We learn that Sully acted from his gut—instinct informed by decades of experience. “I eyeballed it,” he admits. He tossed the rules and did what he thought was the right thing to do. And while investigators into the incident aren’t so sure, everyone aboard the plane is. “If he had followed the d–n rules we’d all be dead,” says co-pilot Jeff Skiles.
Eventually, the investigators have to agree. Sometimes the difference between the right decision and the wrong one can’t be found in the rulebook. Sometimes the right answer can only be found inside yourself.
That’s a challenging supposition, biblically speaking. Over and over again, Christians are told to be very suspicious of their own inclinations. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding,” we read in Proverbs 3:5. Jeremiah 17:9 tells us flat out, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
Yet Christians often operate on what appears to be instinct a lot. We look inward for guidance, because we believe that God, the Holy Spirit, is in there, sometimes “speaking” to us, sometimes nudging us in an unexpected direction.
When I covered religion for the local paper here in Colorado Springs, I had a chance to talk with lots of Christians who made some outwardly strange decisions based on some mysterious whisperings of the soul. They’d quit jobs to create non-profits. They’d take in total strangers and care for them. These decisions weren’t based on their “own understanding.” They were decisions that, outwardly, didn’t make any sense. Certainly, if these people were subject to their own oversight committees, full of rules and regulations and forms to be filled out in triplicate, these decisions would’ve been vetoed without discussion.
And yet, these decisions often prove to be the right ones. The best ones.
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