Economists use the term 'sunk cost' to describe expenditures which cannot be recovered. Generally, economists tell us, sunk costs should have no bearing on our decisions, because they are already paid out, unrecoverable. Whatever achieves our goals most efficiently, regardless of sunk cost, this we should do.
An example. You are waiting in the only lane at the supermarket, and have been waiting for ten minutes. The man still in front of you has a shopping cart full to the brim. Suddenly, a cashier opens register 2.
You, the shopper, must now make a decision. Will you continue to wait in this lane, the lane in which you have already invested ten minutes of your life, or will you hop over to this newly opened checkout lane and leave more quickly?
Strict economics says- SWITCH LANES IMMEDIATELY. Your ten-minute investment is 'sunk cost', unrecoverable. If your end goal is escaping the supermarket with your bananas, you can achieve your goal more cheaply by disregarding prior investment. So, move. Few would question that logic.
Consider gambling. No matter how many coins you drop into that slot machine, your odds of striking it rich are ever and always the same. No matter how much you have 'invested' into that big win, your 'investment' should have no bearing on your decision to drop in another nickel, because that 'investment' has no bearing on your likelihood of success. It's sunk cost.
But that's not so easy. How hard is it to walk away with $200 in the hole? $500? Suddenly 'sunk cost' feels much more pressing. Reason would say 'walk', but we can't- at least not as easily as in BiLo.
Let's get more personal. A friend is moving out of town. They are one of your closest friends, someone you have increasingly grown to love and admire. You have spent hours watching Seinfeld reruns together, fought through despair and heartbreak together, wrestled with major life decisions together. And now they are leaving town.
You know that friendship will be much harder once they've gone away. You know it will likely fade. And the better friends you are, the more upsetting that is to you. The closer you grow to each other, the harder their leaving will be. You don't want them to go, and they are going. What can you do?
Economics has an answer. Economics tells you, 'Change lanes now. Switch friends. The longer you hold this off, the harder it will be. The return on your investment in this friend is quickly coming to an end. You will be better off elsewhere."
Reason, in it's immutable calculations, would no doubt determine that your safest bet is to withdraw and re-align. Find a new friend, a more stable one, and invest your love there. This is your best chance of getting a return on your time, not the friend that is leaving.
But this is harder than gambling, isn't it? Any time with this friend that is leaving, economically, is sunk cost. They are leaving, and you will inevitably suffer loss. There is an allegiance that is hard to break in friendship, a loyalty written in your bones that you fear to cross. It would feel shameful, somehow, to leave them before they leave you. But if we're honest, we do it. We act on economics, we act on fear of loss. We cut our losses, and change lanes, more often than we'd care to admit.
Nowhere is this tension more tangible than in walking towards death with someone we love. Here is the final extreme of this logic, the crucible of our relational economics. We may find some benefits to maintaining a friendship even as they move. We can call, write, visit, after all. But what benefit can we gain by walking with someone as they near death? What benefit can we find in deepening our love for someone who will not survive the month?
You see, the cost of deepening love is absolutely sunk cost. The expense of the emotion, time, cost required to maintain and even deepen a relationship with one who will shortly die- this expense will certainly be followed by grief and hearbreak and sorrow. And the more we love, the greater the sorrow. Loving one who is dying is an expense that at best will leave us with years of mourning.
What reason do our hearts have to love when loss is sure? What justification do we give for our drive to rage against the dying of the light, if it is truly dying? Why do we value such deep loyalty? Why call courage and beauty that love which is such poor economic sense?
Perhaps because there is a higher value for love and even mourning than economics alone can account for.
Several of my friends have now lost children, or face the fear of losing them. And reason would tell them 'Don't get too attached. Don't make the mistake of loving that which might break your heart. Don't be left with wasted time, wasted hope, wasted love.'
Damn that kind of reason. Damn that use of economics. There is no such thing as wasted love, even love unto death. The God who is Love- the God who extends His love to the world, the God who teaches us love by setting His love into our very hearts- this God collects even our tears, for he finds them precious. There is no wasted love. There is no meaningless heartbreak. All human love and all human heartbreak is but the echo of His heartbeat in a broken world, the echo of the breaking of God's heart for His people.
For the Christian, love is never a sunk cost. Ever.
If all of life is about the glory of God- if all of life is about knowing and worshipping Him- if all of life is about restoring (with Him) the world we have broken, extending love into the darkest of places- then every decision to love, regardless of outcome, has purpose. It has meaning. Every love and every mourning has inestimable value, for it is the heart of God revealed, that all creatures may worship Him for His love for eternity.
