Dealing with Foolish Decisions

Over the last couple of weeks we have been thinking about how we can make wise decisions. We have concluded that
the follower of Jesus can make very wise personal decisions. I was going to go on today to think about corporate decision making.

However, the fact is that we have all made foolish decisions and I wanted to spend some time thinking about how this affects us. I wonder, what is a foolish decision? Or indeed, what is a wise decision? How do we measure the result?

Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, once said, "A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines."

Maurice Chevalier also observed, "Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it."

The debate in politics at the moment is over how on earth, as a nation, we are going to stop spending at the rate we are and try and get out of debt. A question many of us have had to ask on a personal basis!

As Darling delivers his PBR the government has some decisions to make. How will they assess the wisdom or foolishness of the decision?
• Economic growth?
• Environmental impact
• Civil liberties and freedom of choice results (equality in employment for example).
• Wellbeing – some sort of measure of happiness.
• Of course, the outcome they most want is to get re-elected.

How do we know what makes a decision foolish?

What about personal decisions? How do we measure the results? When you regret making a decision, what makes you regret it? How do we measure whether we got it right or wrong? Wise decision or foolish decision?

It depends on the outcome you are seeking.
What outcomes do you seek?

From time to time most of us will dwell in the past at least a bit. Thinking, “if only…”.

Sometimes we think through a decision like this:
I am faced with a difficult decision, if I make the sacrificial decision, the one that feels most like a Kingdom one, a God-inspired one, the result will be …

Happiness?

Security?

Health?

An easy life?

A long life?

A great family?

Lots of supportive friends?

Money?

Reputation?

You see, what happens when we do that is that we make the objective of the decision our god. For example we make happiness our god. We worship that result and want to get to it by our decision making. We seek to control the outcome of our decisions.

Another way of approaching it is this. If you knew that making the wise decision would have outcomes which: either you couldn’t control or were outcomes you didn’t like, would you still make the wise decision?

When we make a wise decision but deduce that the way things turn out weren’t good as a result, what is our response?

Did we make the wrong decision?
Did we make the right decision but God didn’t keep his part of the deal?
Or maybe there is a disconnect in our thinking. Maybe we have fallen into the trap of trying to do a deal with God. I will do this and then you will do that. And then we are back in the place of seeking after the wrong gods instead of simply our Kingdom calling to follow Jesus, whatever the cost.

The obvious example of this is Jesus. When faced with the impending torture, crucifixion and abandonment his response was, “Not my will but yours be done.”

When I look back over my life I can see certain decisions I have made which have cost me, cost our family in various ways. Certain things have happened which were outside of my control. Others were within my control. In hindsight I can look back and identify points when if I had made a different decision I would have avoided financial loss or reputation loss. Or I look back and think, God, I made what I thought was the right decision, why did things turn out so different from what I expected?

The thing is, measuring how wise our decisions are by seeking these sorts of results, ones that our society and government are looking for, is utterly misguided. It is in the most profound sense of the word an entirely secular way of thinking.

What did I say was our most important decision last week? Or at least the most important part of making a wise decision?

Kingdom calling

In my view the most important measure of whether our decisions are wise or foolish, the most important consideration that should drive our decision-making is an awareness of our Kingdom calling. Let me explain again what I mean by Kingdom calling. It starts from the belief that we are not her by accident nor that we are incidental.

Psalm 139:13-16

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb….All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Jeremiah 29:11

“I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord.

Ephesians 2:19

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household.

One of the really good things about deciding to follow Jesus is learning what you are on this planet for. Because you are in a new Kingdom we can describe this as discovering your Kingdom calling.

We could define whether or not a decision is wise or foolish by saying;

A decision is not measured by whether or not we achieved our desired result but whether or not it takes us away from God rather than toward him.

It isn’t a big jump to move from that statement to realising that often we are talking about sin when we talk about decisions.

As we have been pondering decision making we have been steering you away from a purely analytical decision-making formula or from over-spiritualising or from just sticking your finger in the air. We have been seeking wisdom in our decision making; a way of Kingdom living that prepares us for those points of decision.

I want to steer you a little further to seeing foolish decision making in the setting of sin, God’s love, repentance, forgiveness and hope for the future.

Let me try and explain how this works from a different angle.

I don’t see foolish decisions in a medical way. When thinking medically we are reacting to an illnesses or event. If you break a leg or are diagnosed with cancer you are powerless to change what has happened (although God can always intervene and change the course of science and history). But with decisions you have a choice, hard ones yes but choices nevertheless.

