The 10 Commandments of Common Sense: Wisdom from the Scriptures for People of All Beliefs - Hardcover

Urban, Hal

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1416535632 ISBN 13: 9781416535638

Publisher: Fireside, 2007

Synopsis

The author of the best-selling Life's Greatest Lessons presents scripture-based principles for how to build one's character and live a faith-based life, drawing on his own experiences within multiple Christian denominations to present guidelines on living lovingly, positively, and without judgment. 60,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Hal Urban was a high school teacher for many years and also taught at the University of San Francisco. He is a well-known leader in the Character Education movement and is in constant demand as a speaker at national conferences and school and community events. He raised three sons as a single father and now lives in Redwood City, California, with his wife, Cathy.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

COMMANDMENT 1

DON'T BE SEDUCED BY POPULAR CULTURE

IT PREVENTS YOU FROM THINKING FOR YOURSELF

Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould.

-- ROMANS 12:2 PHI

You are what you are because of what goes into your mind.

-- ZIG ZIGLAR

TIMELESS ADVICE FROM THE WISEST PERSON EVER, BECAUSE SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE

The wisdom of King Solomon is legendary, but few people other than those well versed in the Scriptures know the story behind it. It's told in chapter 3 of the First Book of Kings in the Old Testament. Solomon was only about twenty years old when he became king of Israel upon the death of his father, King David. He felt inadequate to the task and told God, "But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties." He asked for only one thing. It wasn't power or riches or long life. He asked instead for wisdom. God responded to him in a dream: "I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be."

God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore.

Men of all the nations came to listen to Solomon's wisdom, sent by all the kings of the world, who had heard of his wisdom.

-- I KINGS 3:29,34 NIV

During his reign of forty years, Solomon wanted to pass on his wisdom to both his contemporaries and future generations, so he put it into writing as the primary author of the Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. More than anything, he warns us to not be misled by others, particularly by "fools" and "sinners." In modern times those would be people who do stupid things and those who do illegal things. The truth is, there are times in our lives when we're swayed by both types. A word closely related to wisdom is discernment, or knowing how to make good choices, and Solomon repeatedly reminds us of this throughout his writings. Good choices don't happen naturally; we learn to make them with the help of wise people.

One of Solomon's urgent warnings is to not be enticed by the ways of the world. The dictionary tells us that to entice is to get a person to act in a particular way by offering something desirable. What were those desirable things in the tenth century B.C., when Solomon lived? He mentions money, possessions, power, and the opposite sex, and warns us to not be seduced by any of them. He also warns us against obtaining what we desire through dishonest means. Are things so much different in the twenty-first century A.D.? Not really, except perhaps that we seem to want more and more of it all. Some things never change, and Solomon's advice is as good today as it was three thousand years ago.

WHERE SCRIPTURES AND ANTHROPOLOGY MEET

Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.

-- ROMANS 12:2 MES

The natural act of thinking is greatly modified by culture; western man uses only a small fraction of his mental capabilities.... Man has put himself in his own zoo. He has so simplified his life and stereotyped his responses that he might as well be in a cage.

-- EDWARD T. HALL,PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY

One of the most valuable and eye-opening subjects I ever studied in school was cultural anthropology. Somehow I missed it in high school and college, but in graduate school I became deeply immersed in it. In the early days of my doctoral studies in education, my adviser asked what my area of emphasis would be. I told her psychology. She then asked me how many courses I had taken in cultural anthropology. The answer was none. It seemed like a strange question. What did cultural anthropology have to do with human behavior? I soon found out that it has everything to do with human behavior. Together with sociology, it forms the foundation of psychology and leads us to a better understanding of what we do and why we do it.

Cultural anthropology, sometimes called social anthropology, is the study of human behavior as influenced by other people and culture. As much as we'd like to think of ourselves as individuals and independent thinkers, the truth is that we're often not either. From infancy on we unwittingly go through a process anthropologists call enculturation. In other words, we become products of our culture. The way we dress, the way we talk, the music and entertainment we enjoy, the products we buy, the food we eat, the beliefs and values we hold dear are all closely connected to our culture. It's impossible to be free of the influence of culture, but we can become aware of it and resist its seduction.

