Do you “know the score”?

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Learning is a good thing. The Bible is replete with admonitions to learn, study, and to grow in knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.

But do you “know the score”? According to one famous American admiral, a whole lot of education doesn’t always equal good common sense, as noted in this tidbit from Bits & Pieces:

    Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, father of the nuclear submarine, was skeptical of business school graduates. Having interviewed some 14,000 of them over a period of years, he found them fluent in the jargon of systems analysis, financial manipulation, and quantitative management (whatever that is). But he claimed that they just don’t know the score. He felt most of them had an unrealistic impression of what is involved in business and little appreciation of the importance of technical knowledge, experience, and hard work.

    “What it takes to do the job will not be learned from management courses,” said Rickover. “It is principally a matter of experience, the proper attitude, and common sense — none of which can be taught in a classroom.”

Almost as an “amen” to the admiral, scripture gives significant value to common sense:

“My child, don’t lose sight of common sense and discernment. Hang on to them, for they will refresh your soul. They are like jewels on a necklace,” Proverbs 3:21-22.

Fostering common sense and discernment isn’t something many do today. Instead, we look to memes, tweets, posts, or something from a media source to spark a topic, and then we react (usually emotionally, rather than with considered thought) to it.

To foster good common sense and sound judgment (discernment) we need to take time to think things through for ourselves, to rationally work through the emotions that correspond to such thinking, and validate our thinking with the truth of God’s Word. Just being swept away day after day by “group think” does nothing to foster basic common sense and discernment.

Do you make time each day just to be able to think through what’s happening in your life, your circumstances, and what’s going on in the world around you? How do YOU foster good common sense and exercise discernment? To go a little deeper, you might want to check out my previous posts of “5 reasons for adding a daily ‘think time’ to your life …” which you can find here, and “Six benefits of making journaling a habit …” which you can find here.

Scotty