When our younger son turned 13, he informed me that, although he needed a new bottle of shampoo, he did not want the cheap stuff he’d been using for years.
“I want manly shampoo,” he announced.
English: The hair care aisle of a supermarket in North America. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I understood he might not want to use foofoo shampoo like lilac or rose, but what’s wrong with strawberry and coconut? If it’s good enough to be in dessert, it’s good enough to wash hair.
But I have not yet untangled the male mind. I thought, having two brothers, two sons and a husband, I could get some insight. I figured I could ask any of them and they’d interpret.
When my brothers were boys, they had contests to see how much fruit they could cram in their mouths. One day my younger brother stuffed so much banana in his mouth that he couldn’t move his tongue for several minutes. He had to wait for the banana to dissolve.
So, after we were adults, I cornered him. “Remember the banana incident?”
“Yeah,” he said drawing his words out like cold molasses.
“So why did you do that?” I thought I could get a key in decoding the male mind.
He lifted his shoulders. “I don’t have a clue.”
Some help that was.
One day I watched our 12-year-old son and friend challenge his 6-year-old sister to foot races. Every time the boys crossed the finish line before the little girl, they did a victory dance only matched by my mother when I came home with an engagement ring.
I described the scene at dinner to my husband. “Why would those boys get any joy out of beating a little girl in a foot race? They were older, faster, bigger. What fun was that?” Surely my husband could shed light on the issue.
He lifted his shoulders. “Testosterone causes brain damage.”
Like that was helpful.
Those stories clanged around in my brain as I stood with my younger son at the shampoo aisle. Still trying to learn about a guy’s thinking, I turned him loose. He was my newest study.
We came home with manly shampoo. He rushed to the shower. In the middle of the afternoon.
This was the boy who showered like the cowboys in the westerns: after every cattle drive. And we didn’t have cattle.
Still damp, he rushed out of the bathroom and held his dripping hair under my nose. “Smells manly, huh?” he said.
“Oh, yeah,” I assured him. Then he thrust his forearm in my face.
“Smell that.” Apparently he had manly soap, too. I told him he was very manly and he was satisfied.
I might ask what banana-stuffing, footrace whupping and woodsy shampoo have in common.
Apparently they’re among the pieces in building a man.
If I told you that a hero was someone who sacrificed for the good of others, you might nod your head but your eyes would glaze over. If you watched a hero rescue his daughter from kidnappers or save a city from villains, two hours could fly by and you would have just finished your popcorn.
We love stories. Riches of meaning and emotion come best through stories.
Whether it’s Frodo carrying the ring into Mordor or Will Smith detonating a hand grenade to protect the cure that would save mankind, well-conceived stories grip us.
The Bible is a book of stories. Most of its pages detail the adventures of kings and shepherds, prostitutes and prodigals.
And it is masterly written. The depth of word choices, repetition, significant action, rich metaphors – all these and more blend the narratives into powerful messages about people, their choices, and their God.
C.S. Lewis, no slouch in studying and writing literature, said once, “There is a…sense in which the Bible…cannot properly be read except as literature; and the different parts of it as the different sorts of literature they are.”
Powerful literature captures the heart and struggle of people. Paul Roche, who wrote The Bible’s Greatest Stories, commented that the events in the Bible “tell of mankind’s experience at its most moving and most memorable in words that go beyond mere chronicle: words that strike the heart and light up the vision.”
Words that strike the heart and light up the vision.
The mastery of words creates depth of meaning and The Bible has both.
Take a look at the story in Eden, where the man and woman lived in the freedom of an lush and bountiful garden. Their nakedness symbolized the innocence and safety of Eden.
The Garden’s beauty – the rivers, the trees, the lush fruit – revealed the nature of the Creator. They saw his handiwork and his abundance. Can they trust his judgment?
God asks them to trust him in command: do not eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good Evil. Could they trust his knowledge?
They trusted their own knowledge more, taking the fruit in at attempt to become like God.
Instead, their new knowledge exposed their rebellion. Shame caused them to snatch fig leaves in a desperate attempt to hide their nude bodies from each other and then from God.
