People Are Always Rational

In the last installment, I talked about some of my rules. And I realized today that I forgot one. A very important one. People are always rational.

I did not say that you can always understand them. Or that they are even right. Just that they are rational.

Proper Logical Form

A logical argument has two parts - a list of premises followed by a conclusion. For example, in the book of Romans, Paul uses the word therefore many times. He's making a logical argument. Paul presents his premises then draws a conclusion from them. The word therefore signals the conclusion, like the equals sign in math problems.

My senior year of college, I took an elective philosophy course on logic. One of my most enjoyable classes. We spent the semester learning how arguments (logical statements, not fights) are formed and validated. One point in particular stood out - every argument must have proper form, even if the argument itself is wrong. The conclusion cannot be right if the argument is not properly formed. But having the right form does not

automatically make an argument right.

When I say people are always rational, I mean that they always base their conclusions on a set of premises that support that conclusion. This stuff dates back to ancient Greece. And it's still in use today because it works. At some point, everything you do and everything you believe trace back to a set of premises that led you to that conclusion. Every time.

Jesus used the analogy of fruit trees. Good trees have good fruit. Bad trees grow bad fruit. Same idea. Good premises make good arguments. Faulty premises may make a sound (correctly formed) but ultimately wrong conclusion. You can trace every action back to the underlying premises. And every action makes sense in light of those premises.

Crazy People

At this point, you can probably identify several people and/or incidents that make absolutely no sense. Time when people behaved irrationally. I disagree. They behaved perfectly rational, we just don't have all of the premises. 

Walk a mile in their shoes. Look at it from their point of view. These are simpler, less nerdy ways of saying the same thing. People are always rational if you know their premises.

Two things stand out to me. Call them corollaries to the rule. First, being rational and being right are completely separate things. And second, logic doesn't change minds.

The doctor recently put me on diabetes medication. I'm what she called "pre-diabetic". And this was a preventative measure. Anyway, the medicine messed with my blood sugar. Which I feel more than know. Those feelings became premises that led to conclusions such being grumpy when the blood sugar dropped too low. Realizing that didn't change how I felt. It did allow me to change the premise. Raise the blood sugar, grumpy goes away.

Persuasion occurs when you convince the other person to change their premises. When I draw wrong conclusions, that means an underlying premise has to change. The deeper this premise lies, that harder it is to change. Why? Because it affects every conclusion that ever followed.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Okay, so you start looking at all of the assumptions, feelings, and past experiences that shape your conclusions today. If you laid out every single one as a logical argument with premises and conclusions. Then you would have to go back and do the same for each premise. And for each of those premises. And so on. At some point, you reach a premise that you cannot prove.

Faith is the ultimate premise. Let this sink in for a second. Underneath all of your beliefs, all of your actions, everything you think and do, lies one or more assumptions based on nothing but your faith that it's true. We often associate the word faith with church. That's wrong. Every single person can trace back everything they believe to some element of faith - a premise that cannot be proven.

Therefore, right and wrong exist outside of logic. That also means right and wrong are bigger than logic. They can be described. But they can't be defined. Let me clarify, right and wrong exist. I'm merely saying that right and wrong exist at some level outside of our rational minds. And the real question becomes, who or what do you believe is out there, at that level?

A Few Simple Rules

A few years ago, I wrote about using rules to navigate interactions with other people. My friend at work asked me what those rules are. I've had to think about it. I'm not sure I even know them all.

I learned very young how to program my system 1 - repetition. I remember sitting in Sunday School, in the church basement. The teacher had given us a verse to memorize. If you could say it from memory, then you got a rules as a reward. For some reason, I really wanted a ruler. As I listened to the other kids say the verse out loud, I started repeating it in my head. When my turn came, I quoted the verse perfectly.

When we got home, my parents asked about the ruler. I told them it was for a memory verse. They realized I hadn't memorized any verse at home. My Mom, I think, came up with a solution - quote the verse to them, to show I really memorized it, and I could keep the ruler. It was a bright yellow ruler. I did quote it to them, perfectly. Even 2 or 3 hours later, I remembered it.

This continued through school. Memorization was merely a matter of repeating the passage, list, or speech enough times that I could reproduce it verbatim. We had an hour bus ride in the mornings. I found that to be a good time for memorizing. I know internally, I broke these things into sections. Almost like a song, the sections and the words followed a rhythm. And by reproducing the rhythm, I could repeat what I had memorized.

These rules were internalized through the same mechanism - repetition. And for good or bad, I don't consciously think about them anymore. All of that to say, it took some effort to discern these few examples.

The Rules

I watched the TV show House. Probably went through the entire series two or three times. Dr. House was a jerk. I like the medical puzzles. They were pretty creative and I don't know enough about medicine to appreciate how unrealistic. But the character of Dr. House was a jerk.

I could be that jerk. I'm not proud of it, but I was pretty manipulative growing up. Somewhere along the line came the rule don't manipulate other people. Don't be too impressed. I make it sound altruistic. Truth be told, it goes right along with my personality.

Be honest. This one can be difficult, especially when it's embarrassing. I do face the temptation to lie rather than admitting wrong. And sometimes it's easier to rationalize than others. I make a conscious effort of defaulting the other way - accepting responsibility and assume that I was wrong.

Be polite, assume other people deserve respect until they prove otherwise. 

Everybody makes mistakes, including me. Forgiveness and grace are the way the world should be.

Everybody lies, even to themselves. Sincerity does not correlate with truth. And yes, this even includes me. I question everything I feel, everything I want. Because I find it very easy to believe my own lies. And even being aware doesn't make me immune.

God exists. This one probably seems a little weird. But it colors everything else. All of the other rules, my response to the world around me, all comes from this most basic assumption.

