The Call to Highly Improbable and Infinite Possibilities

 

At the call, Levi leaves all that he has – but not because he thinks that he might be doing something worth while, but simply for the sake of the call.  Otherwise he cannot follow in the steps of Jesus.  This act on Levi’s part has not the slightest value in itself; it is quite devoid of significance and unworthy of consideration.  The disciple simply burns his boats and goes ahead.  He is called out, and has to forsake his old life in order that he may “exist” in the strictest sense of the word.  The old life is left behind, and completely surrendered.  The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity (that is, in truth, into the absolute security and safety of the fellowship of Jesus), from a life which is observable and calculable (it is, in fact quite incalculable) into a life where everything is unobservable and fortuitous (that is, into one which is necessary and calculable), out of the realm of finite (which is in truth the infinite) into the realm of infinite possibilities (which is the one liberating reality)….Beside Jesus nothing has any significance.  He alone matters.

 

Os Guinness

Entrepreneurs of Life

 

“Will we ever go back?”  Lucy asked.

“I should think so; but it will probably happen when you’re not looking for it.”

 

Lucy and the Professor in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

 

What happens when you combine the highly improbable (Black Swan) with infinite possibilities (The Mystery Box)?  Well if you believe there is no God, you experience the perpetual perception of chaos with the sense that your feet are firmly planted in mid-air.  If on the other hand you believe in God (and his Son) you can experience what Levi (Matthew) did when Jesus looked at him and said, “Follow me.”  In other words, you hear His call. 

 

What can appear as an existence of continual uncertainty is, to the Christian, a world of Adventure with incalculable and infinite possibilities.  As those who believe, all we have to do is prepare…prepare, and listen.

 

We can help our young men to be ready for His call; we can encourage them to embrace a future with highly improbable and infinite possibilities.  We can teach them the Heavenly Hat Trick.

 

Black Swans and the 4th Grade

 

Bob Biehl is a great consultant, an excellent speaker, and one of my favorite authors.  I’ve read almost everything he’s written; I’ve also attended two of his one-day seminars entitled “A Day with Bob Biehl.”  These workshops are usually held near an airport so that executives and ministry leaders from around the country can fly in the morning of the event and depart early that same evening.

 

I was so impressed by the first “day with Bob” that I took my son, my son-in-law, and a young sales manager from work the second time around.  The president of Focus on the Family, a Vice President from Chick-fil-a, a number of successful business owners, and directors of multiple international ministries were among the attendees.  

 

At the end of the day Biehl fielded questions from the audience on any topic.  One attendee asked, “Can entrepreneurship be taught?”  Biehl’s answer was, I thought, profound.  He stated that although some people can learn entrepreneurship later in life, most entrepreneurs surface in the 4^th grade.  Jaws dropped around the room, and before mouths could close, Biehl asked, “How many of you in the room are entrepreneurs?”  A number of hands went up. 

 

Beihl pointed at those raising hands one by one with the same question, “What were you doing in the 4^th grade?”  Without exception, all answered with statements like, “I had a paper route at 5:30 every morning,”… “I asked my dad for a job at his business,”… “I mowed lawns for extra money,”…”I fixed bikes,”…”I strung tennis rackets.”   I was stunned, and sobered at the reality of Biehl’s illustration – a point he had made at similar meetings for over twenty years.

 

Yesterday I downloaded version 2.0 of the iPhone software.  Several weeks ago I downloaded a video of Steve Jobs’s announcement of the upgrade to his industry leading communication tool (leading by about 10 light years).  The iPhone is a Black Swan (good bird), so is the iPod.  Both changed the rules in their respective industries.  I’d love to ask Jobs what he was doing in the 4^th grade.

 

Do you see the buds of a growing entrepreneur in your son; even if he’s only in the 4^th grade?  If you do, I encourage you to cultivate it and allow him to be involved in entrepreneurial activities beyond his age.  You may be planting the seeds of dreams that could result in Black Swans that rock the next generation – maybe the next iPhone, maybe the next cure…like this teenager:

 

 

The Black Swan

If you haven’t heard the term Black Swan you will soon.   “What’s a Black Swan?” you ask, “I’ve never seen one.  Do they even exist?”  Exactly.  The fact that you assume there are no Black Swans simply because one has never flown across your windshield, causing you to run a stop sign, illustrates one of our greatest societal weaknesses according to author Nicholas Taleb.

 

Taleb describes his Black Swan as an event or occurrence that has three characteristics:

 

1. It lies outside the realm of expectations because nothing in the past convincingly points to its possibility
2. It carries an extreme impact
3. In spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its happening after the fact, making it explainable and predictable

 

In short, describes Taleb, much of life is random; we live in a world where reality as we perceive it can change in a nanosecond. Black Swans alter our lives, for better or worse, and there’s no way we can predict them.  We try to interpret Swans in the rear view mirror with feeble explanations and causation theories, but we never see them coming – despite all of the Nobel Prize winning models that state we can. 

 

9/11 was a Black Swan (bad bird), so is the iPod (good bird).  Hitler was a Black Swan, so is the Harry Potter series.  Taleb, a wealthy “flaneur” (or professional thinker) as he calls himself, describes his philosophy as “The adventurous practice of uncertainty.” How unnerving is life when a dark bird can descend in the form of two planes that crash and demolish architectural icons - forever changing our paradigm of national security? 

 

We know of course that life is not random - wildly adventurous perhaps - but not random.  We serve an omniscient and omnipresent Creator who knows where dots are currently connecting to form Black Swans behind the scenes.  But we also live in a fallen world with evil enough to launch bad birds every minute of every day. 

 

So what does this mean to us as increasingly efficient technology accelerates the propensity for dark birds to emerge?  Equally or more important, what does it mean to our young men as future responders to the “extreme”?  Let’s dig into “bird watching” a bit deeper.