How Do We Follow Where We Don’t Understand?

August 11, 2011
post 210 (posted temporarily)

Follows both post 208 “Two Masters” and temp. post 209 “6th 7 Maintenance”

Going from where we see the map shows we are to where we are going is quite simple, Following instructions that make sense is easy, Doing what you are told is not hard… once you agree with the directions.
The trouble in these three scenarios comes if we don’t agree, if we have a differing opinion:
“I might not like the destination, I might not prefer the rout, I might think there is a better way, I’m not confident the instructions are correct.” With these “second master” conflicts the trouble is a divided leadership. The first decision then should be to wholly choose the leader to follow (Revelation 3:15).
This conflict has many factors and as many resolutions to choosing the master. Is the master trustworthy? What kind of trackrecord does it have? What makes my differing opinion better or worse? What are the consequences of failure? etc. etc. In this case choosing the master is the conflict, once that is decided most if not all the conflicts disappear. The scriptures are full of wisdom and clarification and logic and reason and history and prophecy to aid us in making that decision.

But after we have fully made the choice and elected God to be our master and have spent years of learning to trust his directions, what do we do when suddenly where and how to follow is not clear? “I want to follow with all my heart, I choose to follow with all my mind, I determine to follow with all my will, but I have no idea HOW to follow because the GPS seems to be broken, the instructions don’t make sense or seem to be missing entirely.”
You change the batteries and bang on the unit, you call the emergency phone number but it doesn’t ring through, you recall all your memories of what you heard but nothing seems to fit your present situation. You find yourself half way to nowhere, and with no direction.
What do you do then?

Why are the scriptures so silent on this topic yet Christians periodically find themselves in this situation? Surely God must have said something about this situation.

The reasonable Christian will immediately point to the questioner as having been the cause of the breakdown in the instruction chain, you ran over the GPS or didn’t charge the batteries, you didn’t pay the phone bill, you misunderstood the directions, etc. and usually this is indeed the case. We should always begin here to search out the cause of how we got off track, make the necessary correction and get back to known ground to then proceed by the instructions this time with greater attention. This is understood,
but have you not tried to put together a product where the instructions appear to have been translated from Chinese to English by a Pakistanian who speaks Arabic and has never seen the product let alone put it together? You really are trying hard to follow the instructions with no self-confident assumptions of wisdom but the parts you have and the instructions just don’t seem to relate properly though you try and try and try to no success? The road you find yourself on by carefully following the map suddenly does not seem to correspond to what is on the map. It simply does not make sense. You back track until the map does match your location and then carefully move forward exactly as the map shows but you find yourself right back in the same confusion. What are you supposed to do then?

Let me explain it with a parable of scripture Matthew 25:14-30:
There are three servants of a single master. He gives each servant a different amount of money/talent for the purpose of making it increase. The scriptures are silent on any instruction that might have come with the cash/talent and the story makes it clear that he then went away and was no longer available for consultation so we must assume they were free to determine the means on their own according to their individual ability. Could they have sold drugs to make the best profit? I don’t think so because every master has his known principles that the servants must follow or be reprimanded for violating just as the parable states in the end. So leaving behind illegal or immoral choices, the servants went about using the money/talent to increase the bottom line for the master. Since the master was wise, he understood the servant’s abilities quite well and gave to them differing amounts directly proportional to their abilities. And so upon his return he called them all in for a reckoning.
I have long been troubled by the fact that there is not a 4th servant given a responsibility that though he tried real hard he still lost money and failed. The only one that failed simply did not try. So what is with that? Are we to suppose there is never a time when we Christians fail to succeed at anything? Are we to imagine we have all knowledge in every situation, and so if we find ourselves confused we must have failed God? Does this not breed foolish arrogance, a thing God clearly condemns? So why do we not see in the parable a servant struggle but fail? I believe the answer lies in what is “between the lines in the parable and I will later explain why.

