I Feel Stupid For Even Wondering

Twenty minutes on something that looked like nothing.

That is the sentence you have been saying to yourself, and you have been saying it in a particular tone, and the tone is not kind.

It was a plain message. Four lines. Nothing dramatic in it, nothing urgent, nothing obviously wrong. And you sat with it for twenty minutes and you still could not decide, and in the end you did nothing, which was the right thing to do.

And instead of feeling relieved, you felt foolish.

Because in your mind, a person with a normal amount of sense would have looked at that and known. Two seconds. Yes or no. On with the afternoon.

I want to look at where that idea came from, because it is the thing doing the damage, and it is not true, and nobody has ever told you it is not true.

Here is the first fact of the afternoon. Those messages are not written to be easy to judge. They are written by people who spend their whole working lives making them hard to judge, and who test them, and improve them, and try again.

You spent twenty minutes on something professionally designed to take twenty minutes.

Wise as serpents, and harmless as doves

There is an instruction that holds two things together that most people think you have to choose between.

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. (Matthew 10:16, King James Version)

Wise as serpents. Harmless as doves. Both, at the same time, in the same person.

Most people assume one of those cancels the other. That being careful makes you hard, and being gentle makes you easy to fool.

The verse says no. It says carry both.

You are told to hold two things at once that most people think cancel each other, and no carefulness has ever once been required to cost somebody their gentleness. Matthew 10:16 says be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds both of those in the same woman.

Now notice what the wisdom is for in that sentence. It is not for being clever about people. It is for surviving in a place where there really are wolves.

The verse takes as given that the danger is real. There is no suggestion that a sufficiently sensible person would find it easy.

You were never told that the wolves would be obvious, and no instruction in that verse has ever once promised that the danger would be easy to spot. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes the seriousness of a situation seriously, and it is written that they were sent as sheep in the midst of wolves rather than into an empty field.

And there is the word therefore in the middle, which is doing all the work. Be ye therefore wise. Because of the wolves.

The wisdom is a response to a real condition. It is not a personality trait some people are born with and others are not.

You have been given wisdom as a response and never as a talent, and no wise person has ever once arrived at it without there being something real to be wise about. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies what a condition requires, and Scripture puts the therefore between the wolves and the wisdom on purpose.

What twenty minutes actually means

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not stop somebody grading herself.

Take the twenty minutes seriously as evidence, but as evidence about the right thing.

A message that takes twenty minutes to judge is a well made message. That is what the twenty minutes measures. It is a fact about the workmanship.

If it had been badly made you would have known in four seconds, and so would everybody, and nobody would have bothered making it.

You are holding the measurement of somebody else's workmanship, and no length of time spent weighing a thing has ever once been a measurement of the person weighing it. The Spirit of God is the one who attaches a number to the right object, and Matthew 10:16 puts the wisdom beside the wolves rather than beside the sheep's ability.

And here is the second half, which nobody has told you. Everybody takes that long. Everybody.

The people who look decisive about these things are usually deciding on one rule rather than on judgment. They are not seeing something you cannot see. They have a rule, and the rule is doing the deciding, and it takes them four seconds because there is no judging in it at all.

That is a gap in the teaching and it is not a gap in you.

You have been comparing your judging to somebody else's rule, and no comparison like that has ever once been a fair one for anybody. The written word calls for both wisdom and harmlessness together, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a woman what the decisive people are actually doing.

Say how long, and say why

Now the small thing, and it is two sentences.

I am not going to hand over a rule today. That is a good thing to have and it is a separate matter, and today is about the twenty minutes and the conclusion drawn from them.

Say out loud how long you spent on it, and then say out loud that it was built to take that long.

You are able to say two accurate sentences out loud, and stating a fact about a thing has never once been the same as excusing yourself for it. Matthew 10:16 holds the wisdom and the harmlessness together in one person, and the Holy Spirit is the one present while a woman says something true about her own afternoon.

Say the first one plainly. I spent twenty minutes on that.

Say it without the tone. That is the whole difficulty and it is worth taking a run at twice. The words are neutral. The tone is what has been doing the harm.

Then the second sentence, which is the fact. It was built to take that long.

Because at the moment those twenty minutes are filed as evidence about you, and the second sentence moves them into a different file altogether, where they are evidence about somebody's workmanship instead.

You are moving twenty minutes from one file into another, and one accurate sentence has never once been a way of letting yourself off anything. The Spirit of God is the one who files a fact where it belongs, and it is written that the wolves are real and the wisdom is the answer to them.