Tag: abilities

What I wish I’d known when I was 13

Experience is something young people can’t have. It’s impossible to teach, learn from a book, or borrow from another person. Experience – good or bad – is what we discover during life’s journey. And, if there’s an advantage from being older, you’ve a lot of experience.

My mind started thinking about that after I came across a photo of me when I was 13. It was a semi-official picture taken at school, probably to have a photo of me in my file. I know exactly when the photo was taken because there’s a poppy in my lapel, which was the custom around the time of Remembrance Day each November.[1]

I look young, and untroubled by issues that concern adults. However, I began to wonder what my 13-year-old self would like to have known but didn’t. Were there things it would have been good for me to understand at age 13?

I’d like to have known that one day I’d have a girlfriend

I’m starting here because girls are exactly what this 13-year-old boy was bothered about. Girls were no longer a nuisance. In fact, they had become rather interesting.

But, at 13, and with only a brother, girls were a mystery to me. How could you know if a girl liked you, and what should you say to her? If only everyone was fitted with a light and when two were attracted to each other their lights would go on. But we hadn’t been fitted with lights, and the mystery remained for a few more years.

By my later teens, though, I had a wide circle of friends, and my breakthrough realisation was that getting close to a girl was less about attraction, and more about being interested in each other, about really getting to know someone, enjoying being together, sharing ideas and plans. Then, one Sunday evening, I found myself walking up a road in Edinburgh chatting to a girl who was more interesting than anyone else. Decades later, now with children and grandchildren, Alison is still more interesting than anyone else.

The 13-year-old me would have been so much more at peace if only I’d known that would happen.

I’d like to have had a career goal

Some know the work they want to do from an early age. Perhaps their ambition is to be a ballerina, an international footballer, win a Formula One championship, do research that wins a Nobel Peace Prize, invent world-changing technology, write block-buster novels. They’re good thoughts, but most will disappear when faced with massive challenges. Some, however, will dedicate themselves to a particular career path, and get there. They’ll be great doctors, top scientists, own a profitable business, or become a member of Parliament.

But I had no idea what I would do for a career. When I was eight or nine I thought I’d like to be a bus driver, or become an Automobile Association patrolman who rode around on an old style yellow motorcycle with sidecar looking for members whose cars needed rescue.[2] But these were just a child’s idle dreams, not serious career goals.

At 13 I had no idea what work I might do. However, when I was 15, my school ran a careers evening with spokespeople describing their work. One was a police officer, and he highlighted all the different specialities that existed within policing. The wide range of options appealed to me, so later I read up about police service. Then I found a problem. In those days the minimum height for men to enter the police force was 5’8”, and in my area even higher at 5’10”. I didn’t think I’d reach either of those heights, so abandoned that plan.[3] When I was 16 I began to think about leaving school,[4] but had no idea still about a career.

I’ve mixed feelings now about that lack of a sense of direction. A career goal would have motivated me about my school work, and reassured me about where my life was headed. Yet, without a particular goal, I was open to any possibility, and that may have been helpful. In the end I began in journalism, became a church minister, then led a large international mission agency, and finished by being President of a seminary in the USA. I changed my work (not just my employer) several times, something that is now considered normal. I was ahead of my time.

So, though I wish I’d had a career goal, the lack of one did me no harm. I was flexible, and accepted change when it presented itself.

It would have helped if I’d had confidence in my own abilities

When I was 13 I was moderately good at rugby. I could tackle, catch and pass the ball, and kick it well too. I was also good at cricket, not so much as a batter but as a bowler and fielder. Somehow I could flip my wrist to make the ball break sharply left, completely confusing batters as the ball zipped past and hit their wickets. And, because I had fast reactions and virtually never dropped a catch, I relished every chance to be a slip fielder.

But sport was simply enjoyable. It was a pastime, not a passion nor a career goal. What was supposed to matter to me aged 13 was my academic work. But, in that area, I had every reason to be modest with my expectations. My teachers were equally modest in their expectations of me. When I was 13 the set curriculum I had to study covered a wide range of subjects, including physics, chemistry, biology and Latin. When I was 14 I was allowed to narrow my schedule. I dropped all the sciences and Latin with the approval and relief of my teachers. After another year I was due to take national exams. My teachers wouldn’t present me for the German exam since I was bound to fail. And fail was exactly all I achieved in three subjects, French, Maths, and Arithmetic. My only successes were in English and history, and I passed those at a higher level the following year.

