Blindness That Kills

It is December 29, 1972, and Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 has just taken off from the bitter cold of New York City and is heading out to Miami. One hundred and sixty-three passengers are on board, most of them hoping to enjoy a New Year’s vacation in the sun.
 
The flight is smooth and without incident as, a little before midnight, the plane makes its final approach into Miami International Airport. The wheels are lowered in preparation for landing, the captain informs the guests of the local temperature, and the passengers fasten their seat belts.

But then the captain notices that something is wrong. On most aircraft, there are three sets of wheels: one set beneath each of the two wings, and another just below the nose. When the wheels are lowered into place and lock into position for landing, indicators in the cockpit light up. But the green light linked to the wheels beneath the nose has failed to illuminate.

This could mean one of two things: either the light itself is faulty or the wheels have failed to lock into place. Either way, the captain has no choice but to abort his landing to figure out what has gone wrong. He informs air traffic control at just after half past eleven.
 
What happens next will ultimately cause one of the biggest civil aviation disasters in history. The crew members fixate on the faulty light. They pull it from its fitting, they turn it around in their hands, they blow on it to remove dust, they get it jammed when trying to put it back in its fitting. They devote so much attention to the light, they fail to notice the gorilla in their midst.
 
The gorilla, in this case, is the fact that the autopilot has been inadvertently disengaged, and the airplane is losing altitude. As the crew continue to focus their attention on the light, the plane is now taking the crew and passengers on a downward path toward disaster in the Everglades.
 
As the plane drops through 1,750 feet, an altitude warning alarm rings through the cockpit. The alarm is part of a sophisticated warning system, informing the pilots of their mortal danger. But although the alarm is clearly audible on the black box recording, neither the pilot nor the copilot hears it. Their attention is so wrapped up with the light, they have no spare bandwidth with which to consciously register the noise. They are now less than one hundred seconds from death.
 
Altitude is declining every second. The pilots can’t feel it because their senses are deceived by the plane’s motion. They can’t see it through the windows because it’s a moonless night, and there is no visible horizon. But right in front of the pilot’s noses, the altitude meter is spinning downward. It is within their line of sight. It is possible that both pilot and copilot actually look at the meter and see it moving. But they can’t perceive what it is saying. Why? Because it never hits conscious awareness. 

Only when the plane is seven seconds from impact with the ground does the copilot finally realize that something is seriously wrong. The pilot takes evasive action, pulling hard on the lever, but it’s too late. A moment later the plane crashes, killing 101 people.
 
 
attentional resources vs. insufficient bandwidth 
 
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 is that the plane’s detailed warning systems worked. The altitude meter told the pilots that the plane was descending, and the alarm system provided the same information in acoustic form. But neither made the slightest bit of difference. The pilots had insufficient bandwidth. They were inattentionally blind. For the pilots, focused on the faulty light, it was as if the warnings never happened. They vanished into the realms of the unconscious.
 
Crash investigators would later establish that the nose wheels had, in fact, locked into place: the plane could have landed. The only piece of faulty equipment was the lightbulb in the nose gear assembly fixture, which had burned out. One journalist said, “The crash occurred due to the failure of a $12 piece of kit.” In a way, he was right, but the deeper truth is that a warning system, however sophisticated, is often only as good as the attentional resources at the disposal of the crew.
 
Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 has become a seminal event in aviation safety history, changing the way crashes are investigated and the way pilots are trained. A key innovation in crew training systems is a clear procedure of delegation between the pilot and the copilots in order to free up attentional resources.
 
The problem with the faulty lightbulb was not just that the captain fixated on it, but that the rest of the crew did, too: the pool of attention was exclusively focused on a single problem. Had just one of the crew focused on the light fitting, there would have been plenty of available attention for the others to have picked up on the visual and acoustic cues indicating the plane’s descent. 

- Matthew Syed, Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success, Chapter 8

Rest Ethic and Noble Leisure

Even if we could work at full capacity, day in and day out, we shouldn’t. A lot of the wonderful parts of the human experience center on rest, reflection, and recovery. Our minds and bodies need a reprieve from the constant pressure and demands on our time and brainpower. If we want to accomplish the big things we’ve set out to do – to create, lead, contribute, and make an impact – we need a rest ethic as strong as our work ethic.
 
