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Exchanged Glory III: Wise as Serpents
Choose your pain wisely, and learn to deal with the pain you choose.
… And fools hate knowledge …
(Proverbs 1:22, NAS)
I use the following adage to help me remember the three wisdom killers.
The naïve says, “I can’t learn wisdom.” The scoffer says, “I don’t need to learn wisdom.” And the fool says, “I don’t want to learn wisdom.”
Hating knowledge is the third heart attitude that keeps us from tuning into God’s broadcast. Some of us don’t want to know the truth. We are having too much fun expressing our own opinions.
A fool has no delight in understanding, but in expressing his own heart.
Fools can be so caught up with their own point of view that even when their sins cause them to suffer, they are unable to use this as motivation for change. The truth forces itself painfully upon them, but they don’t know how to decipher it.
Rebuke is more effective for a wise man than a hundred blows on a fool.
Pound on a fool all you like — you can't pound out foolishness.
(Proverbs 27:22, The Message)
I have stressed in this series of books that we need to walk in the forgiving love of God, because it gives us room to learn from our mistakes. Unfortunately, forgiving love doesn’t help us to change if we fail to get the message from our suffering. In fact, we can misinterpret it as an excuse to continue in our folly. Fools live out the crude but famous saying:
As a dog returns to his own vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.
Addiction is as tragic as Solomon’s metaphor is repulsive. We become so out of touch with wisdom that we can’t learn from our own destruction. Our hatred of knowledge has blinded us!
We might be tempted to think that the phrase “hate knowledge” is a little strong. We don’t hate knowledge; we just like our addiction more. At this point, it is helpful to consider some of the research concerning dependence. It shows that most addicts have a good deal of suppressed anger.[24] They often deny it, but if someone pushes the right buttons, it surfaces.
I believe that suppressed anger is a form of hatred of knowledge. Rather than accepting the challenges that God has allowed to come our way, we shake our fist at them. We inwardly complain against the circumstances that are designed to teach us, because they seem too hard or painful. We would rather get angry than search out the wisdom we need to grow through our trials.
For most of my life, a part of me has not wanted to accept reality. It complained that following God should be easier and more fun. It felt wronged that I needed to suffer in order to obey Him. My heart reasoned that if God didn’t want me to act on my misguided desires, He should have seen to it that I didn’t have them. What kind of God would expect people to live in a world where the path of truth is described by the phrase, “let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matthew 8:34)? His entire plan from Adam and Eve forward seemed stupid.
This part of me didn’t want to learn wisdom; it wanted to remake the world into a place where I could indulge myself without penalty. It sought after a fantasy.
Wisdom is in the sight of him who has understanding, but the eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth.
I didn’t think of it as hating knowledge, but it worked out to be just that! When I looked at my troubles, I felt that I was a victim – that someone, probably God, had messed up and I was suffering as a result. This fueled a buried rage that fought against the good train tracks God was laying down for me. When I sought wisdom, the anger subverted my search and made it hard to learn.
A scoffer seeks wisdom and does not find it, but knowledge is easy to him who understands.
The above verse is about scoffers, but it also is true of fools. Though we may consciously choose to seek wisdom, there are so many subconscious roadblocks leading our hearts astray (anger, impatience, misconceptions …) that we don’t find it. We have a spiritual learning disability!
This isn’t true for the wise. The train tracks in their heart lead to understanding; it is easy for them to find knowledge. They have a foundation in wisdom that makes their hearts eager and able to listen as she shouts in the street.
When referring to a specific kind of fool – the lazy man – another proverb says it this way:
The way of the lazy man is like a hedge of thorns, but the way of the upright is a highway.
In a lazy man, a host of subconscious habits combine to make any effort feel like he is pulling himself through a briar patch. When he tries to work, emotional dysfunctions pierce and tear at him. He didn’t consciously choose to be this way. Instead, the hedge of thorns grew unexpectedly, fertilized by his choices and those of the people who influenced him.