But, with that track record, I had no confidence in my abilities. I never imagined I could be admitted to university, and no-one ever suggested I should try. In fact a career advisor advised me to start work in a department store sweeping the floors, and perhaps I could work my way up to being a store manager. I swept that idea aside, but he was not the only one with low expectations of me in those early to mid teen years.

For a while that was discouraging and unhelpful. Yet, looking back, it may have triggered a desire to prove them all wrong. Which was probably the best response.

I wish I’d understood that not all people are good

I grew up in a loving family unit with two parents and a brother. Nearby were aunts, uncles, and cousins we saw regularly. Our town was relatively crime free, big enough to have shops for everyday needs but small enough that traffic jams were unknown. I walked or cycled to school, came home for lunch, and, when daylight allowed, spent evenings playing football or cricket with friends. During summer holidays from school I’d play golf in the morning and cricket in the afternoon, and when I wanted a change I’d play cricket in the morning and golf in the afternoon. I had a very privileged early life.

The only downside is that it was also a very protected life. When I was 13 almost all I knew of the ills of the world was that I should never go off with a stranger, that a girl in my class had died from a serious illness, and a boy had fallen from his bike in front of a lorry and been killed. But I didn’t know of anyone dying of cancer, anyone getting divorced, anyone without food, anyone committing a major crime. My parents would watch the news on TV, but, as far as I was concerned, bad things happened far away. I had a sheltered existence.

That resulted in an unhelpful innocence, a naivety that everyone is kind and good and no harm can befall you. Of course we must not make children fearful or untrusting. But – as with many things – I wish there had been an age-appropriate way of making me aware that bad things happen in this world.

From my later teens and into my twenties I was a journalist with a national newspaper. That gave me a rude awakening to tragedies and evils. I attended car, rail and plane disasters where mangled bodies were pulled from wreckage. I sat through murder trials, such as the killing of a 15-year-old girl by beating and strangling.[5] It shocked me that one person should so violently and deliberately end another person’s life. There were cases of gang warfare, often drug related. Some politicians were considered corrupt, others attention-seeking. I attended court sessions and local government meetings which were supremely tedious. Some of my colleagues were deep in debt, unfaithful in their marriages, addicted to alcohol, or dying of lung cancer. Of course there were also ‘good news’ stories, but I was used to them from my upbringing. It was the ‘bad news’ that jolted me into a broader understanding of the world.

It would have helped me, certainly by the time I was 13, to have learned something about the harsher sides of life.

I could have known more of how poor most of the world is

My Aunt Milla – whose working life was mostly as a community nurse – rarely spent much on her housing. During two periods she lived in run-down tenements. The first had no toilet facilities inside the building. None at all. Instead there was a small hut out the back which contained a simple toilet. No wash-hand basin, and sometimes no toilet roll, only torn sheets of newspaper which were guaranteed to leave their mark. Day or night, perhaps in pouring rain, the ‘need to go’ was an unpleasant adventure into the outdoors to use the ‘privy’. Milla moved upmarket with her later tenement living. There still was no toilet in the flat, but there was one on the ‘half-landing’ (so named because it was up some steps from the level of flats just below and down some steps from the level of flats above). Since there were two flats on each level, the toilet might be shared by four households. Perhaps queues were avoided only by exploring for ‘vacancies’ at toilets on other half-landings.

These were poor facilities – unhygienic and inconvenient – but were common in many towns and cities, and not just in the UK. We often stayed with my aunt, and therefore used the outhouse or half-landing toilets many times. At home we had indoor plumbing, but I knew many lived with facilities like my aunt, so never thought of her situation as poor or bad. When I was 13, I had no idea at all that most of the world lived in very much worse circumstances.

Almost 30 years later I visited remote desert areas of Pakistan, sleeping overnight in tribal villages. Toilet facilities? The far side of the sand dunes. In a mountainside village in Nepal, there was an outhouse for toilet use, but it was no more than a small enclosure around an open hole with charcoal six feet below to (unsuccessfully) deaden the stench. In a remote Congo village I thought that children were wearing dirty and torn t-shirts as play clothes, then realised those t-shirts were their only clothes. There I also met a mother with seriously malnourished children, hoping for help from medical missionaries. I saw many small houses with damaged roofs. I was told: “There’s no longer anyone skilled in repairing roofs. When people don’t have money to buy food, no-one pays to have their roof repaired.”

