Plan B

There is a man­age­ment tac­tic called “The Sci­ence of Mud­dling Through” — and it works very well for me. It is a non-perfectionist’s approach to get­ting things done. It has some real com­mon sense to it: Get started right away doing what you can. Do not wait for some imag­i­nary ideal time to begin. Learn as you go. Adjust as you learn. Be open to hav­ing an out­come that is not the same as your first thought — one but that fits real­ity a lit­tle bet­ter. Do not waste time on end­lessly bal­anc­ing imag­i­nary scales of pro­duc­tiv­ity, fair­ness, jus­tice, or petty issues. In short — just get it done.

I often tell my stu­dents that hand­ing in a “B” paper is bet­ter than never hand­ing in an “A” paper. Most of my stu­dents make things too hard. Hand­ing in some­thing beats hand­ing in noth­ing. Pro­duc­tiv­ity is more impor­tant than per­fec­tion. True per­fec­tion is found in flex­i­bil­ity. “China doll” approaches usu­ally shat­ter. Prag­ma­tism. Doing what works is what counts the most.

Look­ing back over my life, I can see that Plan B has most often been pre­ferred to Plan A. Plan B is closer to the earth and some­thing Jesus often had to do. Early on in his min­istry, he could no longer work in cities. He had to resort to the coun­try­side. He spoke on moun­tains and from boats along the shore. Peo­ple came out to see him. He had been ousted from the com­forts of the Syn­a­gogues and the Temple.

In the end, Jesus ful­filled his mis­sion. He was not head­line news. He had to com­pete against a list of false mes­si­ahs. His ori­gin and approach was ques­tioned by the elites of his day. His fol­low­ers were writ­ten off as rab­ble. Flaws and all, they still over­came the world.

Nature adjusts con­stantly. Scars may not be as pretty as the orig­i­nal skin, but they denote tested expe­ri­ences and the wis­dom of hard lessons learned. We have two eyes, two ears, two lungs, two kidneys…backup sys­tems to keep in motion and increased meth­ods of sur­vival by sec­ondary means.

Repen­tance and for­give­ness have to do with Plan B. Car­pen­ter becomes Mes­siah. Per­se­cu­tor becomes Apos­tle. Give God credit for cre­ative approaches. From Adam and Eve to the present, it has been one less-than-ideal sit­u­a­tion after another. That is okay. Life goes on even when it has to find Plan C, Plan D, Plan E…