The essence of a foolish decision is not in the helplessness, being at the mercy of circumstances, but in the making of a foolish choice.

Neither do I see foolish decisions in a legal way. When we break a rule or a law there are consequences which can only be put right through a legal remedy – punishment or restitution.

The essence of a foolish decision is not the breaking of rules but the breaking of a relationship with God.

That all sounds a bit heavy for a decision as to which film to go and see over Christmas - Up or Nativity. But for those who live with regret and awareness of foolish decisions in their past – and these decisions are usually the bigger, more significant ones – I want to provide a way of dealing with the feeling of guilt or regrets or disappointment or anger with God.

Let’s step back a bit and look at what the theologians and philosophers call the meta-narrative, the big story as told through the bible. The big story is all about precisely this issue. You can recount it in 5 chapters.

1. God the creator, man in relationship

God creates the universe and places man in his creation in a position of special, vibrant, harmonious relationship with the creation and with God.

Genesis 1:27,28,31, God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it … God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

2. Man’s foolish decision

Man (and woman) face a decision. They make what is generally considered to have been a foolish one and the breakdown of that relationship with God and his creation is the immediate and longstanding result for all men and women.

Genesis 3:23 So the Lord God banished them from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

3. God’s loving pursuit – Christmas and the Cross

The Christmas story - God has provided a way for this relationship with him to be restored, he has pursued us with an everlasting love which has gone to the enormous lengths of the cross, of giving us his own Son to die for us, to make restitution.

Romans 5:18 Consequently, just as the result of one foolish decision was condemnation for all men, also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.

4. Repentance and restoration of relationship

We are given the opportunity to take responsibility for our foolish decisions.
We are given the opportunity to repent of foolish decisions. In so doing we receive forgiveness and freedom from guilt. We can receive healing for the hurt and damage done.

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ.

5. A new creation and life everlasting

And this new life, full of the Holy Spirit is a foretaste of the Kingdom life and the future in the fully restored creation when the Kingdom of God fully comes. We start with creation in Genesis and we finish with a new creation in Revelation:

Revelation 21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…

That’s the big story.
And we see that story replicated in small stories throughout the bible.
• David committing adultery with Bathsheba
• The prodigal son
• Peter denying Jesus 3 times
• The people hearing Peter’s sermon at Pentecost
• Paul persecuting the early Christians
Scores of stories of people making foolish decisions and the way they dealt with the consequences and either restored relationship with God or did not.

Let’s look at one such story – Zacchaeus. Luke 19:1-9

In assessing who Zacchaeus was Luke simply says he was a “sinner”.
His sins were being a capitalist, a collaborator and a crook. The closest we would have in our popular culture might be a fat cat banker or an expense-funded politician.
Zac was very rich but largely friendless and when the good guy came to town he was very definitely at the back of the queue.

In the previous chapter Jesus had made the point that it is very hard for the rich to get into the Kingdom of God.

Let’s say he then comes to Leeds to speak at the Citywide Alpha in the Town Hall and Zacchaeus, Leeds very own Mr Bad, sneaks in and sits at the back of the balcony trying to avoid attention.

Jesus looks past the many rows of the good people of Leeds smiling up at him, squints and then points right up to the back of the Town Hall and says, “Hey, Zacchaeus, come on down, let’s get a takeaway and go back to your place”.

By the time he has had a beer and a curry with Jesus, Zacchaeus has owned up in public and made a commitment to funding Reach Out and over-the-top refunds to his customers. Sounds like he is a fully signed up follower of Jesus (I think he was in that crowd in the upper room at Pentecost – how his life must have changed).

Speaking of refunds reminds me of what happened after Wigan lost 9-1 to Tottenham back in November. The Wigan players were so ashamed that they refunded all the travelling supporters who came to watch the game. At £27.40 per ticket that could come to around £10,000.

But you have to be careful about being too keen to make amends. In 1998 the Brazilian side Flamengo promised to refund its fans if the team lost its next match. About 52,000 people turn up and watched Flamengo who indeed went on to lose. The attendance at the previous game had been 791!

Jesus describes that change in Zacchaeus as Salvation. Hard as it is for the rich to come into the Kingdom, Zac had done so and had been saved. Not just Zac but his household and indeed his community as his new-found generosity floods back into the local economy.

