iThink...thereFore, iAm

I wrote previously on the responsibilities of being a mentor and the things we should look out for when we are mentoring someone. Yet I acknowledge that placing all the responsibility on the mentor for all purposes is unreasonable and those being mentored or those in need of a mentor (I’m no exception - everyone needs a sage!) also have certain aspects in which they can help themselves and their mentors guide them, and raise them.

(Let me first state that I hate using the term “mentee”. What an abomination. I tend to think it’s one of those words that made it into the dictionary because people just keep using it and over time it was included so that the dictionary makers wouldn’t look stupid haha.)

But I digress. I’d to present some perspectives here about being mentored and a few pointers perhaps for those in that category, strictly from my own experience. I’ve had mentors that after a while the connection between us just died, and there are those that still carry on from a more informal perspective, and I draw from both experiences in writing all these down.  There will be misconceptions broken, warning signs, red flags, all of which I hope to bring a perspective to.

Being mentored (*ahem*) firstly and most obviously means you are following someone. Even in terms of apprenticeship or in the days of the twelve disciples and Jesus, this was not a passive occurrence. It is worth pointing out that despite what our current use of English implies, “follow” is a verb. It requires action. And interestingly so, following as two aspects to it: the passive and the active, which must both occur simultaneously.

The active part of being under mentorship is that we must take the initiative. Many have the perception that the mentor is the one arranging everything, doing the active guiding and we just sit back, follow instructions. It doesn’t work that way - both doing and being under spiritual mentoring is an engaging process, akin to how a craftsmen teaches his apprentice. The apprentice doesn’t just sit back and observe - he is involved in some way or another in the craft-making process, and in each step there is a small bit to learn. It’s the same with being mentored, we have to be involved in what we are being taught in. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we follow our mentors on mission trips or help them prepare sermons, but what it does mean is that it’s not a process of sitting down and simply being fed (very much like most of the Christian life) with each Bible study or discussion. Instead, we need to bring things to the table, be it issues or intellectual matters or struggles in our lives. Just as no one learns to walk (and subsequently run) by sitting down all the time, we cannot learn to grow (and I would hope eventually we’d be able to be more and more self-sustaining) if we take the posture of a cinema-goer instead of a movie enthusiast. Both are at the same venue, same conditions, same experiences, but one leaves much more deeply enriched from his own experience than the other.

Being mentored should also be intentional. An old saying goes that you only take from an experience what you hope to get - it holds true at least from my own experience being mentored. Moreover one doesn’t just suddenly find oneself being mentored or being a mentor - it usually is (and should be) an intentional act. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean that God can’t simply drop someone at the appropriate time in the appropriate way to minister to you - but the chances of you actually noticing that God has provided are a lot slimmer if you weren’t looking out for it in the first place. Granted we don’t go searching high and low and weighing every possible older person we meet as a potential mentor; by intentionality I mean that we recognise that it is necessary or at least helpful for a wiser person to lead us in our walk or in life, and in recognising that we open ourselves to the possibility of someone doing that, rather eagerly. Similarly if we never choose to bring up something that bothers you, you never get around to dealing with it. I find this very very evident in my generation: we like to bury things that don’t look very nice, cover our hardships with a facade of “oh God will take care of it” and carry on our happy little lives just leaving that issue there. It is precisely this reason that sociologists have coined the term “adultlescence” for the juvenile state and mentality that the vast majority of the 20-somethings and early/mid 30-somethings hold. We pray, we look, and we prepare ourselves to be mentored - that is intentionality.

So how’s another going to help you? Well, you’ve got to be honest. Not just honest - transparent. This is something that irks me quite a bit with people I’ve had the privilege of being some sort of little guide through the smaller jungles of their life - I’ve come to notice that a lot of them choose to hide certain details, particularly about their thoughts. As much as I’m willing to give leeway that some thoughts are personal, and it takes time to warm up to being so blatantly open with another person, I believe that doing so not only puts us in a position of humility by volunteering our deep thoughts (here we go, intentionality again!) but also in allowing the mentor to have a clearer and cleaner picture of what is going on in our head.  If we give only a partial picture of our thoughts, things will only be dealt with partially, and our personalities will only be dealt with partially. I understand it’s rather uncomfortable to expose the dark sides of ourselves…but isn’t that the whole point of being mentored, to find someone to guide us out of our life habits/issues and from darkness into light? If we hide those issues, if we hide the very areas that we need work on, then how is this other person going to fulfil the very thing we have asked him or her into our lives for? I have seen many people simply omit the hard things to say or the unpleasant facts or things that put them in a not-so-good light, or even lie about them, and they perpetuate their life’s problems by doing so. I, ashamedly, have done so myself, and been told off (when it was realised) for doing so. To deal with problems, any problems, one must first bring them to light - then we can see clearly enough to address them lest we address them too superficially, or worse still, address them wrongly (yes that’s possible too)!  The few mentors I’ve had, I’ve been able to do this, and I’ve been assured none of them felt uncomfortable with me baring all my thoughts before them - in fact, most of the timeII was encouraged to do so all the more, so that they can watch over me properly!