The book of Proverbs helped me to realize that I had a spiritual, mental, and emotional hedge of thorns. My problem wasn’t just that I didn’t know what I needed to know; it was also that my heart subconsciously sabotaged my attempts to learn that knowledge. Even my suffering was unable to help me find the error of my ways!
Realizing this had a huge impact on me. I knew that I needed to find this missing skill. I had to gain enough wisdom so that knowledge would be easy for me. I created a saying to help me do this:
Choose your pain wisely, and learn to deal with the pain you choose.
Behind this adage was the idea that no matter what I chose, I would feel pain. If I pursued my relationship with Jesus and obeyed Him, I would feel the sting of dragging myself through my hedge of thorns. If I disobeyed, I might avoid the discomfort of my inner thicket for a time, but I would eventually feel the ache of having it grow stronger.
Don't be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others — ignoring God! — harvests a crop of weeds. All he'll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God's Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.
(Galatians 6:7-8, The Message)
The first three books in this series have focused on learning to choose pain wisely. I have emphasized our need to identify truth, use it to create a plan for living, and act on that plan. Doing so causes suffering, but as we plant in response to God’s Spirit, we will harvest real life.
Lord willing, the last two books in this series will focus on the second part of the above saying, “learn to deal with the pain you choose.” As someone who has walked out of a hedge of thorns, I know how bewildering it can be to have your personality torn away from the entanglements to which it had become attached. God wants to give us the wisdom to guide our emotions through the painful changes so that freedom becomes an inner reality. He wants to heal us from the wounds inflicted by our confusing briar patch.
We won’t break free if we give up. Let me illustrate with an analogy from basketball. While teaching the game to my children, they sometimes got mad at me. One of them got so upset that when she threw the ball back to me, I thought she was trying to knock me over.
I wasn’t surprised by this. I was exposing their love of simplicity, pride, and hatred of knowledge. Everyone tends to get mad when that happens. It was just the hedge of thorns trying to grow.
If my children stayed with me on the court, we could deal with it, and in most cases we did. When they gained skill, they understood what I was trying to teach them and were grateful. Basketball became so much fun that their anger faded. This wouldn’t have happened if they had left the court. They would have been choosing to fertilize their inner thicket, and they would have suffered the pain of not being able to play well.
In reality, basketball wasn’t the goal. I was trying to teach them how to push through foolishness. Sports gave me a fun way to do this, and the lessons carried over to more important areas of their lives.
During my first season as a coach, I picked a young man I will call Logan (not his real name). Most people perceived him to have an attitude problem. His parents were friends of mine, however, and he looked like he would be a good point guard, so I decided to take a chance on him.
During one of our first practices, he intentionally hurt one of my other players while I wasn’t looking. The injured boy’s father called me on the phone to let me know that Logan had treated his son in similar ways in the past, and he was taking his son off my team.
I asked him to give me a chance to deal with the situation, and he agreed to let me try. I assigned discipline to Logan and put rules in place to try to keep the problem from happening again. Fortunately, Logan’s parents supported my decision and let their son know that he would also suffer consequences at home if he acted up again.
Next, I set about to teach him how to be our point guard. He was talented, but he didn’t like to listen. During our first game, I told him that if he didn’t pass the ball I would sit him on the bench. He dribbled down the court and shot without passing on our first eight possessions. I pulled him out and told him he wouldn’t get in again until he decided to pass.
On another occasion, I wanted to let another player practice at point guard. When I tried to put Logan in at the same time, he refused to let the other player handle the ball. Again I sat him on the bench. As he watched our lead dwindle, he said, “They’re catching up.” I responded, “I’ll lose this game if that’s what it takes to get you to listen to me.”
I was still young enough to participate in practice with my players, and that made it easier to teach him. I played defense against him, and any time he took a bad shot, I blocked it and told him where he should have passed it. He began to understand. As the season went on, he became one of the better players in the league. He enjoyed giving the ball to his teammates in ways that allowed them to score, and we won most of our games.
The father of the young man whom he had hurt at the beginning of the season asked me what had happened. The answer was simple. Logan’s parents and I were able to create a situation in which for a few hours on the basketball court he chose his pain wisely.
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