The Capacity for Right Decisions

April 3, 1966
Plainfield

The Capacity for Right Decisions

Do you know the story of the young girl who, while taking a personality test, came upon the question, "Are you indecisive?" To which, after chewing on her pencil, answered, "yes and no." Are there not many of us who prefer the discomfort of sitting on fence pickets to the difficulty of deciding on which side of the fence we belong? When life presents us with choices which are both important and momentous, rather than trivial or readily postponed, "Choose you this day whom you will serve" – many times we chicken out by subtle rationalizations of that which will contribute most to our comfort and will be least likely to arouse feelings against us or criticisms about our acts and attitudes. There is nothing more important than the capacity for right decisions to our happiness, our growth in wisdom and stature and to the measure of our effectiveness in the society in which we all share. This is one of the enduring meanings of Palm Sunday.

In the Christian calendar, today commemorates the beginning of "Holy Week." Few persons who have been reared in our predominantly Christian religious culture can avoid some appraisal of the nature and meaning of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. But those of us in a liberal religious tradition, who see any particular religion as one segment of the universal religious endowment of the human enterprise, must distinguish between what the character of Jesus was and the dogmas that orthodox theologians have proposed about him. Particularly demonstrated in the last days of his ministry were certain qualities of his character which may be relevant to a presentation of the capacity for right decisions.

The information provided by the editors of the Christian gospels is sparse, not to to speak of being confused and somewhat contradictory. Verified material is almost entirely absent. The literature we call the New Testament is what Christians who have lived from one to three generations after Jesus believed about Jesus. The gospels were not historical accounts in any sense that we would describe as historical. Any belief about the life of Jesus is opinion, not history. In my view, shining through the
cloud cover of theological interpretations, was the human Jesus, a man convinced that all persons could share in the power of the Divine Spirit that Jesus believed watched over the sparrows’ fall and the life of man. For him, dedication to moral standards and serving the physical needs of his fellow humans were the only ways that he could fulfill the great yearning he felt to be one with the Father God in whom he believed. There is insight to be gained into the ways we can become better human beings by reflecting how Jesus and his followers met the succession of crises reported by the gospel writers and those who formed the Christian traditions.

When Jesus turned his face toward Jerusalem, he had made the culminating decision of his life. In personal crises always there is choice between a high road and a lower road. Many of us, I suppose, just do not have the courage or the capacity to take the high road because too often the high road terminates in various degrees of unpopularity and discomfort; sometimes, as in the case of Jesus, rejection, torture and death. Shakespeare has Brutus say,

"There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and miseries."

So with Jesus. He could have remained in the relative quiet of country towns and remote, rural villages, pursuing a prophetic and serving ministry which must have been a rich fulfillment of the human spirit. But he turned his face toward Jerusalem. He was a prophet, champion of the disinherited and knew that only in Jerusalem did his message have a chance of starting larger ripples of influence. He knew his own traditions and surely realized that a radical prophet would very likely die in Jerusalem. But the tides were flooding high around Jerusalem. There was the center of his religion, the Temple, and it was Passover time; there also the provincial power of the Roman Empire maintained a politically effective coalition with collaborators and quislings. Brutus sailed with the flood tide and it did not lead to fortune, but to death. Jesus, too, left the shallows of Capernaum, Galilee and Nazareth to sail with the tide that wafted him to death. Persons who confront moral dilemmas and make moral choices usually know that such choices engender hatred and ridicule as well as respect and admiration.

Jesus was faithful to the Heavenly Father in whom he believed. For many of us, the idea of God can no longer be personal and paternal, but on days such as this we may applaud Jesus' physical courage; we may respect his perceptive mind; we may be inspired by his moral stamina. The flood tide of a great idea has power when moral bravery remains undaunted. Persons who do not accept the Christian scheme of salvation admire the courage of a man who met issues head-on because he believed great causes had priority over his own comfort, popularity or personal safety. How abundant must have been his store of resources for difficult decisions. How can we develop the capacity for correct choices?

One assumption is made in the nature of the subject – that is, that we have freedom to make decisions. In making this assumption, there is no attempt to elaborate the perennial argument, free-will vs. determinism. The freedom which I assume we possess was well-stated by Erich Fromm in his book, THE HEART OF MAN (p. 132-3): Freedom is "the capacity to make a choice between opposite alternatives; alternatives which, however, always imply the choice between the rational and irrational interest in life and its growth versus stagnation and death; when used in this sense the best and worst man are not free to choose, while it is precisely the average man with contradictory inclinations for whom the problem of freedom of choice exists...

"On what factors does this freedom to choose between contradictory inclinations
depend?

"Quite obviously the most important factor lies in the respective strengths
of the contradictory inclinations, particularly in the strength of the unconscious aspects of these inclinations. But if we ask what factors support freedom of choice even if the irrational inclination is stronger, we find that the decisive factor in choosing the better rather than the worse lies in awareness. 1) awareness of what constitutes good or evil; 2) which action in the concrete situation is an appropriate means to the desired end; 3) awareness of the forces behind the apparent wish that means the discovery of unconscious desires; 4) awareness of the real possibilities between which one can choose; 5) awareness of the consequences of the one choice as against the other; 6) awareness of the fact that awareness as such is not effective unless it is accompanied by the will to act, by the readiness to suffer the pain of frustration that necessarily results from an action contrary to one’s passions."

