The Logic of Induction and the Book of Job

Doug McManaman
(Lenten Retreat Talk, Catholic Teachers Guild,
Toronto, Ontario, March, 2014)
Copyright © 2014 by Douglas P. McManaman
All Rights Reserved
Reproduced with Permission

I thought I would offer a reflection on the book of Job in light of some of the knowledge issues I've been discussing with students. Our school became an IB World school a few years ago, and part of their program is the Theory of Knowledge course, which is a kind of philosophy course with an emphasis on knowledge issues. To prepare them for the essay they are required to write for the IB Organization, I spend a bit more time on the logic of induction, because so many more knowledge issues come out of this particular area of logic. For example, there are many induction biases that human beings are unwittingly subject to. Studying these with students is important not only for critical thinking; doing so has positive theological implications as well. This is especially true in our tendency to weave explanations into very complex realities that are beyond our ability to explain, and I think this is what the book of Job is partly about; the mystery of suffering and divine providence, and man's need to explain it, that is, to explain what is beyond our ability to explain. There are some important points on theological unknowing, in particular, the importance of learning to be satisfied with living under or within a cloud of unknowing, and learning to pray and trust in that spirit of unknowing.

Intelligence really is the glory of the angels, not the glory of man. Although we are highest in the hierarchy of beings in the physical universe, we are the lowest of God's intellectual creatures. Intelligence is not our glory, and yet so many people seek to achieve their glory in intellectual achievement. The secret to man's glory is buried in the word 'human', from the Latin humous, which means dirt or soil, from which is derived the word 'humility'. Man's glory is humility. If the angels can envy us in anything, it is in the degree of humility that we are capable of, and in the fact that we can share in the sufferings of Christ in a way that they cannot.

But it is humous or matter that renders the physical universe so complex, so varied, and so opaque to scientific scrutiny. This is not a world of Platonic forms; it is a material world, and coming to know it is a matter of induction, not deduction. And so human knowing is slow, sluggish, time consuming, laborious, always open to revision and always being revised.

That's what induction is all about. We begin in the realm of the particular, with concrete evidence, and we make our way towards the more general. Deductive logic is the other way: we begin with the universal, and move towards the particular. For example, All triangles have three sides. This yield sign is a triangle. Therefore, this yield sign has three sides. The conclusion of a deductive argument is absolutely certain. There is no ambiguity. It is necessarily true.

Inductive logic, on the other hand, begins with the concrete particular and moves towards the more general. For example,

87% of eggs sampled are Grade A.
Therefore, 87% of all the eggs from which the sample was taken are Grade A.

or,

70% of the students of this school think we need a new uniform.
Anushka is a student of this school.
Therefore, Anushka thinks we need a new uniform.

The difference is that the conclusion of an inductive argument is not absolutely certain, only probable. There is space of uncertainty here.

Now, this is a fascinating area to explore. It is fascinating how we are able to take a sample of voters and conclude that the Conservatives, for example, will very likely win the election. There are all sorts of conditions that need to be in place, the sample has to be large enough and representative enough, and to achieve that, we need to select randomly, standard error has to be calculated, and so mathematics is involved, and what's interesting is that the mathematics does not dispel the uncertainty. Mathematics simply gives precision to a conclusion having only probability, while leaving the space of uncertainty untouched. For example, we can take a sample of 500 voters, a representative sample, randomly selected, and determine that since 53% said they voted conservative and 45% said they voted liberal, that with a margin of error of 2% for both, the conservatives will win, either at 51% and the liberals at 47%, or 55% for conservatives and 43% Liberals. We don't know for certain; a range of uncertainty remains.

What is interesting is that not only is science a matter of inductive inferencing, so too is history. In fact, our everyday reasoning is, for the most part, a matter of inferencing. The important point is that our inferences have a space of uncertainty, but most people are unaware of the degree of that uncertainty. Most people treat their inferences as certain, and yet what we can be genuinely certain of, such as general moral principles and their application to very obvious issues, like abortion and euthanasia, most people think that these issues are too gray or uncertain to be settled. People have it reversed.

I like to explain this to students using the hypothetical syllogism. For example, the following is a deduction that is valid:

If John chooses vice over virtue, he will suffer in life.
John chooses vice over virtue.
Therefore, John will suffer in life.

or

If I don't change my oil regularly, my car will not last as long as it could.
I don't change my oil regularly.
Therefore, my car will not last as long as it could.

