Missing my Target

Recently, I sinned. I don’t mean that I acted in a fashion prohibited by my religion. I missed the mark. I missed my target, which is the Greek word “hamartia” and is typically translated in the New Testament as “sin.” One night this summer I found myself in a situation where I had conflicting needs such that any action I took had potential negative consequences.

Specifically, I was with some friends and realized that I no longer felt right about the situation. I felt like I needed to leave if I wanted to take care of myself emotionally and psychologically. However, leaving at that particular time and place meant putting me physically at risk. I was stuck with conflicting needs. My mark or target for that night, as with most nights, would be to take care of all my needs, from social to psychological, from intellectual to spiritual. But, this night, I was doomed to miss the mark no matter what I did.

One of the ways I know I missed my target is how I felt for a few days afterwards. I kicked myself for getting into the situation at all. I felt horrible. I remembered a similar situation from last August, with different friends and place, but otherwise, eerily similar. Why didn’t I learn my lesson a year ago? Besides, I’m getting too old now to get into these stupid kinds of situations. I hurt that I couldn’t stay and I hurt about leaving. I hurt. It felt like death, like a small piece of me was dying. (Maybe that sounds too dramatic, but it did feel like I was dying to self.)

Psychologists call this the hindsight bias, the tendency to think you could have foreseen something after you learn the facts. Doctors who are given case information plus autopsy reports are confident they could predict the diagnosis while doctors not given the autopsy reports find nothing obvious at all about the diagnosis (Dawson and colleagues, 1988, Medical Decision Making). We are all susceptible to this: if I tell you research shows that risky firefighters are better, you will not only come up with good reasons for this, but be confident that you would have predicted this anyway and continue to hold this belief about risky firefighters even after I discredit its basis (C.A. Anderson et al, 1980, Journal of Personality and Social Psych). Problem is…….people told that cautious firefighters are better do exactly the same thing!

“Did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be! Rather it was (missing the mark), in order that it might be shown to be (missing the mark) by affecting my death through that which is good.” Romans 7:13 Yeah, Paul has it. I missed my target and died a little bit inside and I was reminded once again what missing the mark feels like.