I – First of all, then the capacity for right decisions depends upon faithfulness to the values one holds, rather than unreflective response to sudden impulses and mercurial emotions. Freedom of choice and maintaining the power to make choices based on enduring values is not an abstract faculty which one can acquire either by inheritance or by the fast reading of a correct manual, but rather freedom of choice is a pattern
of living which is grown into the character structure by the habit of consistency to one's values. The best way to live up to your highest standards is to make a habit of being faithful to them in matters seemingly trivial as well as in affairs of seemingly major importance.

O. Herbert Mowrer is a Midwestern psychologist who has stirred considerable interest by his viewpoint that conscience is not a guilt-ridden neurosis with which we should speedily dispense, but rather that conscience is a necessary inner-function of our character structure which supports us in the habit of living up to one's standards openly, Dr. Mowrer wrote, (p.61), "psychiatrists, psychologists, and other social scientists are now beginning to realize that will-power – that is, the capacity to make the right decisions and to act upon them – is a function of whether one is in or out of community. This means, quite simply, that if we follow the policy of keeping our lives always 'open to inspection,' we find that our 'wills' are surprisingly strong. Conscience has been defined, somewhat wryly but not inaccurately, as that still, small voice that tells us when someone is watching. But if we adopt a policy of secrecy and deception, so that others can't 'watch' us, then we have no 'resistance to temptation' and our 'wills' progressively deteriorate."

As the baseball players are nearing the end of the Annual Spring Training
weeks and as the basketball players are nearing the end of their prolonged, strenuous season, one can learn something from them about the capacity for right decisions. One measure of an athlete achieving the rating of an authentic professional is, when without thinking about it, he throws to the right base or moves the proper distance from the bag, if he is a baserunner. If the outfielder stops and thinks where he should throw, the runner will have taken an extra base by that time. If the pro basketball player has to hesitate and think about his moves as he drives for the basket, the chances are he will be blocked out, lose the ball or miss what might have been an easy basket. Years of obedient, methodical practice have built-in the right moves for particular situations. Experience counts.

Experience counts in decision-making also. If you have worked on regular patterns of value: keeping your word, respecting your own best standards, whether alone or in the crowd; maintaining your consistency in minor as well as major dealings with others, then you will find that your capacity for right decisions has grown to be adequate even for the heaviest demands that may be suddenly placed upon it.

II – The second observation about the capacity for right decisions looks at the other side of the coin. Our capacity for right decisions is maintained by not blunting our ability to distinguish that which is true to our best standards from that which is false to our best standards. I don't know if anybody reads Sir Walter Scott anymore, but some may remember his little homily, "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." The essential word is "first" – "when first we practice to deceive." For at that point, we begin to erode any consistent standards by which we may hope to live openly and well. [inserted note: John Casey: “For when we’re at it for awhile, we gradually improve our style.”] One of the great, modern churchmen was the late William Temple, Archbishop of York and one of the most persuasive of Christian advocates. In his book, CHRISTIAN FAITH AND LIFE, he unerringly touches the nerve of that which can paralyze our moral autonomy, "No crime looks so bad to the man who has committed it as to the man who kept clear of it. As soon as we have done something that is nasty, we have blunted our own capacity to be disgusted, we have tarnished the mirror in which we are to look at our own reflection."

More than one philosopher and psychologist has observed a classic insight into this process in the encounters of Moses and Pharaoh. Moses and Aaron pleaded with Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go, but Pharaoh refused. Even though in the old story there were successive disasters which Moses and Aaron pointed out to Pharaoh were omens from Yahveh warning that this enslaved people should be permitted to go, Pharaoh's heart was hardened until it required a complete disaster to persuade him to let the people go; and his hardened heart reconsidered this after the people had
traveled a distance. Erich Fromm summed it up, "Our capacity to choose changes constantly with our practice of life. The longer we continue to make wrong decisions, the more our heart hardens....” (HEART OF MAN, p. 150)

III – We will increase our capacity for right decisions by recognizing that neither popular opinion nor unpopular opinion are in themselves guarantees of wisdom. The majority can chart the course after a vote on issues which divide people. But majorities have been wrong. Minorities usually believe that the fault is not in themselves or their cause that they have been outvoted, but rather that the majority have been short-sighted or deceived. But minorities have been wrong, too. If because of a certain pride, or arrogance or stubbornness, a person automatically casts his lot with the majority, just because it is a majority; or if because of a certain pride, or arrogance or stubbornness, a person automatically casts his lot with the minority, just because it is a minority, then there is no increase in the capacity for right decisions. There is no strength for correct
choices gained when one is a "knee-jerk" conservative or a "knee-jerk" liberal (to use W.S. White's phrase) – conditioned to reflex when the proper place is touched or the particular partisan jargon uttered.

