LEARNING TO LIVE WITH OUR DECISIONS

When Dr. James Dobson, the man who has the answers on rearing difficult children (which of course includes all children!), was asked to name the most important thing for parents to learn, a kind of bottom line of all his teaching, he came up with: if you can but teach your children that they have to live with their decisions.

I was impressed that one who has produced dozens of video tapes and books on “how to” could come up with a one-liner like that. And what wisdom fills those words! It implies, of course, that a parent is able to let the child make his own decisions, at least some of the time. I can see a parent saying, “If you choose to use your savings on going to Six Flags again, then you’ll not have the money for the bicycle you’re saving for, but the decision is yours.” And of course the parent must be firm enough not to interfere with the law that one must reap what he sows. Dobson would not doubt insist that a parent makes a big mistake when she tries to get her kids off the hook once they are there by their own free choice.

After several tries as both parent and grandparent I can only say that Dobson’s rule is easier said than done. Dobson knows, of course, that some children seem never to learn the things that really matter, such as responsibility, and we can’t always sock them with the old law of Karma that the Hindus understand better than we. After all, if a kid carelessly loses his coat, then his cap, then his gloves, do you allow him to go to school bereft of such items? They also lose their glasses, their books, and sometimes even their shoes. As they get older it gets even more serious --- wasting time, money, and opportunity, running with the wrong crowd, abusing both mind and body. Their choices! And they don’t seem to learn from their mistakes.

Since we can in retrospect see the same irresponsibility in our own youth, if we are honest with ourselves, and by no means free of it in our adulthood, we can only conclude that there is something dreadfully wrong with the human race. We are fallen creatures, stymied by sin. So there is no way for us to live with our decisions except by God’s grace, and by that same grace we can learn to make more workable decisions.

Decision-making is the stuff of life. It isn’t just the kids who make decisions without considering the consequences down the road. All the human race has a proclivity for mocking God, so it is understandable that the apostle would urge believers as he does in Gal. 6:7: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” The law is a stubborn one. Even if we are repentant and turn our lives around, we still have to suffer from the profligacy of our earlier years.

Mortimer J. Adler, who advocates an education based on the great books and great ideas, says that mankind’s most perplexing problem is finding a way to persuade the youth to benefit from the wisdom of their elders. Why must each generation make the same mistakes as their parents, having to learn the hard way on their own, only to become parents themselves, bewildered that their children will not listen to them? Again, it is our fallenness. It is the message Paul is trying to teach us in Romans. We must walk by faith, which may mean God’s faithfulness as well as our own trust in God.

It helps me as a parent and a grandparent to know what I am up against. I am sensitive enough to what sin has done to the human race that I am no longer easily shocked. While I shun pessimism and cynicism, I am a realist and so my expectations of others are moderate. I like Alexander Campbell’s “Expect great things from God, do great things for God,” and I make demands for myself, but I find life easier to negotiate if I keep on trying to improve myself rather than try to change others.

Now and again I find myself saying to Ouida when we are disappointed with choices made by our children: we can live before them what we believe to be the good life, and that’s about all we can do, except to pray for them. That is especially the case after they grow older. But Dobson ‘is right: if when they are young we can implant within them the inexorable law of sowing and reaping, that they have to live with their decisions, we do them a great service. To do that without “lecturing” requires wisdom that may come only through practice and prayer.

Decision-making has its other side. We must teach ourselves and our children alike that firmness and decisiveness ennobles character. Through fear of making the wrong decision we may become indecisive. When we see what is right, we must do it boldly; if it is wrong, leave it undone. We are only half alive when we do things in halves. If we cannot decidedly say No! when we are tempted, we are on the way to destruction.

Martin Luther may have had his weaknesses but indecisiveness was not one of them. “Here I stand,” he cried before his accusers, “I can do no otherwise. God help me, Amen.” It was a decision he was willing to live with, and one that he almost died with!

Being a strong believer in the human will, I see Dobson’s rule as a rule for all of life, and not simply in child-rearing. A man can will (resolutely decide) to be a loving and thoughtful husband. A woman can will to be a gracious and beautiful person. We can all will to be courteous, caring persons. Love is as much (maybe more) a matter of will as it is of feeling. A person with a prudish, factious heart can change by making the decision to be different. God helps those to victory who make such decisions. So, not only must we live with our decisions, we can live with our decisions. It must be largely the case that if we make the wrong decisions it is because we do not want to make the right decisions. The wrong decision is often the easier one, such as not keeping one’s word or not paying an honest debt. It is noble to say “I was wrong and I am sorry,” but too few of us decide to make such statements, however appropriate they would be. Admittedly, the tougher decisions are often painful, such as facing up to our own ignorance, but they bring great reward after awhile. We must all guard against the malady of not really wanting the kingdom of God within us.

William James, the Harvard philosopher of yesteryear, applied this sort of thinking to belief in God. Belief in God is a crucial issue, he insisted, in that it is unavoidable, momentous, and live. Many of life’s questions, he said, are avoidable, trivial and dead or irrelevant, but the question of God is related to our very being. This being the case, one must (it is forced) decide either to believe or disbelieve. The doubter, who tries to postpone a decision, is really deciding not to believe.

But one can believe, James argued, by willing to believe, for the evidence for believing is at least as strong as for not believing. And so his “will to believe” became widely acclaimed as a challenge to the skeptics. James would insist on the obverse, that people do not believe in God because they don’t want to!

It may be true of so much of life. We can see the good more than the bad if we want to. We can believe the best about people if we want to. We can put the best interpretation on what happens instead of the worst if we want to. We can be joyful, hopeful, trustful, loving in all of life’s endeavors if we want to be.

Perhaps this is what Jesus has been trying to teach us, as per Jn. 7:17: “If anyone wants to do His will, he shall know the doctrine.” It is a point to be pondered that the glories of heaven depend upon the decisions we make. --- the Editor