God’s words, as he came to the Garden, tear at the fabric of what could have been: “Where are you?”
If you’ve ever witnessed the joy of a two-year-old racing uncovered through the house after a bath, you’ve seen what the man and woman knew in the Garden. Joy. Innocence. Freedom.
In choosing to experience evil, the pain of failure washed over them – and the reader. We want to grab the fruit: “Don’t eat this! You can’t go back!”
We are gripped by emotions and this story, delivered in precise and meaningful words, strikes our heart and lights up our vision.
A simple story masterfully told creates emotion and meaning.
The cool of the evening drew me outside the orphanage that had drawn my family to Juarez, Mexico. We’d spent the day painting rooms. Another team in our group had poured a cement foundation for an addition to the orphanage. The summer heat had baked out our energy by the end of the day.
After the evening meal, I grabbed my guitar and slipped outside the concrete walls to practice. I inhaled air laced with cool relief, dust and baked tortillas.
Our group had planned a concert for later in the week and I needed time to polish the music. My teenage daughter joined me with her flute in hand.
We worked our way through a song and then looked up to see a handful of children gathered on the street in front of us. We smiled at them and they smiled back. I moved on to the next song on my list, singing the words as my daughter played the flute. More children gathered.
I smiled at them and they smiled back.
With each song came more children and we were surrounded by bright eyes and wide smiles.
“What do we do?” my daughter whispered.
“We need to practice. They don’t speak English so they’ll probably get bored soon,” I said. We kept playing. The children kept gathering. We all kept smiling.
They didn’t seem to mind our mistakes or when we stopped and started over again. If we laughed at missed notes, they joined the laughter.
The crowd filled the street and stretched as far to either side as I could see. Not that I looked up much because I was concentrating on chords and words.
But then we began one of the last songs on our list. We sang the words, “Jesus loves me, this I know…” and I heard a chorus of voices echoing us in Spanish. At first, only a few figured out the song but their singing crescendoed as others joined in.
We sang in English, they sang in Spanish, and, together, our music filled the street with one of the sweetest sounds I’ll hear this side of heaven.
Information today is so easy to grab. “Google it” has now a verb and if Google fails, well, there’s Siri. Sometimes.
So if I want to study wisdom, where would I go except Google? I do have other ideas in mind but I gave Google a run.
Bible Study 2 (Photo credit: DrGBB)
What did I learn? I know wisdom is valuable. And that many don’t have much.
Wisdom might be the ability to judge correctly, followed up by appropriate actions. You might long for the super-size fast food but wisdom says that’s an indulgence better done in small doses.
So, how do we get wisdom?
My Google search revealed that some scientists think wisdom is wired, that it’s some sort of neurological function that just, well, happens. Others describe it as compassion, self understanding, morality, emotional stability.
Some are exploring the connection between intelligence, wisdom and spirituality.
I think wisdom comes primarily from experience. Make a mistake, learn from it, and grow in wisdom.
But who wants to make every mistake, fall into every black hole, experience every addiction?
So we also learn from others’ wisdom. Their advice can save us from pain. Wise advice from those who know more than we do, who have seen more than we’ve seen, who have connected action and consequence is invaluable.
Wise people and wise books dot the path of wisdom.
The Barna Group did a survey on how Americans view the Bible. They were surprised by how Millennials (the generation Barna defines as being born from 1983-2002) are intrigued by the Bible’s wisdom. These young people are curious about ancient truths.
Maybe they don’t want to experience every mistake. You can save a lot of time and lot of bruises if you can piggy-back on someone else’s wisdom.
Here’s my bottom line on wisdom, and one I want to explore in coming Fridays: Google can help pose the question but wisdom that transcends the ages and goes deep into the human condition is found in the Bible.
Next Friday we’ll explore. The Bible is meant to be read, studied, and pondered. Questions are OK. Simplistic cliches, no so much. I will be posting some of my observations on Fridays. I’m interested in God’s wisdom and how he communicates that to the readers of the Bible.
First, we’ll take a look at the Bible as literature and how the mastery of words creates depth of meaning.
If you’d like to read Barna’s survey, here’s the link: What Do Americans Think of the Bible.
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