Now, we can take those arguments and change them around a bit:

If John chooses vice over virtue, then he will suffer in life.
John is suffering.
Therefore, John has chosen vice over virtue.

Or,

If I don't change my oil regularly, my car will not last as long as it could.
My car did not last very long.
Therefore, I didn't change my oil regularly.

These two arguments are deductively invalid. John is suffering, but it does not follow that he chose vice over virtue; he's suffering because he lost his mother. My car did not last very long, but it does not follow that I did not change my oil regularly; a drunk driver ran into my car while it was parked on the side of the road.

These last two arguments, however, are inductive arguments. The second premise is the given evidence, and the conclusion is possibly correct, but not necessarily. They only have a degree of probability, and we have to determine the probability of our conclusion by testing, that is, by investigating. When it comes to inductive inferencing, we begin with the facts in evidence, and we then proceed to inference to the best explanation, the most plausible hypothesis that explains the evidence. There are many possible antecedents, and not all of them have equal probability.

Consider the following hypothetical statements:

If the principal is a mean and vindictive man,
If the principal just received news that his wife is in the hospital,
If the principal has been fasting for 24 hours and is very hungry,
If the principal just had to suspend someone that he did not want to suspend,
If the principal hates young people,

then he will have a very serious demeanor

If a student is lazy and does not care about school,
If a student is feeling very sick and missed the bus as a result,
If a student's bus was later,
If a student's parents are always fighting and he's feeling rather depressed and can't get himself motivated,
If there was an accident on the road and roads were closed,

then he will arrive late to school

As you can see from the above, there are a number of possible antecedents ("If" clause) that can account for the consequent ("then" clause). That is why making inferences on the basis of the consequent provides us with a probability, not a necessity. Induction begins with the consequent (the effect). Our inferences are always made on the basis of the consequent, and so these have only degrees of probability (either a low, moderate, or high probability). As evidence is gathered, the possibilities are gradually narrowed down to more precise degrees of probability. For example, if I learn the principal has 8 kids, then the likelihood that he hates young people is rather low. Or, if I learn that the student's parents both have criminal records, and that he's on medication for depression, the probabilities of the antecedents have been narrowed somewhat.

An important point here is that the emotions often do incline us to settle upon one alternative and treat that as the only one, when in fact it is only a possibility. For example, if a teacher is going through a stressful period, he may rush to judgment when a student walks in late, settling for the alternative that the student does not care about school - I've done this so often. As we settle on that alternative and treat it as a necessity rather than a possibility, other emotions begin to arise, such as anger, and so we react with anger. The student feels slighted because in his mind, he didn't do anything wrong, he's late because he just can't get out of bed in the morning as a result of his depression (of which he's not explicitly aware, he can't even name it), or traffic was stopped due to an accident, etc. When, towards the end of the school year, I am exhausted and under pressure, I begin to make inferences about administration that are quick and often wrong. It is my emotional state that inclines me to settle upon the alternative that will bring me greater relief, and when I am tired, I have little patience for certain people, and I tend to misjudge the reasons for what it is they are doing. That is why I try not to place a great deal of trust in the way I see and interpret things at the end of a school year.

Now, a tremendous amount of research has gone in to uncovering the many biases that we regularly fall prey to, biases that profoundly affect our day to day inferences. I'm thinking in particular of the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002; he's a cognitive psychologist, and in 1974, Science magazine published "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases", a very important article. He also wrote the best seller, Thinking Fast and Slow.

There is so much to his work, but let me select here and there. One of the things they discovered is the significant role anchoring plays in distorting our judgments without our being aware of it. I can walk into a classroom with a jar full of marbles (200 in total) and ask the students to estimate how many marbles are in the jar. I will usually talk to a student beforehand, privately; tell her to give the first estimate at 400. Then we ask each student thereafter to estimate; we record their answers and calculate the average. But I can walk into a different classroom and get students to estimate without a set up. The first student usually estimates at around 200. The average of the total is always lower. Students are influenced by the first estimate, without being aware of it.