I could multiply these stories, but won’t. The hard truth is that a large part of the world’s population live in poverty. I never knew that when I was 13. As children grow up, and gradually decide on lifestyle and career priorities, shouldn’t those priorities take account of world need? In affluent countries, we shelter children from harsh realities. That’s understandable, but should they not know billions are less well off, and their needs may matter more than our comfort?

I wish I’d known what I needed to do for God to become real in my life

God was never absent from my life (nor is he from anyone’s), but when I was 13 I didn’t relate much to God other than with some prayers. My mother told me several times that she made a special commitment to God when she was 13. That commitment coloured everything she did, and a lot of her time went on supporting church activities and helping neighbours. So, when I became 13, I imagined something might happen in my life to make me a Christian like her. Nothing did, and as the next few years passed I wondered if it ever would.

What I’d failed to realise is that I had a responsibility to reach out to God. I was waiting for God to invade me while, in a sense, he was waiting to be invited. That did all change when I was 18, and I’ve written about that before (https://occasionallywise.com/2021/02/20/serious-business/).

It wasn’t that I was ignorant about the Christian message. I just needed to respond to it. Thankfully I was only five years beyond 13 in doing so. But, if I’d known sooner, my life would have changed much earlier.

–

Writing this blog post about what I wished I’d known when I was 13 has kept generating more thoughts than I’ve recorded here. Perhaps I’ll set them down another time. And one day I may also write things I’m glad I did know when I was 13. That seems just as important a subject.

I’d encourage you to think what you wish you’d known when you were younger, and what you’re glad you did know. You might be surprised about your conclusions.

[1] Fighting in World War I ceased at the 11th hour of the 11th month in 1918, commemorated annually throughout Commonwealth countries ever since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day

[2] There’s a good photo of an AA motorcycle and sidecar here: https://www.theaa.com/breakdown-cover/our-heritage-vehicles

[3] Actually I did reach 5’8” but my interests by then lay elsewhere.

[4] In Scotland, the school leaving age was raised to 14 in 1901, and though from the 1940s there were plans to make the minimum age 15 that was never made law. The minimum age was set at 16 in 1973.

[5] The case set a new legal precedent because the accused was identified by having left unique bite marks on his victim’s body. See https://www.dentaltown.com/magazine/article/7528/the-biggar-murder-some-personal-recollections

Be true to yourself

I was appointed minister of a Baptist church in Aberdeen, Scotland. The congregation had gone through tough times since its previous pastor left nearly three years earlier. With a leadership vacuum, divisions had formed. Two months before I took up my new position, a friend met people from the Aberdeen church at a conference. He reported back to me that one person said, ‘It’ll be great when Alistair Brown comes to be our pastor, because we can get back to being what a traditional Baptist church is about.’ Within a half hour, he’d met someone else who said, ‘It’ll be great when Alistair Brown comes, because we can finally get away from being a traditional Baptist church’.

Two views, representing two ‘parties’ in that church, and each thought I was ‘their man’. I made up my mind that I’d be fair to all and pastor to all, but also true to myself and true to what I believed was right. And I was. A few, including some leaders, left the church but the large majority accepted the new leadership, set aside their differences, and inside three years we’d grown so much in numbers we’d moved to larger premises.

Being true to yourself is essential for both personal and professional well-being. It can come at a cost, but there’s a higher price to be paid by living a lie.

What does being true to yourself mean?

It means living out what you believe. The UK runs a national census in every year that ends in a ‘1’. The census is done now by answering questions online but in earlier years everyone filled out census forms. In one of those past ‘1’ years, I was a student looking for summer employment and got hired to help deal with the millions of census forms. My job was in a very large warehouse, almost entirely filled with shelving holding boxes of forms. A small team of ‘experts’ sat at one end coding each answer for entry into the rudimentary computer system used back then. I was a much more lowly file-picker. All I did every day was take an order for a batch of files, find their boxes among the shelves, and transport them by push-trolley to the coders. When the coders were finished with them, I put them back on the shelves. It was brain-numbingly boring work. But they paid me to do it, so I was grateful to have the job.

A fellow file-picker told me one day that when he was given an order to bring a batch of files, he was told not to use a trolley, just bring them one box at a time and walk slowly. He thought it hilarious that he was ordered to take as long as possible to do his job. I didn’t think it funny, just strange, perhaps too strange to be true. Until one of the bosses gave me virtually the same instruction: to fetch files but not to use a trolley and to take my time.

