Physically ill. An
upset stomach. Butterflies in the gut. Shaking hands. A racing heart.
I suffered through all those symptoms every single Sunday
morning I had to preach a sermon, for the first five years I practiced
ministry. Somehow I got through those bumpy initial years of my profession,
preaching way too many long winded speeches that put folks to sleep. I still
had a lot to learn. I was a rookie after
all, so new to my calling.
But with lots and lots and lots of practice and experience,
I've become better at my craft. Through practice: spending ten hours a week for
48 weeks a year for almost 30 years, researching and writing sermons. Through experience:
delivering upwards of 1,400 Sunday talks.
Do anything over and over and over, over a long period of
time, and chances are very good you will eventually master it. Become an expert. Preaching. Teaching. Singing.
Researching. Building. Managing. Governing.
Or...maybe not. Maybe we can just cut the line of experience
and practice and instead be really good at something just because...we think
we'd be good at it. Because...we want to be good at it. Because...we can be an expert by just
declaring to the world, "I'm an expert! Trust me!"
We are living in an age when the idea and ideal of experts
and expertise is under attack. Think of how
"up for debate" the hard science of climate change still is, even
though the numbers are incontrovertible and rising tides don't lie. Just ask
folks who live in Boston's
Seaport district. Or how about the news?
Attack hardworking honest journalists often enough, hard enough, loud
enough and eventually no one, no news outlet or body will be trusted as experts
or truth tellers. Goodbye Walter Cronkite--you'd never make it in 2018.
Or consider the recently announced candidacy of actress
Cynthia Nixon, running to become governor of New York state, an office with
responsibility for almost 20 million citizens and a budget of $168 billion.
Nixon is a talented person, an expert in the arts, a Tony award winning
Broadway actress and former TV star of "Sex and the City". But in formal governing or public office?
She's without any experience. None. Not
even time on a local school board.
As New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote recently
about Nixon's lack of experience: "You wouldn't want to be operated on by
a surgeon with only a few surgeries under his or her belt, and the assurance
that this doctor brought a fresh perspective to anesthesia and incisions....So
why the romance with candidates who have never done a stitch of government work
before?"
Great questions. Why
would a reality TV star be qualified to win high office? Why are experts and
expertise now so suspect to so many of us?
The internet doesn't help.
Once knowledge and expertise was contained in books and libraries and
"experts" alone. Now seemingly all knowledge is available to us
immediately, with just a "click" or a swipe, so much so, that we are
tempted to conclude we are experts. Why? Because, "Hey! I googled
it!" So too the line between opinion and fact: there is no line anymore. Believe that something is true long enough
and it will become true, at least in one's own mind, even if factually, it still
isn't true. Not one legitimate scientific study has ever linked childhood vaccines
and autism and yet: millions believe that this is so, a fact. Experts and scientists be damned.
I applaud Nixon for her civic spirit and sincere desire to
change things for the better. She'll absolutely
shake up the race for governor. But in a
larger sense I wonder what will happen to us as a society if we continue to
move the line or erase the line that marks the difference between a neophyte
and an expert, a rookie and the master. Give me the wise one who is thoughtful and
competent, from years of experience. What scares me is the fool who speaks up
the loudest because they think they
are an expert, and so they must be an expert. Right?
Life doesn't work that way. God gives each of us raw talents
and gifts and our job is to then work hard and long to hone those skills into true
expertise. Life
finally takes practice and experience.
I know I've still got lots to learn. How about you?
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