Making the Hard Decision

My second attempt at Jonah Lehrer's book entitled How We Decide.

Life got in the way of my first attempt and I found myself somewhat disoriented, so had to start again from the beginning.

In the introduction Mr. Lehrer places two conjectures before the reader that he attempts to answer throughout the book.

How does the human mind make decisions?

How can we make those decisions better?

The book is excellent and has a the substance that one comes to expect from a Rhodes Scholar, yet with an easy intellectual playfulness as if we were all sitting around the locker room after a game talking about something unrelated to the game. Mr. Lehrer wonders well. If you've ever found yourself making decisions (which apartment to buy, what major to choose, what location to live in), you might want to pick up this book. And add a grain of salt. More on that later.

The questions jumped out at me, because I asked myself what that second question really means.

Better?

Maybe we mean, how do we make decisions that will most effectively return a desired outcome?

We often as this question in terms of outcome / consequence. How do we make decisions that produce higher grades, more money, more satisfaction? This is how we generally look at that question.

Yet as God fearing people, not just the lip-service Christian, but one who looks at God as sovereign and whose influence is one that not simply touches our lives but is the foundation for all its facets ("In Him we live and move and have our being." Acts 17:28), we MUST make our decisions based on a "something better" COL 299.

While our non-religious, but spiritual, friends (have you met those people who say they're not religious but consider themselves spiritual?) will encourage us to move from material consequence to more existential consequences (they'll say we must move from more money, higher grades, bigger house as a goal to more meaningfulness, and inner peace), even this for us falls short of that "something better."

Our decisions, as Seventh-day Adventist and Bible-believing Christians, must be based on obedience. While in actuality this is how righteousness by faith works, simply looking at the Biblical example, obedience was the final factor by which every decision was made by those who are faithful. Without the criteria of obedience as the major factor, we may wonder if the decisions of holy men were failures.

Without obedience as a consideration, Noah only saved 8 people. Without obedience Moses's roving community wasted 40 years wandering. Without obedience, Gideon's military strategy, not to mention Jehosephat's 'special teams' would not have a consideration if we were to use those ideas as factors for decision making today.

Obedience continues to be the key for the people of God.

Yet how often do we lay aside the counsel given to us as Seventh-day Adventists on how we are to do Evangelism, how we appeal to the youth, how we worship in Church? If we look at our recent methods of running ourselves, we use criteria other than obedience to make decisions how our churches and our families are to be run. We use reasons like, "it's more effective to reach teenagers." or "research shows that we can reach the most amount of people." or "we find that we have more baptisms using this method." or worse yet, "other churches are doing it with good outcomes."

But obedience hasn't been a criteria for any of those. Obedience to the counsel that says Sabbath is a good time to knock on doors. Obedience to the counsel that we have been for the principles of outreach. That the colporteur work will reach the end of time, that our health message is the right hand of the gospel, that The Three Angel's Messages are righteousness by faith in verity.

We speak of repentance but continue to use every other criteria other than obedience to make decisions for our spiritual well-being.

Mr. Lehrer did not include spiritual considerations, and I don't believe it's an indicator of his stance on God. This is because it is an exposition on how, not why. Like many of the other factors that influence decision, God and His Word are not isolated. It is the things that are truly important to us, whether we acknowledge it or not, that inform our decisions. If God really is in our lives, then He will bear the heaviest weight in our considerations.

From the Sermon on the Mount:
"[Bible religion] is not to be like a dash of color brushed here and there upon the canvas, but it is to pervade the whole life, as if the canvas were dipped into the color, until every thread of the fabric were dyed a deep, unfading hue." Desire of Ages 312.3

While Mr. Lehrer makes a pretty convincing case for how decisions are made and contributes his ideas on how they can be made better, we can (ironically) choose what informs those decisions. We can decide what we read, what we watch, what we use for recreation or amusement, who we spend time with, what influences we receive. We can place ourselves in a position of advantage. Choose by the criteria of obedience.

And then leave the consequences to God, He is that "something better."