Post from July 12, 2023

“👟 RSD 1170 ✅ Today’s Verse: “Whoever heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores correction leads others astray.” — Proverbs 10:17

You’ve heard of “Grey’s Anatomy” (the show, not the reference material), right? Here, Cristina and Meredith are budding surgeons, and the show’s been on since I was in high school, so it’s had a million plot lines and cast changes…you’re caught up. So, “Grey’s Anatomy”—old school “Grey’s”—there’s this iconic scene where Cristina is practicing this one-handed stitch (and she’s been working on it for awhile), shows it to Meredith, and Meredith (on the first try) goes, “Like this?” and begins to do the stitches perfectly. Are you one of those people who gets everything the first time you see it? Like, learning a new game or a new CrossFit workout or a new skill in the sport you like—it seems like some people can just do it. Or, how about the people who do this with academics? They seem to get all of the nuances in the required novel in English class or catch onto the math or chemistry almost automatically (or so it seems to everyone else). If you get everything pretty easily the first time, people probably envy your talent because it’s rare, and we all wish we could do it. But, regardless if you have this talent or not, everybody has something in common: there’s something that we either want or need to know or be able to do that we don’t get the first time. Like, nobody learns ballet and singing and piano and baseball and math and chemistry and English lit instantaneously. Even, if you have perfect pitch, there’s something else in your life that takes longer for you to learn. And, even people with perfect pitch still practice music—in fact, the most talented musicians I know learned a lot initially quickly, yet practice a great deal; even someone who understands what the chemistry teacher is saying right away still does the homework, even looking over it more deeply trying to learn something else. You know Olympic athletes probably didn’t struggle at the beginning levels; yet, those people practice and train harder and with more frequency than most of us could imagine. It’s like the people with this “get it right away” talent can do more than average people initially but know they need to practice and learn more to really cultivate their skills. The most successful people in these fields seem to be the first ones to tell everyone that study and practice is essential whereas people who look at them being able to do some cool things from the start might think everything came easily because they didn’t see all the “behind the scenes” work, and within this “behind the scenes” work is the thing that is among everyone’s least-favorite things: being wrong. Ugh.

Being wrong. You show up to English III thinking the excerpts from Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” were either about gardening or smoking pot, and you find out in class (after the check test) that they were really about things like individual identity, freedom, and beauty and used nature to illuminate these themes. Transcendentalism—it’s a trip. You’re like, “Man, there was a lot of foliage in this reading,” and you know you could just “take the L” on the paper, but your teacher walks your class through reading deeper into the words instead of just reading the surface…and you listen, try it, and it makes sense. Maybe not perfect sense, but definitely something you can begin to work with. You decide to give it a try, and you do this all year, and you learn how to really look at what people are saying a little bit better. So, what’s the point of this after you pass English III? Well, your favorite songs on the radio (or Spotify, I guess) also use this same idea of saying something important using something familiar. And, perhaps more importantly, this practice helps you to communicate with your friends, your significant other, coworkers, etc., both in understanding their words and in choosing your own, because you’ve had practice looking at the “why” of words instead of just the “what.” If you just “take the L” on the paper, you won’t develop this skill as well. And, if you’re not continually growing in communicative skills, you’re going to have more misunderstandings with the people in your life, and handling conflict isn’t an area where most people naturally excel.

Today’s verse talks about learning things. If we take the time to learn things, even if we don’t yet know their application, we set ourselves up for future learning and future success. Learning new things can be exciting, but it’s often frustrating because in learning something new, you’re wrong a lot. So, you continually have to make this decision: do I give up, or do I work to learn something? Sometimes being wrong is also embarrassing. You know, you loudly recite the wrong words to the rap part of TLC’s “Waterfalls” in your friend’s car in front of your other friends or blurt out the wrong answer in history class. Or, sometimes what you’re learning doesn’t make sense and you have to ask someone for help. Yeah, I used some easy examples here, but we can all think of more serious ways in which might be wrong and the stakes that might accompany it. When Solomon wrote today’s verse, he was advising people to continue to learn the teachings in the Bible and what God wants for each of us. People are often hesitant to correct themselves when they realize they are wrong or allow their teachers (coaches, the person who knows more about the thing than you do) to show them what’s right because they’re embarrassed or afraid of losing some perceived status or just too prideful to think they’re wrong. Like, you decide you think the Earth is flat, are embarrassed when you are shown overwhelming evidence to the contrary, so you double-down on your stance, try to convince as many people as possible that the Earth is flat, and boom—Flat Earth Society. It’s a thing.

What Solomon wanted to caution people against is that some people decide to reject Biblical teachings because they don’t like what they say and want to do their own thing and that they might want to try and convince people to think as they do (can’t really have the Flat Earth Society with only one member). Whether or not a person thinks the Earth is flat might not affect their day-to-day life, but rejecting what God says we should do and doing our own thing instead (especially considering our limited human understanding) will lead us away from the path that’s best for us. Sometimes reading the Bible or listening to a well-studied, well-prayed-up church teacher convicts us that maybe something we’re doing isn’t the right thing. There are also times apart from church (like when we’re arguing with a friend) where we just know we’re wrong. Admitting we’re wrong is hard, even in the situations where we kind of already knew we were wrong. God wants us to do our best in doing what’s right, and sometimes it requires some course correction. Without being willing to take correction, we’ll be the person arguing in history class that Alexander Hamilton was President or the person kicking on the wrong count in the kick line on the drill team. Taking correction requires humility, but it ultimately saves us from embarrassment and from going down the wrong path—it helps us to become stronger, wiser, more humble and compassionate, more encouraging and understanding; taking correction gives us perspective and grit, and helps us to be the best of ourselves. In the times when being wrong has higher stakes, asking God for forgiveness and guidance brings us closer to Him and helps us to know how to do better in the future. I mean, you wouldn’t let your kid keep putting their shoes on the wrong feet—they’ll roll an ankle or something. Well, God doesn’t want us rolling our ankles either. Hebrews 12:1 encourages us to “run with endurance the race God has set before us.” So, if you find out you’re putting your shoes on the wrong feet, don’t worry about people seeing you switch them around or what they might think—they have their own starting lines, and there were probably times when they had their own shoes on incorrectly. You can’t really run a race very well with your shoes on the wrong feet, and the race is really what matters. So, don’t worry about how you laced up originally: just trade your shoes and run proudly to where you’re meant to go.”