Jesus On Practicality

The abstract logical truths that govern all things and ground truth and knowledge themselves can be deeply understood without any resulting hatred or shirking of more practical matters.  After all, the situations, needs, and desires that contribute to practicality can only be part of reality if they are logically possible, with only things that do not contradict logical axioms and what follows from the being possible, and practical affairs and solutions can only be understood because of reason.  However, it is often practicality that drives people to embrace the irrationality of assumptions and contradictions: it is easier to just assume than to approach, dwell on, and align with the necessary truths of logic.  Practicality remains a part of human life despite how irrational people misunderstand or misuse it, though practicality is by necessity a lesser thing than logical axioms, consciousness, morality, and the rest of metaphysics and epistemology in all their broadness and details.

In Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus addresses practical needs and desires directly after mentioning how earthly possessions can be damaged.  He realizes that concerns about what one will eat, drink, or wear could be a very personally alarming, extensive part of some people's lives, whether this concern is because of natural anxiety (natural for that individual's personality), a specific situation, or even a person's worldview.  What Jesus emphasizes early on in this part of the chapter is that God cares so much more about human needs than those of animals (Matthew 6:26) even as he points to how worry does not resolve problems in its own and can do nothing to extend someone's life (6:27).  Never does Jesus either dismiss these needs or pretend like they have the same centrality as matters of morality, service to God, or even life itself in general (and by extension logic, epistemology, and the other philosophical truths or concepts that even these matters reduce down to).  It is the pagans, he says, that chase after these things in ways that erroneously treat them as if they are the most foundational part of reality or more than a means to a very limited end that is far from all-important (6:31-32).

Jesus acknowledges that the Christian God does not ignore or belittle the human reliance on things like food or clothing, though clothing is only a necessity for relative protection from nature and to more easily fit into societies that already normalize clothes, as there is nothing morally necessary about wearing clothing at all on the Christian worldview and nothing inherently necessary in a practical sense about wearing clothing besides degrees of protection from rough environments or temperatures.  The more practical needs of human life are not things Christians are to treat as wholly unimportant or unrelated to Christian theology; it just is not rational to pretend they are anything more than issues of convenience or survival, which can have no significance except in light of other things.  Practicality is of course utterly irrelevant to whether philosophical ideas are true or whether one can logically prove them, but practicality in the sense of merely fulfilling the physical needs Jesus mentions is not opposed to either rationalism or Christianity.

The only idiocy a person could reach for here lies in confusing practical needs with the heart of reality, something they are absolutely distant from (only logical axioms and their ramifications, followed by things like the existence and nature of the uncaused cause, could have this status), or in directly knowing practicality is only about convenience and/or subjective satisfaction and then pursuing it with irrationalistic priorities that treat it as the most foundational, vital thing of all.  Practicality encompasses the objectively least abstract and deep aspects of life, even if it has a somewhat special nature by simply facilitating survival and flourishing.  Appreciating or enjoying practicality, though, is not irrational in itself, and on the Christian worldview, recognizing and being grateful for what it is can even refresh someone as they contrast God's concern for them as individual humans with their needs.