where relationships are whole, healthy, and joyful. This can never happen in relationships with thin-skinned people. They are always getting offended by real or perceived insults. Everyone has to walk on eggshells around them. Their presence is like a flammable fume that fills the air, creating anxiety in the relationships because the slightest word could be an ignition that blows everything up. Marriages, businesses, friendships, churches, and even society as a whole can’t be healthy with these thin-skinned people. People must be able to handle criticism and disagreement, justified or unjustified, if they are going to build healthy relationships.

So, how do you do it? An entire book can be written on this, but here are a few basics for becoming thick-skinned or tough-minded.

First, develop confidence in who you are and what you are doing. I’m not talking about some prideful self-reliance. Learn and accept what your heavenly Father says about you in Christ. Be confident in how he defines you and your purpose. That is foundational. But then, as Proverbs counsels in other places, develop and become competent in skills. You are always open to critiques from those people who have proven themselves to you, but the insults of others don’t matter.

Second, discipline yourself not to respond to insults. There is no hack to this. It will come down to you keeping your mouth shut or not typing that response, but you can put some things in place to help you. Count to one hundred, sleep on it, breathe deeply, quote Scripture, or do something else that makes you pause before you react. Think about the source of the insult. Is he a jerk whose opinion doesn’t matter? Is he having a bad day? Was he innocently joking? Also, think about the consequences of your response. Will this escalate the situation and get me embroiled in something that will be at least a distraction or, at worst, knock me off course?

Third, stress yourself. To discipline yourself in any area requires that you accept stress as a friend, many times bringing it on yourself in smaller doses so that you can handle the larger stressors later. You need to be brutally honest with yourself. You need friends who will be brutally honest with you and whom you will not fight when they tell you the truth. Put yourself in situations in which you can and will be criticized. Ask for critiques. If you can’t handle criticism, you will never get better, and you will always be able to be manipulated by others.

Thick skin is not a luxury in our mission. It is integral to the way of wisdom.

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On October 27, 2022 By In Culture, Theology, Wisdom

A Beautiful Gray Crown

A crown of beauty is the gray head found in the way of righteousness.

Proverbs 16.31

We are a culture obsessed with the appearance of youth. When a middle-aged or older man or woman is told, “You look so young,” it is taken as a compliment. To keep those compliments coming, we will do everything from taking supplements to having surgeries; we dress young, nip and tuck everything we can, color our hair, and apply stuff with hyaluronic acid to our faces because it sounds like the model knows what she’s talking about. Forever young is our aim.

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to maintain as much youthful vitality as possible. The curse that works through our bodies should be fought just as we fight the thorns and thistles of the ground. But there are certain aspects of aging that we should joyfully accept. Solomon tells his son that gray hair is one of those glories.

One theme that runs through Proverbs is that of exaltation and its means. Our all-glorious God created us with an appetite for glory or exaltation. That appetite drives us in our dominion project just as our appetite for food drives us to find ways to be fed. We want to be more and have more. Sometimes we want the wrong kind of glory and/or we pursue glory in a sinful way, but the fundamental appetite for glory is God-given. It is, after all, the promised end of our salvation (cf. e.g., Rom 8.18-30).

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On October 20, 2022 By In Theology, Wisdom

Judgment According To Works

We Protestants get nervous when talking about water and works. Let someone quote the Apostle Peter, “baptism now saves you” (1Pt 3.21) and you might be accused of being Roman Catholic or told why baptism in that passage is not baptism and how it doesn’t save you. We get a little nervous around water.

We become equally antsy when someone brings up those pesky passages in the Bible about a final judgment according to works. James has that irritating sentence, “You see that a person is justified¬ [judged to be righteous] by works and not by faith alone” (Jms 2.24). Solomon says that God will bring every deed into judgment, every secret thing, whether good or evil (Eccl 12.14). Jesus joins this party by saying that those who have done good will participate in the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil in the resurrection of judgment (Jn 5.29). He also speaks about how he will separate his sheep from the goats based on the deeds of mercy (Mt 25.31-46). Paul jumps in here by saying that the doers of the Law will be justified (Rom 2.13) and that we will all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive what is due for what we have done in our bodies, whether good or evil (2Cor 5.10). Finally, the judgment scene in Revelation 20.11-15 describes judgment based on what the person has done. And this is only a smattering of passages that speak of this reality. Is it just me, or is it getting difficult to breathe in here?