I don't fully understand God. My understanding will always be limited. And complete understanding is my goal.

I don't understand how I feel.

Crying is not socially acceptable.

Anger is not socially acceptable.

Love is sacrifice.

I have a responsibility to other people and no right to demand anything in return. That doesn't mean other people don't have a responsibility. It means I can't force them to fulfill their responsibilities.

Enough for now? I'm starting to get mentally tangled. 

Time Travel

There's been a discussion in our small group about Pilate's role in Jesus' crucifixion. Each week, the group discusses a couple of questions related to last Sunday's sermon. One of the discussion questions looked at how the Jewish religious leaders convinced a crowd to call for Jesus' execution. How does that interact with submission to church leaders? What do we do when (not if) we disagree with them?

We look back today and think those people should have very clearly known the leaders were wrong. After all, they wanted to kill a guy. But would you support life imprisonment for a repeated child molester? What's the difference? 

We say Jesus was innocent. And according to Roman law, or even our laws today, you would be right. Pilate says as much. Remember that Judaism is legalistic. It's all about the rules. The religious leaders took their power from the rules, or the perceived penalty of violating those rules.

That's why they found Jesus' message so offensive. Jesus taught that the rules weren't enough. You had to follow the rules behind the rules. Unwritten rules that went even farther. This is why Paul says the law could never justify, never restore right standing with God.

Time After Time

Jesus justified - brought us back into relationship with God - through His sacrifice. So what about all those people in the Old Testament who never knew about Jesus? This is the kind of stuff I think about on my walks.

Let me take this from another perspective - can you travel backwards in time? A favorite theme of science fiction, time travel raises questions of changing the past or the immutability of the future. The Terminator movies made an entire franchise off this one question.

I posit that no, you cannot travel back in time any more than you can change the future. Why? Because it already happened. Let's start with an assumption - God exists. If God exists, then we accept that He created the universe, including time. I God created time, then He exists outside of time. In other words, God observes the totality of time.

Moments do not pass. He sees it all as a single, static entity. In the book of Acts, Jesus tells His followers that it is not for us to know the epochs that the Father laid out. In the father's eyes, the story is done and laid out. Our spirit, soul, whatever we call it, simply can't handle that amount of reality.

Did you study infinity in high school? You know, the little side ways "8" symbol. And your teacher, like mine, explained that numbers are infinite because you can always add 1, going on forever. Well, it's even bigger than that. In between the numbers 1 and 2 are an infinite set of numbers. Some of which cannot be represented because they go on forever (Pi). 

Picture that. We have an infinite line representing integers. And at any point on that line you have an infinite number of lines extending off to infinity representing all the decimal numbers between each integer. Does that make your brain hurt like mine?

That's the level that God sees. We can't. We're an image, a reflection, of someone so much more than ourselves.

A Matter of Perspective

Back to the question - what about the people who never knew about Jesus? Imagine you jut won the lottery - $600 million ($600,000,000). The money has been transferred into your bank account. You walk out of the bank and see a $20 bill lying on the sidewalk. A 5 year old also sees it. Would you scoop up the $20 before the kid, or let them have it?

Probably let them. Maybe even hand it to them and smile. $20 doesn't change your life, does it?

Now imagine that you're homeless, see $20 the same time as this 5 year old. Not so easy now, is it. $20 means food. What changed?

Finally, imagine that the lottery was unbelievably huge - $600 billion ($600,000,000,000). How important is $20? Not important at all, is it. I mean, with investment, you could spend $2 billion a year and still have the same amount of money next year. $20 doesn't mean a whole lot.

In the universe, we're homeless and $600 billion doesn't even come close to God's perspective. Time, cause and effect, mean a lot to us. And it makes no difference for God. When He looks at us and the people who died before Jesus, He doesn't see the difference. His perspective is so large that a few thousand years don't change anything. 

I'm not saying that God is indifferent to our perspective. I'm saying that we're not trusting His perspective. We impose our problems on Him, trying to box Him into someone we can manipulate. And there is absolutely no way I can win that fight. He is so far beyond me, that I can't even comprehend it. And yet it's still so very hard to let go.

Redemption

What should I do when I disagree with church leaders? As someone in the group pointed out, no matter what happens, God wins. He takes the evil we do (intentional or not), and makes His good plans happen. My responsibility is doing what He asks of me, now, in this moment. Sometimes that means vocal argument. Sometimes it means quietly submitting. Every time, it means listening to Him. It always seems to come back to that - relationship.

Right and Wrong

So I sat on the porch this morning, sipping tea, thinking about the difference between seeking righteousness and being righteous (in right standing). Jesus taught that we find right standing through Him. And a characteristic of that is seeking righteousness.

What does it mean to seek righteousness? That sounds too churchy. But I don't have any better phrasing. It means thinking about everything you do and say in terms of right and wrong. Yes, black and white. And life isn't so neat, is it?

I'm not talking about legalism, where the rules make you right or wrong. God makes you right or wrong. He decides. Therefore, determining right and wrong means talking to Him. I'll tell you, I'm very good at rationalizing. And when right or wrong depends on me, well, it's hard to tell. Even doing something good can be selfish.

Seeking righteousness comes down to asking God what He thinks. Ironic, doing the right thing falls back on building a relationship. And that brings me back to Jesus being the one way of finding righteousness. No matter how much I seek, I need that relationship to be right, to even understand what right means. And Jesus makes that relationship possible.

I do wrong, way more than I want to admit. I need the forgiveness Jesus made possible in order to try and do what's right next time. Because doing right is what builds the relationship I need in order to know what's right. It's this ever growing spiral where each part pushes along the next which circles back for another cycle. Building on and on.

Where does it end? It doesn't. This is God's forever.