If the master was gone for a week we would be obligated to conclude the servants made one simple successful investment, but since the concept of interest on a loan comes into the parable with the last servant we can conclude the master was gone for an extended period. So what kind of investments did the servants make? We are not told. How many ventures did they make? we are not told, can we not then accept the idea that just maybe they each made a few unprofitable investments in the effort to succeed? Do you suppose they had all knowledge of finance before being given the job or did they learn a few things in the process? Why did God give each of them different amounts? Because of their different levels of ability. Clearly they did not have all knowledge of business but they did have enough to manage what they were given. Is there room to allow that they found themselves with decisions that troubled them in the process? I think so. But the point of the parable is that inspite of the conflicts faced and overcome through the process they succeeded in the end and the end result is what matters. In this parable is the message that no servant of God will end in failure if he actually tries. But don’t miss the side point that there are servants of God who will utterly fail because they dwell on fear of failure and so don’t try. These will not go unpunished as they are highly offensive to God. Try and fail is a successful instructor that can lead to success by eliminating unsuccessful paths.
Is your GPS broken at the moment? Is the map you have lacking in clarity of your present situation? Is the instruction you received not answering your condition at the moment? After first diligently attempting to resolve error on your part, but failing to find the solution, Use your current level of wisdom to make the best effort following what you know of the nature of God, and wing it.
Might it lead to momentary failure? Sure. But there is one thing you can bank on; the failure will not destroy you, it will be a useful tool in future efforts that will indeed end in success. The Jews are the people of God. They have gotten way off track but have not stopped trying. They have failed a lot, yet God has promised them success in the end. It’s going to be pretty hard to try honestly but still mess up as bad as they have so you have lots of room if your heart is right. The greater the possible consequences the more earnest we try to make the right choices, this is a good motivator but don’t get frozen in fear of failure; apply your faith in the practice of practical wisdom and see what you get. If that doesn’t seem to work give it another try with another angle of approach. Your master has not given you anymore responsibility than he knows you can deal with to success, to think otherwise is to question the wisdom of God.
Suddenly what seemed to be utter gridlock opens up to a plethora of options to choose from. Stuff the map in the glove box and toss the GPS in the back seat, you know you have the acquired wisdom to make an informed educated guess. See where it goes.
The reason why this is not a thickly discussed topic in scripture is by this time you are wise enough to make right choices in faith. The scripture is more focused on instructing the more common less wise people incapable of good choices without handholding, and the appearance in both cases is remarkably the same. If your GPS is not working and the map is not giving you useful information and you have gone over all the normal possible errors but find nothing, it is because you need to get your eyes off the cockpit instruments and fly by observation, you now have the skills to actually enjoy the flight with the confidence of good training. God, like the instructor, has blacked out the instruments for a time to encourage a next level of skill called Dead-Reckoning or flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants.
Does this mean you are done with the instruments and maps? Of course not! They should be regularly referenced to ensure the proper course is maintained, but they are simply tools of the flight and not the purpose itself. Enjoy the flight and the new level of piloting. God has not left the plane and he is not concerned that you have usurped his command; he has given you the talents to use as you see fit and actually interested in how you choose to use them. By nature you complain that you need the needle-and-ball instrument or the altimeter, or whatever it is that has been blackend out, but God says no, now it’s your job to find another way to get the same job done without that instrument. At this level of training he will periodically black out different instruments for the sake of making your mind and comprehension expand beyond the blind obedience to a gauge. Sure it’s disconcerting at first but you are learning a whole new dimension to piloting. Is the instrument broken? No. Is it unnecessary now? No. Is proper dead-reckoning in conflict with the gauge? No, but by your experience of trusting the gauge while learning, you gained a “feel” for the way things should be even without the direct and constant observation of the gauge *1. At this point of training you simply know by feel if things are right or need correction and so the same job gets done with less effort and restriction. The gauge is now there as a short but frequent reference to insure your “feel” is still correct, and it is there for the times when your “sight” becomes obscured or uncertain. The gauge is always right while your “sight and feel” can become deceitful in bad weather or "off" by slothfulness.
The tug-o-war over leadership is not a question here and a thing of the past, and God now takes pleasure in your “management” of his money/talent. You are no longer a simple laborer doing exactly as told, and are now a trusted servant. Rejoice! Learn to take pleasure in the success of your training and the confidence the master has placed in you. Simply don’t ever forget that when your “feel” and the gauge are in conflict, it is the gauge that is always right, The Scripture is the gauge and you should never fly believing otherwise.

