Will Haughton’s Reflection on September 20, 2020
Scripture Reading: John 16:16-22
In 2011, renowned Cornell University psychologist, Daryl Bem, published the results of an experiment in a scholarly article entitled “Feeling the Future” in which he demonstrated something referred to as “pre-cognition”. Participants had before them two curtains. Behind one was a pornographic image. Behind the other was a blank wall. In Bem’s study, 53% of people, when asked, predicted the location of the image correctly. Rationalizing, he saw this as pointing to a heightened level of human evolution stemming from our reproductive impulse—our future selves can communicate with us about important, upcoming opportunities. At least in some way, it was argued, humans can now see the future.
If all this is sounding like the domain of scientists and experts, don’t worry. I’m no scientist, but I did see a similar experiment being conducted by Bill Murray’s character, Doctor Peter Venkman, with a deck of cards at the beginning of Ghostbusters—one of my favourite movies! Shortly afterwards, Dean Jaeger, a college administrator at Columbia University, expelled Venkman, Ray Stantz and Egon Spengler, from campus. As the old saying goes, “when God closes a door, he opens a window.” This was exactly the impetus the trio needed to start a ghost-catching business and eventually save New York City from the evil demi-god, Gozer.
In case you can’t yet tell, I don’t believe we can see the future. Of course, sometimes we can make an educated guess about what is to come. A baseball hitter, facing a full count, with no outs and the bases loaded, might know to look for a fastball over the plate. When parents tell their children to wear rubber boots to school on a wet day, they might expect some resistance.
There have been many successful guesses made in history. Anticipating a devaluation of British currency relative to the Euro, in 1992, Hedge Fund owner George Soros made a billion dollars on a single trade by short-selling Pounds Sterling. Educated guesses, however, are not the same thing as seeing the future. If we could see the future, really, no one would ever lose money in the stock market, marry the wrong person, buy a lemon of a car or learn that their cancer is incurable—the correct, preventative action would always be taken in due course.
As people of faith, however, we might be inclined to believe that even if our brains have not truly evolved to connect with the future, maybe God sometimes give us helpful clues along the way. Our prayers for guidance often ask for some indication of what the future may hold, so that we may avoid pitfalls, make wise decisions and, simply, follow where God is leading. Likely, we have come to believe that it is a sign of faithfulness to commit big decisions to prayer and to ask God for direction.
The disciples often wanted to know from Jesus, their teacher, what the future had in store—for themselves, for their nation and for Jesus himself. In John 16, Jesus was in the midst of giving the disciples his parting words, so to speak, at the Last Supper. “In a little while,” he said, “you will not see me. Then, after another little while, you will see me.” The disciples asked, naturally, “how long will these ‘little whiles’ be?” Jesus didn’t answer directly, but said, “You will grieve and then you’re grief will turn to joy.” He continued to answer by giving an analogy of a woman in labour and delivery—it’s horrible and then afterwards, when a birth is successful, there is joy. He gave them not a timeline but rather a promise of what their experience would hold. While not using the particular words here, John-the-gospel-narrator described Jesus pointing his followers to the distinction in Greek thought between chronos—measurable, scheduled time—and Kairos—the right time. Say, for example, we’ve been looking for a job for six months, with no results—that’s chronos, time that marches on. When the right opportunity comes along—that’s Kairos. Kairos is God’s timing. God will act decisively and perfectly when the time is ripe—no later, no earlier. When it happens, we will know it.
To this day, God invites us to live in trust and hope that God’s plan for the world will unfold at precisely the right moments. We are sometimes given signs to look for—“you will grieve and then your grief will turn to joy”, for example—but never, in my experience, a precise timetable. God does not give it to us as human beings to see the future. Much as that might seem like it could be helpful in certain instances, I’m not sure it would give us a life that would even be recognizable as human. After all, it would be helpful to know the future when putting money in the stock market. I, for one, would love to know for certain what I could buy low today and sell high tomorrow. If that kind of knowledge were available, however, who would sell to me now, or buy from me down the road? If we could see the future, no one would need to venture out or take a risk. No one would need to work hard or strive at something. There would be no such thing as trust. There might not be any pain but there wouldn’t be any joy, either. We wouldn’t need God because we would be gods. In truth, there would be no God, no real people—no existence. Instead, in God’s infinite wisdom, we have been created and given minds that require us to learn and grow, make decisions, press on, love one another and have faith. All of these things find fulfillment and meaning, especially, in the midst of the struggles and adversity which provide the backdrop for our lives.
Startled by the shocking results of what seemed to be a methodologically sound study in their field, two of Daryl Bem’s fellow psychologists set out to re-enact his research into the possibility of our seeing the future as human beings. In this case, they enlarged the sample size, reproducing the experiment with 3,000 participants. They found, not surprisingly, that there was no evidence for such parapsychological abilities. Fortunately, it is not true that we know nothing at all of the future. We know that although there will likely be good times and bad ahead, joy will carry the day because Jesus is risen and God is with us.