Not All Advice is Good Advice

When I was a kid, I remember reading “Dear Abby” in our local newspaper. Readers would write in with questions and she would give an answer. Sometimes I would agree with her answers, but often I would not. So who was right, Abby or me?
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No doubt Abby had many more years of experience than I did, but I consider my own mother who has lived in this world for more than 6 decades. She didn’t always agree with Abby either. So where should I get my advice- from a dear Abby or from dear Mom?
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We should seek advice from others. The problem we face is that human hearts and minds have been corrupted by sin and often the advice we get encourages sinfulness rather than godliness. Consider the advice that is often given when someone has done wrong to us. So much of the worldly advice we receive concerns how to get back at them or to show them how it feels to have been done wrong. Such advice encourages bitterness rather than meekness.
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Consider what James wrote in dealing with this very subject: “Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.” (James 3:13-18)
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Notice what the scripture says. The sort of wisdom that says you should have bitter envy and strife in your hearts doesn’t come from God; it comes from the earth, from our own passions, and from the devil. The wisdom that comes from God is not ready to pick a fight, but is rather ready to look for peace. This doesn’t mean we compromise truth, but it means that we submit to God’s wisdom rather than our own or the devils. It means setting aside our selfishness for God’s glory.
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It actually sounds a lot like the fruit of the Spirit that we read about in Galatians 5: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another. Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.” (Galatians 5:22-6:1)
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So who’s advice do I want- Mom’s or Abby’s? I want God’s advice and thankfully I have a mother who does as well. “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Corinthians 1:25)