Posting such an article causes me great concern as perhaps 1 out of every 1000 might actually apply it properly though 900 of those 1000 will feel it applies to them *2. Perhaps this is why the scriptures are relatively silent on the topic, but the days now upon us are of such deception that they will even be able to corrupt our comprehension of the instruments if we have not learned how to fly so well that we don’t recall directly observing the gauges though we actually scan them constantly as every good pilot does.
Isn’t it curious that our founders spent years in school reading and studying the scriptures themselves, then spent a few hours privately every day in the same as adults, yet when writing the Constitution for the Government of the new Christian nation, we find virtually no direct religion written into law although the entire document is bursting with the practical application of scripture. They did not preach their faith, they lived it. They were skilled pilots and trusted servants able to accurately fly by the seat of their pants from the skill of understanding the gauges and how to use them in flight without fixating on them.

How do you know if you are given the instructional dead-reckoning training or have run aground in error and find yourself where you don’t belong? Good question.
Primarily there are two answers;
1st How well versed are you in flying by the instruments? If you are low hours or still shaky with confidence in the gauges (scripture) I’m betting you simply are in error and need to find your way back to solid ground where the gauges tell you you should be but aren’t.
2nd How hard have you tried to find your error? Since this is most often the cause of the condition this is the place to make a diligent investigation. And after investigating and finding nothing… investigate again trust the gauges they will help you find your error.
Continued.
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*1 “Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” II Corinthians 3:6

*2 Because of the great possibility to misapply this post I must also declare that flight instructors also have in their bag of tricks a long narrow hood. Unlike the suctioncup like gauge covers for the student fixated on the gauges, this hood is worn by the student to block his view of anything but the instrument panel. Many student pilots want to prematurely fly by dead reckoning looking out the window and must be forced by the hood to learn to understand and trust the gauges by the inability to look out the window. In fact far more students are susceptible to this weakness than the other but this simple example of two different tools for two different students learning to fly the very same plane is an example of both the law and grace or obedience and salvation promoted in scripture. Many have a tough time with the apparent contradiction not realizing they are different focuses of learning for different weaknesses of students to the same end of successful faith. If you are naturally good at one angle, that is not the angle you should pursue in scripture. You should study the angle that chafes you until you understand it too. The LORD is not Calvinism or Armenian; those are both elements of the same faith viewed from different weaknesses. Are you easily Armenian? Study what scripture has to say in favor of the Calvinist view. Are you Calvinist? Learn what God meant by the passages that are clearly Armenian. I knew a wise man of God who claimed he was Cal-menian, not because his faith was schizophrenic in indecision but because he understood the balance of both angles in Christ’s salvation. When the Apostle Paul said he was under to law to those under the law and under grace to those under grace, he was showing that each view is based in scripture but missing the fuller understanding of the other element. This may sound a bit Pluralistic but it is not; it is a fuller understanding of the singular Jehovah. When God made man in his own image he made them male and female (Genesis 1:27). So is God male or female? He is neither and both. God simply gave each gender different elements of himself and by only giving part of his being to each, he created genders; men have these characteristics of God and women have those characteristics of God. God has them all. God is both provider and nurturer, both strong and gentle, etc.
It is human nature to fixate on what makes us most comfortable and ignore or reject what makes us uncomfortable. The faith is more complex than a simplistic fixation on one element. “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” II Timothy 2:15
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