This is easily the single biggest issue, a mental reflex that requires long conscious reflection to overcome.
We are taught from birth to seek a cause-and-effect relationship in all things. Only if we get a really good education can we then move to an understanding that some things are not quite that way, only a correlation. Still, the Western mind tries to find that not-so-obvious cause for the effects observed.
The first problem is recognizing that effects observed may not be the least bit important. The first step to biblical thinking is to recognize that what you can perceive is mostly deception in the first place. It may seem fairly consistent and reliable, but that’s hardly where things end.
As noted in recent posts, we struggle against the constant siren song that humanity isn’t fallen. If nothing else, at least use the biblical concept of The Curse in early Genesis. God placed all humanity under a curse; that’s the only reason for recording what He said to Adam, Eve and the Serpent. Notice the wording is applicable to all who are born from this first pair of humans, and now we are stuck with the Serpent, who wasn’t previously restricted to human space. What we face today is not Eden; we aren’t in Eden any more. This is not what God intended for us, and breaking the curse is just as complicated as getting under it. It was so complicated that God used parabolic language to convey something well beyond human ken.
Cause and effect is a natural tendency that is within human ken. As such, it cannot help you understand the Curse nor how to ameliorate or break it. The Laws of God ameliorate the Curse and indicate something about redemption. Cause and effect is, at best, a very poor shadow of how things work above the Cursed Realm.
We resort to symbolic representations for things above our realm. Perhaps I can remind you here that such is the nature of ancient Hebrew language itself; it is fundamentally symbolic and full of drama because the only thing on this earth that really matters is conveyed through narrative. Have you ever thought about prayer and why it matters? Prayer is our effort to touch God’s face and plead for Him to change our understanding. You cannot ask for a change in Nature until your own nature is changed.
God says that He does not act outside His own moral character. That means the moral fabric of the universe reflects His personality in some way. Among the things Jesus said and did that so puzzled Nicodemas and the other members of the Sanhedrin was that Jesus was acting fully consistent with that moral fabric. The healings and other miracles were restoring God’s justice, an expression of His character in a world gone wrong. Compare the vast ocean of sorrow among Judeans in Jesus’ day versus those glorious days when Israel defeated three national armies with a choir (2 Chronicles 20, not to mention the Battle of Jericho). The Sanhedrin had allowed their minds to drift into cause-and-effect mode instead of seeking divine favor in the mystical mode.
Your moral obedience passes through the Heavens before it comes back to earth. The whole exercise is aimed at reaching beyond this plane of deception and shadows to claim the privileges of obedience against the Curse. Granted, these days such privileges are muted by the absence of a society that recognizes the validity of any covenant from Scripture, and those few who claim a covenant have perverted it severely, but you and I can still claim the power of the choir to destroy threats. By no means can your feeble estimation of cause and effect explain how it works, but your obedience does change things because it weakens the curse and brings you back the gates of Eden.
Get used the mystery of things beyond your intelligence. Just commit yourself to obedience as best you can grasp, praying that God keeps moving you closer to whatever it is He intended for you in the first place.