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On October 6, 2022 By In Wisdom, Worship

Living the Liturgy

I grew up in the South. The deep South. Any deeper South, I would have been in the Gulf of Mexico. I love my Southern roots. I love everything in the South;  our accents,  our food (I’m from Louisiana, inarguably the best food in the South), our obsession with sports in general and football in particular. I love the blue-collar work ethic, the relative simplicity of life, hunting, fishing, and, at times, everybody in the community knowing your business. Those same nosey neighbors will be there for you when you need them.

An indispensable aspect of this Southern culture is “going to church.” Country songs have repeatedly memorialized the place of going to church in the South. Those songs both reflect and drive the culture (as does all art). Sadly, many of them quite accurately reflect the southern culture. Going to church is just what we do along with getting drunk on Friday and Saturday and having sex with multiple people. Going to church is a relatively unexamined ritual. Again, it’s just what we do.

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On September 29, 2022 By In Theology, Wisdom

The Standard

Throughout Proverbs, Solomon assumes the reality of the righteous and the wicked. The righteous are those who are in the way of wisdom and the wicked are in the way of folly. They are antithetical to one another in their hearts’ thoughts and affections (12.5), the way they speak (12.6), how they treat their animals (12.10), the way they do business (16.11), and their confidence before real or perceived accusers (28.1). Each finds the other odious (29.27). The righteous and the wicked live together in this world.

Wait. Is that really possible? Are there really righteous people in the world?

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On September 15, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Pure Strength

In my half-century-plus of life, I have watched movements and men come and go. Fads in fashion as well as issues are like vapors that appear for a little while and then vanish away. Men’s stars have risen and fallen quickly and hard, many times leaving a great deal of damage. Growing up in and around the Christian ministry, my stepfather being a pastor, and being associated with ministers and ministries for most of my life, I have seen the good, bad, and ugly. I watched men through the years who could captivate crowds with their dynamic preaching, mesmerizing people through emotional fervor, rhetorical skill, and/or theological sophistication. As a young man I remember desiring to be like many of these men. But then I learned what would eventually become apparent to all: many of these men lived duplicitous lives. Some men told outright lies about their lives to make their testimonies more exciting. Others used their magnetism to engage in adultery with multiple women. Still others’ families were in absolute shambles while they were out “saving the world.”

I was disillusioned and sometimes discouraged.

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On September 8, 2022 By In Humor, Theology, Wisdom

Learning To Laugh

[1] Humor is a funny thing. It is altogether familiar yet also mysterious. What makes us laugh? Why do we find things funny? There are academic fields of study dedicated to discovering what makes things humorous. These academicians even have a journal entitled International Journal of Humor Research. No joke. Just thinking of a room full of academicians studying jokes and such to discover what makes them funny is … well … hilarious. Analyzing jokes and explaining punchlines kills the joke. In the off-Broadway play, Freud’s Last Session, Freud quotes American humorist E. B. White’s classic aphorism about humor: “Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the purely scientific mind.”[2] Hopefully, exploring a bit of what it takes to have a sense of humor won’t kill it.

Humor is something relatively unique to us as image-bearers of God in creation. Animals tend not to have a sense of humor. As Terry Lindvall writes, “Animals lack that sense of incongruous. Woodpeckers don’t do knock-knock jokes. Monkeys don’t human around. No chicken laughs when another asks him why the human crossed the road. And other chickens don’t crack up when one chicken steps in chicken … stuff.”[3] Our sense of humor comes from being made in the image of God who laughs.

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On September 1, 2022 By In Theology, Wisdom

Paths To Glory

“Now pride is a great vice, and the first of vices, the beginning, origin and cause of all sins.”[1] Many theologians throughout church history echo Augustine’s understanding of pride as the fountainhead of all sin. While Solomon doesn’t ascribe this capital position to pride, he does make it clear that pride is far from a peccadillo. Pride portrayed as “exalted eyes” in Proverbs 6.17 is on the list of the seven things God considers an abomination, those things that attack and distort creation so as to disorder it that it brings desolation. Wisdom hates pride (8.13) and the heart from which it springs (16.5). Everything that guides the proud heart and everything that the proud heart produces, even providing for a family, is sin (21.4). Pride seeks to overturn God’s order at the most fundamental levels. Solomon, training the king-in-waiting, warns him of pride because it is his responsibility to set the world right, beginning with himself. Where there is pride, this can’t be done.