You see, Love is not a simple noun that will fade, nor a verb that will end, but a Person who is eternal. Therefore no Love is wasted, ever. Love is never a sunk cost.
Saturday, January 30, 2016
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Fear and Trembling
You are his fear, and little wonder. After measuring his life in inches, I am not surprised to find him timid.
You are his fear, little wonder, but you are my dread, and dread as I have never known. You lay claim to my heart even as the knife laid claim to his neck. The loss of oneself, and the loss of all one loves; I cannot be sure which is the greater cut.
When he came to me, so late in time, I thought life would run its course with him. He would have a garden and cattle and a wife and children that I would never see and need not see to marvel at their days. I would sit on my porch and imagine them, and I would see the course of his life, and I would rest in my chair. This laughter had made life worth living, his life made the sun worth smiling about once more. For the sun would one day warm his hands on a brisk winter morning. And it would quicken his grain with long lingering rays and draw each stalk tenderly to itself. It would greet his sons, born red and clutching at one another. And it would make his skin darker and his hair fairer as though marked by blessing as your own. He was yours, and yet he would be more fully yours.
The sun of which I dreamed and the sun that passed overhead on that day were kin like stream and ice which share essence but no more. Yes, that was the sun, but not as I had imagined, not as I had ever seen or dreamed. That day came and lingered as a dream, and the light seemed darker for the sun's immutability. It did not quake, it was not cold. It shone in warmth, calling all men liars and my heart false.
You are his fear, and my dread, and the sun did not notice as we drew closer to its path. The sun had long eclipsed us, and we stepped into our shadows as they lengthened, darkness ever farther than our steps. This obedience, which is life, unto death, failed my comprehension, and fails it still. I believe I took the knife to my understanding long before I took it from my belt, long before we had even reached the mountain. We climbed higher until the air should have cut my nostrils and pricked my lungs, but I do not think that I was breathing. Nothing so human was necessary so close to heaven.
The gods were less surprised than I when you told me what I must do. It was their custom, one I had hoped you did not share. Your claim was no less righteous of course, no less just. Yet it seemed unlike your kindness with me. You take only what you have given on loan, only what you have given for a little while. We all know and acknowledge this. It is yours, I am yours, he is yours. You have every right to do so. But must you do so? You, the maker of promises, the keeper of your word.
Life must again come from nothing, as it does with you- life either from the dead or from the good as dead. You will not be proved false, I believe this. And you tend to write life with a finger dipped in blood. A motif in your stories.
I had already killed my reason, my understanding, my feeling as I climbed, and when I stacked the wood I did not wrap my hands because I could not feel the splinters. And when I prepared the lantern I held the coal between my fingers and could not feel its burn. But when I wrapped the rope around his ankles and wrapped the rope around his wrists it felt like sharp-frayed cable on my hands. And when I held the knife it felt cold and heavy like polished bone against my palm. It felt poorly shaped, an absurd caricature. I remember thinking that I must have never held a knife before that moment. And I felt like I was already alone and he was already dead, and like I was already dead, and like I was holding one of his bones on some nocturnal pilgrimage to the end of the world.
The landscape was that of my country, alien as the moon, and as silent. The sun was low, near the scrub horizon, and its strength failed as it fell. Bound and set upon the wood, he shut his eyes tightly as though to keep something out; still water escaped them. The muscles in his jaw were sharply etched with his straining, and his lips were moving in silent rogation. His body shook, and I should have wanted to comfort him but could not for the numbness within me. That cold which began at your words had by now crept through my every artery and filled my body with ice.
I stood over him as a man over a child, and I thought he looked unlike my son. And I spoke to myself as I looked at him, this is not your son, and I willed that it be so. But it was not so, and I knew it was my son on the woodpile. And my thoughts ran to Sarah at the table as she realized we had gone, and to the boy in the field asking but where, father, is the sacrifice? And to Rebecca giving birth to twins at war, and the violence of man and the violence of God. And I felt my heart harden and break into pieces, the cavity gaping as a mourner's howl. And I looked again at my son. And I cried out that this all might pass, but you did not answer. And I cried out, if there is another way! but there was no sound. And I sobbed, oh take me Father, but you would not. And as I raised the knife I called out once more, thy will be done. My voice failed as I cried.
Your voice shattered the silence like the breaking of glass with a stone. At your voice the heavens shook, and sun's last light fractured into a thousand garnet streaks that burst from the horizon behind and reached over the mountain on which I stood. The light was scored so deeply it was as though meteorites had carved fiery scars across the sky.
At your voice the earth shook and the rocks split and matter crackled as though electrified. The north exhaled in a mighty gust of wind that felled me like a great tree and swept the mountains clean of their ancient dust. Your voice peeled back the landscape like a scab until it shone like raw skin, and immediately I saw my homeland and was utterly lost, an alien in what I once knew.