We recently purchased a new car and traded in our 2008 model. The lady we wanted to deal with was on maternity leave, so we were left in the hands of a slick salesman who anchored us both when it came to the price of the 2008. He offered us $4000 for it. We said no, that's too low. He then asked us to give him a price that he can take in to the boss. We were in the dark here; we should have done our research; we didn't even intend to buy a car that day. But we said $6,000. He comes back 10 minutes later, assures us that it was a battle, but his boss finally agreed, reluctantly. $6,000 was accepted, which really came to $5,000, because of taxes. But we found out later that we should have gotten $9,500 for the car. He anchored us.

The Sequential bias is also a natural form of anchoring. If a student makes a good impression on me early in the semester by asking a brilliant question, I have it in my mind that he or she is brilliant, and that affects the way I see her henceforth; it affects the way I mark her work. I tend to mark high, even when her work is not all that exceptional. I always err on the side of high. Or, when a student does a good job on the objective sections of a test, the way I see her essay is significantly affected. I now get the students to write down their student number, so I can't tell who wrote what. The results are marks more true to the quality. Those whom I expected to achieve well into the 90s are only in the low 80s now. Had I known who they were, I would have re-evaluated their papers in order to fit this evidence that came later into the pre-existing framework.

That is why people with dynamic personalities are able to get away with so much; for we assume that whatever will come after will be consistent with being a "nice guy". Nice guys don't lie, they don't steal, nice priests care about the faithful, they wouldn't mislead them with false doctrine, or neglect them, use them, etc. The problem is many of them do. Most psychopaths have very dynamic personalities, and they fool a great many people, even psychologists who are experts in the field of psychopathology.

Confirmation bias is an especially pervasive induction fallacy. This is the tendency to favor confirmatory instances of a hypothesis and to allow them to strengthen belief in the original hypothesis. Confirmation does not prove a hypothesis correct, but disconfirmation proves that it is incorrect.

If you recall the Walk Against Male Violence, as if violence is a male phenomenon. It was argued: "If violence is a propensity specifically characteristic of the male psyche, then we will see many and far more instances of male violence against women than vice versa. This year alone there were k instances of domestic violence against women. Therefore, the propensity to violence is a characteristically male phenomenon."

The conclusion of this inductive or hypothetical argument has only a degree of probability, which is why it requires testing. The tendency is to settle upon that hypothesis - because we are lazy minded, or we have an axe to grind - , and so every news item of a woman who is the victim of male aggression becomes a verification or confirmation of the hypothesis, a significant piece of evidence that stands out and is easy to remember precisely because it confirms the original hypothesis, giving rise the satisfaction of "understanding". Those news items, however, that disconfirm the hypothesis, such as the rate of female violence in women's prisons is greater to or equal to that of male prisons, or that the majority of violence perpetrated against children is committed by females, is left in the penumbra. It does not stand out, because it does not confirm the original hypothesis. If anything, it has a negative subconscious influence: if it is true, it means back to the drawing board, and that's a tiring thought, so we ignore it and look for confirming pieces of evidence. It feels like we have understanding, but we don't.

There is also an Availability Heuristic Bias, or what Daniel Kahneman refers to this as WHAT YOU SEE IS ALL THERE IS. A colleague told me recently that when he first came to Canada from India, he was expecting students to stand up as he entered the classroom - teachers are highly esteemed in India. He was rather taken aback when he first walked in to a classroom here; students would be talking to one another and they would pay not the slightest attention to him. (What You See Is All There Is); he thought that what he saw in India is all there is and that his experience was universal. This is another example of how we are not naturally aware of the limitations of what we know; we naturally think that what we see is all there is. It is impossible to be arrogant without being thoroughly under an availability heuristic.

The Narrative Fallacy is especially pervasive, and this is what I want to talk about in relation to the book of Job. Statistician Nassim Taleb describes it thus: "The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or… forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help them make more sense. Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding."

This is easily illustrated using occurrences that have statistical relevance only. Consider the following and estimate which one has the higher probability, or greater odds.

Students typically estimate the first to be less likely than the second. An earthquake in California, however, is readily imaginable; there is a cause and effect significance to this alternative and this greatly increases the mental availability, and thus the assessed probability of the scenario. But, a massive flood somewhere in America in which more than a thousand people die, has greater probability than an earthquake in California, causing massive flooding, in which more than a thousand people die; the latter is an instance of a massive flood somewhere in America, a limited instance, so it is less probable.

