TMI

There is such a thing as "too much information." I'm not just talking about the "over-sharing" of personal information that makes us cringe with embarrassment--I'm actually thinking more philosophically about what goes into good decision making. You see, the popular but incorrect idea in our culture seems to be that more information means a better decision, but in fact there is very little correlation between having information about a matter and making a good decision regarding it.

The most well known explanation of this phenomenon is Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink. It's a study of how people make decisions and how, almost inexplicably, snap judgments based on limited information are more accurate than more deliberative ones. It seems that what's important is not having lots of data, but rather having only the right data.

Here's a good application of this principle--some priests coming into a parish would seek out their predecessors right away for in-depth heart-to-heart. And although I've had a few conversations with significant figures from Messiah's past and present, I'm not looking for an earful about the place. Or, at least, I didn't want to get all that information up front. Instead I wanted my first impressions and initials decisions to be based on what I found in my encounter with the parish rather than my encounter with well-meaning and informed friends of the parish.

The hard part about this is that it means turning down opportunities to "learn more." It means deliberately deciding not to ask certain questions because I'm not ready for more data--it would just confuse me!

I sometimes run into people that seek a deeper intellectual understanding of their spiritual or psychological problems because they believe (often erroneously) that understanding equals control. It does not. Although a certain amount of insight is helpful, it is not, by itself, transformative. This is one of the reasons why I've gotten increasingly impatient with insight-based preaching. It's intellectually pleasant to be surprised by "ah-ha" moments while listening to a sermon, but it doesn't actually change anything!

So far the only things that I'm really sure consistently transform and grow people are relationships, environment, and intentionality. By "intentionality" I'm really talking about the kind of mental and spiritual attention paid to something or someone. This is way beyond curiosity--it's nearest equivalent would be something like "listening."

For example, I once had a person come to me with depression. They kept wanting to talk about the reasons for their depression. But I quickly realized that this rationalization of his illness was simply a perverted attempted to have a relationship with it. But while he kept trying to talk to his depression demon with thoughts and words, it shouting back with somatic symptoms like weight gain and insomnia. I tried to tell him that he should stop trying to tell his body how it should feel and instead simply feel. If he simply took the time to listen to his own body I'm sure he would have learned something important, but instead he just kept feeding the cycle of his own depression by creating a bigger and bigger rift in his psyche.

Here's another interesting example. Back when I studied Karate I learned that it was a mistake to look at an opponents arms or legs to determine what he was trying to do. It's simply more information than is necessary or tactically useful. All you really have to do is attend to the center of your opponents body--a point just behind the belly button. It's impossible for him to make any move that does not involve some shift in this part of the body. So ever since then I've looked for that point near the center of a thing that will reveal what's going on in the rest of the system. Malcolm Gladwell calls this "thin slicing." If you want a fancier word you would call it an application of the principle of Metonymy--parts represent the whole.

All this theory is very useful when trying to decide what questions I should ask about COTM....

-t