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Now that we’ve endeavored to understand true Wisdom, and how to hear her voice, and bring it to the foreground of our lives, we need to recognize the other voice that seeks to take us in another direction.

“My son, keep your father’s commandment,
    and forsake not your mother’s teaching.
²¹ Bind them on your heart always;
    tie them around your neck.
²² When you walk, they will lead you;
    when you lie down, they will watch over you;
    and when you awake, they will talk with you.
²³ For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light,
    and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life,
²⁴ to preserve you from the evil woman,
    from the smooth tongue of the adulteress.” (Proverbs 6:20-24)

“My son, keep my words
    and treasure up my commandments with you;
² keep my commandments and live;
    keep my teaching as the apple of your eye;
³ bind them on your fingers;
    write them on the tablet of your heart.
⁴ Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,”
    and call insight your intimate friend,
⁵ to keep you from the forbidden woman,
    from the adulteress with her smooth words.” (Proverbs 7:1-5)

I share these profound verses of Hebrew scripture because they offer us the path of wisdom. Don’t get hung up on the gender of “my son” or the “forbidden woman”, nor the specific subject of temptation unto adultery. These words depict a tale of two women, competing for the influential voice over our life decisions, namely: Wisdom (Sophia) and Folly (Treyla). The sobering reality is that if we don’t prize Wisdom and seek her voice, the default mode of life is that we will only hear Folly.

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” (Proverbs 14:12)

Life will suck if we lack wisdom because it means we follow Treyla…our own way. A foolish person continually makes bad decisions because they don’t possess true North. Is life fighting you? Do bad decisions turn into another one? Has life become a perpetual struggle? We must understand that this form of suffering and despair and struggle is the grace and goodness of God … the scourge of Love. The Good News is that we can perceive life is hard. I will train you how to not make it harder.

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:13-14)

The masses lack wisdom.

To begin hearing Folly’s voice, the best place to start is with self-pity. Nothing good ever follows self-pity. Learn that. Self-pity is the seductress. Self-pity is quick sand that must be avoided or life itself becomes a trap. Self-pity is far worse than we realize.

When life seems unfair, the voice of self-pity swoops in like a smothering, mother love. Her voice plays on our affections and not our will. She tempts us with emotion, not our intellect. When feeling sorry for ourself, we embrace a fictional worldview, and welcome the self-delusion that ensues. We willingly follow her to our own destruction. This goes beyond replaying sad songs that hit just right, this the fundamental watershed which dictates our life’s course.

The reason self-pity is so dangerous, is because it’s tied to our identity, or our sense of being, it’s the lie that tells us who we are. Who we are is our true destination, not who we think we are. Self-pity forces upon us a metamorphosis into victims by claiming we would be better off if it wasn’t for the rigged system, those people in power, or our unfair disadvantage. Self-pity externalizes our locus of control, or said another way, she robs us of our agency. Self-pity is our enemy that must be committed to complete destruction. Every addict, bankruptcy, divorce, suicidal thought, and isolated person are ultimately the mistaken identities derived by the voice of Folly through self-pity. Indulge her fake ID once, and we’ll begin losing ourselves, along with true life.

I offer this lesson second to wisdom because, as you’ll see, the life we truly desire comes much easier once we can discern between these voices. That’s what life is about. Picking wisely. This form of self-awareness is also known as our spiritual life. We must win in the non-physical aspects of reality before we can truly win in life.

If the seductress convinces us we are victims, or not enough, failures, and purposeless, then we’ll freely follow our appetites for pleasure because we’ll be convinced that’s all there is. Once we go there, it’s painful to believe that we are beloved by God, and that His will is for us to enjoy God and the life He has uniquely designed for us. This idea will anger us. If we miss this watershed, the best we can hope for is for some life-hack to improve only one part of our life, while everything else remains a house of cards or a dumpster fire. I call this: disintegration, the Bible calls it wrath.

So be self-aware of any dissonance right now.

We don’t get to this deep despair by doing the wrong things. We get there by going after the right things in the wrong way. In my first book: “Getting Better When You Can’t” I prove that being a sinner doesn’t mean you desire the wrong things, it means you “fall by the wayside” (paraptoma) or we “miss the mark” (hamartia) because we “over-desire” (epithumia) the means more than the end. This is a true trap. It’s real. And there is only one way out…Sophia.

Side note for A students: Wisdom is the cosmic office of Christ…long before Jesus was born. Christology (Wisdom) is bigger than any religion.

If we possess the self-awareness to catch ourselves in the despairing pride of self-pity, then we must realize what a gift this is. So what should we do in that moment? How do we bring wisdom to the foreground?

“Toward the scorners he is scornful, but to the humble he gives favor.” (Proverbs 3:34)

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.” (Proverbs 11:2)

“The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor.” (Proverbs 15:33)

“Before destruction a man’s heart is haughty, but humility comes before honor.” (Proverbs 18:12)

“The reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life.” (Proverbs 22:4)

Humility is the gateway back to wisdom. Gratitude is the antidote for self-pity. The gift of both is the discovery of our true self, designed and found in God. These spiritual acts of self-awareness are the necessary transformations that give us a “factory reset” and lock in our GPS to its true destination.

All the training I’m going to offer you in the rest of this series will only truly work if we first gain this spiritual insight. As our heart and mind go, so follows the rest of our lives. If we would like to avoid costly mistakes, we must realize that life decisions are always the physical blossom on the plant which grows from our spiritual grasp of wisdom. If you don’t like your life, then stop defending your decisions and make wise ones so you will like your life later.

Folly forces us to live behind the wave in a reactionary reality. It’s profoundly frustrating because the way that seems right to us is fictional. As Kierkegaard said: “We are in despair, before God, refusing to be ourself.”

I hope you can see the long range vision of your life coming into play. Wisdom will restore your hope in the future, your purpose in a world, and will give you a tremendous sense of peace despite Folly surrounding everything you see.

Now I will help you to really live.