Cloudy forecasts

Here’s the new business buzzword: premortem. Instead of conducting business meetings about the new project that are actually pep rallies (“We’ll slaughter the competition!” “We’ll capture the market!”), some managers are leading off with the bad news: “Gentlemen and ladies, the project has failed. What happened?” Even when the project hasn’t been launched yet.

That’s a premortem, wherein a project committee tries to envision everything that could go wrong—or rather, what is certain to go wrong—in order to sketch out the best response and file a backup plan. Proponents of such negative thinking hark back to Stoics like Epictetus and Seneca, not to mention Murphy: Life is struggle. Patient endurance is heroic. If something can go wrong, it will. The practical benefit, of course, is that when the worst happens nobody is surprised.

One of C.S. Lewis’ favorite characters in his Narnia series was Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle. At his first appearance in The Silver Chair, Puddleglum offers the protagonists eel stew: “It’s not in reason that you should like our sort of victuals, though I’ve no doubt you’ll put a bold face on it. All the same, while I am a catching of them, if you two could try to light the fire—No harm trying!—the wood’s behind the wigwam. It may be wet. You could light it inside the wigwam and then we’d get all the smoke in our eyes. Or you could light it outside, and then the rain would come and put it out. …”

The character was based on Lewis’ gardener, a relentless pessimist of stalwart loyalty. We all know people who look on the dim side, but relentless pessimism as a business strategy is “new.” Other places and times would call it merely being realistic.

The Man who said, ‘With God all things are possible,’ also said, ‘They will hate you because they hated me.’

Predicting failure could become a formula for success only in a society that’s already phenomenally successful. Only people who live at unprecedented levels of comfort and financial security come to expect smooth sailing, even though history advises to the contrary. The Power of Positive Thinking advocated by Norman Vincent Peale can only take root in a life largely free from worry about basic needs like food and shelter; in many poor countries, “positive” and “thinking” are two words that don’t belong together.

That’s a lesson lost on many Americans—especially, perhaps, American Christians. How many building-committee meetings envision membership dipping so low they can no longer afford the 500-seat facility? How many pastor-search committees imagine hiring a man who will soon smack against midlife crisis and run away with the organist? With God all things are possible! has launched many an outreach program and church plant—only sometimes, when the going gets tough the tough get going right out the front door, never to be seen again.

American Christian optimism is such that for the last 10 years or more we’ve felt betrayed by our own country. We love America. We thought America loved us. What happened?

The Man who said, “With God all things are possible,” also said, “They will hate you because they hated me.” That’s nothing less than we should expect. Much of Psalms, in fact, can be seen as a handbook of constructive negative thinking: “How long shall the wicked exult? They pour out their arrogant words. … They crush your people, O Lord, and afflict your heritage” (Psalm 94:3-5).

Failure is built into human enterprise ever since a certain incident in a garden. But such is the creativity of the Creator that He twists its ugly strands into a portrait of ultimate success. Not that it comes with a happy-face sticker—the artistic process can be painful and wrenching and could cost you everything. But sometimes you only learn who’s got your back when your back is against the wall—when you can say, as Puddleglum does at the climactic moment of The Silver Chair, “I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it.” That’s often when God shows up: “Your steadfast love, O Lord, sustained me.” And that’s enough.

Email jcheaney@worldmag.com