A great rest ethic is not just about working less. It’s about becoming conscious of how you spend your time, recognizing that busyness is often the opposite of productivity, admitting and respecting your need for downtime and detachment, establishing clear boundaries and saying “no” more often, giving your ideas time and space to incubate, evaluating what success means to you, and ultimately finding and unlocking your deepest creative and human potential.
 
As Nassim Taleb noted, “only in recent history has ‘working hard’ signaled pride rather than shame.” With this false pride, our culture has descended into a crisis of mental health issues, burnout, and widespread unhappiness. Even the one thing we so desperately seem to be seeking – productivity – is suffering as a result.
 

Work is a necessity. But leisure was noble.
 
The key distinction Aristotle saw between mere work and noble leisure was essentially the question of why we do it. Work is done for a purpose, a utilitarian goal. Leisure, on the other hand, is done purely for its own sake, in search of meaning rather than purpose.
 
So while today we might think of Aristotle’s pursuits as “work,” to him they were largely leisure. Most of his thoughts were pure contemplation, which he considered as an “activity that is appreciated for its own sake…. Nothing is gained from it except the act of contemplation.” He was “pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end.” Something “useless” can be “beyond usefulness” and a true good in itself. Unfortunately, even among the most “pure” knowledge workers today, such as academics, this form of thinking removed from purpose rarely exists anymore. We no longer understand the concept of noble leisure.
 

- John Fitch & Max Frenzel, Time Off: A Practical Guide to Building Your Rest Ethic 

and Finding Success Without the Stress.

Directed, Undirected, and Misdirected

The expression “pay attention” makes sense as we dive deeper into where and how our minds concentrate.

There are different types of attention:

• Our choice to concentrate is directed attention.
• Our intentional move to let our minds wander is undirected attention.
• Our less productive, more troublesome use of the brain is wasted energy, or misdirected attention.

- Joseph McCormack, Noise: Living and Leading When Nobody Can Focus (2020)

When Authentic Forgiveness is Achieved

True forgiveness is a painful journey, a prolonged wrestling with a wound, and a process aimed at achieving genuine repentance by the offender, graceful acceptance by the victim, and restoration of the broken relationship. This is true forgiveness in the biblical sense.
 
Forgiving is not an instant solution or a quick fix. It is a long, deep, difficult, and painful process of wrestling with the injury, and risking a return to conversation and a resumption of relationship. The Christ of the cross, who shows how costly it is for God to forgive, is our great example (1 Pet 2:21). Augsburger states, “God used the Cross to make forgiveness possible and to model forgiving to an unforgiving world.
 
Some ask when authentic forgiveness is achieved. Augsburger states, “Grace and truth, acceptance and confrontation, sacrifice and prophetic rebuke are needed in resolving alienation, injustice, or interpersonal injuries.” Authentic forgiveness requires one party to repent and the other party to have the grace to accept that repentance with trust and respect. Authentic forgiveness occurs when there is mutual recognition that both repentance and acceptance are genuine, and when the severed relationship is mended. The final stage in authentic forgiveness is when the victim reconnects with the offender and discovers that the strange chemistry of reconciliation can heal the wound until nothing remains but the remembered scar with a transformed meaning. Such forgiveness results in a deeper and stronger union than before.

- John C. W. Tran, Authentic Forgiveness: A Biblical Approach, 2020.

Forgiveness is Not Unconditional

Conflicts are not resolved when misdeeds are overlooked—the hurts continue to ache and the relationships continue to decay. As forgiveness enthrones justice, to make harmony genuine, both parties should discuss the issues in depth with one another so that they can confess, repent, and reconcile with substance.
 
As Western culture has become increasingly individualized, the importance of a moral context has been trivialized and forgiveness has often been reduced to passive forbearance. It is only when moral values and virtues are central to the meaning of personhood that the importance of forgiveness is appreciated. Augsburger writes: “Authentic forgiveness is that cluster of motivations which seeks to regain the brother and the sister in reconciliation.… The courage to forgive is an excellency of character, a virtue that enables one to act in restoration of personal relationships, to risk in reconstruction of social networks, to commit oneself to live in moral integrity.” Forgiveness demands the moral virtues of justice, fairness, love, mercy, repentance, and reconciliation.
 
In Christian tradition, repentance and reconstruction of right relationship are central to the process of forgiveness. According to Augsburger, repentance should consist of three dimensions: remorse, restitution, and renewal. Remorse, when accompanied by a full detailed discussion of the issues, is a genuine sorrow. Restitution is an attempt by the offender to restore what was destroyed, again, when accompanied by full discussion. Renewal is a change in life direction, with the offender not only repudiating past behavior but affirming a new principle of moral action is needed. 

