Editor’s Note: You can read our previous articles in this series below:
Making Wise Family Decisions
Who is Ultimately Responsible for Family Decisions?
Foolish Ways of Making Family Decisions
As part of our ongoing series focused on making wise family decisions, we’ve been exploring many different facets of decision-making. Our North Star for family decisions should be God’s Word as we seek wisdom to honor our heavenly Father in all of our choices. Unfortunately, we live in a fallen world and there are many foolish ways that people make decisions for their families.
In our last article, we looked at several foolish ways of decision-making: recklessly, naively, fleshly, and passively. We’ve just scratched the surface of common ways that people make unwise decisions. Let’s look at several other common ways of foolish decision-making.
Timidly
Description: Making decisions based on fear.
Examples:
- Analysis paralysis – being too overwhelmed to make a decision, because of all of the potential options.
- Fear of failure – not making a decision, because you’re afraid to make a mistake.
- Always taking the safest decision, even if it is not best for your family.
- Making decisions for your family based on what your parents want.
What Does the Bible Say About This?
for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
2 Tim 1:7
For those that are thoughtful when making decisions, you may be overly risk-averse. In general, it’s good that you don’t want to take unnecessary risks (see Prov 27:12). However, nothing in life is risk-free, so if you only base your decisions on all the things that could possibly go wrong or, if you can’t make a decision because you’re afraid of failure, that’s not good for your family (see also Eccl 11:3-4).
I had a close friend who was like this: he would not make a decision until he had researched every aspect of it to the nth degree. He and his wife had a broken dryer for over a year and they had to do laundry at other people’s houses, because he had narrowed down his research to a few dryers, but still hadn’t decided which one was the absolute best.
Another form of this is being afraid of upsetting family members. In trying to please your parents or in-laws or conform to cultural expectations, you might choose things for your family that neither you or your spouse want. This is the fear of man at play and is not the way to be making decisions for your family. Scripture says, “The fear of man lays a snare; but whoever trusts in the LORD is safe” (Prov 29:25).
Ignorantly
Description: Making decisions without understanding the details.
Examples:
- Making commitments without researching all that it entails.
- Buying a house without understanding the hidden costs.
- Investing in the latest meme stock or cryptocurrency because everyone else is doing it.
What Does the Bible Say About This?
Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way.
Prov 19:2
If you’re making a big decision about something that is complex, but you haven’t done any research or consulted with people who are educated about the issues, you could be setting yourself up for failure. If you make a long-term commitment without researching all that you’re signing up for, you may be paying for your mistakes for a long time. Lack of due diligence can lead to huge traps.
Selfishly
Description: Making decisions that only benefit yourself.
Examples:
- Always pushing for your way over the needs or desires of your spouse.
- Spending significant portions of your family’s income on your hobbies or pet projects.
- Spending your time and energy on things that only benefit you and don’t serve your family or others.
What Does the Bible Say About This?
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
Phil 2:3
If you are always pushing for your own way and what you want while ignoring your spouse’s needs or desires, that’s selfish. Consistently making decisions that only benefit you is harmful to your marriage and your family.
By the grace of God, if you’ve placed your faith in Christ, He has paid for our foolish or sinful decisions on the cross. However, as followers of Jesus, we should want to honor Him by making decisions that are in keeping with His word. In our next article, we’ll look at biblical principles that will help us make wise decisions.
