Knowing the Trees, Navigating the Trail

Romans 14:1-12

There's a familiar cliché critique about a person who “can't see the forest for the trees.” It means that a person is so focused on details that they cannot comprehend the bigger picture. The Epistle reading for Proper 19, Year A (September 13, 2026), is Romans 14:1–12. In this text, the Apostle Paul addressed three “tree-level” issues: dietary controversies, calendar controversies, and conflicts born of judgmentalism. In the larger section of Romans, Paul deals with ministerial roles in the church (Romans 12:3–8), vengeance and oppression (Romans 12:14–21), responsibility to the government (Romans 13:1–7), and delivery of the collection to the Christians in Jerusalem (Romans 15:22–31). I'm curious as to how these many issues, addressed in a letter read aloud, played themselves out within the congregation. Could the people in Rome see the forest for all these different trees?

Or should we perhaps question the wisdom of the cliché? In actual practice, assessment of forest geography is an integrated look at topography, biology, geology, and hydrology—just to name a few of the relevant sciences. It would look at both high-level forest contours and ground-level flora, with multiple points in between. Close-up knowledge of trees would notice, for example, where the live oaks end and the scrub brush begins and would explore what forest-level factors might be creating that natural boundary.

For me, Paul’s forest-level theological convictions running through Romans 12–15—and, really, the whole of Romans—are these: God alone is judge (12:19; 13:1–2; 14:4, 8, 12). God has chosen to be gracious in God’s judgment (11:28–32; 15:13). Therefore, we ought to respond to one another in love, as God in Christ has responded to us. Divine authority is combined with divine grace and that determines Christian response.  

From this forest-level perspective, the question is not, “Should a Christian eat meat—possibly meat sacrificed to idols or, at the very least, meat considered unkosher—or not?” The question is, what does love compel me to do? (See Romans 14:20–21.)

This way of thinking is so characteristic of Paul—the pattern of deciding specific ethical issues in light of larger theological convictions—that people who study Paul's letters closely have a shorthand way to refer to it. It's called the indicative-imperative. He named, understood, and addressed specific issues. His guidance to the church was rooted in bringing the deeper theological commitments to the surface of the decision-making.

An indicative is a verb form that names what is true or what is happening; it is the form we use most often. An imperative is a command. “She ran with endurance” is indicative. “Run the race with endurance” is imperative. We often read Scripture looking only for the imperatives—what we are supposed to do. Paul reminds us that what we are supposed to do emerges as an implication of what God has already made true. Ellen Charry, By the Renewing of Your Mind, explains that Paul's instruction to the baptized is that “they are to become those whom they have been made to be” (p. 45).

Two real-world examples show where I think this way of thinking has been modeled. In February 2020, the Vatican provided theological-ethical guidance around the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as it issued the “Rome Call for AI Ethics.” Bear in mind, ChatGPT would not be made widely available until three years later. The statement says, among other things, “The development of AI in the service of humankind and the planet must be reflected in regulations and principles that protect people—particularly the weak and underprivileged—and natural environments.” The document concludes with six principles: transparency, inclusion, responsibility, impartiality, reliability, and security and privacy. There are different ways of assessing an AI model, platform, or application.

Another example that I would point to is in our own work as the Christian Church in the Southwest. At the 2026 Regional Assembly, we will propose a new Design for the Region. Design is the term Disciples like to use for our governing document.

Churches, Regions, and Ministries operate as nonprofit entities and must comply with the law. We need governing documents to guide our processes of decision-making and gathering. Because such documents are incredibly mundane, it's easy to let them be formulaic. However, the design revision team consistently asked about and articulated our theological convictions and then allowed the practical decisions about how Regional Assembly, Regional Council, and Regional staff would function to be made in light of our convictions. 2026 DRAFT CCSW Design

Responding to the complexities of AI or rewriting a Region's governing documents are two places where we can get bogged down in tree-level complexity and simply catalogue our opinions item by item. Similarly, we could also address them at a level of strategic ambiguity where we can sound like we're making theological statements at the forest level, but in such a way that it doesn't truly help navigation. I believe the wisdom demonstrated in the Rome Call for AI Ethics, as well as the proposed Design of the Christian Church in the Southwest, is the wisdom of seeing the interrelatedness of specific issues and broad commitments. Forest geography, soil geology, flora biology, and water-pathway hydrology all combine to give an understanding of the terrain we are currently in. In short, knowing the trees helps navigate the trail.