The Zacchaeus Story
What’s going on here? It is the Big Story writ small in the life of one man:

A man God had made

You can discern the likeness of God, being made in his image, by his reaction of generosity and his welcome into his house.
A man who had made foolish decisions

most of his life, ones that had led him into great financial success but away from his creator God.
Jesus pursues him

and restores relationship with him over a takeaway.
Zac repents and receives forgiveness

His life changes so radically that we see the Kingdom come not just in spiritual salvation but in an economic shift in the community (Zac almost certainly ended up significantly poorer as a result - so wise decisions don’t always lead to financial blessing - but I think there would have been massive healing of relationships with family and friends as well as a healing in his inner being as he received Jesus’ grace and learnt that he was OK). There are inevitable consequences to a history of foolish decisions but Zac does work toward putting some of that right.
And Zacchaeus’s new Spirit-filled life

leads him into everlasting life with God.

So we have looked at the big story – Genesis to Revelation.
We have looked at Zac’s story – one of many in the bible.

• What’s your story?

When I spoke about making wise personal decisions last week maybe you were thinking, what about the foolish decisions I have made? What about the way my life has not turned out the way I wanted it to?

For some of you there are decisions in the past which you know were foolish and wrong. Sinful in fact. Times when you did the wrong things when it came to the decision-making process. You may have lived with the regret or guilt for many years.

Last week I read about a lady called Sylvia Blampey. 38 years ago went shopping in Reading. She bought three blankets from Jackson’s department store but was only charged for one. She handed over £3 and left before anyone noticed. But her conscience has troubled her ever since, for 38 years and last week, aged 77, she travelled up from Paignton in Devon to repay the extra £6 plus £14 interest.

For others there are decisions which you think you were wise and which you made with the best intentions and trying to do the right things. And yet the results have not been what you wanted. You are in that place of saying, “But I thought we had a deal here God”.

The person who made the foolish decision has to repent and turn to Jesus.
The person who made a wise decision but did so in order to win another god – wealth, happiness, health – also needs to repent and turn to Jesus.

We are all part of the same story:
1. The starting point is in knowing that there is a God who created you and who wants relationship with you.
2. Then we have to accept the fact that along the way we have allowed other things to take God’s place, that we have made foolish decisions. Or that we have made decisions which may have been wise but we have sought to dictate the outcome and when we didn’t get what we want we have blamed God.
Adam’s poem
3. The great thing is that, whatever the situation, whatever you feel about yourself, or indeed about God, He is still looking for you. Just like he went looking for Adam and Eve in the garden, just like he sought out Zacchaeus, he is looking for you, calling your name and wanting to rebuild relationship.
That’s what Christmas is all about. We celebrate with songs and stories and gifts and traditions and food but what it is about is a play, written by God and into which he writes himself as the main character. Jesus, the star. God coming to us in Jesus to rescue us and reconnect with us.
4. All we need to do is repent, change our way of thinking, turn around and look the other way. Seek out and pursue His Kingdom calling rather than the many other little gods that tempt and call out enticingly. And forgiveness is there, in that moment, full forgiveness, salvation. Many of us need healing for the past and we all need restoration of relationship with our Father God.
There will always be the reality of the consequences of foolish decisions but there is also grace. We may not be able to change much or make significant restitution but we can receive healing and forgiveness.
5. And of course, full of the Holy Spirit we step forward into a new and everlasting life, better equipped to understand our Kingdom calling, to hear Jesus’ voice and to make wise decisions, and to one day know the wonder of a new creation in which there is no sin and no foolishness.

How did the people respond who were in the baying crowd that called for Jesus’ crucifixion?

When Peter preached his first sermon on the day of Pentecost he accused those people listening of being complicit in Jesus’ murder. Of deciding to kill the King of Glory. Some who heard responded with a “Not me governor”, or, “You don’t understand, I was just following orders”, or, “I only popped into town for a bagel”, or, “It seemed right at the time” (the Iraq response).
For others it was, “What shall we do?”
We need to take responsibility for our own decisions

Peter’s reply was:

Acts 2:38 “Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off … even in Leeds.”

Let us take responsibility for our own decision-making and repent where we have chosen foolishly or where we have chosen wisely but with the expectation of controlling the outcome. Let us receive forgiveness and grace and be filled again with the Holy Spirit and step forward with hope into a new everlasting life.
The follower of Jesus can make very wise personal decisions.

David Flowers, 13/12/2009