When a steak walks into the forest covered in honey.
Who should we blame?
In the forest lives a bear.
We all live in the forest.
By living in the forest, you run the risk of your path intersecting with the bear.
By living in the forest and covering yourself with honey, you increase the risk of your path intersecting with the bear.
By living in the forest, covering yourself in honey, and tying raw meat to yourself, you further increase the risk of encountering a bear.
The probability of running into the bear is never zero, but it does change depending on the environment and what you do.
The bear operates on instinct. He does what bears do, without remorse.
Probability is the math of how likely something is to happen. It’s expressed with a number between 0 (impossible that it would happen) and 1 (certain that it would happen). It can also be expressed as a percentage from 0 - 100%.
Rolling a six-sided die has a probability of 1/6, or approximately 17%. Flipping a coin has a probability of 1/2, or 50%.
To perform accurate probability calculations, you need actual numbers and data to work with. We aren’t going to worry about a particular data set, but instead, just consider what probability means in theory for those of us who live in a forest with a bear.
Let’s say there is a one in five chance you’ll run into the bear (20% chance). What does that actually look like for forest dwellers living their lives?
It could look like several things.
Scenario 1: Maybe the first four times you go out into the forest, nothing happens. You never run into the bear. It’d be easy to assume you never will and that the things you did those four times have no impact on meeting the bear. But the more time you spend in the depths of the forest, the greater the likelihood you’ll run into the bear. You’re always eating away at the pie and inching towards that 20%.
Scenario 2: Perhaps, after several rounds of the above scenario, you’re confident you know what it takes to avoid the bear, or that no bear will ever bother you. Your existence in the 80% has given you confidence, and you question if the 20% even exists. You add the honey and raw meat and go wild in the forest.
But now you’ve changed the probability.
It’s no longer a 20% chance of meeting a predator, but now a 40% chance.
Maybe the first three times you get off scot-free, but you whittle away at your now-fewer chances of avoiding a bear.
And worse, you will experience this probability differently than others do, allowing the order of experience to color your judgment. Maybe you’ll go into the forest covered in honey and raw meat and never see the bear the first twelve times, but your less fortunate friend runs into the bear the first time out.
The probability of running into the bear in the forest is never zero, and this fallen world is the forest. It’s a forest God made and has complete power over, but because the forest dwellers decided otherwise, it is currently ruled by the master of the bears.
Is it your fault when the bear attacks you for simply living in this forest? No. The probability is never zero.
Is it your fault when the bear attacks honey-and-meat-covered you for walking in the woods? Still no. The bear is at fault for who it decides to attack. The prey isn’t at fault for existing, which makes the predator want to harm it. Changing the probability doesn’t make the attack your fault, since the probability was never zero.
But we do have some power in this equation. We aren’t trapped in the whims of fate. How we choose to exist in the forest can affect our probability in either direction. However, while choices affect probability, we have to remember that fairness has little to do with how probability functions. The probability is still never zero.
“It’s not fair, God!” as the bear lumbers toward us. “I made good decisions.”
“It’s not fair, God!” as the bear lumbers towards our friend. “I made the bad decisions.” (We don’t say this last one too much. In those moments, we mostly feel relief if we’re even self-aware enough to recognize the disparity.)
There’s a much easier way to say all of this, but people don’t like to hear it bluntly put. We don’t like it when the Bible says our choices and how we live our life has consequences, and we don’t understand why bad things happen to good people.
I’m trying to figure out how to make sense of what happens in life, like tens of millions of humans and philosophers before me. We are careful never to blame the victim while simultaneously creating victim-based identities, thereby creating a strangely victim-centric society in which the blame must go outward. Every action is followed by blame.
Who is at fault for what has happened to me?
Every bad thing must be attributed to someone or something. There must be blame for there to be understanding, or purpose, or moving forward. Blame means there is someone or something to take action against, a chance to taste justice, and to give terrible events meaning we can understand. Few things are worse than a tragedy that never makes sense because there is no perpetrator we can blame; it sits without closure.
We never blame the victim, a good rule of thumb. A good question might also be: who is a victim, and who is perpetrating self-destruction? What if the person committed actions that increased victim probability, actions that almost suggest they are not a victim, but a perpetrator against themselves? What if they went looking for bears, and crawled into their den?
I've seen this firsthand in people in my life who consistently make terrible life decisions, which have exponentially increased the probability of a life filled with drama and wreckage, who have sought out every terrible life choice, and are still angry about the fallout. They insist that all the terrible things that have happened are not their fault but someone else’s.
God gets the blame. Fate, if you don’t believe in God, gets the blame. Maybe a white male somewhere gets the blame. Maybe a political figure gets the blame. Maybe law enforcement gets the blame. Maybe our parents get the blame. Maybe our boss gets the blame. Maybe boomers get the blame. The rich get the blame. You cannot be a good victim unless there is well-defined blame. A victim who places no value in blame is not marketable, for they refuse to take on the identity of a victim.