Taleb, writes: "if I asked you how many cases of lung cancer are likely to take place in the country, you would supply some number, say half a million. Now, if instead I asked you many cases of lung cancer are likely to take place because of smoking, odds are that you would give me a much higher number (I would guess more than twice as high). Adding the "because" makes these matters far more plausible, and far more likely. Cancer from smoking seems more likely than cancer without a cause attached to it - an unspecified cause means no cause at all."

Narrative affects our understanding of probabilities. We tend to believe that if something is more readily imagined, it is more probable. Students always think that if a story makes sense, there is a far greater probability that it is true.

My spiritual director once told me that "Every parish gets what it deserves". He means that every parish gets the pastor it deserves. If a parish gets a bad pastor, it deserves him. But how do we know that? There's no doubt in my mind that this is the narrative fallacy at work. It is difficult enough to know what one person deserves; how do we know what an entire congregation deserves? And what do we say about a parish that has a great pastor, but fails to appreciate him? Do they get what they deserve?

The claim that a parish gets what it deserves is an example of weaving an explanation into a very complex network of facts, and this explanation is one that might make someone feel better. You are no longer incensed at the injustice of a bad shepherd neglecting the faithful. Rather, you are now thankful that this parish has been given such a pastor, because he is precisely what it deserves. Notice how the narrative has changed this state of affairs from an injustice that gives rise to anger, to one of justice that gives rise to a sense of vindication. The important question, however, is: "Is it true?" Are we taking a random event and framing it with an illusion of cause and effect, that is, an illusion of order? The claim is an inference.

All narratives "make sense", and although all that is true makes sense, not all that makes sense is true - just as all men are animals, but not all animals are men. The narrative fallacy is a type of inference that "explains" the consequent, but there are a number of possible antecedents that can equally "explain" or account for the consequent.

The confirmation bias plays a role in the narrative fallacy; the tendency is to look for confirmation of a hypothesis. One's hypothesis is that the parish deserves what it gets; one notices that this and that parishioner is dissing the former pope, is irreverent, etc., and so one draws the conclusion: "Yes, these people do not deserve a good pastor who will feed them solid food. They deserve a diet of Spaghettios."

But what about the faithful parishioners who pray daily, who are daily communicants, who are faithful in so many ways, and would really like to have a good pastor for a change? Such evidence would seem to disconfirm the hypothesis. The tendency, however, is to overlook that evidence, or ignore it, or alter the narrative in some way.

In the end, we just don't know. In other words, we don't have enough information to know who deserves what, or what the parish deserves as a whole. A priest friend of mine was very surprised at the reaction of the congregation when he moved the tabernacle to the center of the Church. A small number, that is, a "small sample" of very loud parishioners objected to the move and claimed the parish as a whole would be opposed to it as well. He feared that this small group of dissenters might very well be representative of the whole. When he finally moved it and proceeded to announce it to the congregation, he was not able to finish because the congregation stood up and applauded. To his dismay, the majority approved of the move. This small circle of dissenters was convinced that the majority would not approve of this move because they were subject to an availability bias; they associate with like minded people.

There are all kinds of narratives circulating in high schools these days: the anti-corporate narrative; the anti-Israeli narrative; the anti-American narrative; etc., and all these narratives allow students to look at a complex world through special lenses that allow everything to "make sense".

A big problem with the culture today - and there's no doubt that the Church is influenced by the culture - is it has these knowledge issues backwards: What we can be genuinely certain of, popular culture says we cannot be certain of, and what we cannot be certain of, most people in this culture believe we can. For example, we can come to know general moral principles, and we can draw relatively unambiguous conclusions about the morality of certain acts. Most people, however, think that moral knowledge is uncertain, forever opaque and cloudy. And yet, so many of us make quick inferences and treat them as if they are absolutely certain, pass them on to others who in turn treat them as gospel, totally oblivious to the risky nature of inductive inferences and oblivious to the biases that are behind them.

I think that's what we have in the book of Job. Job's friends gave speeches that were packed with great theological truths, but each one as a package, as a whole, was an inference that attempted to explain Job's predicament. And the Lord was angry with Job's friends.

