A Struggle for Perspective

For many years Walter Cronkite was the anchorman on the CBS Evening News. Each day Cronkite gave the news of major developments around the world. After doing that, he signed off each broadcast in a way that was unique to him. He would always say, “And that’s the way it is, November 1, 1970” (or whatever the date was that day).

When I was in Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, Vance Havner, the long-time Baptist evangelist, came to our campus and spoke at chapel. He talked about how the way we see things is often skewed. Our perspective clouds our vision of the way things really are. He pointed to Cronkite’s characteristic way of signing off at the end of a broadcast. He said, “When Walter Cronkite says at the end of his broadcast, ‘And that’s the way it is, November 1, 1970,’ I always want to step to his desk and say, ‘No, Walter, that’s just the way it seems.’” We are always struggling for perspective on things.

Each Sunday in the NFL, the officials on the field make many judgment calls. Some of these calls are challenged. For example, an official will rule that a player was out of bounds when he caught the football, and the coach on the opposing team will throw a red flag to indicate a challenge to the official’s ruling. At that point, the referee will go to the sideline and watch several replays of the catch. Sometimes, the referee will overturn the ruling on the field. Now, what happened to cause him to overturn the ruling? What happened was that when he saw the play from several different angles, he saw that the call by the official was incorrect. The official was sincere in his call, but the problem was that his perspective was limited. He did not see it from the right angle, and thus his call was incorrect. We often do that in life. We are convinced that something is correct when it might be incorrect. And, vice-versa.

Often, it is a problem with our historical perspective. Someone asked a Chinese scholar what he thought of the French Revolution, which shook France in the latter part of the 18th century. The Chinese official said, “I don’t know. It’s too soon to tell.”

Sometimes it is a problem with a lack of perspective about what is big and what is small. A traveler on a country road asked a farmer if he could safely ford a swollen stream that was running across the road. When the farmer reassured him that the water was shallow, the traveler attempted to ford the stream only to have the water come over the hood of his car. When he accosted the farmer about his erroneous advice, the farmer said, “Well, I don’t understand that. I saw my ducks cross it just a while ago, and it only came half-way up their sides.”

Maintaining a proper perspective on life is tricky. Only God sees things as they really are. God can help us maintain our perspective and see life as it really is.