The Repair Costs Nearly As Much

There are two numbers on the back of an envelope on your table.

You wrote them on Tuesday. One is what the repair man said. The other is what a new one costs, the plain one, not the good one. And the gap between them is not big enough.

That is the whole problem in one sentence. If the repair were a quarter of the price you would fix it and think no more about it. If it were the same price you would replace it. It is neither. It is close enough that both answers are defensible and neither one is obviously right, and so you have been adding them up again every evening for five days.

And you have started doing the other thing, which is generating information.

You have looked up how long the new ones last now, and found two people saying seven years and one saying fifteen. You have read about the part that failed. You have found out what a different model costs. You asked the man at work and he said it depends. You have a browser open on this at eleven at night.

And you are not one step closer, because the information is not the missing piece.

What is missing is certainty, and certainty is not available. Nobody knows whether the repaired one lasts four more years or four more months. That is not a knowable fact about the world, and no amount of reading produces it, and you have been searching for it for five days in a place where it does not exist.

So let me say plainly what this article will not do.

I am not going to tell you which one to choose. Not at the end, not implied in the middle, not hinted at in the story. I do not know your machine, your house or your circumstances, and a recommendation from me would be a guess wearing a confident voice.

What I am going to do is get you out of the deciding, because the deciding is now costing you more than either option.

He giveth liberally and upbraideth not

There is a verse in James about asking for wisdom, and the second half of it is the part that matters here.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. (James 1:5, King James Version)

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask.

Notice first that lacking it is assumed. The verse does not say if any of you have failed to acquire wisdom, or if any of you have been careless. It says if any of you lack, which is the ordinary condition of a man in front of a decision with information he does not have.

Then: he giveth to all men liberally.

Liberally is generously, freely, without measuring it out. Not in proportion to how well you have handled previous decisions. Not held back until you have demonstrated something.

And then the phrase I want you to have: and upbraideth not.

Upbraid means to scold, to reproach, to remind somebody of their failings while helping them. And the verse specifically says God does not do that when you come asking.

He does not say you should have known this. He does not bring up the last thing you got wrong. He does not point out that you left it too long, or that you should have replaced it two years ago when it started making the noise.

You have almost certainly been upbraiding yourself for five days, and you have possibly assumed God was doing the same, and this verse says He is not.

Now here is what the verse promises and what it does not. It says wisdom is given. It does not say certainty is given, and it does not say you receive the outcome in advance. Wisdom is the capacity to choose well with what you have. It is not a preview of which choice works out.

Wisdom is given to you freely and without one word of reproach, and lacking it has never once been held against you. James 1:5 says he giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a man at a table with an envelope in front of him.

A decision is not a prediction

Here is the practical half, and it is the distinction the whole thing turns on.

You are trying to make a decision that cannot be proved wrong later.

That is what the five days are for. You are not gathering information, you are trying to construct a position that is immune, so that when it goes badly, and one of them will go somewhat badly, you can point at your reasoning and be safe.

There is no such position.

If you repair it and it fails in March, somebody will say you should have replaced it. If you replace it and the old one would have run four more years, you will know that and it will sit in you. Both futures contain a version of you being wrong, and no amount of thinking now prevents either.

So the standard you are working to is unreachable, and that is why you cannot finish.

Here is the standard that is actually available. A good decision is one made honestly with the information a person had at the time. That is the whole of it. Not one that turns out well, because turning out is not a property of decisions, it is a property of the future, and you do not get that in advance.

You already have enough to choose. You have two numbers, a rough sense of the machine's age, and a knowledge of your own household that nobody else has. The tenth reading of the same page adds nothing to that.

And the deciding itself has a price you are already paying. Five evenings. The thing on the table you look at every time you sit down. The conversation you have had four times with the same person. That is real, and it has been more expensive than the difference between the two numbers.

A decision is not a prediction, and choosing honestly with what you have has never once been the same as choosing right in advance. The written word gives wisdom liberally without ever handing out certainty, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a man who has been trying to make himself unblameable.

Write them down, pick one, and close it

So here is the assignment, and all three parts are the assignment.

Write the two options down, pick one today, and stop reopening it.

Write them properly. Not the numbers you have been carrying in your head. Two lines on one page: repair, and what that costs, and what you get. Replace, and what that costs, and what you get. Four lines at the most.

You will notice how little there actually is once it is written. The reason it has felt enormous is that it has been circulating rather than sitting still.

Then ask, out loud, in the room, for wisdom. That is what the verse is for and it takes about six seconds. Not a long prayer about the household finances. Ask for wisdom, plainly, and expect to be given it without being told off first.

Then pick one. Today. Before you go to bed.

And then the third part, which is the hard one and the one that actually changes your week.

Stop reopening it.

When it comes back tomorrow morning, and it will come back, you say: that is decided. You do not re-examine the reasoning. You do not check one more time what the other one costs. You do not run the comparison again in the car.

That is not stubbornness. It is that the decision has been made with what you had, and there is nothing further to be got by taking it apart again, and every reopening costs you another evening and buys nothing.

You are able to decide today with what you have and close it, and reopening it has never once produced anything you did not have on Tuesday. James 1:5 gives wisdom to a man who asks without one word of reproach, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody saying: that is decided.