"Every system is perfectly designed to yield it's results."- Anonymous
Parents have a lot of great one-liners. I don't know if they are passed down from parent to parent in some sort of secret book when a couple have their first child, or if it's like some sort of gnostic quest for hidden knowledge that you unlock at a certain stage of enlightenment, or if it just kinda hits you in the face one day when you're changing your first diaper. Some of them are just goofy enough to merit being classified as what you might expect to hit you in the face when you're changing your first diaper. But others are pretty good. Like the quote above, for example. The fact that no amount of googling was able to turn up an original source for that quote might actually lend itself to the theory of some secret book of parental wisdom, but whatever. Bottom line, it was one of those things my dad said about as often as my mom said "it's easier to prevent a mess than to clean on up." Which was a frequent occurrence with me in the house. In fact, most of this post is stuff he has taught me in one form or another, so I take credit for none of it.
But anyway, as with most bits of "hidden wisdom*," you have to reach a certain stage of "enlightenment*" to get the meaning. For me, it was about 16ish. Right around the time *some* of the teenage brain began to wear off, and two very helpful things called "foresight" and "hindsight" began to develop. You know, the things that tell you "Hey, this ______ (insert incredibly dangerous teenage stunt) might not actually be the best idea..." and "Wow. That ______ (insert same knuckle headed scheme) was definitely a bad idea." Prior to developing those precious instincts, all that really comes through up there is "BROOOO..." right before you jump and "duuuuuudeee...." right after. Sometimes in reverse order. But anyway, I digress.
After putting that one phrase to the test for several years I began to realize that, go figure, dad was right. Everything I did added up to a system. And every system was perfectly designed to yield the result that it did. Whether it was the physics behind a particularly daring jump that lead to a particularly broken leg, or the 18 years worth of cumulative experience that lead to my desire to be a pastor one day, it's all the same. It's all a system, and it's all perfectly designed. Which brings me to the main point, and the reason I decided to write this today: 2015 was a system. And where your life was last night, on December 31st, 2015, was the result it was perfectly designed to yield. So i guess the question that begs answering is, "Are you happy with your result?"
I see so many Facebook statuses, tweets, and instagram posts all devoted to the same idea, that people are so glad 2015 is over. As if everything bad that happened to them was somehow now definitively in the past, whereas 24 hours ago it was still painfully in the present. The hard reality of the situation is, every system you have not intentionally changed is still in place. If you had a system of self destructive behaviors in place last year, then unless you have gone in and intentionally re-worked them, they are still there. Buying a new calendar didn't change that. If you made poor decisions last year, and have yet to isolate the errors within those decisions, then you will almost certainly make similar if not identical ones in 2016.
Now, if you find yourself thinking that this New Year's Eve was almost hopelessly bad, and that changing that tangled mess of systems seems almost impossible at this point, then let me suggest something: start at the beginning of the system. Just like altering the aim of an arrow by a few inches at the bow can alter the target of the shot by hundreds of yards in any direction, so can altering the most foundational parts of your system. Perhaps rather than focusing on a particular negative outcome, or a myriad of negative behaviors all at once, you could kill multiple birds with one stone by altering the source of all of them; your heart.
Of course, different people's systems start out in different ways, so when I say "heart" I could really mean either your emotions or your thoughts. Some people feel based on their progression of thoughts (me) and others think based on their strongest emotions at a given time (the majority of people). So for some it may be as simple as changing a distorted thought pattern, and for others it could be a matter of recognizing unhealthy or wounded emotions. But regardless of which camp you fall into, we can probably simplify this even further by starting with your "desires." Because fact of the matter is, whether you think through emotions or feel based on thinking, the direct motivation of that system is your desires. It's what you want. It's what you don't want. Sometimes it's even what you want not to want. But however you want to call it, it's what drives you.
So how can you go about adjusting your desires to improve your system? Well, truth is you can't. You are not powerful enough to do it. Jeremiah 17:9 says "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick. Who can understand it?" Our hearts are hopelessly (in a sense of our own ability) broken, and beyond our ability to repair. Have you ever noticed what happens when you try to cultivate pious thoughts behind your pious actions? For example, have you ever done something nice for somebody, kept it a secret in an attempt to be humble, and then become prideful at your own humility? No? Ok. I'm the only depraved one here then. Or what about the myriad of times we do something kind for someone not just so they will be better off, but so that they will think better of us? Yeah. We are all pretty bad off. Heaven forbid any of us were to start a blog to show off our theological knowledge, as that would be the hight of hypocrisy.
What I'm trying to get accross is that we are all desperately damaged. But we should probably finish the verse in Jeremiah 17. It concludes, "I, The Lord, search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds." So not only does the Lord know and discern the heart, but He puts it to the test. To judge the fruit of the system, and then to improve the system. Because in all honesty, the system belongs to Him.
Yes, The Holy Spirit has a system of His own in place. Because the more radically depraved we are, the more we will learn to depend upon the sufficiency of His righteousness. Only once we have seen the state of our own hearts without Him, will we learn of a holy discontentment with our sin, and an inability to be satisfied or to receive joy from any of the things we desperately seek apart from Christ. Only at that point could we begin to cultivate a new desire. A desire for something other, something better than what we have. It is from this first step that Christ will begin a new creation. Just think about that... A system perfectly designed to create something new and beautiful out of tragedy. If only God were sovereign enough to do something like that, huh? (Proverbs 16:9, Romans 8:18-25, Romans 9, James 4:13, etc say he is.)
But I understand that this whole concept of a God sovereign enough to work all things (the greek word used there is πας, meaning literally "all things," in case you were wondering) together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28) is hard to accept for some. So if by chance you are curious about what it would mean for God to be so sovereign as to work even our pain and our desires into His plan to draw us to Himself, please feel free to email me. I would love to talk with you further about it! I also plan to address the topic more fully in future blog posts. In the mean time, check out websites like www.desirginggod.org, www.aomin.org, www.thegospelcoalition.org, www.reformedpub.com, and ligonier.org.
Or best of all, go read Paul's letters to the Romans, Galatians, and the Ephesians, or the whole book of Job. Really, pretty much anywhere we look in Scripture we are faced with the reality that there actually is a being in the universe who lives up to the title of "God," and I think that is more than most people, including most Christians want to admit. But I think the more you look at it, the more you realize that only a God like that could ever have the power to mend such broken beings as ourselves.
Or best of all, go read Paul's letters to the Romans, Galatians, and the Ephesians, or the whole book of Job. Really, pretty much anywhere we look in Scripture we are faced with the reality that there actually is a being in the universe who lives up to the title of "God," and I think that is more than most people, including most Christians want to admit. But I think the more you look at it, the more you realize that only a God like that could ever have the power to mend such broken beings as ourselves.
Thanks for reading, and happy New Year.
- Robert Jackson
*In case it's not implicitly obvious, I'm joking about the ancient heresy of gnosticism, not espousing it. Don't write me emails about that.
