Don’t Wait for the Perfect Situation
The amount of choice you and I have in the modern world can be paralyzing. You go to a store to buy paint and you are greeted by 100 shades of every color you could want. Or maybe you search for a job online and find dozens of openings in locations throughout the world. Decision making becomes difficult when faced with an abundance of options. And just when you are about to make a decision, the question creeps into your mind “Why don’t you wait for a perfect situation or option? Surely it is out there somewhere!”
I recently began reading through a book called “Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence” by Vikram Mansharamani. The book so far focuses on how the amount of options you and I have each day leads us to trust experts, computer algorithms, and protocols to make decisions for us. “Think for Yourself” has some incredibly insightful points relevant to living in the modern world. Today, I want to look at one of the most impactful quotes in the beginning of the book.
This explosion of data dangles the possibility of an optimal decision, leaving us with constant low-grade regret and fear of missing out on the best option.
Think for Yourself, Vikram Mansharamani
What the quote means
More data, more problems
This quote contains one of the main propositions of the book: you believe that if you only had enough time and information, you could choose the perfect option. And “Think for Yourself” argues that this belief leads to a constant regret over the decisions you have made and keeps you consistently afraid of missing out on the perfect option.
Vikram points out in his book just how much data you and I have access to. When I say “data”, I mean “information that you can use to make a decision.” For example, let’s say you want to go out for dinner at a restaurant. You are not limited to the restaurants you currently know of. Instead, you can simply look up on your phone all the restaurants around you. Depending on where you are, you might get about 20 restaurants to choose from.
That is what Vikram means when he says you and I have access to an “explosion of data.” With a few clicks, you and I can see every restaurant option within 20 miles of us. At first, you might think this is a perfectly good thing. Isn’t more options better than less options? What I find most profound in the quote above is what Vikram says this amount of choice leads to: the “possibility of an optimal decision.”
What this means is you believe in the back of your mind that you can choose the perfect option if you have enough time and information. In our restaurant example, after seeing all the options, you start searching through them not just find a “good enough” place to eat dinner; you want to search the options to find the perfect, best, ideal restaurant for you at this exact moment in time.
This belief that the perfect decision is out there, just waiting to be discovered leads to two things according to “Think for Yourself.” First, it leads to low-grade regret. You can never be certain that you actually chose the best option out there. When you finally choose a restaurant and go to it, how can you know you chose the right one? And if you are disappointed in any way with your choice, isn’t that a sign that you didn’t find the perfect, ideal restaurant? Thinking this way leads to regretting the decisions you made.
Secondly, the belief you can find the perfect option leads you to have a “fear of missing.” Perhaps you look at the list of restaurants and you narrow it down to five top choices. How do you decide which to go to? Making this final decision can become difficult because you are afraid of choosing wrong. What if you pick the second best restaurant?
You have as much choice as you could want, but this choice ends up making it harder to decide in the end.
Why it is important
Don’t wait for the perfect situation or complete information to make a decision
What struck me as I read this quote is how frequently I have personally experienced this mindset in my life or in the lives of believers around me. My Church is close to several colleges, and college students frequently ask the questions “who should I marry?” and “Where should I work?” These are big decisions, and it is here where the desire to make a perfect decision creeps in.
Everyone, including Christians, is susceptible to the belief that the perfect is out there, just waiting for us. If you only have enough time and information, you can marry the perfect Christian, get the perfect job, serve Christ in the perfect way and so on. “Good enough” is seen as “settling for less.” And “Think for Yourself” is exactly right when it says this mindset leads to regret and fear of missing out.
The “who should I marry?” question is a great example. Scripture is clear Christians should marry only believers. But God does not spell out in the stars who you should marry. Furthermore, the Bible makes it clear that even the most godly person is nothing more than a redeemed sinner. But it is easy to think if you had enough time and information, you could find the absolute perfect, compatible, amazing match and gain nothing but happiness once you marry this person.
Such a mindset (which I believe comes from the world not the culture) will make you terrified of choosing the wrong person to date. It will will also cause you to start thinking “maybe I didn’t choose the right spouse” if you do marry that person and they disappoint you. This same pattern plays out in dozens of decisions you make whether it is as important as what job you choose or as mundane as what restaurant you eat at.
What is the solution? Don’t wait for the perfect situation. Even with all the technology and information you and I have access to, we still live in a fallen world. More than that, information does not become omniscience. God alone is all-knowing and all-wise.
To implicitly think you can make a perfect decision purely based on information is to ignore basic theology. Christians make decisions in faith with full dependence on the Lord.
Takeaways
1. Act in faith and humble dependence on the Lord
Don’t wait for the perfect situation to make a decision. Oftentimes, you don’t need more information, you need to trust the Lord and then act based on the information you have. There is a place for getting wisdom from a “multitude of counselors” and there is certainly a place for seeking the Lord in prayer and in the Word. But even if you ask every Christian in the entire planet, read every Word of the Bible and spend a month in earnest prayer you will still have to make a decision based on faith and trust in the Lord.
It is foolish to believe that you can figure out God’s secret will if you just wait long enough to make a decision. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God” Deuteronomy 29:29 says. At some point, you must act in faith, trusting that God is the one in control of your life, not you. You rely on the Lord, seek His will, and then act based on what you know to be true. This frees you focusing on finding the perfect decision to every choice you are faced with.
2. Trust that God is sovereign over your decisions
Now, you might be thinking “if I don’t wait for the perfect situation, won’t that mean I could choose the wrong thing?” To answer this question, I would remind you that God is sovereign over all things, including decisions you make. That does not mean you won’t sin or make a “wrong” decision. But that does mean as you act in faith, seeking to be as obedient to God as possible, you can live without regret or fear of missing out.
If God is working all your life together to make you more like Christ, you can truly “forget the things which are behind and reach forward to the things that are ahead.” What a freeing perspective! Instead of getting caught up in trying to make perfect decisions in every situation, you act in faith and trust that God is active in and over your life. This allows you to look back on the decisions you have made and look for God’s providential hand, rather than looking for where you chose the less-than-ideal.
3. God makes your paths straight, not more information
One of the most profound verses in Scripture is “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6).
There is a subtle idolatry which occurs when you think if you only had more information, you could make a perfect decision.
To put it another way, it is easy to think that if you looked through all the data, you could make your own paths straight. This is leaning on your own understanding.
Even in the “modern world” where you have access to a ton of information and can grow your “understanding”, you cannot make your paths straight. That is what I love about the quote from “Think for Yourself.” It is a reminder that all the information apart from God will just lead to regret and fear of making the wrong decision. The Bible offers a better way: acknowledging God in all your decisions.
You cannot make your own paths straight, but God can.
So don’t wait around for the perfect situation. Trust in the Lord, acknowledge Him in all your ways, then go and live in obedience to His revealed will.
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