True understanding

I admit I have not often been around a horse, and even less so a mule, close enough to observe much about their behavior in bit and bridle.  I was born in the tail end of an agricultural era and so as a child only occasionally observed such things.  It may be a little hard for most of us to hear this message, but not impossible.

"Do not be like horse or mule, which have no understanding; who must be fitted with bit and bridle, or else they will not stay near you." (Psalm 32:10)

Conditioned by the 20th century's reductionist gloss of human behavior as stimulus and response, we can imagine ourselves to be like the beasts in the Psalm.  We are fitted by unseen cultural, social, or political forces that act as our bit and bridle.  There are "social contracts" that keep us in place.  It is peer pressure or group think,  co-dependency, or even performance training and conditioning.  I choose to believe that the Psalmist is implying a more transcendent kind of human understanding here.  Furthermore, the implication is that God has given us a freedom to act with that understanding and not to always be bridled.  Not that the love of God does not sometimes put us in a bit and bridle - and we should be thankful that it does.  This is about human freedom, true freedom to understand, true freedom to comprehend the proximity of God.