The blind man is not afraid of ghosts.
Burmese Proverb1
Al Stoller’s decision not to take the risk of confrontation differs little from an executive neglecting to make a decision because he can not or will not recognize the long-range implications.
Several years ago an executive faced a difficult decision at his chemical company’s coking plant. Coke making requires a gigantic battery to cook the coke (a derivative of coal) slowly and evenly for long periods. The battery is the most important and expensive piece of equipment used in the process.
This particular plant’s battery showed signs of weakening. A replacement would cost $6 million. Such a large expenditure would adversely affect the bottom line that year. Pressured by a recent corporate decree to cut unnecessary expenditures, the businessman tabled the request to replace the battery. Instead, the existing battery was patched and held together for four more years.
When the battery finally collapsed, however, the company, unable to produce coke for several weeks, was sued for breach of contract by a steel producer. The Environmental Protection Agency cited the firm for violating pollution regulations. Eventually, the total bill, including lawsuits and replacement, exceeded $100 million.
In hindsight, of course, we can see the executive should have replaced the battery earlier. Had he acted decisively, millions of dollars would have been saved. He took what appeared to be the risk-free way — and ended up risking not only his leadership but the very existence of his business.2
Contrast that account of indecision with a story told about Calvin Coolidge. During his term as governor of Massachusetts, the Boston police force went on strike. The police commissioner responded by recruiting a new force. Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, appealed to Coolidge to recognize strikers’ rights. Coolidge dictated a reply: “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.”
Friends urged Coolidge not to send it, saying it would end his political career. “Very likely,” said cool Calvin, and he sent the message anyway. It proved to be a successful, and popular, decision.
Such commitment under pressure inspires. The contrast between our close-to-the-vest executive and daring Coolidge appears to teach a simple lesson: act decisively and with bravado.
But is it really so simple? When we stop to think, we recognize that in the case of a prudent, successful politician like Calvin Coolidge, for every risk he took there were ten he did not take because he judged the danger too great. In fact, Coolidge’s biographer later noted that “Coolidge was the reluctant hero of law and order. Only with great caution did he recognize the issue that had been forced on him by the Boston Police Strike.”3 Coolidge did indeed stick to his guns — but out of careful deliberation, not any John Wayne bravado.
How does one judge the relative riskiness of a decision? When do you take a risk? Answering those questions demands that we look more closely at what risk is.
Risk Is Inescapable
We go to great lengths to avoid risks, especially physical ones. Entire government agencies protect us in the work place, on the highways, and aboard public transportation. Other agencies guard our food, drugs, and medical care. Educational institutions are monitored to protect us from psychological risk and manipulation.
With this apparent cushion of protection around every facet of our lives, we are tempted to think of ourselves as safe. Two factors, however, betray the illusion.
The first is our own secret yearning for the zest that risk brings. Something deep in our psyches tells us it is better “to put all, save honor, in jeopardy” than to look too long before taking a leap.
The second factor is reality itself. Risk is still an inevitable part of daily life. Death, the ultimate risk, lurks on the edge of everyone’s consciousness. We take a risk every time we drive a car, eat a meal, meet a new acquaintance. Unknown contingencies challenge every waking moment.
The illusion of risk-free living weakens our ability to cope when danger, either physical or psychological, does strike. August Heckscher, in the Christian Science Monitor, said that perhaps the primary aim of education is to make informed risk takers: “Every graduate from the ideal school should be constantly undertaking ventures that test him and put his very being in hazard. What he learns from his books and teachers is not information, certainly not technical knowledge. It is a sense of the values that make him what he is and that may permit him to become somebody different. It is an instructed judgment and a capacity to dare.…
“To be a risk-taker requires a mature perception of our changing position amid complexities. If an acquaintance is to turn into a friend, and a friendship into a deeper intimacy, one must be aware at each stage of what is happening in one’s inner and outer world. Shakespeare described the nobility of life as being able ‘to look before and after,’ to appreciate, that is, precisely the pitfalls one is escaping and the rewards one achieves.”4
Once the ubiquitous nature of risk is understood, we become better decision makers. Instead of forfeiting opportunity by doing nothing at all, we can choose between actions, accurately weighing the risk of each.
Risk Is Essential
Without risk takers, life would be even more dangerous. Politicians, doctors, and scientists throughout history who were willing to take well-calculated risks have benefited us all.
