Lessons: Rationalizing

Taking a break from music posts and returning to an thread where I was writing about lessons in life.:) A groupie in our small group Salmon Run once remarked that the greatest threat to the Holy Spirit is our (human) ability to rationalize everything we do.

It certainly doesn’t take any stretch of the imagination to contextualize the above. Just take a look at any of those controversial issue reported in the papers. E.g. the debate online and in media on homosexuality here in Singapore. Any biblical verse that’s supposed to be straight forward gets debated and argued upon by both sides of the issue.

It’s not my intention in this post to present on what I think about homosexuality, though I think my small groupies have heard what I’ve got to say about that LOL. I’ll say what works for me though; and it stems from another simple truth that I believe in, that…

“There isn’t any temptation that you have experienced which is unusual for humans. God, who faithfully keeps his promises, will not allow you to be tempted beyond your power to resist. But when you are tempted, he will also give you the ability to endure the temptation as your way of escape.” (1 Corinthians 10:13)

This is the second of three ‘anchor’ verses that have helped me simplify many things in life. Like the first one, the full significance of this verse came from QT during my full-time NS days.

The context of the learning was based on a story told in the copy of Our Daily Bread I was using, and the author gave the classic story of if a murderer came to your home wanting to kill one of your family and wants to know if he is home, do you tell the truth or lie?

If we were to take the verse literally, it’d mean that the right thing to do would be to tell the truth. Because God will never want us to break a commandment of his in order to keep another. OK, the verse uses the word ‘temptation’, but if I remember rightly, the author of the entry believed it means ‘in all situations’.

It’s easier said than done. I believe many of us would lie simply because in our minds, to tell the truth would mean the murderer would then step right in to kill our loved one. It’d be utter madness not to do everything to protect our family, including lie. But thinking aloud, doesn’t this stem ultimately from fear of what we can’t control?

Instead, what if we were to take that leap of faith and to trust in God… that if we were to completely trust Him in all things, whatever happens would be His will and it would be the best thing that can happen?

Yeah this all sounds hypothetical, and until someone comes into our home in The Rivervale and threatens to do the same, who knows what we’d really do or say.

But in a simpler context, I think there’s a lot of meaning and application from this verse to everyday life: that we should stop trying to project what we think to be the right and desired outcome, and instead strive to just obey God’s commandments, and trust Him in what happens in our lives.