At your voice my eardrum burst, and blood issued from my right ear. Your word swept silence away and deafened me to the world, swept dread from my heart as refuse but taught my heart true fear, glory mixed with the most violent of hopes, new dread as I have never known. I would not hear for weeks, and I could not hold the knife for my trembling, and it fell into the soil.
And you spoke again and you said to me, get up and untie the boy. I did so with weak hands, and when I had finished I stepped back and watched as he sat up and stepped away and fell into the bushes vomiting. He had not stopped shaking since we reached the mountain, and watching him as a stranger I too began to vomit.
When I ceased, I collapsed, and closed my eyes and fell into an empty sleep, for how long I do not know. And when I opened my eyes there was the boy curled in the dust, and there was a goat caught in the bushes beside the woodpile with his eyes towards me. And he looked at me without blinking as though to speak, but I could hear nothing. He did not run when I untangled him and brought him to the pile, and when I bent to the knife he shook but did not cry out until the knife pierced him through and his legs buckled and he fell forward and to the side. I set his body upon the pile and lit it from the coal and stared in silence at the flames as they ran up the wood to him as though in some long-awaited greeting. The fire covered him, and lifted him heavenward, towards the stars that had begun to blink out of the night to see what had come to pass on that low mountain. My tears fell thick, as to wash even his blood away if they could. I began to walk, and the boy rose and followed me at a distance. The stars stared on in wonder all night as we descended, and only turned away as we walked into the morning.
The sun rose over the house as we fell into the kitchen where his mother had not moved for three days. The servants stood back from the door and whispered as we entered, and when our shadows passed into her vision his mother looked up and cried out so loudly that I felt her voice pass through me. She fell on the boy like a heavy robe and he fell to the floor, and she washed his feet with her weeping.
I found the blood on my ear and rubbed it off between my thumb and forefinger, and took off my sandals. I washed off the blood of the goat from my body, bathed, and changed my clothes. I tried to drink water but could not. And when I returned to the kitchen the boy remained on the floor, curled up like the child he was then, still shaking. And his mother held him there and rocked as though in a trance, halfway between sleep and death. I stood in the doorway and looked down at them, and when I saw his form held between her arms, I did not see my son. Instead, it was as though I was looking into a deep canyon, a canyon striped with red, and cut by the very finger of God.
You are his fear, little wonder, but you are my dread, and dread as I have never known. You lay claim to my heart even as the knife laid claim to his neck. The loss of oneself, and the loss of all one loves; I cannot be sure which is the greater cut.
When he came to me, so late in time, I thought life would run its course with him. He would have a garden and cattle and a wife and children that I would never see and need not see to marvel at their days. I would sit on my porch and imagine them, and I would see the course of his life, and I would rest in my chair. This laughter had made life worth living, his life made the sun worth smiling about once more. For the sun would one day warm his hands on a brisk winter morning. And it would quicken his grain with long lingering rays and draw each stalk tenderly to itself. It would greet his sons, born red and clutching at one another. And it would make his skin darker and his hair fairer as though marked by blessing as your own. He was yours, and yet he would be more fully yours.
The sun of which I dreamed and the sun that passed overhead on that day were kin like stream and ice which share essence but no more. Yes, that was the sun, but not as I had imagined, not as I had ever seen or dreamed. That day came and lingered as a dream, and the light seemed darker for the sun's immutability. It did not quake, it was not cold. It shone in warmth, calling all men liars and my heart false.
You are his fear, and my dread, and the sun did not notice as we drew closer to its path. The sun had long eclipsed us, and we stepped into our shadows as they lengthened, darkness ever farther than our steps. This obedience, which is life, unto death, failed my comprehension, and fails it still. I believe I took the knife to my understanding long before I took it from my belt, long before we had even reached the mountain. We climbed higher until the air should have cut my nostrils and pricked my lungs, but I do not think that I was breathing. Nothing so human was necessary so close to heaven.
The gods were less surprised than I when you told me what I must do. It was their custom, one I had hoped you did not share. Your claim was no less righteous of course, no less just. Yet it seemed unlike your kindness with me. You take only what you have given on loan, only what you have given for a little while. We all know and acknowledge this. It is yours, I am yours, he is yours. You have every right to do so. But must you do so? You, the maker of promises, the keeper of your word.
Life must again come from nothing, as it does with you- life either from the dead or from the good as dead. You will not be proved false, I believe this. And you tend to write life with a finger dipped in blood. A motif in your stories.
