On Giving Advice

I've been thinking a lot lately about advice: how to give advice, how to receive advice, how to discern between good and bad advice, etc.

On the one hand, the Proverb rings true to me that there is wisdom in having many counselors. (Proverbs 11:14.) On the other hand, the old saying also rings true that "opinions are like assholes: everybody has one, and most of them stink." Nothing so delights an ignorant man as giving his opinion on a subject he knows almost nothing about. If you do have a multitude of counsellors, you have to choose them wisely, as well as understand that an expert in one area may be a fool in another.

So how do you recognize good advice, ignore bad advice, and give only helpful advice to others?

On giving advice, and receiving it . . .

Why do we give advice?

Thinking back to occasions when I have given, or wanted to give, advice, I can see a mixture of good and bad motives. I think my desire to give advice has sometimes sprung from a real empathy for a person who may have been facing a rough situation, and I wanted to feel like I had something to give them, even if it was just advice. At the same time, if I look deeper, I think another part of me was scared by this empathic connection with the other person's problems, and I wanted to create some distance between his situation and my own; and giving advice seemed (on a subconscious level) a good way to do that. After all, if I had the answers to give him about what he needed to do, then I thereby demonstrated that I was really not just like him; he did not have the answer, but I did. That was really arrogant, but looking back, I think that I detect a subtle streak of arrogance in much of the advice that I have given, and it probably sprang from that secret fear that it could just as easily have been me in a bad spot, needing someone else to give me advice.

Moreover, there was the additional burden of being a good Christian. By that, I don't mean what you might expect. What I mean is this: if I believe that I have a deep and abiding relationship with the God of the entire universe, and if I believe that I have hundreds of pages of Bible verses that are plain enough for me to understand God's will for my life and all that, and if I believe that God is all good and all knowing and all powerful and that he has made lots of apparently straightforward promises throughout scripture to guide us and never leave us or forsake us; if I believe all that, then it is frankly very terrifying to acknowledge that I don't have any answers when faced with a challenging situation.

Looking back, I recall times when I felt an urgent need to give some satisfactory answer or comforting words to someone facing difficulty, but really, if I'm honest with myself, the urgent need I felt was for myself. I felt like I had to prove to myself that my faith was something real enough and meaningful enough to deal with Life's challenges.

True, God never promised to give us the grace to deal with someone else's tough experience. And shockingly, rather than give us any kind of definitive answer as to why bad things happen to good people and why there's so much apparently needless suffering in the world, Jesus instead joined in our suffering. So it shouldn't surprise me that, as a Christian, I frequently find myself without any clear answers, especially when considering the problem of suffering in the abstract, as a philosophical issue.

But when faced with someone dear to me who was going through a really rough time, I felt like if my faith and Bible knowledge meant anything at all, I should have some comforting words or wise advice to give. (Maybe I should have just been more like Jesus, and just mourned with those who mourn -- although Jesus did do a lot of miracles that instantly delivered people from tough situations, too.)

Then, there were other times when I really did know something practical and helpful about which to tell the other person. In those cases, I -- strangely -- did not feel as desperate to voice my opinion or to have the last word. I simply let it be known that I had some experience in that area and could offer my insight, for whatever it was worth, and then, when the person was ready to receive it, I shared it with him.

I suppose the discrepancy is noteworthy. In one situation, I really did not know, but I was desperate to appear as if I did. Whereas, in another situation, I really did know something, but was less obtrusive and insistent about giving my advice, and less concerned about whether the person ultimately agreed with me and heeded my advice.

None of this was clear to me at the time. What brought it to my attention was when I was the one going through a tough situation, and no shortage of people lined up to give me unsolicited advice, most of it bad. Why did so many people, who all seemed to mean well, give me such bad advice? In puzzling over this question, I reflected on my own advice giving over the years, and I realized that I, too, had doled out more than my share of bad, unsolicited advice. Sheesh!

Some rules of thumb about distinguishing between good and bad advice

My own experiences of giving advice, which I realize in hindsight was foolish and counter-productive, has led me to formulate some basic rules of thumb about how to distinguish between good and bad advice.

In my experience, most of the good advice has been prefaced by words such as the following:

• "I don't know what to tell you, but here's something that helped me out . . ."
• "You know, I actually have a little bit of experience with that; I may be able to help you out."
• "Well, for what it's worth, I had some success with . . ."

Most of the good counselors showed restraint and humility. They did not force their opinions on me; rather, they offered to share their experience with me, but waited for me to accept their offer, before they launched into it. They also were aware of, and frankly admitted, the limits of their expertise. They also tended to be older, although there are certainly no shortage of older people who have strong, but very uninformed, opinions. However, young people almost never have the intellectual humility or patience to give such advice; that seems to be something learned through getting out in the world and getting knocked flat a few times.

On the other hand, most of the bad advice was prefaced with words such as these:

• "Here's what you need to do . . ."
• "The Lord says [insert out-of-context Bible verse here] . . ."
• "Here's what your problem is . . ."

Most of the bad advice was characterized by sweeping generalizations, appeals to authority, false dichotomies, etc. Instead of restraint and humility, these counsellors (including me) were all too eager to share their opinions, without even bothering to listen or to verify that they had understood the situation correctly.

When to give advice

So for me, and for anyone else sometimes afflicted with the desire to give unsolicited advice, here are some good rules of thumb about giving advice:

• Ask questions first, make sure you understand the situation, before you offer advice.
• Don't tell the other person what he needs to do; tell him what you did and what you learned from it.
• Let him draw his own conclusions about how your experience applies to his situation.
• Don't give advice unless the other person asks for it; let the other person know if you have any relevant experience, and let him invite you to share, before you offer your opinion.
• Don't presume the other person's situation is just like yours; even if external factors are similar, differences in personality can completely change the dynamics of the situation.

And that brings me to the most important lesson that I've learned about giving advice: be willing to follow your own advice, as well as the constructive criticism that you receive from others. So with that in mind, I will try to be more consistent in following these rules of thumb when I am tempted to give advice.