What’s the point in low-level, practical advice?

I get this question a lot. The question is, why bother learning to write Thank You notes? Why bother learning to make friends laugh? Why bother learning to play card games?

This is all low-level advice. After all, this advice isn’t in the Bible. It’s not directly spiritual. It’s not even always the best way to serve others (telling someone about the gospel is surely a more appropriate use of energy).

This is a legitimate concern. I ask it of myself all the time too. I wonder if perhaps all this advice does miss the mark. Perhaps it does focus on trivial matters in the grand scheme of the cosmos. If that’s the case, why bother? Why bother doing it at all? And even more crucial, why bother teaching it to others?

But here’s where I stop doubting. I stop because…

Practical is where it starts

I don’t believe writing Thank You’s and cracking jokes and playing card games is the ultimate goal in life. If it stopped there, I would be wasting my time… and yours.

No, I come back to the practical, low-level, repetitious advice because it’s how we learn the high-level skills. I don’t have all the answers. I wish I could say I do. And even the answers I think I have, you might not understand (probably because of my lack of communication skills) or you might chose not to follow.

I think it’s much more reasonable to get you to start writing Thank You’s and cracking jokes and playing cards than to get you to think in high-level terms. And while you do the low-level stuff, you educate yourself in the high-level concepts.

I can’t teach you to become more thankful. I can’t teach you to encourage others. But I believe I can teach you the low-level skills that set you on the path to learning the rest.

I’m a teacher, and here’s what I offer

My greatest accomplishment, my goal with all of this, isn’t to place answers in your lap. I used to think it was. But even if I could, answers aren’t enough. Answers are everywhere – what you need is encouragement. Encouragement is constant and continual, and I won’t always be here to give you that.

What I can give you are the tools to constantly, continually get that encouragement.

That’s why I’m here. I’m here to give you the tools, to instill in you the desire to go further than I could ever take you by myself. I could try to teach you that with a bunch of theoretical concepts. But even if you learned all the concepts in the world, I doubt they’d matter much to you.

It might seem like the way to give you the desire to learn would be to give the theory behind the details. That way, you’d have the overall picture to start with. In reality, though, the way to instill in someone the desire to learn is to take them through it.

This is exactly what Jesus did for His disciples.

Jesus literally walked His disciples through life for three and half years. He gave them the example, the daily life of it. While His disciples were running through this, they wanted to quit and some did deny Him at times. But afterward… afterward, what happened? They stuck around. Living in the experience drove the disciples to continue to live in the experience.

I want to do that. I want to take you through it. To walk you step by step through the practical skills, motivation, even feeling of serving others. I think helping you experience it is the way to give you the desire to take it further. Because only by going through it will you really know if you want to go through it.

Serving Suggestions:

(1) Don’t discount practical advice, even if it seems mundane. I’m not just saying this for what I talk about here. This applies to anything you try to learn.

(2) Focus on building practical action into your life. Stop learning and start doing. What’s something insanely practical you could do to serve others right now?