In trying to wrap my head around this, I’ve come up with what I call my three categories of understanding why things happen.
Do I deserve it? That’s a question of justice and could easily turn into a theological sermon about grace, if I let it.
Is it my fault? That’s about blame, and it’s not the same as the first question.
Did I increase the probability that it would happen to me? That’s about reality, about living in the forest where there are bears.
Questions two and three are challenging to answer because we often don’t know the specific kind of people or situation we’re dealing with.
The bear we meet could be a wild grizzly bear or an escaped friendly circus bear. We don’t know if the steak will encourage the bear to attack or to come over and perform tricks. We make decisions based on a gamble that we won’t get hurt because we don’t deserve it, and in gambling, the forest always wins. It may not be your fault if you win or lose, but your decision to play is ultimately yours.
The decisions we make at any moment are many, and don’t always seem like conscious decisions. The friends I chose to hang out with. The people I allowed to speak into my life. The clothes I wore. Who or what I tried to attract. The time I left the event. What I drove. How I behaved. If I controlled my emotions. If I stayed home. The relationships I allowed. The drugs and alcohol I introduced to the equation. The anger I let override my logic. How much self-control I had. The entertainment or input I consumed. My situational awareness.1 And especially, in whom or what I placed my faith.
That’s the tricky bit: after having established a nice, tidy theory, the reality is that God is involved.
Probability isn’t the machinery driving life, though it does function within life. It’s the human method of using math and common sense to understand the average outcome of situations and decisions. It’s how we understand what tends to happen when certain variables are present. (The book of Proverbs can also do you a solid in this.)
Is God in control?
Yes. But we have free will, and in that three-part list, we return to #2. God might allow probability, the natural outflow of our decisions, since He has told us in His Word how this fallen world works and what kinds of choices we should be making, or He might step in and operate in #1 by not letting us get what we deserve. We never really notice or thank Him for when he does that, mind you. We only have words with him when he allows the bear attack.
We live in a forest with bears.
When something bad happens that seems so unjust, who is to blame?
The fallen forest and the bear, mostly.
But we are foolish if we don’t talk about the probability factor, choosing to build our decisions and an emotional life on a sandy foundation that assumes there are no bears or bear attacks.
No, it’s not fair.
Yes, you have the freedom to make your own choices.
No, you don’t have the freedom to avoid the potential outcomes of those choices.
Yes, some situations are completely out of your control.
No, drinking or doing drugs won’t help you get control in a situation, nor will pretending you are in control and can tame a bear.
Yes, you can take steps to improve your chances of not being a victim.
No, I’m not blaming victims.
Yes, I think it’s reasonable to consider that list of decisions and consciously make wise choices, given the bear is out there.
No, you don’t have to be paranoid. You can still enjoy a full life in the forest.
I’m not trying to tell you what you can and cannot do. I’m simply telling you to consider the forest you live in carefully. I want fewer victims, and one way to do that is to reduce the probability that you’ll be one.
Situational awareness is a lost art. Most people are lost in their own world, not aware of what is happening around them. They aren’t observing the behavior or people around them and noting how it might affect them. They don’t hear or see warnings. They miss cues that could help keep them, or others, safe. They’re losing connection with the reality around them, which isn’t just a safety issue, but is also a mental and emotional issue. If our attention is drawn to music, video, or something outside the current time and place we are existing in that moment, our existence grows thinner and weaker.
I’m flummoxed by the need for everyone to wear earbuds or big Bose or Beats headphones. Some of the things you need to be able to hear to maintain situational awareness: how your car engine is running, if there are sirens, if someone is coming up behind you, if there is a car, if there is an animal nearby, if someone is calling for help, if there is thunder or an approaching storm. You also never hear the sounds of birds and locusts and wind through the trees.
It’s mind-boggling that I have to do the same with our eyes, since you’d think we couldn’t cover our eyes. But we do, by staring at our screens. It’s the same thing, a lack of situational awareness. People who can’t stop at a red light without looking at their phone, while driving, at restaurants, at the campfire, in front of the TV, in the movie theater. Literally, we now have to be entertained while we are being entertained!
Ah, situational awareness. Something that is preached in occupational settings but still seems to be listed as a root cause of many accidents/incidents. When there is a focus on being aware in a fluid environment, and cues are still missed, how many potential hazards are missed iamong those without some focus or training?
Thanks for sending me down the rabbit trail of independent vs cumulative probabilities. 🤣
[I realize that was pretty irrelevant to the overarching points you're making, but you and I share the same perceptions and beliefs about them and I have nothing to add there.]