Adjusting Expectations Downward “A curious thing happens when fish stocks decline: People who aren’t aware of the old levels accept the new ones as normal. Over generations, societies adjust their expectations downward to match prevailing conditions. The concept of a healthy ocean drifts from greater to lesser abundance …” (National Geographic, Apr. 2007, pg. 78). Whether people think fish are plentiful depends on what they expect, and what they expect is based on their experience. More fish than they expect, based on experience, is “good.” Less fish is “poor.” Yet, their expectations decline as fish do. They accept what is, especially if the decline occurs slowly enough for each generation to accommodate its expectations to it. This phenomenon is not altogether bad. Survivors cannot afford to feel ever after the same sadness they first felt when a loved one died. Humans have a built-in psychological capacity to accept unchangeable reality. Simply put, they adjust. They learn to be happy despite the evil that occasionally happens. The alternative is perpetual depression. Yet, this facet of human nature also has moral and spiritual ramifications, since people can also learn to adjust to sin. It disturbs them less and less. They come to tolerate it and even embrace it as good. Their experience becomes the standard by which they define normality. Satan knows this. So, he introduces a person to sin gradually, in small amounts, and if not directly, then into his environment. When his victim has adjusted to it as “normal,” he increases it a little, almost imperceptibly. Over time, this results in a person who indulges sin. The Jews of Jeremiah’s time had so downwardly adjusted expectations of good that they could not even do it: “… They are shrewd to do evil, but to do good they do not know” (4:22). They had even forgotten how to blush at sin (6:15). It was also said of Israel, “But they do not know how to do what is right …” (Amos 3:10). Paul spoke of Gentiles “having become callous” (Eph. 4:19) and even some who would be “seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron” (1 Tim. 4:2). People get this way by adjusting expectations of goodness downward. Yet, the silver lining here is that this process can be reversed. People need to reset their definition of “good” or “normal” by changing their experiences. They need to: • experience goodness — to know it again as “normal.” • insure for themselves experiences which adjust their expectations upward. • hear themselves and others breathe the name of God in reverent prayer. • interact with God by reading and hearing His word. • squeeze out Satan by doing good. • change their environment. • associate themselves with good people both at, and outside, the church. • have associates who are good on the principle that, if “bad company corrupts good morals” (1 Cor. 15:33), good company will have the opposite effect. • filter out of their environment any bad influences which skew downward their conception of what is right and good. • immerse themselves in goodness and surround themselves with good people who will constantly remind them that “good” is normal and set their expectations of it high.