The Rationality of Commendations that are Rooted in Contradictions
In a prior post, using illustrations drawn from context of business, I showed a contradiction can embed a rational course of action.
In this post, I show that the God who reveals Himself in the Bible, The God who is Father of Jesus Christ, Himself embeds Commendations of people in Contradictions. I further demonstrate that, in an imperfect world filled with imperfect candidates, all of God’s commendations were perfectly rational.
First, however, delineation of an important principle. Suppose two candidates for a job, Candidates A & B. Suppose the recruiting team does not make any attempt to project it’s identity (it’s collective subjective preferences or biases) on the candidates, implements the hiring process solely for benefit of the organization. In this respect, note that it is well established that recruiting efforts of organizations have tendency not to address organizations’ most important needs (Tom 1971; Christiansen et al. 1997; Adkins et al. 1994; Kristof-Brown et al. 2005).
Suppose then that Candidate B is offered the job, goes on to deliver a solid average performance.
The question is: Should the hiring organization deem it’s hiring efforts not fully successful, this because Candidate B only manages to deliver average performance?
If we are to arrive at an answer to this question, the hiring organization has to quantify, had he been offered the job, the probability that Candidate A would have managed ‘higher than average’ performance. But by it’s hiring decision, the hiring organization already arrived at exactly such an estimate. In presence of this realization, all that is left is identification, if any, of any mitigating circumstances. In presence of mitigating circumstances, wise organizations do not fire or lay off, do the right thing, which is, provide Candidate B with more time for proving of his or her worth.
In this respect, a budding investment banker once walked into his CEO 's office to acknowledge some of his bets would be costing the company a couple of million dollars, but south of US$5 million. The bets had been placed within guidelines specified for his position, meaning he had not acted rogue. Sheepishly, he voiced the anticipation that he expected to be fired. In response, the CEO replied, “It just cost a couple of million dollars to provide you with some real world training, and you think am going to fire you?”
If a hiring decision has property of perfection — that is, certainty of choice of the very best candidate — all feasible outcomes attest to rightness of the hiring decision, for it must be unequivocal that all other candidates would, under similar circumstances, fare worse.
If (a philosophical ‘if’, that is, a person-neutral if) The Father of Jesus Christ is ‘God’ in terms of all that ought to be connoted by the word, ‘God’, He knows all things, as such is able to rank perfectly all candidates for a role that He has open, a role He needs to fill. So then, when He picks Abraham for filling of role of Father of Faith, yet with full knowledge that Abraham would not trust Him enough not to tell what he construed to be a harmless lie, this twice (Genesis 12:13; 20:2), it is because He could find none better. Add to this the fact that Abraham found it difficult to believe he could, in old age, have a child, and again, it must be because he could not, at that time, find anyone better.
Why then Abraham as Father of Faith?
Abraham would not condition his relationship with The Father on a benefit promised by The Father. His conviction of reality of the person of The Father was sufficient for maintenance of his faith.
When The Father of Jesus Christ declares that Moses was, in his time, the most truly humble man, this regardless of the fact that Moses would attempt to claim credit for the very last miracle that was wrought through him by The Father (Numbers 20:7–13), it is because all other candidates, would, perhaps have needed restraining right from the very first post-Egypt miracle — the crossing of the Red Sea.
Why does The Father confer Moses with title of the most truly humble man?
Moses desired that every Israelite led by him could attain to his stature, and he worked tirelessly for 40 years towards the objective, but the people just were too stubborn. It was their attacks on his person that led to his mistake.
Perhaps the most seemingly undeserved commendation from The Father is the choice of Jacob over Esau as Father of the Nation of Israel.
The word Jacob means ‘Usurper’; the word Israel, ‘Prince’.
What tilted the balance in favor of the conniving, dubious, lying, cheating Jacob whose name The Father would change to Israel?
From the seizing of his older brother’s heel to propel himself out of his mother, Rebecca’s womb (Genesis 25:26), people had it in for Jacob.
You know, the way people feel when they feel a person seems to be attempting to upend the way things are for arrival at good change that benefits them.
Jacob learnt to prevail, however, not by his old cunning, but via reliance on The Father. In the arrival at reliance on The Father, as opposed to his old ways, there was the assurance that he would make efforts to bring up his children to honor the name of The Father (Genesis 32:28). While Esau was a good man who, himself became great, he was a self sufficient man. Self sufficient men direct their children’s attention towards themselves, not towards The Father.
While he started out rough, Jacob earned his change of name from Jacob to Israel, and became more worthy than Esau for The role that The Father needed to fill.
The Evidence? While Edomites, the descendants of Esau cannot now be distinctly recognized, the descendants of Israel, the Jews, remain distinctly recognizable.
When the best that is available is rough and uncut, as such in need of refining and polishing, every commendation is, of necessity, rooted in a contradiction, a contradiction that, in entirety, is rational.
