7.3 | set your house in order

VII | ROOMMATES

About that time Hezekiah became deathly ill, and the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to visit him. He gave the king this message: “This is what the LORD says: Set your affairs in order, for you are going to die. You will not recover from this illness.” // 2 Kings 20:1

In Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, Rule 6 is “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.” Peterson gives us great perspective. He says this about Hurricane Katrina:

When the hurricane hit New Orleans, and the town sank under the waves, was that a natural disaster? The Dutch prepare their dikes for the worst storm in ten thousand years. Had New Orleans followed that example, no tragedy would have occurred. It’s not that no one knew. The Flood Control Act of 1965 mandated improvements in the levee system that held back Lake Pontchartrain. The system was to be completed by 1978. Forty years later, only 60 percent of the work had been done. Willful blindness and corruption took the city down. (Peterson, Jordan B., 12 Rules for Life (p. 154).

A hurricane is uncontrollable, but hurricane preparation is certainly controllable. Difficulty and suffering are some of the common things that define the human experience. They are unavoidable. Life is hard. Our difficulties come at the hands of disease, people, and inevitable things outside of our control. When these things happen, we experience the injustice of situations that we can’t control. But what about the bad decisions we make, our sins and self-inflicted damage?

Critical Theory starts with a critique of the world. The issue in CT is uncontrollable. Injustice is because of oppressors who have created a system that oppresses people. It asserts that if we could just control all of society better, the world would be fixed. The problem is not us; it is everything except us. Applying Critical Theory is like trying to control the weather. No matter how hard we try, we most likely will make little progress.

Kingdom asserts that the problem with the world we live in is us. Our greatest pains are self-inflicted. Until we change that, there will be no progress. Are we taking full advantage of our opportunities? Have we forgiven those who have sinned against us? Do we have good habits that are helping us to be healthy? Are there things that we could do to make the world around us better? Are we doing those things? How well are we doing at controlling what we can control?

Are you currently doing things you know to be wrong? If your answer is yes, worry about that, and then worry about the system. Peterson advises, “Don’t reorganize the state until you have ordered your own experience. Have some humility. If you cannot bring peace to your household, how dare you try to rule a city?” (155).

The evil in the world is decreased when we decrease our personal evil. The Kingdom requires us to deal with the logs in our own eye, not the specks we see in others’.

Critical Theory tells us to commit ourselves to the lifelong struggle of antiracism, dismantling oppression, and overthrowing oppressors. Never forgive, never forget. The Kingdom tells us to commit to a different kind of lifelong struggle, the lifelong struggle against self. St. Francis of Assisi says, “Sanctify yourself and you will sanctify society.”

How should we sanctify ourselves? What is the lifelong commitment to getting our own house in order? Where do we start?

We must start by learning, living, and teaching a Kingdom worldview. The odds are that we don’t currently have one. It’s simple to start to develop a Kingdom worldview. Read the Bible. Start in John, read the rest of the New Testament, then read the Old Testament. Each one of us has to determine to allow God’s word to change us from the inside out before we start worrying about the state of the world. If we don’t allow God to transform us internally according to his word, then there is slim to no chance that anything changes externally in the world.

Setting your house in order is like the story of the boy and a fence. A boy once lived with his family in a small village. He was a troublemaker and frequently found himself in trouble in the village. His father, worried for his son's reputation and the way things were headed, took him aside one day.

"My son," he said. "The school has tried and failed to help you. Your friends and family have given you their best. Your mother doesn't know what to do anymore. I can see that when you get punished you lash out even more, so I'm asking you a favor: Every time you hurt someone, whether I hear about it or not, go to the fence and put one nail in. That's all."

The boy agreed and over the weeks he did as he was asked. Every time he'd get in a fight, steal, or cheat, he'd go out back and put a nail in the fence. At first, he saw these nails as trophies; he was glad to put a nail in and he did so frequently. He enjoyed it. As the months went by, he started seeing that the fence was getting filled with nails and his attitude changed. The fence had begun to look unsightly. A once beautiful painted fence was now dotted and cragged by uneven nails. This caused him to look at himself and realize how many times he could've done differently, how his own reputation appeared like that fence. He decided in his heart that he would change.

A month later, his father approached him. "My son, I've noticed you haven't put a single nail in my fence all month. Why have you stopped?"

"Because the fence looks dreadful and, besides, I would run out of room," the boy said. "So, I made an effort and I stopped causing trouble."

"That's good,” the father said. “Now I want you to go do one good deed a day. Every time you apologize or you help someone, I want you to use the hammer but this time to take one nail out of the fence and put the nail back in the box. And don't leave the hammer outside so it doesn't rust."

The young man did what his father asked. Little by little, he helped people, made amends with those he hurt in the past, took a nail out for each good deed, and made sure the hammer wouldn't be left out to rust. When the fence was cleared, he went to see his father, proud of his effort.

"Father, there are no more nails in the fence," he said. They went out back to observe and repaint the fence.

"Good for you, my son. But look at the fence. It's still full of holes. I want you to remember this. Although you've taken out every single nail from the fence, you will never be able to remove the holes you've made in the fence. This is why it's important to try not to put in any nails in the first place."

Setting our house in order is simple. But simple ≠ easy.