Professor Ex

Some say experience is the best teacher and I tend to disagree for several reasons...firstly sometimes experience can be a very harsh teacher with consequences that are difficult to recover from...but also because, as a Christian, I believe the best teacher is the Holy Spirit who dwells in me...in fact Paul says we are filled with all knowledge (Romans 15:14), and John says the anointing teaches us all things (1 John 2:20,27)...and Jesus said the Holy Spirit would come to teach us all things (John 14:26)...

With that said, there are indeed that we learn from experience, hence the title of this post, "Professor Ex"...a bit silly, I know...but one has to try to be creative right...

We need to be careful what we learn from experience and how we apply those lessons to our daily lives...this is particularly true for the negative or bad experiences we will have in life... As you read this post, I am sure you can think of several bad experiences you have had, and you have drawn some sort of lesson from it that you have probably generalised in your application...now this is not necessarily bad, there are just a few things I would like to draw to your attention and ask you to consider..

I recently had an experience where I was defrauded as a result of doing what I felt, at the time, was a good service to another human... I thought I was helping, and for those who know me, I can be very quick to help those I see to be in need...well this time it did not work out so well...

After the event, I began to think and ask myself whether I was too generous or naive in how I dealt with people...was I too trusting and too quick to offer help without considering how sincere the people I was interacting with are..? Lots of questions...at the end of which I was beginning to conclude that perhaps I should stop helping strangers...or if I am to help I should find ways of protecting myself from any damages or negative impacts of the help I offered...as some of you may know...we all have an innate instinct for self preservation... and this is what was driving this thought process..

As I continued to think over it...a counter argument sprang up... "will you stop doing good just because of this one experience, will you ignore some in need of genuine help just because someone abused your desire to help?"...and... what does the Bible say about doing good and helping those in need?

All this made me realise just how far we go to make generalisations that inform our outlook on life based on one experience...especially the negative ones...and what impact this has on how we relate with others and how we live out our lives...

I believe we are to learn from every experience, rather from the majority of our experiences...and in that way experience can be a good teacher...but we ought to be careful how we determine the final lesson and to do this we should consider what it is motivating that conclusion we are arriving at.

Satan will use our negative experiences to build fear in us such that we will make generalisations that if we implement could result in us missing out on God's plans and purposes for us. In the example I have given, the fear of being defrauded again could result in me not being a blessing to someone and bring glory to God. At the same time, I was going to use this one experience negate all the other times when I have helped someone who went on to praise and glorify God, being convinced of His goodness and care, and in some cases God has used this person to help me later in life...

It is important for us to carefully think about the consequences of whatever lesson we are drawing out our life experiences. We need to consider what is motivating the conclusions we arrive it. Are we being motivated by fear or is by faith? Are we looking to God's word and His promises...are we continuing in the hope He has called us to? The answers to these questions should help you and me to draw the right lessons from our experiences...

So learn from your experiences, but be careful what you are learning...