I mentioned it earlier, and I think this goes hand in hand with transparency - humility.  Now I have to acknowledge that I’m a proud person. Very, very proud - I know what I can do and I’m pretty damn good at it (oops there I go again). But humility in being mentored, as it is in any relationship, is crucial. Without humility you will not be able to bear your deep, dark thoughts, you will not be able to approach another sincerely seeking help. Without humility we will seek the mentor as someone to validate what we already have set our minds on in the first place, and disagree with him whenever he puts forward a view that doesn’t quite sit with what we want. We need this humility to enable us to listen to what a wiser person has to say (and it does help if we remind ourselves that the other person is wiser) and seek his advice on things even when it’s not offered. I’ve found myself in both situations, and in retrospect it sounds really (let’s come forward and just say it) stupid to come to someone wiser than ourselves, put our opinion or perspective forward for his counsel, and then reject his counsel and go about it anyway. Sounds stupid? It does to me. But we do it all the time anyway. (Worse still, we keep silent on the issue and never bring it up.) I’d even bring humility one more step - we have to be willing to act on what we are told. Now this step is doubly hard, and it requires (especially for me) a double dose of humility. Make no mistake, this step often involves me doing something I don’t really like! Or something that will bring me quite a bit of pain. Or something that I would rather do otherwise (like advice against vengeance, for example). And it takes a LOT of determination and swallowing of pride (not to mention self-beating…for a good reason) to do so.

With that, we go into another perspective - in being mentored we also need to have our own discernment. This also applies in finding a mentor. I’ve once had the poor choice of finding someone so much like me (and unfortunately only as mature as me) to guide me on my journey, and it was disastrous. We agreed on everything, and because we always agreed, we thought we were always right - and you can imagine the kind of damage that leads to. A mentor needs to be someone who will defy your point of view when necessary, but will also encourage you when you’re on the right track. Remember then, that mentors are also human - being human, we are limited in observation, in resources (be it physical, mental, emotional or spiritual) and in abilities. There is only so much someone else can do, can listen to, and as much as we hope otherwise, our mentors have their own lives too. Being human, they can make mistakes, and so it deserves to be said that our mentors are not and cannot be the final authority - all that they say must be matched against the word, the heart and the character of God. I’m not saying some of them are evil - merely that they could well be misinformed, have good intentions but incomplete perceptions and therefore give not so good advice, or (as I’ve sometimes noticed) have a much larger picture to mind as well and cannot even give any advice, except for general ones. Good mentors are even willing to admit all these (yes they have to be humble too haha). So a certain amount of discernment and wisdom is most definitely necessary, not to mention divine guidance. I wouldn’t want to end up with a mentor who’s is essentially just someone who has everything nicely packaged and presented very pleasantly - that’s a lot of wrapping over the inside, and the fruit that comes out of the box isn’t very pleasant. I think “by their fruit you shall know them” speaks a lot - and even this is dangerous because we tend to pick people who fruit we like, but aren’t really deep enough. Worse still we ask people whom lives we’d like to live to mentor us - not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, but given our human desires and our deceitful hearts I don’t think that’s a good sole criteria!

We must also come to realise that our mentors are not there to hold our hands all the way - we must still do the walking, the journeying ourselves. I mentioned earlier about a rather brutal transparency, but in balance of that, I should also declare that we need to know what to bring to our mentors for them to discern. Be transparent yes. Be honest to the point of embarrassment, yes. But treat them with kindness and respect due to a sage - they are there to guide, not to narrate the problem and figure out the answer for you. If you’re actually looking for a mentor and understand the need for one (assuming you need one, which just about all of us do), then I would think you are sharp enough, knowledgable enough, if not wise enough, to at least have a base grasp of the situation. Sure there will be times where we will just have to wail and cry out in our confusion. There will also be times where we have no idea what is going on. But by and large we at least know ourselves - partially, if not wholly, for I would think some of us do not see parts of ourselves and that’s another reason we seek a mentor to guide us. A base grasp of whatever we are feeling, whatever the situation is about is always helpful when bringing things before our mentor (not to mention before God).

Some of you may be shocked that I took so long to mention God, particularly since the whole idea of a mentor is to point you to God. Why I’ve not mentioned Him much is that I want to bring forward this point - your mentor cannot and should not be a replacement for God. It is not a replacement or substitute for quiet time, prayer, and reading His Word and communing with Him. Your mentor can guide you in that, can even keep track of you in that, but he or she cannot be your primary source of direction, comfort, approval, encouragement or rebuke. I will stress this again because I think this is a very fatal trap that will kill both the mentor and the mentored - your mentor (as applies to any other earthly sage) is NOT a replacement for God. Ultimately, it is your walk and talk with God that matters; having a mentor guide you is supposed to help you in that aspect, not replace it. John Eldredge, in “Walking With God”, speaks of his experience with God in a very vivid manner, asking God simple questions like “where should I go today?” to more vague things like “what do you want me to pray for this person?” and I dare say that he might have even brought deeper questions to Him. By the way, Mr. Eldredge is (I’m sure he won’t mind me saying this) only human, and I think there are times where he too doesn’t hear from God as much as he’d like. But even then the primary importance is that we grow closer and closer to God. Approval, counsel, rebuke, direction, instruction and encouragement can and will come from a mentor - that’s what they’re there for. But it coming from them cannot be our be all and end all - it will do us good to remember that they are merely the mouthpiece, and it is God who has to be the one doing the speaking.

It seems like quite a bit doesn’t it? I acknowledge that there’s a lot of little virtues and skills merely touched on in this - things like being discerning, being wise, looking at the fruit of the soul, and so on, but I wanted to concentrate rather doggedly on what we need to bear in mind and the perspective taken as we’re being mentored. (Perhaps I shall write on these other things in time to come!)

Being mentored and being a mentor is quite a serious thing - it always is, when lives and souls hang in the balance. Thinking of mentors and mentees (there, I said it) often reminds me of Bruce Wayne and Alfred. Alfred never walked the path of the bat that Bruce took - but always having words of advice, always sticking up for him, caring for him, and scolding him when necessary, he never gave up on Bruce. It reminds me of Jesus - that even in denials, humiliation, betrayals and abandonment, He never gave up on us. He even came back from the dead for us, and when He left He also left with us a Counsellor. And as we seek that ultimate goal, He has provided us with people along the ways of life to guide us.

How can we not take this seriously?