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How to Decide |
Which path to take? A situation is obvious, and we must decide what to do next: do we choose A, B, or C? Do we try to find a Q, or an X? What happens when we have thought all the way to Z and cycle back to A?
One common way, is to use whatever we first think. For instance, let's consider a common situation: to which day-care center, should I send my child? I don't have a choice, I have to work or we won't eat, and I don't have any relatives nearby who I trust to help: I have to do this. So which one? The closest? The most expensive? The one whose director just sued five parents for mysterious reasons to get them to shut up?
Well, that problem is perhaps easier than many. There are much tougher ones, and one of these is brought forth below. But first: how are we to apply the Holy Scripture to problems?
Certain powerful church-leaders both past and present, have read about killing witches, and attempted to form 'Christian nations' in which they killed all witches. Should we do this?
Others have read about good and evil, and have done much persecutions to non-Christians. They have used threats and embarrassment to force children in public schools to say lying prayers, to mouth words they do not understand, and to pretend to respect all of it. Should we do this?
Perhaps there is a more straightforward question: In Scripture, how do we divide it properly? How do we decide which verses to obey right now, which verses to consider as not to be obeyed right now, and which verses as not at all to be obeyed, by ourselves or anyone we would encourage?
And certainly there are many verses in the Holy Bible, in the Holy Scripture, which we should not obey now or ever. If our son or daughter is profoundly disobedient, we should not do as is written in the Scripture: we should not kill them, even though the Scripture says that certain parents should kill their children if those children are disobedient. Which parents should do this thing? It is written: the descendants of the man named first Jacob and then Israel, son of Isaac, son of Abraham. And my mother and father are both descended from this man named Israel! So. Should they have killed me? I was very disobedient.
Well, I am suggesting that since a certain Man, Jesus of Nazareth, was sent to this world almost two thousand years ago, there has been a better definition of right and wrong. I am suggesting that we should consider His commandments to be the most important for us in the now. He said we should love our neighbors -- which He defined as everyone we meet even briefly -- in the same way that we love ourselves. So I suggest that in Holy Scripture, the One who is God has quoted many different kinds of people. He has quoted Himself speaking; He has quoted men and women speaking who were holy, but faulty; he has quoted unholy men and women, and evil spirits, and the devil himself, too. And I suggest that when we read Holy Scripture and try to know what God would have us do, we should remember this very carefully. We should consider that which Jesus of Nazareth, who is one of the One who is God, has said, and his example, to be of utterly topmost priority to us. We should consider that definitions of truths which God has given elsewhere in Scripture to be equally important, even though the related commandments are not given to us. And when we have record of non-God persons speaking, we should consider that they are not God, and yet sometimes, not always, their word should be respected, inasmuch as their words match up to what God quotes Himself as saying.
So let's now apply this to a much tougher problem. Let's choose one which to this day is giving people terror in communities all over the world. The question is: How shall we treat our women?
When my wife, or my sister, or my mother, disagrees with me and speaks out loudly, how shall I respond? When my wife desires to have her own car and drive it wherever she pleases, what should I say?
Perhaps it is that readers of these words, will be of the complete spectrum of human behavior today. Some think that all women should remain in silence and in all subjection. Some think that a wife is desired to be the help-mate of a man in all things. Some think that a woman should usually be locked away in her home, and when she must be suffered to leave, must be covered from head to toe, in order that no man except her husband might see the merest outline of any part of her body. And many will have very different thoughts, thoughts that are usually considered to be new.
I suggest that on this matter, Jesus of Nazareth is not quoted as speaking -- but He is quoted in Scripture, as behaving in very specific ways. A woman at a well asked Him for a major blessing, and was refused, and talked back to Him -- and was rewarded for having done so. He gave women the responsibility of contradicting the words of their own men, after the Resurrection.
As for me, whom the Lord has blessed into a very happily married man, I shall ponder my wife as by far my closest neighbor. I shall try very hard to love her every word, and even though I must try harder when she disagrees with me openly, I shall make the effort. I shall never consider that she should remain always in silence and in all subjection, because this is not what my Lord Jesus did or stated to any of the women around Him. I shall make the effort to bless her always, just as the Lord said to do to both enemy and neighbor. We have available much more quoted in Scripture of the Lord Jesus. I suggest that all of these deserve by far the highest priority of all that we have.