UCC
Daily Devotional Aug. 28, 2018
(Ir)Rational
Quinn
G. Caldwell
"Oh,
how I love your law!
It
is my meditation all day long.
Your
commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,
for
it is always with me.
I
have more understanding than all my teachers,
for
your decrees are my meditation." - Psalm 119:97-99
Bad news, friend: you are not a rational
person. Turns out most of your opinions and decisions are made up of an
unsavory soup of prejudice, first impressions, old hurts, snap judgements, and
fantasy, with some actual fact and reasoned thought thrown in for spice. In case
it makes you feel better: same here. Same everywhere. We tend to think of
humans as highly rational, but it just isn't so. Google "are humans
rational?" or "do facts change minds?" Dig one layer down past
the fluff pieces and listicles and see what science actually has to say about
our minds—not that I expect any of the information there to change yours, if
you're like the rest of us.
Seems like the psalmist knew this about us. No
matter how smart we get, no matter how many facts or concepts we master, without
a strong guide, most of us are going to spend our lives in a morass of
idiosyncratic opinions and cockamamie decisions. You can fill yourself up to
the eyeballs with good information (and for what it's worth, I think you
should), but it's not going to be that helpful in living a life that is
beautiful, harmonious, rational, or wise. So once you find something solid to
help you make your decisions, it's worth holding onto. That's the understanding
that the psalmist has acquired that makes them wiser than their enemies and
smarter than their teachers. They've found a way to make decisions
consistently, a measuring stick that can be trusted, a rubric older and deeper
and better-tested than their own weird opinions: the law of God.
I know you want to rely on your own powers of
reason; me too. And that will be fine if you don't care much about outcomes.
But if what you want is a life marked by wisdom, loving kindness, generosity,
and consistency, then you're going to need a little help, a few boundaries, a solid
measuring stick. And where facts and smarts fail you, says the psalmist, the
Law may just be the answer.
Prayer
God,
your law may not be sophisticated, but it's better than relying on myself.
Thank you. Amen.