Return continually to Jesus’ helpful suggestions, all of which were meant to give you reliable ways to proceed. He preached integrity – that is, being the same thing inside and outside. Don’t do things behind your own back. Know your intent and hold to it.
When listening for the small still voice, or talking to the guys, or trying to know what the right thing to do is, the key is not to fool yourself. And how does one assure that he is not fooling himself? Not by judging the content, like the person who only accepts what is reasonable to his own previous definitions of what is possible. What you can judge is whether you proceeded honestly and consciously, as best you could. Good fruit grows from good stock: Good information proceeds from good intent and good execution.
In other words, we don’t need to worry as much about fooling ourselves as about wanting to fool ourselves, or being willing to fool ourselves.
That’s what it comes to. And you can always be aware of your own true intent if you are in the habit of being honest with yourself. If you were the units you appear to be, it would be relatively simple. But you are not units, but communities, and not even communities of units, but communities of communities. That’s a lot of cross-purposes!
Jesus’ saying about not putting new wine in old wineskins, nor old wine in new wineskins may not apply to our lives, our consciousness, our task of bringing our constituent parts into alignment during our life, but it seems like maybe it could.
Well, if you try to cram old perceptions into new circumstances, or new perceptions into old categories, you can see that it probably won’t work very well. Jesus need not have meant the analogy for it to be true nonetheless.
So how do we avoid being led astray by our internal contradictory elements? Some do it by adopting a rigid code, but for those who can’t or won’t?
A first step is to be clear about the distinction between you as present-tense keeper of the ring – the person who has the right and responsibility to decide – and you as arbitrator among so many constituent agents. Same you, different functions.
And how do we distinguish? Intent, I suppose.
Exactly. In your intent as to what you wish to be, you have your guide.
The way some people say What Would Jesus Do, for instance.
That’s an example. The fact that a technique may be misused, or may not fit you, does not mean it is mistaken or worthless. And after all, if Jesus is too exalted an example for you, the world is full of examples. Who do you admire? (We’re talking of character, not achievement or renown.)
And I see that we could take this trait from one, that from another. Lincoln for honest, clarity and humility, Washington for character and obedience to perceived duty. Jefferson for lucid intelligence and all-devouring curiosity, Teddy Roosevelt for sheer vigor and energy and determination, and so on. We could choose among any who were important models to us, regardless of their fame or obscurity, their field of activity, their nearness or remoteness to our actual lives.
Certainly. One’s grandfather or brother or cousin might serve, or a friend. There is no limit to who might serve as model, and, after all, the qualities one infers from observing may or may not be actually present in that other. That doesn’t matter. What matters is not the source of one’s ideal but the nature of the ideal. Choose what you want to be, and live toward it, retaining the sense that you will not attain the goal and shouldn’t (else the goal was not set high enough). If you do attain the goal, merely set another, higher.
In other words, no guilt or discouragement, but no self-satisfaction either.
Well, rules are misleading. Let’s leave it at this. In order to have a compass, you need to set an intent and live it. (Everyone has intent, if only accepted ready-made, as a social convention, or a religious creed. But for people like you, deliberate choice is the only practical path.) You may or may not know who you are, but it is essential to have some clear idea of who (and how) you want to be; who you want to become, who you hope to see in the mirror, looking back on your life. This isn’t for the sake of meeting an expected judgment, it is for the sake of keeping you oriented along the way.