'The Cost of Turning Around'

In 1975, a Kodak engineer named Steve Sasson built the first digital camera in a lab in Rochester, New York. It weighed eight pounds. When he showed it to his executives, they didn’t ask how it worked. They asked why anyone would want to take a picture that way — there was nothing wrong with conventional photography. The patent was shelved. In 1996, Kodak had $28 billion in market value and 140,000 employees. By 2012, they filed for bankruptcy. Researchers who study organizational behavior call this escalation of commitment: the more you invest in a position — money, years, identity, reputation — the more expensive it becomes to admit you were wrong. Kodak didn’t fail because their people were incompetent. They failed because they had given everything to the wrong thing, and by the time the evidence was undeniable, the cost of turning around had grown too high to pay.

The apostle Paul was not traveling to Damascus on a business trip. He was traveling with letters of authority to arrest Jewish Christians, drag them back to Jerusalem, and hand them over for punishment. He had given years to this work. Every arrest, every trial, every approval of a death deepened the investment. He was not someone who could be nudged. Then, at noon on a bright summer day, a light from heaven made the sun look dim and Paul fell to the ground. When he opened his eyes, he could not see. The most credentialed man in that traveling party was blind, on the ground, being led by the hand. Acts 22:6 records the moment: “As I was on my way and drew near to Damascus, about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone around me.” This is the two-by-four that Paul needed. The thing that happens when the slow path of correction has been declined too many times.

There are two ways to find out you have been heading in the wrong direction. Someone who loves you tells you — and you humble yourself enough to hear it. Or reality forces the issue in a way you cannot argue with. Both paths require the same thing in the end: the willingness to be wrong. The difference is what it costs you to get there. The good news about Paul is not that he avoided the hard way. He didn’t. The good news is that even the hard way worked. No investment in the wrong direction is too large for God to redirect. Sometimes the right way to go is in the other direction.

Jonathan Beck