The old legends of the last days of Jesus suggest two touching illustrations of the reactions of two men and their capacity for correct decisions. In the story of the evening in Gethsemane, Jesus predicts that great trouble will come. Peter says, "Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison and to death." Jesus replies, "I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me." After the soldiers had seized Jesus, the disciples including Peter had fled. The soldiers tried to round up these rebels, of course, and Peter sat by the fire in the priest's house, trying to be inconspicuous. A maid looked closely at him, "this man also was with him." Peter said, "Woman I know him not." Within a short time two others quizzed him about being one of the followers of Jesus. Both times Peter said, "I am not." And the old story reports, that while he was speaking for the third time, "the cock crew." There was a time to come that Peter would rediscover his moral strength, but after the arrest of Jesus, Peter's denial saved him from the occupation soldiers, but the old story records that afterward, "Peter went out and wept bitterly."

According to the old story, another disciple, Judas, found that his betrayal of Jesus for money and the approval of the Roman rulers and collaborators were paltry rewards when his actions brought him face to face with his own guilty conscience. Judas tried to return thirty pieces of blood money, [but] found that the conspirators laughed at him. He threw the money away, went out and hanged himself.

The social scientists have taught us much about the origin of conscience. The reality that conscience is a product of our social conditioning from infancy, that it is taught by parents and caught from environment does not alter the reality that it is a force with which to reckon when we permit fear or greed to tempt us to violate it . The legend of Martin Luther's courageous confrontation of Emperor, princes, nobles and churchmen at the Diet of Wurms has it that Luther refused to renounce convictions, "I neither can nor will recant anything, since it is neither right nor safe to act against conscience. God help me. Amen."

Neither the popular position nor the unpopular protest are in themselves guarantees of truth or inward assurance. One' s capacity for right decisions is expanded as one understands that truth may be elusive and that simplifications may be too easy. The social psychologist, Erich Lindemann, (MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT, p. 8), put it well, "within communities and other social structures, the determinants of priorities for planning and action are as unconscious, as powerful, as complex, and as difficult to reach as are the unconscious forces in the individual psychic apparatus."

IV – One maintains the capacity for right decisions by allowing room for turn-about. Both Peter and Judas made wrong decisions – Peter overestimated his stamina to be known publicly for his association with the prophet from Nazareth. Judas hated himself for selling out his friend and teacher. Peter later redeemed his cowardice. Judas had no such chance for self-redemption, for he had hanged himself. These ancient legends illustrate that the capacity for right decision may pivot on keeping enough working room to admit error and to turn-about, to allow for the possibility that it may be the better way to switch.

There are suggestions that Jesus' journey to Jerusalem – the triumphant procession celebrated by Christians today, may have been a turn-about, a change of direction. In the gospel stories there are some indications that for awhile Jesus may have been trying to escape the authorities. He withdrew to isolation after the execution of John the Baptist. Later Jesus may have been avoiding the soldiers of Herod, whom Jesus called "that old fox." There are indications that Jesus was in Tyre, Sidon and Ceasarea Phillippi before turning South for that fateful meeting in Jerusalem – prophet confronting power.

When one thinks about it, the only justification for counselors, therapists, parole officers, psychologists, psychiatrists, analysts and all the other persons in professions that administer to the emotions and minds of persons, is the reality that there is margin for turnabout in this self we call the human spirit. If we have been convinced of notions that just aren't so, we do have the resources to bring new facts into focus; fresh convictions can expel stale ideas that were making us less than our best. Erich Fromm, (HEART OF MAN, p.129) reminded us that the Hebrew word for "repentance" implies that renewal does not require self-condemnation. Repentance mean ''return – to God, to oneself, to the right way. ... The Talmud uses the expression 'master of return' to describe the repentant sinner.”

If one's life is to be richer in resources for correct decisions, then one must deepen the habit of consistency to the values one prizes most; one should not blunt one's ability to distinguish the better from the poorer way; one must be aware that neither popular nor unpopular opinion in themselves are any guarantees of the truth; and that reserving a margin for error, room for turnabout, may provide the chance for fulfillment.

In conclusion, let me remind you of one of the pertinent uses of myth which a modern religious scholar finds in the life of Jesus, Harvey Cox, on the faculty of Harvard University Divinity School, is the author of one religious of the most talked-about/books published in the last couple years, THE SECULAR CITY. The whole book is an informed, intellectual adventure wherein Professor Cox seeks to make the historic structures of Christian thought relevant and viable in a civilization that has long since gone beyond literal pieties and escapist salvation schemes. Cox writes that the ancient phrase, "fully God and fully man," used to describe Jesus, when translated into the vocabulary of contemporary social change, proposes that the "issue is whether history and particularly revolution is something that happens to man or something man does." (p. 111-12)

One may have reservations about the authenticity of equating the ancient Christian myth with the ambiguities and difficulties of modern social change in a secular world, but there is suggested the basic motivation for seeking the many ways we can strengthen our capacity for right decisions. If we believe that history is something man does, then we will begin to understand the need for each of us to maintain the capacity and the will to be change-makers and not just the stuff to which history happens.