To Mock is Human; To Understand, Is Divine

,

As a quarterback who had to read blitzes to stay upright and read defenses to sustain drives and score points to win, I paid intense attention to our coach’s scouting reports of our opponents’ defensive schemes. I also studied my film and our offensive tendencies to correct and improve my play.

Now, imagine yourself as the quarterback and society is the defense. Here’s your scouting report: It has a brutal, unrelenting, and ubiquitous negative blitz package of social and political media.

Let’s self-scout. Has a dumb TV ad, receiver dropping an easy pass, or a politician ever prompted you to mock them? I’m talking sarcasm, cynicism, and name-calling.

I’ve done it, too. But our Ultimate Head Coach, Father God, gives us a better plan.

Proverbs 14:6 says, “A mocker seeks wisdom and finds none; but knowledge comes easily to the discerning.”

Let’s break it down with descriptive words for our modern reality.

A mocker is cynical, sarcastic, critical, skeptical, negative, disbelieving, and pessimistic. He scoffs, sneers, jeers, boos, finds fault, slanders, and labels with angry presumption, prejudice, and name-calling.

He seeks and wants to appear smart. He’s a know-it-all who wants to be heard instead of learning, who puts others down so he can be above others.

And he finds no wisdom or intelligence because he closes his ears to reality, truth, and wisdom. He doesn’t ask or listen to people who are different than himself and his opinions.

But knowledge comes easily and naturally to the discerning, a man who is open-minded, willing to listen and learn, teachable, who desires to understand, a man who is humble.

Ours is an era of instantaneous digital information, news, and reaction. Have we opened our eyes to how it’s impacting us?

Social media and profit-motivated traffic kidnapped objectivity and news. It has allowed unscrupulous competition for attention, audience, and brand popularity. It’s incentivized opinion over inquiry, fact over accuracy.

Consider which of these biases dominate in social media and the individualistic, conditional, and consumptive culture, which grows more callous and more caustic:

  • Negative or Positive
  • Extreme or Measured
  • Labels or Description
  • Headlines or Story
  • Presumptions or Questions
  • Prejudice or Impartiality
  • Demeaning or Dignifying
  • Deceit or Honesty
  • Lies or Truth
  • Name-Calling or Character-observation

Don’t think we men, young and old alike, don’t need some straight-up man coaching in this area. Especially for our grandkids, kids, and wife’s sake, as well as our own souls as sons of Abba Father and brothers of the most noble non-mocker, the quintessential and ultimate man, Jesus.

Ok, let’s self-examine:

  1. Where am I thinking, speaking, and posting best or worst relative to the list above?
  2. How am I doing around my wife, children, and grandchildren? With friends? At social gatherings or work? Online?
  3. Am I aware that the NEWS is rarely real news—journalistic, researched, objective?
  4. How accurate, contextual, objective, accountable, truthful, and unbiased is the news I seek and the sources I watch or listen to?
  5. How vulnerable and gullible am I toward the Instagram/TikTok clips (that are edited, mashed, and curated just for me) that algorithms are feeding us, based on what Pastor Miles McPhearson warns is a constant “US vs THEM” approach?
  6. What am I going to do, or stop doing, to improve the content I let in and send out of my mouth, device, and heart?! How can I become more wise and intelligent about life vs. being damaged and damaging others by ignorance, bias, and mocking?

So, men, my teammates and brothers, what is Father God’s relevant coaching for you to play offense more than defense and to displace the negative with positive?

Live consistent with our true identity as His adopted son, which makes us:

  • an “ambassador for Jesus Christ”
  • effective in my “ministry of reconciliation” both vertically to God and horizontally among people
  • as “salt and light” to others who need both
  • a “citizen of God’s eternal kingdom”
  • “overcoming evil with good”
  • treating others by the Golden Rule and “as Jesus treated us”
  • with “fullness of grace and truth” from Christ
  • in”agape love” that “lays down my life for others”

If all this seems too high a standard to achieve, you’re correct. Only Jesus accomplished it, and He can live it through you if you do two things:

  1. Connect with, depend upon, and abide in Jesus.
  2. Live in the light of self-awareness and mutual coaching with your micro team of a couple of your closest core friends (your Level 5 friends).

Let’s team up to end all the mocking and be the men that Jesus coaches and empowers us to be.

Find your own local man coaching and tap into my CORE 3 COACHING if you want help along the way.

by