shirt #6: Advisors

Title: Advisors

Design: multicoloured on white

Make: Threadless

Who are you listening to?

I like this t-shirt because you have to think a bit. All you see is feet. What’s going on? Oh, right, an angel on one shoulder, and a devil on the other.

It’s almost a cliché now to have a ‘goodie’ and a ‘baddie’ offering you conflicting advice, which is usually equally unhelpful. In Disney’s The Emperor’s New Groove, Kronk, the dumb bad guy, asks his ‘shoulder angel’ for advice, but neither his shoulder angel or shoulder devil are much help. Eventually he asks them both to shut up while he works out what he should do.

And then there’s Dan Piraro’s clever little take on the problem*.

Just imagine if your shoulder devil and shoulder angel were that fat!

The reason we laugh at cartoons like this, though, is because sometimes we do feel caught in the middle of two conflicting viewpoints. We all know good, well-meaning, saintly people whose advice just seems unworkable. Equally, we all know persuasive, intelligent people whose advice seems seductively reasonable, but there’s just something not quite right about what they are saying.

And somewhere in the middle we’re stuck, not quite knowing what to do, who to believe, and who we should listen to.

Now, like when you were asked a question in Sunday School, in a classic Christian piece of writing the correct answer here would be “Jesus”. Just listen to him and everything will be okay. Ignore everyone else and listen to what God is telling you.

Well, yes… but it’s not as simple as that, is it? What about all those people who claim to speak for God? How come they all seem to say different things?

And if you’re not the kind of person who hears voices, you may feel that God isn’t talking to you anyway, so how can you listen to him? (And secretly you may be suspicious of the people who do ‘hear’ voices and say that God ‘s talking to them. I’ll let you in on a secret – it’s not just you! I frequently ignore them too because I suspect they might just be imbalanced.)

So, who do we listen to? The apostle Paul has some interesting comments to make on that one.

He says: “avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him.” (Titus 3: 9-10)

And “watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people.” (Romans 16: 17-18)

And, also “see to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)

So, when we’re weighing up who to listen to, there’s quite a few checkboxes on the tick-list, at least according to Paul. Is a person divisive? Are they looking out for their own interests? Do they flatter you? Are they basing their ideas on worldly things?

Those things count against a person’s trustworthiness, and the things they say may well be worth weighing carefully. (But interestingly he doesn’t say ‘only listen to Christians’. He even warns against listening to certain types of Christians. In other places, Paul quotes various pagan philosophers, so it seems character matters more than the faith someone claims to represent…)

And it makes sense to routinely assess who is giving us advice on how to live our life. Is it the latest TV chef or fashionista? Is it our friends in work or school or college, who think we’re odd if we don’t conform to their idea of a good time on a Friday night? Is it a family member who expects us to live to a certain standard of living, or a neighbourhood peer group who think there’s something wrong if you don’t want to keep up with the Jones’?

Or is it a church community that has always done things a certain way and now believes that their way is the only proper way to do things.

Maybe it’s time to push the people sitting on our shoulders off, even if they look like angels.

After all, ‘devils’ are angels too.


*I'm a huge fan of Dan Piraro's cartoons and was fortunate enough to have coffee with the man himself on a trip to New York. I recommend you buy his books!