Thinking in Christ — Issue 27: Consider Your Ways

Now therefore this is what Yahweh of Armies says: Consider your ways. (Hag 1:5)

The age has a counsel for the man who has just decided, and it sounds like responsibility. Assess the results. Count the positive consequences and the negative ones. Identify the lessons learned. Analyze the mistakes honestly and without defensiveness. Seek feedback from others. Engage in self-reflection, examining the biases and assumptions that shaped the choice. Extract the key learnings, write an action plan, apply the lessons next time, and keep iterating. Share the reflections with the team, foster a learning culture, and grow continuously. On this telling, the reflective man is the man who reviews himself well, and the better decision next time is the reward of the better review this time.

Therefore this issue must ask what the review itself assumes. It assumes a reviewer fit to judge his own ways, a standard clear enough to measure them by, and an outcome plain enough to read the verdict from. But if the reviewer is the man whose ways are under review, the review cannot be trusted to acquit or condemn him rightly. And if the outcome is the judge, then success will baptize disobedience and failure will condemn obedience, though Scripture does neither. The command does not say, measure your results and improve yourself. It says, consider your ways. The ways are considered before a Judge, not before a mirror.

Consider first the anchor, and the case that carries it. Now therefore this is what Yahweh of Armies says: Consider your ways. (Hag 1:5) The people had sown much and brought in little. They ate and did not have enough. They drank and were not filled. They clothed themselves and no one was warm, and he who earned wages earned wages to put them into a bag with holes in it (Hag 1:6). The outcome was plain, and it was bad. Yet the bad outcome was not itself the lesson. The reason was: each of them was busy with his own house while the house of Yahweh lay waste (Hag 1:9, paraphrased). A man who only assessed his results would have concluded that he needed a better technique for sowing and earning. He would have iterated his way deeper into the same disobedience, with a better plan. The outcome exposed the waste. It did not define it. The Word defined it, and the Word named the way back: go up, build, and let Yahweh be glorified (Hag 1:8, paraphrased). Reflection that stops at the result learns how to fail more efficiently. Reflection that hears the Word learns where the way itself went wrong.

Because of this, the reviewer must be named before the review is trusted. The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it? (Jer 17:9) A deceitful heart does not review itself neutrally. It reviews itself in its own favor. It will call a costly obedience a mistake, because it counts cost as failure. It will call a profitable disobedience a lesson learned, because it counts profit as wisdom. It will rename a sin a shortcoming, so that it can be managed rather than repented of. The method will look honest, open, and iterative. And it will lie, because the hand that ran it wanted a particular verdict before the first result was assessed.

Yet the next verse does not leave the review to the reviewer. I, Yahweh, search the mind, I try the heart, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings. (Jer 17:10) The searching belongs to Yahweh first. He gives according to the ways, not according to the man's account of his ways. This is why true reflection begins not with self-examination but with being examined. Search me, God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way. (Ps 139:23-24) The psalmist does not ask God to confirm his self-assessment. He asks God to replace it, and to lead him in a way that is not his own. No mind is neutral (Rom 12:2, paraphrased). A mind conformed to the world reviews its outcomes by what worked and what cost least. A mind renewed by the Word reviews its ways by what He commanded and what He forbade. Every thought must be taken captive to obey Christ (2 Cor 10:5, paraphrased), including the thought that the review is now complete and honest.

For this reason, feedback finds its true place under the Word rather than above it. The voices of others can be useful. They can see what the man cannot see and corroborate what the Word has already said. But voices can corroborate. They cannot found. God's testimony about His Son stands first (1 John 5:9-10, paraphrased), and a verdict confirmed by every colleague and contradicted by the Word is still false, while a verdict contradicted by every colleague and commanded by the Word is still true. A learning culture built on shared reflection will only share the same blindness more widely unless the Word judges the sharing. Confession to one another has a place (Jas 5:16, paraphrased), but confession is not a feedback exercise. It is the naming of sin before God and before the brother wronged, and it ends in prayer and turning, not in an improved process document.

At the same time, Scripture does not forbid looking back. It commands looking back in the right direction. Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to Yahweh. (Lam 3:40) The searching and the trying have a destination, and the destination is not a better version of the man. It is Yahweh. That is what reflection sounds like when it is honest: not, here is what I will do differently, but, here is where I rebelled, and here is the God to whom I turn. Likewise the psalmist: I considered my ways, and turned my steps to your statutes. (Ps 119:59) Consideration ends in turning. A review that produces only a plan has not yet reflected. A review that produces turning has reflected, because the way itself has changed direction.

This is where mistakes must be distinguished, for not every sorrow over a mistake is repentance. For godly sorrow produces repentance to salvation, which brings no regret. But the sorrow of the world produces death. (2 Cor 7:10) Worldly sorrow grieves the cost: the reputation lost, the opportunity missed, the outcome spoiled. It will gladly extract a lesson if the lesson spares it the next cost, and it will call that extraction growth. Yet it produces death, because it has grieved the consequence and left the rebellion untouched. Godly sorrow grieves the sin itself, and it produces a turning that brings no regret because it does not depend on whether the next outcome improves. A man can learn a technique from a failure and remain in the same rebellion that caused it. The age asks, what did you learn? Scripture asks, to whom did you turn?

Consider, then, what happens to iterative improvement when it is placed under this rule rather than above it. Improvement is real, but it is not self-made. One plants, another waters, but God gives the increase (1 Cor 3:6-7, paraphrased). The man does not improve himself by reviewing himself. He is kept and completed by the God who began the work in him (Phil 1:6, paraphrased). This does not abolish diligence. It relocates it. Diligence is no longer the engine of growth. It is the fruit of being led. The man who trusts his review to improve him will iterate forever, because each review is run by the same heart that needs changing. The man who is led in the everlasting way (Ps 139:24) changes by a power outside himself, and his review becomes testimony rather than technique.

This is where the testimony reaches its center. The wisdom by which every outcome must be weighed is not a method the man masters. It is a person the man receives. Christ is made wisdom to those who are in Him, with righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1 Cor 1:30, paraphrased). Apart from Christ, the understanding is darkened and the life of God is alien to the man who reviews himself (Eph 4:18, paraphrased). In Christ, the past is not raw material for self-improvement. It is judged and covered at the cross, and the man is no longer condemned for the ways he now turns from (Rom 8:1, paraphrased). The contrast is never between the reflective man and the unreflective man. It is between the man in Christ and the man apart from Christ, and the same Word searches both. Every mind is a slave to sin or to God (Rom 6, paraphrased). Autonomy is not a skill for learning from mistakes. It is the fall itself, renamed as reflection.

So let the final word reverse the age's counsel. Do not assess the results, extract the learnings, and then iterate toward a better self. Begin where the anchor begins. Now therefore this is what Yahweh of Armies says: Consider your ways. (Hag 1:5) Let His Word define the way, search the heart, name the rebellion, and lead the feet. A past that God has already judged is not material to be mined. It is a way to be turned from, toward the God who searches, pardons, and leads.

I considered my ways, and turned my steps to your statutes. (Ps 119:59) The outcome does not judge the way. The Word judges the way, and the turning proves the judgment was heard.