And the LORD said, Don’t Prejudge a Thing

Introduction to Ethics was a seminary unit of study foundational for a theology for morality, proving how complex the wisdom of ethics is.

Recently I was given update training about the ethics of life in the only way life can teach us; through raw lived experience.

Something piqued my awareness that something suspicious was going on. Righteous anger welled up within me, and I decided to take matters further. I consulted with my wife. J Given the information I supplied, she was equally alarmed. We had to respond to this. Not an injustice done to us, but an injustice of systemic proportions where others affected, dozens of them, were potentially taken advantage of.

Ethics is about justice, and justice is about fairness, and fairness is about equity. Semantics, perhaps. But ethics is about people and a virtue ethic is about the fruit of the Spirit as it is shared in relationships. Obviously, the opposite is what I was concerned about — we were — the appetence of greed morphing into abuse. We were about to make a drastic decision.

Oh the folly of prejudging a situation!

How good is God to show us, me no less, within two hours, three separate and salient situations that would turn my perception, in gaining God’s perspective, on its head. From insidiousness to inspirational… in a matter of hours.

All because I had briefly misunderstood and misread a business model. That’s understandable. I wasn’t the author of it. I was just one of the stakeholders with my own skinny vantage point.

We see very little from a limited vantage point. And this is what ethics teaches us: we can only judge when we have the full picture. And rarely do we, ever, have that. Any response of judgment prior is a banking on folly. So many of us, so much of the time, have very little through which to see, and the moment we prejudge a situation we close our minds off to the truth that might otherwise break through the night experience that God wishes to turn into day for us. To look into a mirror with clarity when we would otherwise, without Him, look into that glass dimly.

The Author of the ethics of life is the Author of the wisdom of life, and these two are one and the same; they’re, like God, inscrutable, as life itself is enigmatic.

From the matter of understanding comes wisdom, and that because of one thing: right perspective. Upon which a true ethic can be gleaned.

Judge a thing prematurely and we can expect to get it wrong. Wait. Can you hear Him? He will speak when it’s time.

Ethics teaches us to wait on the truth, for the truth tarries, and the right remains behind the scenes for the proper time to be revealed.

Ethics in the Kingdom of God is wisdom for life for the discerning and doing of virtue.

Ethics is the provision of wisdom that saves us from the prejudging responses of folly.

I am so grateful to God, that, in this instance, He showed me what He had revealed for me to see. My prejudging of a situation was foolish. He came through with His wisdom, and everyone prospered, not least, me.

Only God can turn a person’s perspective so effectively.