Forgiveness is the mutual recognition that repentance is intended, embraced, and pursued. Forgiveness is not unconditional. Augsburger writes: “Love may be unconditional, forgiveness is not.… The familiar teaching of unconditional, unilateral forgiveness is not forgiving but a return to loving.… Forgiveness … recognizes the complexity of reopening the future in risk, restoring relationship in trust, and recreating the nature of that alliance in justice.” Thus, forgiveness without repentance and reconciliation is incomplete; it is simply love for one’s enemy and a willing heart to forgive.

- John C. W. Tran, Authentic Forgiveness: A Biblical Approach, 2020.

The Relationship between Forgiveness and Repentance

Authentic forgiveness is a mutual recognition that repentance is genuine and reconciliation has been achieved. Without repentance, authentic forgiveness offered by the victim cannot be consummated because the victim can only extend a forgiving heart, which indeed demonstrates a love of one’s neighbor and enemy.
 
Jesus’s cry from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34), has often been misinterpreted to mean that he requires no repentance from sinners. But Jesus’s words echo the Old Testament practice of sacrifice for unintentional sin (see Num 15:27–31). His words confirm that his death is a once-and-for-all sacrifice to offer divine forgiveness for those people who act wrongly in ignorance. Nevertheless, this wrongful act in ignorance does not mean that there is no requirement of repentance.
 
In Acts 3:13–19, Peter stresses that people who deny God in ignorance also need to repent. To those who denied, rejected, or even killed Jesus, Peter said, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord” (Acts 3:19). Luke describes how Jesus, after his resurrection, reminded the disciples that everything written about him in Israel’s Scriptures must be fulfilled (Luke 24:44–46) and then authorized them to go to all nations to preach “repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:47). In obedience to this commission, Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, preached powerfully about the gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38). Repentance is essential for God’s forgiveness of sin and for salvation.
 
Repentance is indeed a necessary response to divine forgiveness and the salvation offered by Jesus. This is crucial because when disciples are called to follow Jesus to embody forgiveness, they will consider how repentance is associated with forgiveness in Jesus’s eyes. Many people tend to trivialize victimization by ignoring the claims of victims if they interpret what Jesus does for us as “cheap grace”—to use Bonhoeffer’s term. Cheap grace must be rejected because the forgiveness offered by Jesus was very costly—indeed, it cost Jesus his life. And Jesus takes very seriously the offenses that human beings commit against God and against one another, and he requires that sinners repent.

- John C. W. Tran, Authentic Forgiveness: A Biblical Approach, 2020.

Forgiveness Restores Communion

Authentic forgiveness is more than absolution of guilt. Based on the Trinitarian idea that God is a communal being, L. Gregory Jones argues that confession and forgiveness should take place communally. God, through his self-giving communion, is willing to bear the cost of forgiveness to restore humanity to communion in his eschatological kingdom. In response, human beings are called to embody forgiveness, with the aim of restoring communion between God and humankind, and with one another, seeking to remember the past truthfully, repair brokenness, heal division, and reconcile relationships.
 
Jones confronts the tendencies, both in the church and in other social contexts, to see the world either as “lighter” or “darker” than it is. To see the world as lighter than it is means the tendency to trivialize forgiveness by making it therapeutically easy, without dealing with repentance and justice. Dietrich Bonhoeffer polemicized against such “cheap grace.” He resisted, among other things, preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance, and communion without confession. Sin cannot be overlooked or forgotten but, instead, must be confronted and judged in the context of forgiveness. To see the world as darker than it is, on the other hand, is to view forgiveness as impossible because violence is seen as the ultimate master of us all.
 
Jones resists the notions of either grace without judgment or judgment without grace, of either forgiveness without repentance or repentance without forgiveness. Grace without judgment is cheap grace that does not result in transformation of lives; judgment without grace holds others accountable but results in unbroken cycles of violence. Forgiveness without repentance invites continuity of sin, while repentance without forgiveness can lead to despair and self-destruction. To confront the tendency to trivialize authentic forgiveness, Jones asserts, “When we fail to see and embody this forgiveness in relation to particular lives, specific situations, and concrete practices, we too easily transmute the notions of judgment and grace, forgiveness and repentance, into abstractions that destroy rather than give life.”

- John C. W. Tran, Authentic Forgiveness: A Biblical Approach, 2020.