Pride can be quite obvious at times, but it is also slippery. As with all other sins, pride is not an ex nihilo creation. Pride finds a righteous host, attaches itself to it, distorts it, and sucks all the life out of it until it is a corpse. The good creation from which pride leeches is glory.

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On August 25, 2022 By In Wisdom

Discretion

Shock jocks abound in our culture. These are the men and women who are always violating the bounds of propriety to get attention for themselves, their cause, or, most likely, both. There was a time when they were limited by television and radio stations that would take a chance on them. Howard Stern was in a small minority when he gained popularity in the 80s with his risqué schticks. With the advent and growth of social media and the market being flooded with personalities, people resort to all sorts of indiscreet words and behaviors to get a share of the attention market. It is difficult to stand out, so the lines of propriety must keep being violated. Once people grow accustomed to this impropriety so that it becomes ordinary, the next frontier of shock must be explored.

This phenomenon is not limited to the non-Christian world. Christians throw out verbal hand grenades in the midst of their brothers and sisters, not because a hand grenade is needed, but because they merely want to be provocateurs. There are times that these explosive devices are needed in the family. Some social and theological conventions not only need to be injured but put in the morgue. Knowing when to throw these hand grenades and when to keep them on your belt is the art of discretion.

Read more: Discretion

Being discreet is becoming more and more a lost art. That is not sad in the sense of the American muscle car with its loud internal combustion engine being replaced with the electric vehicle (though that is quite sad). It is sad because it reveals that we have become a society of fools. Discretion is not a superficial social grace that is expendable. Without discretion, good judgments that recognize the bounds of propriety, good, healthy, productive order in a society is lost. The community descends into chaos.

Discretion is not always about obeying black-and-white rules. Very little judgment is needed to see the rule and follow it. Mature discretion is understanding people and situations and knowing what to do in those situations to create and maintain a joyful peace. Discretion is having social skills that help you blend in and work with people in given situations so that you don’t draw needless attention to yourself.

Cultures large and small have customs that are not a part of their penal codes but are vital to their overall health. In good cultures, these are those practices that apply biblical principles that show respect for one another. Whether it is saying “sir” and “ma’am,” “Mr.” or “Mrs.,” dressing to fit an occasion, or using good table manners, these customs are the dance steps of the culture that they use to work together in peace and respect. Those who dance with them are discreet and, thus, wise. They know when to speak and when not to speak, how to speak when they speak, and, generally what is appropriate for their actions on occasions. Within those boundaries, they can help move the culture forward without being immodest.

Social graces and modesty in words and actions are not mere niceties. The aim is to create a peaceful, productive, and joyful community, and that is part and parcel of the mission God has given us in the world. This can’t be done with people always wanting to be different and refusing to “blend in.” If working within the bounds of propriety in social graces is a cultural waltz, the lack of social graces is a mosh pit with everyone looking as if he has been pepper-sprayed; something is being done together, but it looks pretty ugly and potentially violent. Not going along with social conventions and practicing social graces may be a display of arrogance that violates Paul’s exhortation to “let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself” (Phil 2.3).

Don’t push yourself forward, always trying to stand out and provoking others. There are times it is needed, but if it is over-used or used in the wrong ways or at the wrong times, you simply come across as a shrill toddler seeking attention whom the wisest people will ignore or laugh at. For the most part, you probably need to simply plod along quietly blending in.

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On August 18, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Shrewd

Remember when life was much simpler when you were a child? Looking back, you had very few decisions to make, and the decisions you made had mild consequences whether good or bad. Of course, when you were a child, all of your decisions, their consequences, and the work you had to do seemed huge. But looking back now as an adult you realize that life was much simpler because the responsibilities were fewer, lighter, and consequences weren’t as immediately severe.

As we grow into our teenage and young adult years, all of this changes. Life becomes more complex. Responsibilities become heavier, and the consequences of our decisions have much more serious ramifications for the rest of our lives. The complexities grow with us as we age and add more to our lives.

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