This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.
Not long ago, someone came to me grappling with a life decision. It would affect where he lived and what he did for work, and he didn’t want to get it wrong. “I don’t want to make a mistake I’ll regret,” he said. “How do I know if I can trust myself to make the right decision?”
I said, “How do I know I can trust myself to give you advice about how to trust yourself to make the right decision?” I was only three-fourths of the way kidding. His question was a good one, and it’s one that at some point we all have to ask.
My conversation partner spoke of a “major life decision,” but those aren’t really the hard ones. Most of our important decisions aren’t the huge ones (“Will I deny Christ if I’m forced to fight lions in the Colosseum?”), nor are they the tiny ones (“Should I eat Chick-fil-A today or warm up leftovers at home?”). The most troubling are those middle-weight decisions: “Should I take that job?” or “Should I call that person?” or “Should I attend that church?” or “Should I go to that school?”
Part of the reason these decisions are so hard is because we are typically people who either prize the objective over the subjective or the other way around. I’ve known those who do SWOT exercises (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) to decide whether to go to Gatlinburg or to Panama City Beach for vacation. And I’ve known people who, when asked to give some money to help kids in their church go to youth camp, spend weeks trying to get “a peace about it.” If you rely on only the objective or only the subjective, you will never make a decision.
In his commentary on the Book of Numbers, Eastern Orthodox priest Patrick Henry Reardon noted that God provided guidance for his people out of Egypt with both the objective, fixed Word of the Torah and the unpredictable, mysterious leading of the pillar of fire and cloud.
“Israel recognized no possibility of conflict between God’s will fixed in the Torah and the more fluid guidance He provided in the cloud and pillar,” Reardon writes. “The divine guidance in the lives of the faithful is ever thus. At no point is God’s revealed will in conflict with the fixed and determined order by which men are ever to be governed, but also at no time is a man justified simply by observing those fixed and permanent norms of the Law. God always guides His people in these two ways.”
I agree, and here are some suggestions I had for the man who asked for my advice in grappling with these sorts of decisions.
1. Rule out first what’s objectively wrong.
You don’t have to pray about whether to train for a new career as a trafficker for a cocaine cartel. If you’re married, you don’t need to seek the Lord’s will about whether to create a Tinder profile for yourself. (The answer to both is no.)
Even with matters that are not straightforwardly moral, part of biblical wisdom is observing the typical outcome of people’s decisions. We ought to know, for example, that taking a dog by the ears is a bad idea (Prov. 26:17). We make many decisions by remembering others who made similar choices for similar reasons and noticing what they saw or missed.
2. Cultivate long-term biblical wisdom.
Most decisions are about choosing between what seem to be morally equivalent options. In those cases, you should be shaped by Scripture, but probably not in the way you think. A search of your Bible app is not going to tell you whether you should change your major to marine biology just because you happen to be reading Jonah. Most of your reading of Scripture is not going to seem relevant to the decisions you are making, because it’s not a set of tarot cards.
Like invisible yeast fermenting, the Word shapes you to have the kind of conscience and intuition to make decisions, and that happens over a long period of time. What you are reading and praying now is usually getting you ready for decisions you have not yet faced.
3. Recognize the ways otherwise good decisions could be wrong for you.
Here’s where the objective and the subjective meet. You have to know not just what is right or wrong but what is right or wrong for you given your temperament, vulnerabilities, and experiences. The recovering alcoholic should probably say no to attending bartending school.
Years ago, I was asked to consider doing a talk-radio call-in program on a regular basis. I’d done it as a fill-in many times, enough to see I would be both personally miserable and professionally bad at doing what that format would require—surfing whatever was outraging the audience at the moment. Some people could do that—and have—without becoming audience-captured hacks. But I think I would have struggled. Saying yes to that opportunity wouldn’t be straightforwardly morally wrong, but it would have put me in a place of temptation I am now quite sure that I couldn’t have handled.