Let me use an embarrassing example from my own life to demonstrate the influence of popular culture. I was in my mid-thirties when I started studying cultural anthropology. Since education is supposed to increase our understanding of the world and our self-awareness, I had to ask myself if popular culture had influenced a think-for-yourself guy like me. The honest and humbling answer was yes -- in a big way. When I took a good look, I realized that popular culture had played an enormous role in my life. I had this moment of self-awareness in the 1970s, a decade many of us would like to forget.

I cringe when I see pictures of myself taken during that period. I had long hair, a big mustache, and muttonchop sideburns. I wore bell-bottom pants and flowery shirts with big collars. I was into everything pop psychology had to offer because my goal was to be "self-actualized." In addition to my impressive command of psychobabble, I used terms like "groovy" and "far out." And yes, I listened to disco music, including the Bee Gees. But the worst part of all was that I thought I was pretty cool.

How do things like this happen, even to educated people? It's simple. Popular culture is one of the most powerful and seductive forces in our lives. We're bombarded daily with shallow messages about what we should look like and all the things we should own, because then we'll be cool. If we allow popular culture to take over, as I did, we cease to think for ourselves. And we deny ourselves the opportunity to become the type of people we could be. That's why Solomon told us to "Put away foolishness" and Jesus told us, "You must change your hearts."

It is only with the heart that one sees rightly.

-- ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPéRY

LIFE IS AN EXERCISE IN MINDLESS CONFORMITY

Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but be a new and different person with a fresh newness in all you do and think.

-- ROMANS 12:2 TLB

During the last several years of my teaching career I used the heading above to launch into an exercise I used with both my high school and university students. I wrote those words on the board and gave each student a half sheet of paper with the following instructions: "At the top of your paper, write the word 'agree' or 'disagree' in regard to your feelings about this statement. It has to be one or the other. Then in one concise paragraph, explain why."

This simple assignment quickly became one of my favorites because it consistently produced two wonderful results: first, it always got my students to think; and second, it never failed to provoke a lively discussion, which often included some healthy disagreement. Ironically, more than three-fourths of the high school kids answered "disagree" (is there a period in our lives when fitting in is more important than it is during adolescence?), while more than three-fourths of the adults answered "agree." Those results surprised me the first time, but not afterward. Kids, especially teenagers, feel an enormous amount of peer pressure to conform. They do exactly that but don't seem to be aware of it. Even if they are, they rarely admit it. Adults, who feel much less peer pressure, are simply more aware that we often do things to conform without thinking first, and it's usually what everyone else is doing.

The conversation in both age groups always led to the topic of how we make choices. My main contribution to this part of the discussion was always the same: "If we don't learn to consciously make our own choices, either we'll make choices unconsciously (not even aware that we're choosing to do one thing over another) or we'll let other people make them for us." One year a very bright high school senior said he agreed with me and then asked, "But how do you learn to make conscious and independent choices?" An excellent question. I said we learn to make our own choices only after we become aware of all the powerful influences in our culture.

To make my point, I told him and the rest of the class about what I was like in the 1970s. They laughed, and some even asked if I had any old yearbooks so they could see pictures. I said I'd burned them. In spite of my college education and thirty years of life experience, I'd been leading a life of "mindless conformity." I also explained a little about cultural anthropology and sociology and why I thought they should be required courses beginning in junior high school.

This topic seemed to genuinely intrigue both my teenage and adult students. The first time we did this exercise, another good question came up, namely, "What aspects of our culture do you think most influence the choices we make?" I surmised aloud that we would get different answers from different people, so I suggested that we answer it collectively. The students gave me their answers, and I wrote them on the board. Over the years, there was remarkable consensus. These are what they saw (in no particular order) as the most powerful influences in our culture:

Advertising

Peers

Family

Television

Education

Faith

Magazines

Celebrities

Fashion

Fads

...

Edition details

• Publisher: Fireside
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1416535632
• ISBN 13: 9781416535638
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 272