I had already killed my reason, my understanding, my feeling as I climbed, and when I stacked the wood I did not wrap my hands because I could not feel the splinters. And when I prepared the lantern I held the coal between my fingers and could not feel its burn. But when I wrapped the rope around his ankles and wrapped the rope around his wrists it felt like sharp-frayed cable on my hands. And when I held the knife it felt cold and heavy like polished bone against my palm. It felt poorly shaped, an absurd caricature. I remember thinking that I must have never held a knife before that moment. And I felt like I was already alone and he was already dead, and like I was already dead, and like I was holding one of his bones on some nocturnal pilgrimage to the end of the world.
The landscape was that of my country, alien as the moon, and as silent. The sun was low, near the scrub horizon, and its strength failed as it fell. Bound and set upon the wood, he shut his eyes tightly as though to keep something out; still water escaped them. The muscles in his jaw were sharply etched with his straining, and his lips were moving in silent rogation. His body shook, and I should have wanted to comfort him but could not for the numbness within me. That cold which began at your words had by now crept through my every artery and filled my body with ice.
I stood over him as a man over a child, and I thought he looked unlike my son. And I spoke to myself as I looked at him, this is not your son, and I willed that it be so. But it was not so, and I knew it was my son on the woodpile. And my thoughts ran to Sarah at the table as she realized we had gone, and to the boy in the field asking but where, father, is the sacrifice? And to Rebecca giving birth to twins at war, and the violence of man and the violence of God. And I felt my heart harden and break into pieces, the cavity gaping as a mourner's howl. And I looked again at my son. And I cried out that this all might pass, but you did not answer. And I cried out, if there is another way! but there was no sound. And I sobbed, oh take me Father, but you would not. And as I raised the knife I called out once more, thy will be done. My voice failed as I cried.
Your voice shattered the silence like the breaking of glass with a stone. At your voice the heavens shook, and sun's last light fractured into a thousand garnet streaks that burst from the horizon behind and reached over the mountain on which I stood. The light was scored so deeply it was as though meteorites had carved fiery scars across the sky.
At your voice the earth shook and the rocks split and matter crackled as though electrified. The north exhaled in a mighty gust of wind that felled me like a great tree and swept the mountains clean of their ancient dust. Your voice peeled back the landscape like a scab until it shone like raw skin, and immediately I saw my homeland and was utterly lost, an alien in what I once knew.
At your voice my eardrum burst, and blood issued from my right ear. Your word swept silence away and deafened me to the world, swept dread from my heart as refuse but taught my heart true fear, glory mixed with the most violent of hopes, new dread as I have never known. I would not hear for weeks, and I could not hold the knife for my trembling, and it fell into the soil.
And you spoke again and you said to me, get up and untie the boy. I did so with weak hands, and when I had finished I stepped back and watched as he sat up and stepped away and fell into the bushes vomiting. He had not stopped shaking since we reached the mountain, and watching him as a stranger I too began to vomit.
When I ceased, I collapsed, and closed my eyes and fell into an empty sleep, for how long I do not know. And when I opened my eyes there was the boy curled in the dust, and there was a goat caught in the bushes beside the woodpile with his eyes towards me. And he looked at me without blinking as though to speak, but I could hear nothing. He did not run when I untangled him and brought him to the pile, and when I bent to the knife he shook but did not cry out until the knife pierced him through and his legs buckled and he fell forward and to the side. I set his body upon the pile and lit it from the coal and stared in silence at the flames as they ran up the wood to him as though in some long-awaited greeting. The fire covered him, and lifted him heavenward, towards the stars that had begun to blink out of the night to see what had come to pass on that low mountain. My tears fell thick, as to wash even his blood away if they could. I began to walk, and the boy rose and followed me at a distance. The stars stared on in wonder all night as we descended, and only turned away as we walked into the morning.
The sun rose over the house as we fell into the kitchen where his mother had not moved for three days. The servants stood back from the door and whispered as we entered, and when our shadows passed into her vision his mother looked up and cried out so loudly that I felt her voice pass through me. She fell on the boy like a heavy robe and he fell to the floor, and she washed his feet with her weeping.
I found the blood on my ear and rubbed it off between my thumb and forefinger, and took off my sandals. I washed off the blood of the goat from my body, bathed, and changed my clothes. I tried to drink water but could not. And when I returned to the kitchen the boy remained on the floor, curled up like the child he was then, still shaking. And his mother held him there and rocked as though in a trance, halfway between sleep and death. I stood in the doorway and looked down at them, and when I saw his form held between her arms, I did not see my son. Instead, it was as though I was looking into a deep canyon, a canyon striped with red, and cut by the very finger of God.
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