Thought for the Day 02/03/22 - Decisions

AUDIO

Decisions, decisions ... what can you do?

What are you GOING to do?

The growing science of making decisions

Decision-making seems to be something that is receiving a lot more attention as Brexit and COVID increase the pressures on people and business, but in truth the 'science' of decision making has been getting increased attention for quite a long time. 

The London School of Economics even runs a six-week course in it, and no doubt that'll be a very good course!

So what actually is 'decision making' all about?

I love this definition from the online definitions service ... 

'A conclusion or resolution reached after consideration'

No doubt we'd love to think that this was true ... but in all honesty that's just NOT always the way we decide, and the psychologists are now really getting on top of this issue.

Automatic Judgements and Cognitive Bias

Human beings most often make their decisions somewhere deeper-down ... on the basis of their likes and dislikes, preferences and sub-rational opinions ... not as the result of on-the-surface rational approaches.

The academic experts speak of 'automatic judgements' and 'cognitive bias'.

The Apostle Paul, inspired by the Spirit of God, addressed this issue when he wrote to the Philippian church around 62 AD, as we see in our verse for today

The Key Factors for making good decisions

Paul identifies three key factors in ensuring we will 'decide what is best'

• Love that is increasing

We'll come back to that, but notice most people don't put this in their decision-making thinking. The Bible here puts it in first, with the next two considerations (normally considered essential) being made subsidiary ... tagging on behind this first one here.

No. When we talk about the things that make for good decisions, most people go straight to elements like the next two that Philippians lists here:

• Knowledge

The original Greek New Testament word used is ἐπίγνωσις (epignosis) and it  means precise and correct (we might say 'technical') knowledge. It is used in the NT of the knowledge of things ethical and divine.

• Insight

The Greek New Testament word here is αἴσθησις (aisthesis). It means perception, not only by the senses but by the intellect, what's called cognition or sometimes 'discernment' and it is used also used of moral discernment in ethical matters.

These last two words describe the things on which we'd like to think we base all of our  'rational' decisions.

But in practice people usually decide what it is they want to do, and then find rational reasons to back their decision ... and that's where the job can start to go radically wrong!

How we decide for the radically wrong reasons

The church at Philippi was a VERY diverse church. By background as well as nature they just DIDN'T see things the same way, and in any close-knit group of humans that gets frustrating. 

These negative emotions start to affect your character and the underlying 'gut' that makes most of our decisions.

You'll make BAD decisions if you're working with a frustrated, critical bad character, because it is that underlying character that forms your cognitive bias and make your quick automatic decisions.

Which all brings us back to Paul's primary focus for good decision-making in Philippians 1:9-10:

I pray this, that your love may abound even more and more 

in knowledge and 

every kind of insight 

so that you can decide what is best

You need knowledge and every kind of insight, but the first thing to tune is not your intellect or your database but the dominant chords of your heart. 

If you don't deal with that, your cognitive bias and your automatic decisions will be coloured by the rivalry, critical attitudes and unchecked competitiveness that riddle the human self ... and that's where your poorest decisions will come from.

So someone will ask ...

What is this 'love' of which you speak?

The Greek lexicon will tell you that ἀγάπη (agape) means brotherly love, affection, good will, love, and benevolence.

The first Philippian Christians were an Asian woman, an exploited slave girl and an ex-Roman centurion ... predicatably not the sort of people who'd have known a lot of love in their life!

But they'd met the undeserved love of God in the self-sacrificing Saviour as Paul preached and the effect on their personalities was transformational. 

That encounter with Christ as His message was preached started the process of putting His love in their hearts.

The point: Creating the transformation of mind

We need a transformation in our natural ways of thinking to build healthy cognitive bias and to govern the way we go with our automatic decision making ... the key to good decisions is a transformation on the inside of our character!

While that first encounter with Christ is transformative ... the way it can be when you meet someone very special indeed ... Paul writes of a transformation that is a continuing process.

This transformation is not something achieved by making a decision that 'love' is a good idea so now you are going to do better.

You don't mainly make good decisions because you've been on a course, but because you're engaged in a on-going thought-transformative process.

It's a matter fundamentally of two things, says the Apostle:

i) of being exposed to Christ's love every day, chewing over in your mind His loving ways to understand better what the loving thing to do in any situation would be ... growing in knowledge and depth of insight, and  

ii) living in a relationship of love with Him, loving back the One Who loves you so that your character is conditioned by His love, which makes your automatic decision-making a love driven process. That means spending time with Him throughout each waking hour, speaking, worshiping, fellowship-ing, spending TIME. As in any relationship ... investing in it, and in doing so learning from the universe's greatest mind.

Who else but the Universe's Creative Genius can better help you to deal with hard questions?!

The Takeaway

Good decision making is not a matter of getting a one off answer to a problem. 

You need to get into training to have the character ... to be the person ... who is going to make the best of decisions because it is out of that fundamental character that our decisions actually tend to come.

It's not a diploma course, it's CPD.

Paul says to 'abound more and more'.