The other day, I got into a brief Twitter exchange with Derek Webb, solo artist, and former member of the band Caedmon’s Call. A few years ago he went through a rather public divorce (his own word) from Christianity and doesn’t profess faith anymore. In our short back-and-forth, he made this comment to me:
“i’ve always hated the way the bible (and therefore, church) teaches to ‘lean not on your own understanding’, to distrust your gut. in my opinion, that’s a very problematic and destructive lesson.”
I suspect that he isn’t alone in this. “Lean not on your own understanding” comes from Proverbs 3:5-6, but Derek knows the Bible pretty well, and he probably had some other strands of biblical teaching in mind, like the deceptiveness of the human heart, and the “darkened understanding” spoken of in Ephesians 4:18 and other places.
He’s also right, at least in my experience of evangelical churches, that this often translates to a generalized warning against trusting yourself—your own heart, your inclinations, or your “gut” as he puts it, and I don’t doubt that it can be communicated or heard in harmful, steamrolling, and destructively stifling ways. I did ask what kind of things he had in mind when it called it “very problematic and destructive,” but as of this writing he hasn’t responded. In any case, Derek is an insightful guy, and what he did say got me thinking about this. So this article is some rough thoughts I had.
When we talk about trusting our “gut,” we’re usually talking about making decisions at a level of consciousness that’s above simple instinct, but maybe below fully deliberative and analytic. It might be something like whether or not, or how far, to trust someone you don’t know well or have just met. It might be which job to choose if you have two or more offers before you. It might be something more trivial, like what to order at a restaurant where you have never eaten and everything looks good, and you can’t decide between options, but after sitting on the fence for a minute you start to become conscious of your “gut” pulling you more toward one option than another.
Nothing in the Bible condemns the “gut” in that sense. It’s just an efficient way we are made to operate in a world where we often have to make choices without all the information or time to deliberate that we might want.
If I had to guess though, I think what Derek probably has in mind is what we might call our rational or moral gut, our intuition about what is true and good. To cut right to it: The idea that a man died on a cross 2,000 years ago and that somehow has an effect on my personal burden of guilt and my standing before God might not exactly cohere with my “gut” or what my brain would normally register as plausible. Looked at objectively and from the outside, it might strike as absurd. Folly, even (1 Corinthians 1:23). Another example: Most of us probably know people who identify as gay. Is it against our gut to affirm what the Bible teaches about homosexuality, in their particular case? They are probably perfectly nice people—perhaps even our friends. And it might well be against our gut, in our increasingly globalized and connected world, to affirm that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, the good shepherd, while others who came before and after are thieves and robbers (John 10:8).
But I think we have to remember that our instincts and “gut” don’t come ready made. There is immense cultural pressure with regard to embracing homosexuality, gay marriage, and all the rest. The issue has been constant and prominent in our media and cultural air for years now. Are we to think that this has not had a major impact on our collective gut, desensitizing us to something that used to draw a quite different reaction? My concern at the moment is not to say whether anyone’s “gut” reaction to something like gay marriage is right or wrong. That’s not my point. It’s just to say that it seems obvious to me that our reaction in 2021 is in all likelihood quite different from the reaction of someone in 1951, and that certainly owes a lot to cultural discipleship.
Racism would be another example. Go back to the 1920s or so in America, and thoughtless racism was the norm and was ubiquitous. Few and far between would be the white person who had any real sensitivity or aversion toward it. The media and popular culture were suffused with it. It was the air that we breathed. Fast forward to now (in America), and there is near universal sensitivity to, condemnation of, and opposition to racism. To even be suspected or accused of it ruins lives and careers. The white “gut” has changed on this issue. Again, this seems obvious, and is an instance of collective cultural discipleship.
So should you trust your gut? Maybe you should, maybe you shouldn’t. It isn’t a fool-proof or self-sufficient guide, and does not speak in all people in all times and places with one voice. Maybe you find some particular biblical teachings implausible, but it seems to me that the ability of the human heart to deceive itself, to change with the winds, and to be discipled by the surrounding culture is simply true on the face of it.
And in fact, what Proverbs 3:5-6 says is not to “lean” on your own understanding. I don’t think Proverbs says this as some kind of blanket condemnation of instinct, and certainly not of reasoning. Ignoring your own understanding is not the point, and the point is definitely not to shut off your own brain and just accept everything a pastor (or anyone) says from the stage. The point is, what is your anchor when it comes to discipling your gut? The Bible does not teach us to reject our own sensibilities and rationality in any kind of simplistic way. If that were the case, why would it engage in argument and reasoning? Why would we be told to judge ourselves (e.g. 1 Corinthians 11:31)?
Proverbs is directed toward the young, toward the “son” who must learn the wisdom of mature adulthood. Set in opposition to the son’s “own understanding” is the wisdom of the wise (1:6), the spirit of lady wisdom (2:23), and the commandments and word of the Lord (3:5). Our conscience and gut are an inextricable part of us, just like nerves and muscles, but like nerves and muscles must be trained and disciplined if they are to perform properly. Does the Bible teach us to “distrust our gut” as Derek says he hates? It certainly teaches that our gut can be deceptive and deceived and needs to look to the word of the Lord for proper grounding. That the collective social gut (and therefore an individual’s) can change quite drastically seem to necessarily imply that it can be wrong. Why lean on it as Lord?
So where do you go to set the compass properly, current day mass media and the vibe of your own social circle? You can do that if you want, but you should be clear-sighted about what you’re doing, and not pretend like your gut exists in a vacuum or speaks with changeless authority.