Eventually the explanation dawned on me. It wasn’t just the file-pickers who were temps; so were the coders and so were many of the bosses. Almost everyone working in that warehouse had a financial interest in their job lasting as long as possible, hence a secret ‘go-slow’ policy.

That first time I carried the files one by one to the coders and back to the shelves. And I did it the next day. But then I couldn’t do it any more. This was wrong, just wrong. Deliberately slow work cheated the top officers who needed census results processed promptly, cheated the tax payers who were paying my wages, and, for me as a Christian, I felt I was cheating God by not giving my best. I didn’t sleep well that night; I knew what I had to do next morning. I got my first order for files, went to the shelves, offloaded the boxes on to a trolley, and wheeled it to the coders. Later I did the same in reverse to put them back on the shelves. I kept doing that through the day. No-one said anything.

But they did the day after. I got an order for files, and found my way to their location in the centre of the ‘stacks’. Two file-picker colleagues were waiting there for me. One pinned me against the shelving, while both of them made their views very clear. ‘You do what you want to do, but you’d better not show us up by how you do it.’ I can’t reproduce the hostile tone they used, and I haven’t included the words beginning with ‘f’ and ‘b’ that littered their warning. With a last shove they let me go, and disappeared. It was a moment of decision. But the only decision I could make was to be true to myself. I had to live what I believed, and that was to do the job right. Which I did, day after day. And, as with most bullies, the file-pickers didn’t go through with their threats.

Living with a clear conscience, living as you believe you should – it’s the only way to feel good about yourself, to honour others and God, and to get a good night’s sleep.

It means being honest about experience and abilities. I’ve read hundreds of job application papers. Often they’ve seemed too good to be true. In some cases, they actually weren’t true.

Let’s imagine how Dishonest Joe – DJ – secured the job of his dreams. DJ wrote a great application, sold himself at interview, and chose referees he knew would write positive references. DJ got the job. ‘We’re impressed with what you can do’ they told him.

Except DJ didn’t have the experience he said he had, and couldn’t do what he’d said he could do. His application was a very generous statement of abilities and accomplishments. And every answer at interview could have been a model response in a textbook. Actually, that’s exactly what they were, answers DJ memorised from textbooks on interview technique. He wasn’t at all the person the employer thought he’d hired.

So, how long before DJ was found out? Not long. Anyone can bluff it for a while, and DJ’s early mistakes and uncertainty were written off on the grounds that he was ‘new to this job’. But after a couple of months, who DJ really was and what he really could do was obvious to all. Pretence doesn’t last.

Nothing but problems and unhappiness would lie beyond that point for DJ. If this was real, probably he’d be fired after a few more months, and he should be. If that didn’t happen then he’d find his deceit had landed him in a place of incompetence, with disillusioned colleagues, and challenges he’d no idea how to meet. Perhaps DJ would leave after a year, write another dishonest application, and try to persuade the next potential employer that the last role simply ‘wasn’t a good fit’ for him.

The DJ-like people I’ve met were one of two types. Either they’ve been unaware of their limitations, and think they’ve just been unlucky in the past but now, if they can secure a great job, everything will miraculously ‘work out’. Or they’ve been cynically intentional when overstating their character and abilities, believing that’s the only way to get on in life.

When someone can’t or won’t get real about the kind of person they are and what they can do, only bad consequences follow. It’s hurtful for them, and causes anguish and extra work for those around them.

It means living out your values. I’ve known a lot of travelling sales reps. They were on the road most of the week, trying to persuade existing customers to buy more or cultivating ‘leads’ to win new orders for their product. The company car was their office and hotels were their accommodation.

I asked Harry how his week had gone, and apparently it had been a good one. He’d closed several deals, and he was looking forward to a bonus. Then he added with a smile, ‘One day I drove 200 miles south in the morning, and 300 west in the afternoon.’ I asked how he’d fitted in time with clients along with so many miles. ‘By averaging about 90 mph almost all the way,’ he said, ‘which I don’t like doing because I know it’s wrong. But I couldn’t do my job if I kept to speed limits.’

I thought about that a lot afterwards. My reaction was, ‘If your job requires you to do wrong, you’re in the wrong job.’ But I also realised that ‘sales’ was likely Harry’s only skill; finding an alternative that didn’t create a moral challenge wouldn’t be simple; and he had a mortgage to pay and a family to feed.

