To watch the sermon click here.
On my phone I have an app that calculates compound interest. Most of you know about compound interest. It is simply the interest on the initial principle plus, the accumulated interest from previous periods. It’s interest on interest, and allows a fund to grow a lot faster than it might otherwise. When it comes to your investments compound interest is a good idea.
But it occurred to me the other day that I probably could use a compounding calculator that assesses the accrued impact of my hasty decisions. They can have compounding effect just like interest on interest.
Herod could have used one of these as well before deciding to chop off the head of John the Baptist. It was a hasty decision that had huge ramifications.
Here’s the background. Herod is with a bunch of buddies having a party. He’s showing off. He invites his stepdaughter to dance for them. I guess that’s a thing they did back in the day. Seems a little creepy. Nonetheless, it provoked Herod to proclaim in the midst of his brag, that she could have anything she wanted, up to half his kingdom. She’s a little more strategic than Herod and wisely asks her mother for advice…which wasn’t so good for John. “I would like John the Baptist’s head, on a platter,” she announces.
Herod is reluctant. He is uncertain how the people might respond but also, because he is, personally, interested in John the Baptist. The text said that he liked to listen to John. He found John to be perplexing. He was curious about John. He was probably trying to understand what John was getting it. What is this stuff about “preparing a way.” What is this talk about a Messiah.
I sense that Herod had a sincere interest in John the Baptist, and yet, the pressure to act immediately took precedent, and led to the hasty execution of John. Had Herod had his compounding calculator that measured haste, I am sure he would have paused for further consideration.
Here is what he might have seen. Let’s do the numbers. The execution of John the Baptist is found twice in the New Testament, once in Matthew and once in Mark. Now take those two stories and multiply them by the number of Bibles that have been printed in the last 2000 years, which is estimated at 3 billion+. So, Herod’s haste is replicated 6 billion times in 2000 years. And that doesn’t even begin to measure how many times the story is read by one person, or multiple persons from the same Bible, or read out loud to a room full of people, or broadcast to innumerable listeners. That’s not great. Talk about an unintended consequence. He could have used a compounding calculator to assess the impact of his hast.
I could use one of those haste-compounding calculators as well, though hopefully I’m not on track to compete with Herod. My hasty bumbles are generally much smaller. One segment of my life where they show up is the speed at which I hit send on an email. Maybe you know what I’m talking about.
Never in my life, and my wife always reminds me never to say “never,” but I’ll say it today, never in my life have I regretted waiting to send an email. Now the corollary is also true. There are more than a few emails that I sent with haste.
Now here’s the interesting thing about those hasty emails. I always felt I was right in the moment. I always felt justified. I was always 100% certain in my position. And that certainty proved to have a compounding impact that I either had to actively work to repair, or it ended the relationship. Certainty that ignited haste can lead to the unintended impact of isolation, and isolated is where Herod ended up.
By the time he died Herod had completely isolated himself behind soldiers, and food tasters, in massive fortresses that he had built all over his realm. In the end they say he went absolutely mad. And maybe that just meant he was absolutely mad at everybody, or maybe he actually slipped into the insanity of his certainty.
That level of righteous certainty that provokes hasty actions, can have much bigger consequences then an email coming from me. I am mindful of what’s happening in Israel right now. The catastrophe in Gaza is the result of acting immediately. Yes, a response to Hamas’s terrorism had to be confronted: maybe even an eye for an eye. But the cost of their hast has a compounding effect that will impact the nation of Israel in perpetuity.
We’ve seen this before. The bombing of the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and Flight 93 necessitated a respond, but the one done in haste turned into a two trillion-dollar war that lasted for 20 years with no particular outcome.
Another place where we are battling the impulse toward haste right now is the development of artificial intelligence. Companies are racing to be the first movers, to create hegemony which means control, which means power, toward the ends of profit.
One of the more significant thinkers on the topic of haste and artificial intelligence is a guy named Nick Bostrom. He is the founder of The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. This is an institute that focuses on questions of humanity and future technological advancement. In a 2004 article titled the Future of Human Evolution Bostrom made the claim that we must slow down. That not only will haste make waste, but it could lead fundamentally to missing the human potential for blessing all of creation for a trillion years out into every corner of the cosmos.
His argument is that if we don’t get the values behind artificial intelligence right today; if we don’t have a value-based foundation built for humans, not for profit, even if it takes us a million years to figure out what those common values are, we must do so or risk polluting all creation with a flawed value system; a system that may even destroy us before we even get out of the gate. Bostrom warns that if we get it wrong the compounding effect is tragic, if not catastrophic.
What we have to recognize and then actively repress, is the impulse of the first mover, the impulse to act hastily, because this compulsion for the immediate often is about the accrual of power, or keeping of power. That was certainly the case with Herod. He needed to maintain his reputation for brutality. This reputation gave him power. Murdering somebody in sport was part of that.
When I’ve acted in haste, immediately, if not impulsively, it has almost been around power. Maintaining my status, maintaining my position, maintaining my authority. And at least in my case, never was it about understanding, curiosity, or connection.
I have a friend, who I also live with, who sincerely believes that we can always achieve understanding if we seek it out. This doesn’t mean agreement, but it does mean getting to a place where we can understand another’s point of view. It requires sincere curiosity.
Herod was sincerely curious about John the Baptist. But it appears that curiosity took second fiddle to the immediacy of maintaining power; and this haste galvanized his place history a billion times over as a really bad guy.
The moral of the story: take your time. We need to take our time to get it right. We need to do so individually. Which doesn’t mean you can’t go home and slap out that righteously required email. Do it. But don’t send it. Wait. Take your time. Talk to somebody. I promise you will never regret waiting to send that email, particularly if you feel so certain that you are right.
But we also need to do this as a species, as a human family. We need to wait. We need to seek to understand. When we don’t do that, we end up in situations that we don’t want to be in. So, download your compound calculator for haste. Pull it out when you feel certain, pull it out when you feel justified, pull it out when you feel angry, pull it out when you feel provoked, pull it out when you find yourself with your back against the wall, pull it out when you feel you must act immediately, pull it out and calculate the cost.
Take your time. Get it right. And right doesn’t mean getting the right answer, it means getting the right relationship. It is our duty to get the value system right. So, take the time to do so within all the spheres of influence in which you find yourself. Don’t cut off the head of John the Baptist… There is no rush,