It ought to be self-evident that anything that is true is beneficial, and anything that is false is of less value than what is true. However, the way almost everyone lives suggests that it is anything but self-evident. We tend to view life—others, ourselves, our environments—as normative. We introspect based on what we wish we had seen, what we hope we are, and what we hope for the future. This leads to many problems. In fact, perhaps it is the leading cause of problems in this world.
Consider all the problems that are, at their root, caused by a normative bias. All human disagreements are, at their root, an unwillingness by one or both parties to see things as they really are. All individual weakness is, at its root, an unwillingness to see things as they really are.
We have to learn to see things as they really are, not how we hope they are. In a nutshell, human reality is that the heart of mankind is evil by default, and that the world we live in has unavoidable constraints. Therefore, almost any solution to almost any problem will take the form of an imperfect but optimal approach built around the constraints of reality and based on an acknowledgement of the predictably wicked behavior of man.
Do not be shocked at how far afield this approach might seem from the simplistic notion that if everyone would just follow the Ten Commandments, mankind would be instantly ushered into paradise. It was the Lord himself who, when asked why Moses gave permission for the Israelite men to divorce their wives, replied “Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives” (Matthew 19:8). His disciples responded by complaining about how his suggestion of a more insoluble marriage made it undesirable. Instead of backtracking or revealing some secret about how delightful permanent marriage is, he said “All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given” and suggested a variety of ways to instead be celibate (Matthew 19:10-12).
God works with reality, not against it.