Wisdom Is Contextual

Maybe you’ve heard this before: “The people best positioned to decide something are those who must live with consequences.” But it’s not that simple. Even if we moderate this by saying those most affected should have the most volition, it still assumes something contrary to biblical moral thinking. That principle assumes that you could know enough about the consequences to decide what is right. The Bible says that the consequences you can discern are not the whole story, and may not even be the most important part.

More to the point, the Bible says that your moral choices touch Heaven, and Heaven responds in ways we cannot comprehend. We aren’t dealing with a material-mechanical universe; it’s alive and sentient. God made His Creation to be a person, too, and He rules as a kind father over all of His Creation. Creation responds personally. Thus, you may observe with your senses unpleasant consequences for some choice, but God sees and knows your heart, and can turn it into a blessing. That blessing may pop up somewhere else entirely unrelated — that is, unrelated in terms of what your can understand intellectually.

It also works the same way with curses for bad moral choices. You can piss off the whole universe in ways you cannot comprehend with your mind. But unlike we puny humans, an angry universe and an angry God will respond in ways we can never comprehend. The universe, both in all constituent parts, and as a family together, will commune with the Creator about what matters and what doesn’t. You cannot begin to comprehend how things are measured until you turn to God and ask for His revelation to be born in your soul.

So if I tell you that decentralization is God’s command for humanity, that’s because He expects us to re-centralize on Him. In other words, that principle stated above in the first sentence is relative to human politics, not a universal absolute. God calls us to join His family communion along with Creation so that we can discern what little He has equipped us to understand: Our individual part in restoring His peace to the world.

That peace is the root of all your moral consideration. When you can discern what among your choices is the path of inner peace with God, you need no other motivation. It won’t hurt if you are aware of likely consequences as mere humans measure such things, but those consequences are not the touchstone of decision. The foundation is always and only your peace with God.

As your elder, I will tell you that the principle in that first sentence above serves as a caution against typical human government. It’s what you would say against all the various political and social agendas by which people seek to enslave others. It’s the first answer to elitism and centralization, which always equates to tyranny and oppression. It is inherently morally evil. But we also know that such principles hardly scratch the surface of true moral action according to God’s revelation.

We know that our actions will always have consequences radiating outward in ways humanity could never fully know, but we can be sure the activist’s perception of consequences is deeply, morally flawed simply because they are activists. That alone signifies a false perception; it is the manifestation of someone who refuses to live from the heart, but insists that human reason (along with some brand of unstated assumptions) is all we need. God’s Word says that even if your choices have consequences for others, what He has delivered into your hands is not morally subject to any other person, particularly if those persons are not living by the heart or moral convictions. To the ears of some, it sounds just like the elitism we claim to detest.

Yes, we are prejudiced. We are prejudiced against the tyranny of fallen human reason. We are prejudiced against folks who refuse to take up the full range of faculties God has granted us to know His truth. Nobody suggests their decisions always have to accord with yours; that’s simply not possible. But when there is the inevitable conflict, God tells us how to handle it for His glory. Meanwhile, we use wise epigrams to open the minds and to awaken their hearts. We tell the activists in our world that people have to live with their choices, and that it is inherently evil to take away choices. What we mean by that is taking away choices God has given them. That’s because the entire range of human thought within the Western assumptions about reality are so very far from God’s truth that it has to be reined it just to get started on the right path.

We also tell people things like: “Play with the cards you are dealt.” We warn them that helping people with a poor hand cannot justly start from depriving others who have a rich hand, but that the starting point is destroying Western society and rebuilding an Ancient Near Eastern feudal society. If it’s not the covenant family first, it’s bad politics. We take a radical position that pretty much slams the door on everything you see promoted as popular political thinking. Thus, we might choose to support a particular action because it serves to break down the lies, or perhaps it merely brings on a clearer revelation of God’s glory by cooperating with His wrath. We don’t care about logical consistency as humans see such things. We see all things in the greater context of heart-led convictions about finding peace with our Creator and His Creation.

Whenever possible, be forthright and honest in your full rejection of Western mythology. Sometimes you can’t do it without walking through a lot of intellectual swamp until you start to touch the heart. In any given context, there will always be those you cannot help at all. They will always manifest themselves somewhere in the process; be watchful and make it clear when you are morally obliged to exclude them, and on what grounds. Never, ever accept someone’s demand that you have to make sense based on their assumptions.