Early in my career as a family counselor, I was so self-conscious about my youthful appearance that I opted for glasses instead of contacts and grew a beard. My thinking was that people would accept the counsel and "wisdom" from someone who at least looked old enough to give it. Now at my current stage in life, it’s probably time to reverse the process. Go for contacts and shave the stubble. I hesitate, however, deliberately cutting off ANY hair ANYWHERE on my person, given so much of it is falling out of its own accord!

"Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young." [G. K. Chesterton].

As I remember back on those early days, I occasionally winch when I remember some the "sage advice" I offered people. Most of it came straight from the textbooks. After all, weren’t those guys the experts?! I’d counsel clients to seek out whatever they believed would enhance their self-esteem and personal growth:

Feeling like your marriage partner is holding you back? Then, by all means, your growth and your happiness might warrant a divorce.

Despite your best efforts, you say your teenager is rebelling, experimenting with drugs, shirking their responsibilities, or getting pregnant? Well, then Mom and Dad, it’s fairly obvious your communicational and interactive parenting styles are to blame.

Ouch! Like I said, I still winch.

"Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough."
[George Bernard Shaw]

Fortunately, I eventually began wizening up and humbling down. It wasn’t the beard, glasses, textbooks, or degrees that did it either. It was experience. I simply lived long enough to experience some of the same things my clients were experiencing. I came to realize just how selfish and self-absorbed the self-esteem movement of the 70’s and 80’s (the "Me Generation") really was. I met some very wonderful parents who loved, cared for, and did everything right by their kids, only to have the kids make some of the stupidest and most hurtful choices an offspring could make. I once heard a wise man reflect that the longer he lived the less he claimed to know absolutely and the more comfortable he became with absolutely not knowing for sure. Because of this, he found himself much more forgiving of the mistakes of others.

"You cannot create experience. You must undergo it." [Albert Camus].

Educators tell us there are two types of learning; experiential and theoretical. One is lived, the other read. Both are important, but the most complete learning comes when both are employed together. Young counselors and construction workers, teachers, and truck drivers, pilots and preachers; essentially everyone has only the theoretical upon which to rely at first; the experiential must follow.

As we mature as Christians, it is important we combine the two. A purely academic understanding of God’s Word will win very few to Christ. However, a holy life lived in the crucible of human suffering and trial will garner all kinds of attention; teaching volumes with very few words ever having to be spoken. "Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me-- put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you." (Phil 4:9) Paul repeatedly asked his new converts to "imitate me." (1 Cor 4:16). This was not an egomaniacal plea on Paul’s part, but rather his loving understanding that what he was trying to teach them would be better learned if it was seen lived out in his life. Such teaching examples are still desperately needed in the Church. The trials we endure with God’s help leave a rich residue of wisdom that should be passed on. Granted, communicating the experience of your trials to another can only be passed on through words and not through the actual experience itself. Nevertheless, your verbal accounts provide an outline that others can use to fill in the "colors" of their own shared, yet unique experiences.

It’s one thing to learn about integrity in Bible School. It’s quite another to watch it being lived out in the life of another turned down for a job promotion because she refused to bend the truth in order to advance herself. Perseverance in "running the race" takes on flesh and blood when a child watches their mother or father get out of bed everyday and go to work to support the family through honest labor. Believing in the "God of all comfort" becomes believable when testimony of God’s care is told to you by the father who was able to endure the tragic loss of a child only through the strength given by Christ’s Spirit.