August 3, 2016 – Devotions based on passages from the book David and Goliath
Desirable Difficulties 

“But Joseph said to them, “Do not be afraid, for am I in God’s place? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.   So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.” In this way he reassured them, speaking kindly to them.”  Genesis 50:19-21 
“I want to explore the idea that there are such things as “desirable difficulties”.  That concept was conceived by Robert Bjork and Elizabeth Bjork, two psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles…For example, can Dyslexia turn out to be a desirable difficulty?  It is hard to believe that it can, given how many people struggle with the disorder throughout their lives—except for a strange fact.  An extraordinarily high number of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic.” (David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell, p. 102, 106) 

“The idea of desirable difficulty suggests that not all difficulties are negative.  Too often, we make the…mistake…and jump to the conclusion that there is only one kind of response to something terrible and traumatic.  There isn’t.  There are two…. 

Your father can commit suicide and you can suffer from a childhood so unspeakable that you push it to the furthest corners of your memory—and still some good can end up coming from that.” (David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell, p. 134, 135, 143) 

Consider the following puzzle: 

1. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total.  The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball.  How much does the ball cost?   

What is your first intuition about the answer?  Many people say the ball must cost $0.10 (ten cents).  That can’t be right, can it?  Think about it – the bat is to cost $1.00 more than the ball.  If the ball costs ten cents, and the bat costs one dollar more, it would cost $1.10…leaving the total to be $1.20.  And that is wrong – which means the ball costs five cents ($0.05 plus $1.05 = $1.10) 

This question is part of a three question intelligence test – the shortest IQ test in the world.  It’s called the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT).  It is touted by its creator to be just as useful as IQ tests with hundreds of questions.  How difficult is the test?  MIT students average 2.18 correct answers out of three.  Carnegie Mellon University students averaged 1.51 correct answers out of three.  These three questions are hard because they appear to be easy.  So, the easiest way to increase the scores on this test is to make it more difficult, a little bit harder.  Let me explain.  So, someone gave the test again to some students, but printed the question in a font and gray scale that made it almost impossible to read.  When given to MIT students in this more difficult font and gray scale, their scores went up to an average of 2.45 correct answers out of three.  The difficult font made the students slow down, read the question several times – in other words, they had to work hard to read the question, and thus think a little bit harder.  But the difficulty turned out to be desirable.   

We do not want to create difficult situations for ourselves, but we may just find out that the difficulties we face in life may often have desirable effects on us in the years to come.  If we have a reading disability, or face the loss of a parent at an early age, we may have learned to deal with life’s difficulties and challenges differently – because we have to work just a little harder to get on with life.  Although I do not want to claim that I know the secret to life, one of the benefits of life is take each experience, good or bad, and learn something from it. We can learn a lot about ourselves and our relationship with Jesus in how we endure life, good or bad, and how those experiences point us to a stronger relationship with all people.

Pastor Dave