Thinking in Christ — Issue 9

Approve What Is Excellent

"This I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment; so that you may approve the things that are excellent; that you may be sincere and without offense to the day of Christ;" (Phil 1:9-10)

Information arrives by the flood, and the flood does not ask permission. A day brings more claims, reports, opinions, and updates than any mind can hold, and most of it is true. That is the first difficulty. The problem is not only falsehood. A true fact can still be a distraction, and a mind that collects everything true will still be buried. Therefore the question is not only whether a thing is true. The question is whether it matters, and to what.

For relevance is always relevance to something else. A fact about a distant war matters to a man deciding whether to travel there, and not at all to a man deciding what to cook. A statistic is significant to the question it answers, and noise to every question it does not. Relevance is never a property a fact carries alone. Therefore ask first: relevant to what?

Thus the first discipline is to name the end before weighing the means. What question is actually being answered? What decision is actually being made? A report that does not touch the question at hand may be interesting, well-sourced, and entirely true, and still be beside the point. A mind full of beside-the-point truths cannot find the point when it needs it. Discernment begins by refusing to carry what the present question does not require.

Yet a second distinction must follow, because relevance alone is not enough. A thing can be relevant and still not be excellent. It can bear directly on the question, and still be a weight. Therefore Scripture draws a line the world does not draw: "lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us" (Heb 12:1). Note the pairing. Sin entangles, and weights slow. Not every weight is a sin. A legitimate concern, a true report, a fair grievance can become a weight when carried into a race where it does not belong. The runner drops weights not because they are false, but because they keep him from running. So the test is sharper than relevance. It is not only, does this bear on my question? It is also, does this build me up for the race? "All things are lawful for me," but not all things are profitable. "All things are lawful for me," but not all things build up (1 Cor 10:23). Lawful is not the same as profitable, and relevant is not the same as excellent.

Likewise, beware the confusion of loudness with significance. What shouts is not thereby important, and what is quiet is not thereby trivial. An urgent message demands attention now, but urgency is a claim about timing, not about worth. A scandal, a quarrel, a crisis arrive with sirens, and the sirens are mistaken for significance. Meanwhile the quiet work — a promise kept, a debt paid, a child taught — makes no noise, and is judged insignificant by a mind trained to measure importance by volume. But volume is not a measure. It is a tactic. The mind that follows volume will always be busy and always be behind, chasing whatever shouted last.

This is why the old distinction between the important and the merely pressing must be recovered, and why it must be recovered in Christ rather than in the self. The world's version of this discipline says: define your purpose, set your goals, and filter everything by whether it serves them. But if the purpose is self-chosen, the filter serves the self, and relevance becomes flattery. A man will call relevant whatever advances his plans, and call irrelevant whatever crosses them. He will filter out the rebuke he needs and filter in the praise he wants, and he will call the result discernment. The filter works perfectly, and the man is perfectly deceived, because the standard itself was never examined.

Therefore the governing inversion must be stated, for it changes the whole exercise. No mind is neutral. The mind is either conformed to this world or transformed by the renewing of the mind (Rom 12:2, paraphrase). Apart from Christ, the understanding is darkened and alienated from the life of God (Eph 4:18, paraphrase), and a darkened mind will weigh significance with darkened scales. It will call significant whatever serves its desires, and insignificant whatever threatens them. The heart is deceitful above all things (Jer 17:9, paraphrase), and a deceitful heart needs no false information to go astray; a true fact, carefully selected, will serve where a lie would have stood. Technique cannot cure this. A filter in the hands of a deceitful heart becomes one more instrument of the deceit.

Thus significance is not measured by usefulness to our plans. It is measured by excellence before Christ. The anchor passage gives the horizon: love abounding in knowledge and discernment, approving the excellent, sincere and without offense to the day of Christ. The day of Christ is the standard. A thing is significant insofar as it bears on that day — on sincerity, on righteousness, on the knowledge of Christ. This does not mean that only explicitly religious facts matter. A true report about a road or a price can be deeply significant, because life before Christ is lived in a real world. But the measure is not, does this serve my ambitions? It is, does this serve the life I am called to live before Him?

Moreover, significance is not fixed once and settled forever. What was needful in one season may be a weight in another. A question that rightly consumed a week may rightly be laid aside the next, not because the facts changed, but because the race moved on. Therefore continual evaluation is not restlessness. It is stewardship. Revisit what you carry, and ask again whether it still bears on the question and still builds up. Yet the standard does not change while the load changes. The day of Christ does not move. Only our carrying changes, and it changes against a horizon that stands still.

And because no single mind can be trusted to weigh its own load alone, evidence rightly used has its place. It checks, it corrects, it exposes the report that is loud but empty. But evidence is corroboration, never foundation. God's testimony about His Son stands first (1 John 5:9-10, paraphrase), and a mind that builds its sense of significance on what the evidence can prove will rebuild its world every time the evidence shifts. The weighing of information serves the truth. It does not create it.

This brings the matter to Christ, where it must come. Martha was anxious and troubled about many things, and none of them were imaginary. The serving was real, the guests were real, the work was real. Yet the Lord answered, "but one thing is needed. Mary has chosen the good part, which will not be taken away from her" (Luke 10:42). Many things, one thing. The many things were not condemned as false. They were set beneath the one thing, because the one thing could not be taken away and the many things would pass. Likewise Paul counts all things as loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord (Phil 3:8, paraphrase). Not because all things are worthless, but because beside that excellency they lose their claim to rule. The excellent reorders everything beneath it; it does not abolish the lesser things, it puts them in their place.

So approve what is excellent, and let the excellent do the sorting. Name the question before gathering the facts. Ask whether a true report bears on it, and then the sharper question: does it build up, or weigh down? Refuse the loud because it is loud, and the trivial because it is trivial, even when true. Re-examine the load as the race moves on. Do all of this, because a careless mind is not a faithful mind. But never ask the filter to do what only the Word can do. Every thought is taken captive to obey Christ (2 Cor 10:5, paraphrase), and the captive mind can afford to lay things down, because its life is not staked on carrying everything. The one thing needed will not be taken away. Let it measure all the rest.