Hey friends,
There are a few topics that have been sitting hard on my heart for some time. Largely, these are observational-only topics that I honestly don’t know where to place in Scribbler. I’ve decided to put them under Prattles of Faith because these are, in part, theological in nature. This is not a researched phenomenon, so it will take the form of an opinion piece.
The first subject I want to tackle is about values, and it comes from two verses in the Bible. The verses are not connected by content, but there are contextual links I wish to discuss.
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matt 6:21
“Brood of vipers! How can you speak good things when you are evil? For the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart.” Matt 12:34
Here’s the basic context: Matt 6:21 is about earthly treasures; Matt 12:34 is about being careful with the words we say. And that’s the context surrounding those verses. So how do they connect? In a word: values. What we value, we will spend money and fight tooth and nail to get. Also, what we value will be spoken from the heart. But what we say does not always align with what we do. These values are competing with one another. Virtue signaling, as I’ve seen, is the process by which we express our values to get people on board with us. It’s intentional. It is also not what is happening here.
In this verse, Jesus is speaking directly to the self-righteous Pharisees, who justified their opposition to God’s law in the name of human tradition. A problem Isaiah identified as coming hundreds of years before Christ appeared. The problem is that humans tend to see what they say and do as right. We justify, instead of examining, put our self-interests ahead of others, and even claim that being self-interested is to put others first. This goes against true altruism because, in true altruism, we do not consider our own interests at all, only the interests of others.
This issue comes with a paradox. Moral and ethical ambiguity (neutralness) does not actually exist. We have to wrestle with the sources of morality and ethical decisions in our lives and expand them. Why? Because we live in a gray world of brokenness, not in black-and-white. Many of the morally good and ethically good decisions do not easily cross, and we are limited in making good decisions. We can’t know everything, and we can only make decisions on the knowledge we possess. Therefore, we need to expand that knowledge, and yet, we must at times draw hard lines while admitting our limitations. We must do the right things for the right reasons with the guidelines we know. In essence, this is one complicated and messy process.
When I started writing my books, I kept this in mind. Larkspur, my beloved narrator, constantly pours his own ethics and morality into the pages. However, many of the characters struggle to make the right decisions and end up making mistakes because of their limited knowledge. However, I often struggled to convey Larkspur’s ethics and morality because they don’t always align with my own. I believe his ethics and morals are good, but my practices and arguments often push the boundaries of Larkspur's. I am aware of this and admit it, but with hesitation. I want to be more like Larkspur, believing in absolute good and evil in decisions. But what I’ve learned in life makes the world more nuanced than his perspective. But if we examined Larkspur’s life and his sarcasm toward the other characters, does he even live up to his own expectations? No.
Larkspur and many of my other characters exemplify this miscommunication of values because I am attempting to portray them as believable, fallible characters. But many of us, including myself, live like Larkspur. I love and adore his character, but when a moral or ethical choice comes to this subjective narrator, which will certainly happen and soon in the series, will he change? That’s left to be discovered.
What about you?
Now presented with this opinion, given our limited knowledge and poorly communicated values, both verbally and through our actions, what will you do? I have a poor understanding of my own values and often rely on my gracious and loving wife to reflect my actions. I also see my actions reflected in my children's actions. The “do what I say, not what I do” as much as I’ve tried to avoid it, lives on through the next generation. Simply changing my language to “I’m only asking you to do what I do” is not enough. I have to do it. I also have to grow, get new tools, and pass that toolset off to them. We all probably were handed severely limited toolboxes to build our families with. I want to expand that so that when my kids grow up and have families of their own, they are not limited by the tools I can pass on. That means I have to change. Constantly. I have to grow. Constantly. I have to be in His word to read truth, above my own values, and align them with His. I want my heart to express the values that matter above all else. And I simply do not know them all yet.