I Know

                It used to burn me.  My dad would try to tell me something and I’d reply, “Yeah.  I know.”  Without fail, he’d inform me, “No.  You don’t know.  If you really knew, then I wouldn’t have to be telling you.”

                In marriage, in our faith, and in the workplace, the phenomenon is the same, and it’s why I spend very little time trying to tell people how to live their lives.  I made the mistake this afternoon of trying to tell a fellow mechanic about some very basic emission principles.  I wasted about 10 minutes of my life, because he already had the answers.  Oddly though.  He walked away completely incapable of getting to the bottom of the problem.

At Work

I don’t always have the right answers for other people’s problems, and neither do you, but even when we really do, there is a stubbornness that is impossible to overcome, no matter how clear you are.

                In my career, I have tried to train several apprentice mechanics, and I’ve given up trying to hold anyone’s hand. Earlier on, I’d tell apprentice after apprentice how to do things.  And nearly every time, they’d completely ruin it get it wrong.  So many times they’d tell me, “I tried it your way Kevin and it just didn’t work.”

                Even when we receive authentic words of wisdom, there is a stubborn spirit that wants to try just hard enough to be able to say, “Your way doesn’t work.”

                Seriously.  How many of you like to be shown where you’re wrong?  Do you really like taking orders from someone who knows better than you?  How about spiritually?  Do you want to know where you sin?

                In Marriage

                My wife had a friend who was having a difficult time in her marriage.  It isn’t like all of our advice was top notch or anything.  We aren’t nearly as authoritative as the kind of people who write online articles.  We did know a few basics though and did the best we could.

                From our perspective, she really seemed like she was doing the things that we recommended.  It wasn’t until years later that we discovered she was no different than the apprentice mechanic who put in just enough effort to make it look like he was doing as he was told.

                In time, she told us how she just needed to submit to her husband’s authority.  From our perspective she seemed like she had.  She did what her husband asked.  She made him supper every night.  From the outside, anyone would think that she was submitting in the way that a believer is called.  In her heart however, she confessed that she only did what she did in some attempt to get him to shape up.

                How teachable are you?  I fight almost everything I read, other than the things that I agree with.  If it’s written in The Huffington Post, I’ll find something I don’t like, even if it’s just the font.  How capable are you in recognizing truth for what it is, no matter how palatable it would seem?

                We are a creature that lives to instinctively defend whatever position we currently hold.  We defend our sin.  We defend our ideology.  We defend our actions.  What would life look like, if rather than finding evidence to support our thesis, or make our point, we began to seek out the truth?  After all, what else can set us free?