The Filtering Effect on Decision Making

This reflection is adapted from Andrew H. Selle, Make Smart Choices (not Foolish Ones)—Together!  The Theology and Practice of Church Decision Making (WestBow Press, 2025).          

Wisdom created. God grants wisdom through the “light of nature,” available to all people through careful observation of the perfect order in all he has made. Many former atheists in various scientific fields have come to acknowledge the Creator simply by observing creation’s exquisite design. Everything we see in God’s universe ought to lead us worship him intelligently and with ever-increasing adoration.

           Wisdom corrupted. In an unimaginable tragedy, Adam’s fall into sin corrupted him, his progeny, and even impacted the creation around him. In the Lord’s pristine Garden, the devil lured our parents by offering knowledge without love, the promise of independent wisdom—which was actually demonic pseudo-wisdom. Now the world demands to grasp such understanding, and the flesh lusts for it. Sinners crave knowledge to “succeed” on their own terms with no God to hinder their quest. They strive to be successful or popular or comfortable, or to get even—anything but to gain true knowledge of God. This is me-wisdom, with self on the throne. Adam and Eve become cosmic traitors and reject God in favor of the devil’s experiential “knowledge of good and evil.” From that point, everything plummets down the cliff face of human history.

           Grace abounds. Humanity’s miserable condition after the Fall forms the dark backdrop for God’s grace in all its brilliance. He opens hearts and minds of blinded sinners, so they acknowledge their sin and turn from it intelligently, spurning the devil’s lies and believing the truth of God’s Word. Not just individuals, but entire groups can change, too—often initiated by humble leaders who become the “chief repenters” and thus lead the church to Christ. Effective Christian decision making always grounds itself upon the gospel of Christ crucified, risen, ascended, and now dwelling in his people. We rejoice, “Our sins are forgiven!”—and therefore, “God is among us!”

           But with resistance. Sin creates the moral struggle for gaining wisdom, and this meshes with our ontological condition—finiteness. Highlight this critical feature of faulty decision making: Not only are humans sinful; they are finite. Our knowledge is limited, incomplete, and often inaccurate, and this reality greatly complicates our ability to choose well. And when human sinfulness is thrown into pot, which it always is, we are cooking the recipe for disaster. It is often difficult to sort “sinful” from “finite” in our analysis of decision-making problems, especially those made by groups, yet we can gain understanding of these errors by exploring them from the perspective of human limitations.

           Filtering of experience. Here is a reality of the human condition that becomes a source of many decision-making errors: We must filter the total available data in order to make sense of it, interpret it, and act wisely in light of it. We live by shorthand summaries of what our senses take in. That human limitation is simply realistic—and is not, in itself, sinful. For example, as I write, I just finished mowing our lawn before the rain came in. I began with the goal, “Cut the grass in my yard to a particular height.”

Yet to accomplish this task, I ignored vast amounts of information:

a. The “yard” is defined by precise boundary lines; the actual mow line is not. It’s close enough, and neither my neighbor nor I care if it’s off by a few inches on one side or the other.

b. Define “grass.” In my neighborhood, we aren’t too fussy about species; if it’s greenish, and not poison ivy, it’s probably fine.

c. It all got chopped to the same height. Or did it? Actually, the slight bumps and dips across the yard resulted in some grass blades being cut shorter or longer than others, and some not at all.

           All this extraneous information, along with the scratch on my sunglasses, some peeling paint on the side of the house, the traffic noise and squirrels, the barking dog next door, and thousands of other sensory events never entered my consciousness. They were not important to the task, so my mind filtered them out.[1] I did, however, pay attention to the dark clouds in the west, not wanting to be mowing under that tall pine tree during an electrical storm. We learn in life what to observe, what matters in various circumstances, and how to make choices accordingly.

           Created Design. This lawn-mowing illustration highlights a crucial attribute of human cognition and behavior: God created human beings in such a way that they must function within their created limitations. He designed us to love him and obey him under those limitations—and to thrive while doing so. For example, we can think of many right motivations for me to mow when I did. It is a way to show love to my wife who cares about the yard and wants to keep allergy-producing weeds at bay. It maintains a good reputation with neighbors who want their neighborhood to look presentable. It is a way to be busy with my own affairs and work quietly with my hands. It ought to be done safely, caring for my body, rather than risking being struck by lightning later in the day.

           Recall the three perspectives of obedience.[2] Divine Authority (“normative”): God commands me to love him and my neighbor. Divine Control (“situational”): God has placed me in this home, within this culture, as the location for my obedience right now. Divine Presence (“existential”):  I inwardly desire to be faithful to his calling, and do this next “good work” he has “prepared in advanced” for me to do.

           Malfunctions of the Design. Loving God and neighbor requires me to focus on what is most important at any given time and place. As we consider the various types of decision-making errors, we will observe the breakdown of that focus. All people battle the legacy of Adam’s sin and the immediacy of their own. The mind is weakened and warped. We become easily distracted from our calling. Instead of focusing on the grass to cut, I notice the peeling paint and start grumbling in my heart about the last painter, and I curse the squirrel in the birdfeeder who was doing nothing more than surviving.  So I repent, pray, and reset my attention upon completing the task at hand—mowing the lawn to the glory of God.

           Human Limitation Sanctified. Thank the Lord that he can show us viable alternatives to harmful decision-making patterns. Without that hope, we are stuck on a narrow path with a bottomless chasm on either side, paralyzed by fear and unable to move either forward or back. We rejoice that the God of Light will not leave his people in darkness when they rely upon him. Furthermore, reliance upon the Lord necessitates that we rely upon our brothers and sisters who are also seeking the Spirit’s wisdom. Created human limitations demonstrate that central theme which we keep circling around to: We need one another to make smart choices. “Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed.”

[1] For some people, focused attention is exceedingly difficult. Or on the other end of the spectrum, a powerful hyperfocus overtakes the mind. They become obsessed with useless minutia, every blade of grass, every precise measurement of the yard, and cutting in perfectly straight lines, which are impossible to achieve. We are describing in broad strokes symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). These and other psychiatric conditions, in a continuum of extremes, hinder the ability to weigh data appropriately and make decisions based upon what is relevant to the task at hand. Even if such conditions contain a physiological component, they will never cause a person to sin; they do, however, increase temptations to sin. This fact highlights the need for such individuals—indeed, every one of us—to rely on other people for “reality-checks” about what matters are objectively most important.

[2]Terminology of John M. Frame, summarized in Theology in Three Dimensions: A Guide to Triperspectivalism and its Significance (P&R Publishing, 2017), p. 24.