The Grace of a Noble Half Truth

The quote is attributed to Louis Pasteur: "In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind." This is, of course, the rankest form of nonsense. Chance--the occurrence of random events-- by definition "favors" no one. Jesus reminds us that the rain falls on the just and unjust alike. It was this realistic appraisal of God's even-handed graciousness that sets him apart as much as anything else.

Chance does not favor the prepared mind. More accurately, the prepared mind is far more able to respond quickly and positively to unforeseen events. This is why I am no fan of strategic "planning"--whether in the church or elsewhere in my life. John Lennon knows this world better than Pasteur at this point: "Life is what happens to us while we're making other plans." I think it is far better to think in terms of strategic preparedness and strategic positioning.

We must make plans or risk paralysis of thought and will. But we must not pretend that we know how things will work out. In addition to making plans, we must develop our capacities to respond constructively to things that disrupt our plans entirely. And we must not be disappointed when the experts turn out to be wrong.

Otherwise, we become like the Lutherans installing a light bulb. It takes four Lutherans for the job, of course, One of them changes the bulb. The other three wax nostalgic about how much they liked the old light bulb.

Bulbs burn out. People die. Life changes. Events transpire. And we are best served to prepare our capacities for nimble response rather than to spend all our energy on detailed plans that will inevitably and quickly become obsolete.

So why do we make such plans? We are regularly victimized by the "hindsight bias." I have discussed this in some earlier posts. This is our tendency to view past events in terms of how things actually turned out. We lose track of our earlier predictions and plans. We are certain that we predicted the outcome in advance, when in fact all we did was to describe the outcome after the fact.

Keep track of how many times people will say, "I knew that would happen." It is deeply satisfying to say that. It creates the illusion of knowledge and feeds our need for certainty. And it is a fabrication. Unless you are predicting that billiard balls will move when struck, it is unlikely that you really know how things will turn out.

There is grace in this reminder. Kahneman reminds us of the perverse power of the "outcome bias" (Thinking, Fast and Slow, page 203). We hold people responsible for knowing things they could not have known in advance. How many people have been penalized because they "should have known" something that is only clear in hindsight? Far too many.

How many times do I punish myself for a "bad" decision? Far too often. Instead, we are well served by one of the noble half truths of life. People make the best decisions they can at the time. Otherwise they would have made different ones. I remind myself of that often--especially at those times when I want to punish myself for not knowing what I couldn't have known.

That noble half truth helps me to focus my energy on being able to respond to what comes next in life. And it makes the whole adventure so remarkably interesting.