You're listening to the Allender Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender.

This week, Dan continues a series about the nature of wisdom by looking at the binds we

inevitably encounter throughout our lives. Dan reads excerpts from the weight of glory by

C.S. Lewis, introducing the concept of the inner ring and wondering

how we might engage harmful separations between the in-crowd and the out-crowd. As we have

considered wisdom, I wanted to be clear as we re-engage this topic, that it involves a skill of living.

Wisdom is the ability to apply knowledge into the extremity of the unknown and to do so in a way

that moves the heart to goodness. So wisdom, if it's a skill of living, it's a skill of living

particularly as you make entry into the binds of the world, the complexity of, it seems like

you have to go to the left, but you should go to the right, and there's no clarity as to what to do

in the middle. So our binds exist in every

relationship. They exist in every marriage, all relationships with your children, every interaction

to some degree or another at work, in our relationships at church. It's comprehensive. Binds are there. If I speak

the truth, I create havoc. If I don't speak the truth, I create ease, but ease that bears the cost

of my own integrity, as well as the goodness of the process that I'm in the

middle of. In psychological categories, we talk about the two primary, shall we say, urges of the

human heart are toward individuation or autonomy, and on the other hand, to affiliation or intimacy. And the more intimacy

you have, there has to be a price, and you will lose something of yourself in your association

in a marriage and friendships in an organization. Yet the more that you create affiliation and intimacy with others,

if there's a loss of who you are, eventually that loss will eat you apart because you have

lost yourself in the process. Yet if you pursue pure, total individuation, there's no possible way to be in community, to be in

communion, because the price of individuation is the ultimate, I am the center of the universe,

...