Life is just one contrasting set of experiences after another. The contrast between having to be a strong adult and mold a child, and the same time really enjoy their failures and foibles. To be strong and to be sensitive at the same time. To look to the future with confidence and yet go with caution. I guess life is full of paradox.
We tend to think of our choices as dichotomies or two opposing choices. In reality, there is a third element in our decisions that is probably the key one that is most often overlooked. It is well expressed in a prayer that comes from Reinhold Niebuhr. It seems to have gone through many revisions and editors. Here is the way I remember it,
God, give me the courage to change what I can,We know what courage is like, even if we don’t have it. We learn what patience is like when we make the mistake of praying for more of it. I’m not sure we would recognize wisdom if it was one of our children. How much of the problem is we don’t want to recognize wisdom because it tells us to be patient when we want to charge ahead or tells us to be strong when we want to run, or tells us to run when we want to charge ahead? Wisdom is a mystery.
The patience to endure what I can’t,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Wisdom is the key element that is missing in our cultural conflicts. Wisdom is the missing attribute which looks beyond the current priority into the long-term effects of decisions. Wisdom is something which makes us pause and take a second look instead of being so sure of ourselves. It used to compel us to consider universal values and unchanging morals in our mores.
Why is it so rare? For the same reason that science is having a really hard time telling us the truth about what it learns or discovers in its research. It is a rejection of those universal values, a rejection of God. People may disagree on how you define such a thing as adultery or theft, but they agree on the concept that such things exist. God is one of those standards in our hearts. He’s also giving us ways to help understanding, to find them, but we tend to reject what we are hearing.
One of the reasons our culture is going downhill is that we are rejecting the accumulated wisdom of our history. That can involve simple philosophy, lessons in human nature and can extend to the eternal wisdom of the Bible.
Maybe it is time to read the Harvard Classics again.
homo unius libri
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Comments are welcome. Feel free to agree or disagree but keep it clean, courteous and short. I heard some shorthand on a podcast: TLDR, Too long, didn't read.