Lobsters and helicopters - what's the real question?

I happen to have a few friends who run in high circles - really nice people, but, yeah, high circles. Over the years, this has caused some comedy (for me). 

Once I had a fancy dinner with a group of them, and as the youngest among them at that time, they graciously offered me first pick at the dish. This big tray of ice turns up, and the guy next to me says, go ahead! And I think, go ahead and do what? 

I'm half about to grab some ice and dump it on my plate when he points out the pale thin slices lying camouflaged on the ice. He says, laughing, it's lobster. I think, ooh. I pick out a slice and enthusiastically dunk it in my soup to cook. NO WAIT, he yells, too late. It's sashimi :D

I sometimes catch myself thinking, do these people genuinely think I comprehend what they're going on about? My family and I just had a short trip with our daughter who's studying abroad (on scholarship yay!). Someone casually suggested to me - while you're there, you should take a helicopter from the helipad at ABC to XYZ, and have a grand meal there.

... What? What?? WHAT?!?

When I related the suggestion to my son who was with us, he pointed out that just earlier that same day, we had decided not to take the Tube, because it was 5.50 pounds, so we just took a long walk. Helicopters? You're having a laugh, ha ha ha!!

The whole thing made me recall some lessons I learned from a book I recently read, by Daniel Kahneman, called Thinking Fast and Slow. 

Daniel Kahneman is the Nobel prize winning economist best known for his groundbreaking work on behavioural economics, which challenges the basic assumption of human rationality in economic theory. In this book, he examines various cognitive biases, one of which is the interesting human habit of substituting easier questions for harder ones which we find difficulty in answering.

One classic example is in hiring. The real question is, will this guy be a good hire for the company? But this is a fiendishly hard question to answer. So we substitute the real question with an easier one - is this guy interviewing well? This we can answer - the guy is right in front of us, and we can tell if he's interviewing well or not. And we are tricked into thinking we've answered the hard question of whether the guy is a good hire, when in fact we only answered the substitute question of whether he interviewed well.

I began to ask myself, what easy questions have I unknowingly substituted for the real and hard ones?

As I get older, one question that comes up is, when is it time to ride off into the sunset? Lots of media attention on this, from government agencies like CPF to financial advisors and insurers, telling us, plan early! Sound advice. Really, it is. You should plan.

But is the real question when do I ride off into the sunset? Or is there a harder, underlying question? 

The easy question is, do I have enough money to stop? Because that's a question that can be answered with mathematical projections and spreadsheets. And it disguises the harder-to-answer, but real-er question of what should I do instead? Or what path would make me happiest?

So no matter how times I run to my spreadsheet, it never quite provides the answer I want. Possibly because life expectations run wildly out of control (lobster sashimi!! Helicopters!!) but more probably because in our heart of hearts, we know the spreadsheet isn't giving us the answer to the question we really need answered.

So what path would make me happiest? I realised that the answer was straightforward - I know, objectively, that following God will make me the most fulfilled. Of course. He loves me. He knows the best for me. He sees eternal value in me. Following Him is a no brainer. But how do I know what "following God" means in practice?

More questions! I tried to start with "How can I be most useful to God". But I quickly realised that this question was, again, an easy question substituting for the real question. Asking how I can be useful to God is something I can assess, looking at my skills, resources and inclinations. It's also rather self-centred. It involves me saying, I'm great at this, so God, so please use my wonderful abilities and preferences here. And the other stuff I don't like to do, find someone else to do it Lord.

It's true that God does use our abilities and inclinations. But that's not the starting point. We don't dictate terms to God, otherwise it'd be our messed up plan and inflated egos leading the way. So the question is not quite "what can I do for God". The better (and harder) question is simply, "God, what do You want me to do?"

It's great to get past the illusion of the easy questions and answers, so that we don't start running down the wrong paths. But the trouble with identifying the real and hard questions is, the answers are hard to come by! So, what does God want me to do? To me, the clearest mandate is, share the Good News with people. But how to do that?

I often think that, in order to share the Good News with others, I need to be interesting. I need to do interesting things, be successful and have a good reputation, so that people want to hear what I have to say and respect my opinion. 

I recently asked someone - how do I make myself interesting enough so that people will listen to me? And he said something really insightful. You don't have to make yourself interesting. It's way more important for you to be interested. Care about what's happening to other people's lives, not what's cool about your life.

Jesus was a nobody. The disciples were nobodies. The apostle Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians "Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him" (1 Corinthians 1:26-29)

D.L. Moody observed that Moses, the great prophet who led Israel out of Egypt and parted the Red Sea - he spent the first forty years of his life thinking he was somebody (a prince of Egypt), the next forty years realising he was a nobody (a shepherd), and the last forty years understanding what God can do with a nobody.

As we head into the Christmas season, and remember when God came as a nobody baby in a smelly shed in a nowhere town, to save us all by dying on a criminal's cross, may I also remember that I don't need to be rich, important, or successful to be effective and joyful for Him. 

May I see through the easy questions and answers to the harder, real-er ones, and help others do the same. This Christmas season, may the joy of the Lord be your strength - rejoice, again I say, rejoice!