I Decided, And I Am Still Explaining

Makoa decided in March. He is clear about that and he has never wavered since.

He sat down, he did the arithmetic properly, he asked the garage what it was likely to need and wrote the answer down, he looked at what a replacement would cost him against what the old one costs him, and he decided to keep it and run it until it stops, and he is comfortable with that and he would make the same call again today.

That was six months ago.

And he has explained it, at a conservative estimate, thirty times.

At two family dinners in full. To his brother, three separate times, because his brother keeps circling back. To a cousin at a christening. To his mother, twice, who did not ask but who made a face.

And every single one of those explanations has been good. He is articulate about it. He has the numbers. He can make the case in about ninety seconds and it holds up.

That is not the problem. Here is the problem.

Every time he makes the case, the decision goes back on trial.

Because that is what making a case does. It presumes a court, and a jury, and a verdict still pending. And by delivering it well, thirty times, Makoa has quietly taught everybody at that table, including himself, that this is a matter still under consideration and that they are entitled to a view.

He decided in March. And then he spent six months conducting an appeal against himself on behalf of people who were never his judges.

His brother said in August, near the end of one of these, "Well, it's your call."

And Makoa said, "It is, but the thing is..." and carried on for another two minutes.

And that sentence, it is, but the thing is, is the whole of this article.

His brother had conceded. The case was over. And Makoa kept arguing, because after six months the arguing had become the thing he does about the car rather than a thing that leads anywhere.

An explanation reopens what a report closes

Let me put down what I am not doing, so nothing has to brace.

I am not going to tell you whether the decision was right. You did the arithmetic and I did not, and it sounds like you did it properly.

And I am not going to tell you your family are overstepping. Nothing in this says that. A brother who circles back is usually a brother who is worried about something, and a mother who makes a face is a mother.

What I want to look at is the difference between explaining and reporting.

You have already made the decision, and Scripture treats a yes that means yes as sufficient on its own. Matthew 5 says let your communication be yea, yea, nay, nay, which is a plain answer given without the scaffolding a person builds to make it acceptable, and the Holy Spirit is what makes a short report a whole answer rather than half of one.

Here is the verse, and Paul is at his bluntest in it.

For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.Galatians 1:10

Now, that is written in a heated moment and it is about doctrine rather than about vehicles, and I am not going to pretend a man's car decision is the gospel.

What I am taking is the distinction, because Paul draws it very sharply and it is the thing Makoa needs.

Do I seek to please men?

He is not asking whether pleasing people is pleasant. He is asking what job he is doing. And he names two jobs, and says they are not the same job, and that a man cannot be doing both at once in the same act.

Which puts a question under every one of those thirty explanations, and the question is: what was that ninety seconds for?

If it was to inform, it needed to happen once.

If it was to be agreed with, then it was the other job, and it will need to happen again next month, because agreement is not a thing a person can secure by being articulate.

You are not a man who cannot make a decision, and Scripture separates informing people from needing them to approve. It is written do I seek to please men, for if I yet pleased men I should not be the servant of Christ, which names those as two different jobs, and His Spirit is the one who makes that distinction usable at a family table.

You have been doing the second job while believing you were doing the first. Galatians 1 puts the two side by side as alternatives rather than as degrees of the same thing, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that a relief rather than an accusation.

A report does not need an audience to agree

Here is the practical thing, and it is a shorter sentence.

Next time it comes up, do not explain. Report.

I decided in March. I'm keeping it.

Eight words. And then stop talking. Completely. Do not add the numbers. Do not add the reasoning. Do not add the bit about what a replacement would cost, which is a good bit and which has been doing him harm for six months.

And here is what happens in the silence after eight words, and it is worth being ready for it.

Somebody will say something. Probably his brother. And the pull to answer will be enormous, because a case half made feels unbearable to a man who has a good case.

Do not answer it. Say, warmly, yeah, and then ask them about something else entirely.

Because the thing that closes a matter at a table is not a better argument. It is a person declining, pleasantly, to have the argument.

You have permission to stop making the case, and no verse anywhere requires a man to secure agreement before a decision is real. Galatians 1 puts the seeking to please men outside the job entirely, and the Spirit of God is what makes eight words and a silence an act of obedience rather than of rudeness.

And I want to say the honest half, because there is one and it is not comfortable.

Thirty explanations is a lot for a man who is completely settled.

I am not saying he is not settled. I think he is. But it is worth him asking, once, quietly, whether some part of him has been going back to that table hoping somebody would say that sounds right, and whether the not getting it is what has kept him going back.

That is not weakness. That is a man who would like his family to think well of his judgment, which is one of the more ordinary things a person can want.

You were never going to get that from an argument, and Scripture puts a man's approval somewhere other than in a room. It is written that we labor that whether present or absent we may be accepted of Him, which is 2 Corinthians putting the accepting with God, and His Spirit is what makes that steadier than thirty good ninety seconds.