I maintain that God’s second commandment, “No false gods,” is summarized by the word “balance.”
Anything that we are overly impressed or intimidated by – other than our genuine creator God – is going to unbalance us if not short term, definitely long term. Things we are overly impressed with are our “aholisms” like booze, TV, or too much talk, work or play. Things we are intimidated by are our “avoidances,” like apology, polite confrontation, clean up, research, something new and stretching our comfort zones. Our “aholisms” sour our minds and bodies from overuse and our “avoidances” do the same through underuse.
With horses, we see examples of this unbalance when we specialize too much. A horse might win a special event at a show, but then buck its rider off when a Walmart bag flies underneath its belly in the parking lot. Racehorses can be burned out by running them too young and too much.
In our human endeavors, a famous football coach summed up football this way: “We have 22 men on the field in desperate need of rest who are wearing out, and they are watched by 22,000 spectators in desperate need of exercise who are rusting out.”
Our false gods make us prematurely old in mind and body, but still babies when it comes to our true maturity. We can test this on ourselves by depriving ourselves of our “adult baby bottles,” or stretching our comfort zones a little and see how much we cry about it.
When we start horses in training, we try to balance out as many things as possible. We work more on the things they do not like to do so we can condition them to hang in there to listen to their god (that is us) even though they are afraid of leaving their comfort zone. No matter what breed they are or background they have, we will work them on all the “hovercraft” moves, and try to subject them to many of the things that might distract them or intimidate them in any way. We will change subjects often so we do not bore or sour a horse on a particular move or no-move situation. When we don’t overdo or underdo, we actually condition the horse to be a confident self-working partner.
It seems that the biggest frustration of leaders in our modern day church is that people are not growing. We may be growing in head knowledge, but not actual maturity. I suspect that if the abundant head knowledge of the Christian and the horse world was balanced with more shoulder to shoulder sharpening (as in Hebrews 10:24), we would recognize the balance that is so desperately needed; the balance that shows us humbly when to move to something else, and when to boldly hang in there and keep on keeping on. I know when we recognize this true sense of balance, we will acknowledge God for it and see what genuine “cool” is all about !
Mike Daniels is a horsemanship trainer and barefoot trimming specialist from Raymondville. His columns are posted online at www.houstonherald.com. Call him at 417-457-1015.