Smallpox was the scourge of mankind in 1717 when Zabdiel Boylston developed an effective but hazardous method of protection. He called it innoculation. He injected a small amount of infected material directly from smallpox patients into uninfected patients.
It was reasonably effective. During previous epidemics of smallpox, one in seven of those infected died. Only one in forty-one of those Boylston innoculated died. Boylston did not lack volunteers for this risky procedure because fear of the epidemic drove people to him. Boylston’s medical colleagues, however, strongly opposed his revolutionary practice. They made a great deal of the one of his forty-one patients who died, ignoring the extraordinary improvement in mortality the other forty represented.
They accused Boylston of violating two of the ancient injunctions of Hippocrates, whose teachings had guided medical ethics since antiquity: “Above all do no harm to anyone nor give advice which may cause his death.” Boylston persevered in his treatment because he understood the relative risks of not being innoculated (at epidemic’s end, 844 of 5,759 people, or 14.6 percent of those who developed smallpox, died) compared to the risks of being innoculated (eventually 6 of 247 people, or 2.4 percent of those he innoculated, died).
This striking reduction in the risk of death eventually exonerated Boylston and demonstrated the principle that smallpox could be prevented by human intervention, eventually leading to the almost-foolproof method of vaccination.5
It also illustrates the principle of benefiting from a thorough understanding of risk.
Risk Is Necessary in the Church
Risk taking is a necessary part of local church ministry. Without risk-taking leadership, churches quickly become ineffective. The great leaders of church history recognized this and took great risks to further the cause of the body of Christ. Two examples:
John Chrysostom. A Christian orator, Scripture exegete, and church father, Chrysostom was born at Antioch about 347. After ordination as a priest in 386, he began a brilliant preaching career. In his zeal to keep the church pure, however, he frequently called the clergy to task. He berated the rich in his congregations for not regarding their wealth as a trust, and charity to the poor their chief obligation.
This was a risky position to take in a day when Christianity was the state religion, endorsed in all its pomp and luxury by the Empress Eudoxia. Eudoxia was known for both her support of the Christian clergy and her luxurious lifestyle. Surely Chrysostom understood the risk of attacking not only the church hierarchy but the empress. After weighing the risks, he decided it sufficiently important to take the chance. As a result he was exiled by Eudoxia and was deposed as bishop by the clergy.
Was it worth the risk? Eudoxia is now a footnote to history, the other clergy of the period mostly unknown. Chrysostom’s writings, however, have influenced countless theologians in the fifteen centuries since his death.6
Ulrich Zwingli. In 1522, Ulrich Zwingli had been preaching the gospel in Zurich for three years. Shortly after Ash Wednesday that year, Zwingli made a symbolic stand regarding the rule of fasting from meat during Lent.
Zwingli attended a simple evening meal at which some of those present ate sausage. Although he did not eat any himself, he raised no objection, an equal sin for a clergyman. It would have been easy for him to escape the consequences. He could have explained it as a mistake or admitted it as sinful and sought absolution.
Instead, Zwingli not only condoned the action but made it a public issue in his sermon of March 23, which was enlarged on April 16 into a short pamphlet.
In that pamphlet he explained that he had never spoken against abstaining from eating meat during Lent or on Friday. What he had encouraged, he said, was freedom in Christ, and this had been interpreted by some to imply they need not abstain from meat. It was this opinion regarding freedom in Christ, rather than the action taken, that Zwingli sought to justify.
Eventually the Swiss church adopted Zwingli’s position, which led to a more unified church in Switzerland and contributed to the reformation of the church throughout Europe. Zwingli accomplished this by risking his name and position on the matter.7
We could go on with further illustrations of risks taken in local churches throughout the ages. Risk is part of life and ministry. Indeed it might be accurate to say that to minister well is to know when to take risks.
J. L. Cranmer-Byng, ed., Burmese Proverbs (London: John Murray, 1962), 23.
Robert Jackall, “Moral Mazes: Bureaucracy and Managerial Work,” Harvard Business Review (September/October 1983): 126.
Donald McCoy, Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President (New York: Macmillan Company, 1967), 86-95.
August Heckscher, “The Risk-Takers,” Christian Science Monitor (19 June 1981): 20.
John Urquhart and Klaus Heilmann, Risk Watch: The Art of Life (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1984), 21ff.
See Donald Attwater, St. John Chrysostom (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1939).
See G. R. Potter, Zwingli (London: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
Copyright ©1987 by Christianity Today