But – while sincerely acknowledging the real-world situation Harry faced – I still wonder how someone can stay in a job which requires them setting aside their values. How do they suppress the unsettledness that must generate? Being true to who you are means being true to the values you must live by.

And that doesn’t just apply about a job. It’s a truth for every area of life. If a relationship isn’t right, then it’s not right to be in that relationship. If the cost of a holiday, or new car, or golf club membership is causing financial damage, then these are wrong expenses. If building a career requires everything else to be sacrificed, it’s wrong to wreck your health, weaken your marriage, and alienate your children.

Most people wouldn’t say these things are what they really want. But if it’s what they’re getting, then they’re not living true to their values.

I’d never tell anyone that change is easy. We don’t just wake up one morning, decide to be different and easily start living a new life. But it can start by waking up one morning, realise we’re not living true to our better selves, and begin a journey to the right place. That journey may be long and rough, but supremely worth making.

Misplaced certainties

From about the age of ten I loved photography. My parents’ Kodak Box Brownie camera was as simple as a camera could be, but occasionally I got to push the shutter button, always excited to see (eventually) the photo I’d taken.

But I didn’t have a camera of my own. And I desperately wanted one.

Then, a magazine ran a competition with ten prizes of cameras. All you had to do was answer simple questions and write a slogan for a firm’s product. I begged my mum to let me enter, and together we worked out the answers to the questions. The slogan, which would be the tie-breaker between entrants, was more difficult. You were only allowed about 12 words, but I wrote something like: ‘Tasty Coffee gets you going and keeps you going through the day’. Clearly, my future wouldn’t be in advertising, but mum said the slogan was good, so my entry was posted.

The entry details had said winners would be notified by post soon after the competition closed. My answers were right, and my slogan was brilliant. So I waited for the letter. Mum pointed out that thousands would have entered, so it was unlikely I would have won. But obviously she was wrong. Even if winning was unlikely, it was possible. Within a couple of weeks possible had become probable in my thinking. After two more weeks, probable had become certain. I knew I was a winner, but where was the letter? I hurried home from school every day, and asked my mum: ‘Has the letter come?’ She’d shake her head, and my shoulders would slump. Every day for a month that happened. ‘Any letter?’ – ‘Sorry, no.’ Then my mother took pity on me, and contacted the company who’d run the competition. As gently as she could, she told me I was not one of the winners. I was devastated. I had believed so strongly that I must have won, it had become a certainty.

I had convinced myself something was true which wasn’t. My certainty was misplaced. Not unusual for a child. But it doesn’t happen only with children.

Unjustified certainties can occur at any age and at any time when we let our wishful thinking become more than wishful.

Here are other examples of misplaced certainties.

Prejudice    I went to live in the USA in September 2008, and Barack Obama won the US presidential election eight weeks later. (I don’t claim a connection between my presence and his victory!) The following January Obama was inaugurated as President. His appointment to the highest office in the land was a major conversation item.

I had that conversation with a friend, Sally. Now, Sally was one of the godliest people I’ve ever known, a gracious Christian lady who seemed to love and want to help everyone she knew. But she didn’t seem to have much love for her new President. I asked her if that was simply a difference in politics?

Sally hesitated, looked embarrassed, and then said, ‘I just can’t trust a black man.’

Wow! I hadn’t seen that coming. Perhaps I would if I’d been raised in certain parts of the US. Sally knew her distrust was a contradiction of her Christian principles, but it was a deeply embedded idea with which she’d grown up and which still controlled her thinking.

Prejudice is wrong and often downright shocking. But it’s so innate we may not recognise its existence or find it hard to shake off. It’s one of the worst kinds of misplaced certainty.

Over-rating our own abilities    Have you ever tried to tell someone they’re a bad driver? How did that conversation go? Or, have you ever had a bad boss who knew they were a bad boss? Do you know many preachers or other public speakers who’d admit they’re boring?

  • Most drivers think they’re great drivers; it’s everyone else on the road who make their life difficult.
  • Most bosses think they’re great bosses; they just can’t get equally great staff.
  • Most preachers think they’re great speakers; if only the congregation would stay awake and pay attention.

Some of that may be an exaggeration, but you get my point.

In his 1786 poem To a Louse, the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote:

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion

Very roughly ‘translated’ it’s a wish for the gift to see ourselves the way others see us, freeing us from blunders and foolish notions.

But we don’t see ourselves as others do. And wishful thinking all too easily gives us a misplaced certainty about how gifted we are.

