Take Your Blows

Courage 12/19/2019

I remember watching the old Kung Fu movies growing up. It seemed like in every one of them, there was always an idiot. He was always messing up and as result was always being punished. The master never relented but continued the beating for each offence. I am sure a real life master’s hope would be that the idiot would finally learn his lesson.

The book of Proverbs is filled with many of the same instances. And though the idiot never learns, it should be a powerful lesson for us. There are consequences for our actions. If you make a mistake, you will most likely pay the price. Hopefully, the price is so great that you don’t make the same mistake again.

The feeling of pain is a great motivator to discontinue your current path. If humans never learned from pain, we probably wouldn’t be here today. But they did. They knew the consequences of touching fire, eating poisonous food, and provoking the wrong person/animal. They passed that knowledge down to us just like we will pass it down to the next generation.

If you repeat the same mistakes over and over again, you are an idiot. Yeah, I know it sounds harsh, but we all have to deal with the broken record eventually. If you don’t, you are neither helping yourself or the next generation.

Don’t be afraid to fail. Take your blows and realize they are essentially a learning tool. Learn your lessons so that you may be able to take on greater and more complex tasks. Be the intelligent person mentioned in Proverbs and gain the knowledge necessary to evolve.

Beat a scoffer and the naïve learn a lesson; rebuke the intelligent and they gain knowledge. –Proverbs 19:25