“You are but mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." ~ James 4:14
The following is a true story.
On January 6, 1995, a large, middle-aged man moseyed into a
Melon Bank near Pittsburg. He strolled up to the teller and, in broad daylight,
brandished a semiautomatic pistol and demanded money. He wore nothing to
conceal his identity, even smiling cheerfully at surveillance cameras before exiting
the bank.
But there’s more! With
the newly heisted $5,200 in his pocket, the thief got in his car, went down the
road, and held up ANOTHER bank in an equally shameless manner. After the news
media flooded the airwaves with the banks’ security footage, police identified
him immediately.
Police arrested a shocked
McArthur Wheeler. When shown the surveillance tapes, Wheeler stared in
disbelief. “But I wore the (lemon) juice,” he mumbled. Huh?
He acted boldly
because knew that lemon juice is sometimes used as invisible ink. Knowing just
that little piece of info, Wheeler rubbed lemon juice all over his face before
entering the bank believing it would render him undistinguishable from
videotape cameras.
Police concluded that
Wheeler wasn’t crazy or on drugs - just incredibly misinformed. For his botched
efforts he received a 24-year sentence.
After extensive research, psychologists at Cornell
University coined a name for the cognitive bias to inflate self-assessment. The
“Dunning-Kruger effect,” describes how people inaccurately assess their
abilities as being much greater than they are.
Before we poke fun at
Wheeler and his misguided faith in the power of citrus, it’s harder to admit
that we too succumb to the Dunning-Kruger effect in our own lives.
As a Dad and husband,
I’m often guilty of refusing to ask for directions while getting us hopelessly
lost. What self-respecting man doesn’t insist he can complete a basic home
repair only before chaos (and property damage) ensue? Once teens obtain their
driver’s license, research says they consider themselves good drivers despite their
car’s telltale signs of scratches and dents.
But nowhere does the
Dunning-Kruger effect become more apparent than the arrogance with which we plan
the future. According to James (above), human life is like “mist”- a fleeting
kind of thing. He spent most of his chapter warning about the wisdom of the
world and selfish ambition.
What James is driving at is that we should recognize our
arrogance in believing that we are the masters of our own fate. Our lives are
temporary and fragile. We can't predict or control the future. We truly have no
idea what will happen tomorrow.
So be humble and
take a long hard look
in the mirror. If you’re going to be bold about anything, be bold about doing
the things Jesus taught us are good. And for the love of all that’s holy, when
lost, use your GPS… or better yet, ask somebody for directions.
