Living skillfully

When I worked at The Golden Spike one summer in the ’70s, one head waitress could breeze through the dining room and spot what every table needed. I could not. It was a short gig.

Everybody in the world is good at something and bad at something. The exception would be Leonardo da Vinci, who was good at everything—painting, inventing, sculpting, building, engineering, astronomy, anatomy, geology, botany, cartography, paleontology, and ichnology, which most of us haven’t even heard of.

Sometimes whole cultures are good at something and bad at other things, but one is not allowed to mention that, under pain of being called racist or xenophobic by people who don’t countenance distinctions of any kinds. Israel took a desert and made it productive; Haiti took a paradise and made it a desert.

There is a mysterious nexus between skill and wisdom in the Bible.

Even within single gift sets there are strengths and weaknesses. An essay writer may fail at novels; sprinters are not marathoners; pitchers don’t bat well, which is why the American League invented the “designated hitter.” Again, there are exceptions to the pitcher-hitter rule: Babe Ruth.

I have always been intrigued that the American Indian never came up with the wheel. Or arch, or cart, or plow, or pottery wheel, or glass, or iron, or stringed musical instruments. I feel I could have invented the wheel. Don’t you, if the alternative is dragging your load over rocks via travois sleds made of tepee poles? On the other hand, I never figured out how to work the VCR, so I may be in error.

When Louis XIV’s France rejected the gospel and drove out up to 900,000 of its Protestant citizens, it shot the economy in the foot because this was the population that understood the silk-making, plate glass, watch-making, and cabinet-making industries. This is similar to the 1492 Alhambra edict that expelled the Jews and caused a brain drain in Spain.

Speaking of body parts, since being married to a left-handed man, I am fascinated by left- versus right-hand dominance. The interesting thing is that it’s not as if my left hand is totally useless, which would be understandable. It works just well enough to be a “helper” to my right hand. It cannot boast of supremacy, but it cannot be gotten on without. Uncomplainingly, it tags along and joins in whatever the right hand has purposed to do. A humble but necessary role in life.

My favorite TV character was Radar O’Reilly. Corporal in charge of the Korean MASH unit PA system and radio station, he was humble, unassuming, in the background—indispensable. He knew what the colonel needed before the colonel did, and would suddenly appear at his elbow to give it to him. It is my deep desire to cultivate that kind of selfless sensitivity to people’s needs.

“Do you see a man who is skillful in his work? He will serve before kings; he will not serve before obscure men” (Proverbs 22:29).

There is a mysterious nexus between skill and wisdom in the Bible, a fact that perhaps led Old Testament professor Bruce Waltke to conclude from his study of Proverbs that wisdom is “skill in living.” Living skillfully is living righteously, for every other kind of living leads to death, in one way or another. Gentle words save relationships. A little sleep, a little folding of the hands, and poverty comes upon you like a bandit.

That spiritual dimension of skill is clear in an early Scriptural mention of the Holy Spirit: “The Lord said to Moses, ‘See, I have called by name Bezalel … and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, … to work in every craft” (Exodus 31:1-5).

There is no reason why we cannot ask for particular skills, and receive them as needed: “Blessed be the Lord my rock, who trains ... my fingers for battle” (Psalm 144:1). “For by you I can run against a troop, and by my God I can leap over a wall” (Psalm 18:29).

We have nothing we have not received, so boasting is eliminated. I hope da Vinci understood.