4. Subvert your quirks.
Look back on your decision-making and ask whether your temperament leans more toward impulsiveness or fearfulness. If you typically make rash decisions, tell yourself to slow down. Sometimes that kind of quickness is its own kind of indecisiveness: If I just jump and do it, I don’t have to spend time wondering about it. On the other hand, if you tend to ruminate endlessly on whether to do something, price that in too and realize that no matter when you make a decision, your psyche will scream at you, Why so fast? What if something goes wrong? Resolve not to let that rule you.
If you typically try to gain happiness with some change in venue, recognize that and slow down. If you typically try to find contentment by retreating to a rut, spur yourself into what will feel dangerous for you.
5. Don’t panic at perplexity.
With a lot of decisions, there is a long time of not knowing what to do. That can lead us to feel anxious, as though we will always be uncertain. But our perplexity is a crucial part of the decision-making. We don’t like that. This is one reason some people want a firm, unquestionable answer as to what they should do—whether that’s a set of data points (a personality or aptitude test, for example) or an indisputable, settled peace. We want a solid answer for the same reason people want to read horoscopes: We want the kind of control that removes the risk of making the wrong decision.
Most of the time, though, that sort of immediate clarity would destroy us later. Our Lord’s brother James told us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (1:5, ESV throughout). That’s not a one-time ask. We don’t ask for wisdom and then get a lifetime supply. Just as we keep asking for bread daily, we must keep seeking guidance from God.
An essential aspect of the feeding of the 5,000 was Jesus asking his disciple Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” John reported this was not because Jesus did not know the answer, “for he himself knew what he would do” (John 6:5–6). Philip first had to come to the edge of what he could know and do in order to say, There is no way to do this. Your perplexity may well be shaping you into the kind of person you will need to be on the other side of it.
6. Expect a gradual realization more often than a sudden epiphany.
Once, when I was making a personally important decision that was taking a long time, I talked to the late Tim Keller about how to decide. He said, “You don’t need to. You’ve already made this decision. Your conscious mind just hasn’t caught up to the rest of you yet.” He was right. Looking back, I could see how, even in my fear, I was spending more and more time imagining the future that could be. I could see all the little providences that seemed to be getting me ready for it. Often, I’ve found that many decisions seem less like “Let there be light” and more like the sunrise that is so subtle we cannot really see when the night ended and the morning began except by looking back.
7. Seek out third-space advice.
The Book of Proverbs tells us that “in an abundance of counselors there is safety” (11:14), and most of us realize we need advice. But it’s also important that you see the different kinds of counsel you need. Sometimes you need advice from someone who knows you, loves you, and has your best interest in mind. But with some things, that person has too much of a stake in your decision. Sometimes you need advice from someone at a distance, someone who doesn’t know you and can tell you objectively what to choose.
But often you need a third kind of advice. You need counsel from someone who knows your strengths and weaknesses but is distant enough that he or she won’t be affected by what you decide.
8. Take responsibility but lose control.
One of the reasons decisions can provoke such anxiety is that we want to protect ourselves from future hurt or regret. To some degree, that’s healthy. Jesus affirmed that only a foolish king would go to war without first sitting down to “deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand” (Luke 14:31). But he said this in the context of taking up the cross and following him. That’s not a matter of calculation and control.
Jesus said to Peter, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand” (John 13:7). In conforming us to himself, Christ does not give us what we want—an ahead-of-time overview of exactly the path he has planned for us.
“Little children, keep yourselves from idols,” the Bible tells us (1 John 5:21). Sometimes that idol can be a refusal to make a decision—expecting to be carried along without ever having to say yes or no. Sometimes that idol can be a refusal to wait for a decision to present itself—wanting some sort of sign to choose for us. For some, the idol can be a refusal to think. For some, the idol can be overthinking. For some, the idol can be trusting themselves too much. For others, it can be second-guessing themselves too much.
An idol is predictable. We make its mouth and give it the words we want to hear. The living God is different. We can ask for guidance, but we cannot peer into every counterfactual. We can take responsibility for our decisions while also trusting that God’s providence includes even all of that.
Russell Moore is editor at large and columnist at Christianity Today as well as host of the weekly podcast The Russell Moore Show from CT Media.
The post 8 Things I’ve Learned About How to Make a Major Life Decision appeared first on Christianity Today.