ZA MAGAZINE // seek truth.

I heard a quote once which went like this: “A foolish man makes mistakes and never learns from them. A smart man makes mistakes, but learns from them; but a wise man will learn from other people’s mistakes.” This isn’t a specifically Christian saying and there are certainly some caveats to it (I don’t think that wise men will never make mistakes and this doesn’t encapsulate all the aspects of wisdom), but I think it makes a lot of sense. After all, we’d like to avoid sin wherever possible, right?

Psalm 107:43
Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things; let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord.

Read Psalm 107, if you don’t mind, before you continue. It looks at the situations of different people. They fall into hard times or sin or punishment, and in each situation it says that “Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress” (107:6,13,19,28). At the end, it gives the verse I quoted. The idea here is that we should look at these situations and realize what had happened so that we can avoid ending up in the same problem.

So the quote from the beginning makes sense, and now we have a little Scripture to back it up. Now, let’s look at the Bible as a whole. Why do you think the Bible is so quick to give us shortcomings in just about every character? The Bible is a book that tells the tales of the heroes of our faith! I mean, when dc Talk sat down and wrote the book “Jesus Freaks,” which was partially derived from John Foxes’ “Book of Martyrs,” these books of the Christian heroes of the day didn’t include the times when they got drunk or killed people or stole or dishonored God. So why would the Bible do it? We want David to be a hero to look up to, not a guy who commits adultery and kills the husband to cover it up! We want Moses to be untouchable, not the guy who takes God’s glory and is therefore condemned to never enter the Promised Land!

But the Bible documents the sins of just about every character, and I believe that there are good reasons for this. One reason, only vaguely on topic, is so that they’re not an unattainable ideal. We see that they are human beings like us, flesh and blood that messes up. We can then look at them and realize that we can be like them, because they’re not special superhumans!

The second reason is more in context with the topic at hand, though, and it’s so that we can be wise men and women and learn from those who have gone before us. We have it easier than the apostles, who had it easier than the Israelites leaving the Promised Land, who had it easier than Cain and Abel, because as time has passed, humanity got more and more of the Bible, which shows us what pleases God and what doesn’t. We can learn from this and avoid so many of the sins that have been committed throughout history!

Cool perspective, huh? Praise the Lord! But there’s one more part of this line of thought that I’d like to share. Check out these two verses.

James 5:16
Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

Galatians 6:2
Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

We as Christians are supposed to help each other out. Confess our sins to each other, bear each others’ burdens. Why is this? I propose that there are two reasons, and they are the same as the two reasons why all the mistakes are shown in the Bible. One, it reminds us that we’re all human, and two, it makes us wiser! As a man who has come out of certain sins, I can confess these to my brothers who can learn from them and hopefully avoid the same things!

See, the Bible is a living example of these two verses, and we have a network of brothers and sisters with whom we can collaborate so that we can grow in wisdom and learn to avoid falling into the same sins. Praise the Lord for this support! But you have to use it! Get into your Bible and get into a Christian ministry, a small group, a Bible study, a church, something like that. Go out and do this thing and do it right!

Grace and peace,
Brendan

Photo credit goes to “freefotouk.”