Over-confidence about our decisions    I hear many news stories about people tricked into parting with their money. Scammers persuade them to invest by promising fantastic returns from bonds or shares. People empty their low interest bank accounts to hand over all their cash. And then it’s gone. At best the investment opportunity was a super-risky venture. At worst, there never was a legitimate investment, just a scheme to give cash to criminals. When those stories are reported, the last question the interviewer asks those who’ve lost their money is: ‘Why didn’t you get an opinion from family or a responsible financial advisor?’ Typically the answer is: ‘I didn’t want anyone to talk me out of the investment. I was so sure this was a wonderful chance, and I didn’t want to miss out.’

‘I was so sure… I didn’t want to miss out.’ Reckless over-confidence about a decision, a misplaced certainty with dire financial consequences.

By no means have I exhausted all forms of misplaced certainty to which any of us might succumb. It’s a weakness we don’t know we have until it’s too late.

Are there avoidance tactics we can use, or ways to diminish the danger? Yes there are. Here are four.

Stop and think.    Rationality can’t be the sole guide for every decision, but mustn’t be excluded from every decision. Our minds are not enemies. Using them is not a failure of faith. Jesus commanded us to love God with ‘all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’. (Matthew 22:37) We are meant to think.

Here’s a true but sad story. Four friends felt convinced they should buy a flat. They didn’t have enough money, but were sure the money would come in time. In their gut they felt it right to go ahead. So, in faith, they submitted a binding offer to buy. The money never came, and they couldn’t pay the seller. The flat had to be rushed onto the market for as much as they could get to diminish the large debt they’d incurred.

Impulses and intuitions are both friend and foe. They can serve us well, but they can also tempt us into seriously unwise actions. We need to look (to think) before we leap.

Talk to a real friend.    There are times when protecting your private ideas is just stupid. You can be sure the four friends who went ahead without money to buy a flat wished they’d got good financial advice from an expert or wise friend.

Share your big ideas with someone who knows your abilities, your impulses, your dreams. The temptation is to ask someone guaranteed to agree with you. Avoid them. Ask someone who’ll be ruthlessly honest. A superficial friend will tell you what you want to hear, but a real friend will care enough to tell you what you don’t want to hear.

Slow down.    We live in a fast-paced world, and it seems everything must be decided immediately. Yes, there’s a danger of delay, but also a danger of rushing ahead irresponsibly.

As a youngster I dragged my sledge to the top of a super-steep hill, took one glance, felt the adrenalin, and launched myself on the ride of my life. It was a ride that could have ended my life. What I hadn’t considered was the road at the bottom of the hill. My sledge propelled me down that hill so fast it didn’t stop until I was right in the middle of that road. I scampered out of the way of an oncoming car just in time.

It’s dangerously easy to allow heightened emotions and desires to launch us down hills towards disaster if we go too fast. When we ask someone ‘Are you having second thoughts?’ it seems there’s an implied criticism. There shouldn’t be. There are decisions so consequential that we ought to slow down and have second thoughts.

Be ruthlessly honest.    The more we want something, the more we find arguments to have it. Inconvenient arguments we push aside. That’s the weakness behind a lot of misplaced certainties.

Ruthless honesty is possible because it’s a choice – a choice based on willingness to accept either the conclusion we want or the conclusion we don’t want. In other words, a willingness to accept whichever conclusion is best.

My friend George was minister of a large and growing church which appointed an associate pastor to support George’s work. Some months later George realised his preaching wasn’t going over well with the predominantly student-age congregation who came to evening services. He made the associate the principal preacher for those services. Here’s how George described the outcome to me: ‘It’s wonderful to have my associate preaching at evening services because he’s much better than me and numbers attending are going up’. I was impressed by what George told me; impressed that he’d given his young associate the chance, and impressed he was thrilled about the result. I’m not sure I would have made his decision or reacted so generously at the outcome. But George was a ruthlessly honest man, and he wanted the best for his people whatever that meant.

In the New Testament, the apostle Paul wrote this: I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment  (Romans 12:3)

There’s wisdom there: don’t over-rate yourself, and always think with sober judgment. That’s hard, but not impossible.

We’re all prone to misplaced certainty. Our ego wants to believe we excel when we don’t; our will leans towards believing we should have whatever we desire; our hearts are drawn to every opportunity that attracts. So we convince ourselves things are right that aren’t right.

But what’s not right for us is also what’s not good for us. Knowing that – really knowing that – will save us from a lot of foolishness.