Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart;
And lean not upon your own understanding.
In all your ways, acknowledge him;
And he shall direct your paths.” Proverbs 3.5-6

Decision-making--do you remember a time when you did not seem to making decisions and choices almost minute by minute? I am not sure I do. I suspect that as a child (so many moons ago now) I went minutes, perhaps hours without having to decide a single thing. It is only a suspicion though—I simply cannot remember not being a decision-maker, a chooser. Perhaps that is when we realize we are adults: when life seems to be just a continual process of deciding.

In this selection from the Hebrew wisdom literature of the Old Testament, we are given a basic principle on approaching life. Consequently, it gives us wonderful insight into decision-making and choosing. The passage draws a distinction between what I will call the “human equation” (HE) and the “divine equation” (DE).

The HE approaches life from the ability and capacity of human reasoning to analyze, interpret, and comprehend life situations. It seeks to solve the problem, make the choice, or make the decision based on human wisdom and knowledge. In short, when at a crossroads of life, the HE attacks the situation from my own ability to deal with the choices.

Now, this is not altogether bad. I like human reasoning. After all, I have devoted a huge part of my professional life to the study and teaching of the history of ideas. I believe that the human capacity to think, to reason is part of the imago dei (image of God) in humans. I have been teaching a course called Critical Thinking for a decade now and all research in that field indicates that those who employ critical thinking skills, on average, have more successful lives and are more content.

Why? Pardon the humor—it just makes good sense. Because of their use of critical thinking and effective reasoning, they have made fewer bad choices; therefore, less self-inflicted wounds. Their lives are usually less chaotic and when difficulties do arise, they apply their thinking skills to problem-solving and effective ways of approaching the difficulties. This either minimizes the damage or gives them an able method of coming to terms with, and adjusting to, the situation. Those who just react or who do not apply reason in an effective way tend to make more bad choices, create more problems for themselves, and have less of an ability to come to terms with changing circumstances.

My point here is that the HE, when used badly, leads to bad choices and worse outcomes. The HE, when used to its best, can provide a great deal of benefit to the situations of life.

However, if reason is part of the imago dei and if reason leads to better decisions, how much more effective would the DE be? The DE looks at life situations from God’s ability and capacity to deal with it. It is going to the source of human reasoning at its best—the mind of God.

You might recall that in Isaiah, God says through prophet, “Come, let us reason together…..” Yes, the Book of Isaiah later says that God’s ways are not our ways and his thoughts not our thoughts. However, look at what the two together seem to be saying to us. Humans have a capability and reasoning together with God (because of the imago dei). That said, God’s reasoning is so far superior to our reasoning that we cannot fully comprehend it.

This is not a bad thing though. If human reasoning, with its limitations, can still improve life, then how much more improved would life be if we employ the superior reasoning of God? I think this is the point of the thinker that penned Proverbs 3.5-6.

Hebrew poetry (and Proverbs is written in poetic form) employs parallelism as a major structural component of what it is trying to communicate. In other words, it is not just the meaning of the words in each line, but what those words mean in syntactical relationship to the lines around each line.

For example, “trust” in the first line means to put your whole weight on something. That is to say, to trust something to hold you up (like a chair or tree limb). This parallels “lean” in the second line. We are to trust in the Lord with all our “heart.” Look at the parallel to “heart.” It is “understanding.” The problem is that we use heart as a metaphor for emotion; in Hebrew culture, it was the metaphor for the thinking of a person, the will, the consciousness. It was used by them the way we use “mind.”

So, adjusting for cultural metaphors, the two lines form an antithetical parallelism (the second line contrasting with the first line): “Put the weight of your thinking on God and do not lean on your own thinking.” This is reinforced by the next verse where the reader is told to acknowledge God in all the ways of life and he will provide direction.

The application: when confronted with a decision, I can take one of three possible categories of approaches. Option one: I can approach the situation using my own mind but not to the best of its ability and I will have increased odds of choosing poorly and making my life worse. Option two: I can use my human reason exclusively but use all the best critical thinking skills to choose as wisely as I humanly can. This, on odds, is a better option than number one. Option three: because the best of human reasoning is modeled on the image of God in each of us, yet still pales in comparison to the reasoning of God, I can seek the direction of God as his wisdom is far better than mine, even at its best.

Option three is the best. That does not mean the choices are easy are that my life becomes trouble-free and utopian. It does mean that the odds are better and even when I can not understand why things are the way they are, I can trust there is a greater wisdom at work. As one who still suffers from earlier decisions poorly made, I can verify the superiority of this approach to the normal human approach.

This is not faith to the exclusion of reason; rather, it is reason and faith informing each other. Give it a try—what do you have to lose?