RESPONSIBLE MINISTRY, BENEFICIAL TRUTH

No one values what they are not ready for. If you doubt it, deliver ten trucks of free ice cream to the lawn of an ice cream shop owner with no extra space in the freezer. They absolutely value the amount and specific types of the ice cream they ordered, which is the ice cream they are low on and need to have on hand to sell, as they value owning a well stocked and efficient business with a good reputation, and they value profit they earn by having them, and if their order is delayed, they will be distressed as they see dissatisfied customers leave without spending money on what they wanted. But multiplying the amount of the same thing they value in a specific quantity and type and the wrong timing does not multiply the value of it; in fact, apart from adding them no resale value at all, several tons of melted cream will also destroy the value of their lawn and property, not to mention rob them of the value of their own time in dealing with the huge non-blessing that it is. This principle applies to the arrival of the perfect romantic partner when you are not ready, say when you are still struggling with making a failing marriage work and the added complication multiplies the legal costs and emotional distress by multiplying the challenges of navigating the divorce while starting the new relationship on rocky ground instead of starting it one year later after a mature and responsible conclusion to the first marriage, arrived at on its own merits and terms. It can even apply to having unexpected money show up out of the blue, say for instance showing up in December where it puts you into a higher tax bracket while suddenly robbing you of huge subsidies you were depending on qualifying for, whereas if the money arrived in January, you could plan the whole year accordingly. In some cases the subsidies people have lost amounted to more than the unplanned money they received, and as such the money was a curse and not a blessing. This principle also applies to knowledge, because knowledge you are not ready to accept and use is not a blessing, and may be a curse too. Knowledge of good and evil, if insufficient to produce conviction to overcome character deficiencies, may only serve to increase one’s accountability for bad choices, whereas the same knowledge dispensed in measured quantities and the right timing would be of inestimable worth. If the range of our gaze is only to the extent of identifying right and wrong, truth and untruth, and opportunities to speak it and not penetrating into the lives and circumstances of those we attempt to thrust it upon, then we are self absorbed, seeking only our own blessing and not theirs, serving ourselves and not them, and certainly not God. And if we think that shortsighted efforts that are not calculated to benefit others can ever bless us, then we have received the wrong kinds of knowledge, or at the wrong times, in the wrong proportions or in the wrong order, and in that wrong order have formed our values.