What's interesting about this story is that it starts off, as you know, with a dialogue between God and Satan. The Lord says to Satan: Where have you been? He answers: Round the earth, roaming about. So the Lord asked Satan: 'Did you notice my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth: a sound and honest man who fears God and shuns evil.'

Satan responds with unbelievable arrogance. "Yes, but Job is not God-fearing for nothing, is he? Have you not put a wall round him and his house and all his domain? You have blessed all he undertakes, and his flocks throng the countryside. But stretch out your hand and lay a finger on his possessions, I warrant you, he will curse you to your face."

The arrogance is either in that Satan believes he sees where God does not see, or that God is a liar in that God knows that what Satan says is true, but is just playing with Satan.

"Very well, the Lord said, 'all he has is in your power. But keep your hands off his person'".

We all know what happens, disaster strikes. He is stripped of everything, reduced to complete indigence. Job refuses to curse God. In chapter 2, the dialogue continues: "Did you notice my servant Job? There is no one like him on earth: a sound and honest man who fears God and shuns evil. His life continues blameless as ever; in vain you provoked me to ruin him.'

But Satan's arrogance is unyielding. 'Skin for skin!...A man will give away all he has to save his life. But stretch out your hand and lay a finger on his bone and flesh; I warrant you, he will curse you to your face.' God gives him permission, and Job is covered with malignant ulcers from head to toe.

The interesting thing at this point is that Satan's first prediction failed, but that does not change him in the slightest. He looks back, sees what he might have overlooked, and predicts once again with bold confidence. In his mind, he was right; it's just that he needs to make a minor adjustment. He then predicts once again, with arrogant confidence.

What is taking place here is a kind of battle; there is a preternatural war going on. It has little to do with Job; it is a battle between God and Satan. And Job still refuses to curse God. "…in all this misfortune, Job uttered no sinful word." And so God remains victorious. What is important to note, however, is that Job is oblivious to all of this, and he remains so; he is completely in the dark.

When news came to his three friends (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar), they set out to find him and console him; all they ended up doing was increasing his suffering. They sat there on the ground beside him for seven days and seven nights - a long time to make sense out of their friend's suffering. And that's just what they did; they 'made sense' out of it. They constructed a theological narrative. The speeches of Job's three friends are the narrative fallacy all dressed up in theological garb. There are some great truths in their words; it's the total package, put together as an explanation of Job's predicament that is radically false. They shed light on his suffering, but it was a false light; it misses the mark completely. It manifests a profound desire to explain, to make sense out of what is beyond our comprehension, to simplify what is utterly complex and concerns another realm altogether.

"Can you recall a guiltless man that perished, or have you ever seen good men brought to nothing?" said Eliphaz. Bildad said: "Can God deflect the course of right or Shaddai falsify justice? If your sons sinned against him, they have paid for their sins; so you too, if so pure and honest, must now seek God, plead with Shaddai. …Does papyrus flourish, except in marshes? Without water, can the rushes grow? Pluck them even at their freshest: fastest of all plants they wither. Such is the fate of all who forget God; so perishes the hope of the godless man. His trust is only a thread, his assurance a spider's web." Zophar spoke next: "Do you think your talking strikes men dumb, will you jeer with no one to refute you? These were your words, 'My way of life is faultless, and in your eyes I am free from blame.' But if God had a mind to speak, to open his lips and give you answer, were he to show you the secrets of wisdom which put all cleverness to shame - you would know it is for sin he calls you to account."

We know this is not true, but the friends of Job have constructed this narrative on the basis of genuine theological truths. The truths by themselves are marvelous, for example: "Can you claim to grasp the mystery of God, to understand the perfection of Shaddai?" That is a marvelous line. The irony is that they are so intent on "explaining" that they violate their own principle. It is their use of these theological truths packed together as an antecedent to explain Job's predicament that is invalid. They don't even wait for evidence that he sinned; they simply conclude that it must be so.

Of course, in the end, Scripture says that God was displeased with the three friends. But most importantly, it is not revealed to Job what the meaning of it all is. He is kept in the dark throughout. All we know is that he is caught in the midst of a battle, and God has used him for a much greater purpose. We really are called to trust in the midst of suffering, and not to try to explain it, to account for it.

Job has given us the larger picture. For Job there is no clarity at the end, just opacity. But we are still uncomfortable with opacity. We are naturally Platonists. Even Descartes, who admired and studied Aristotle, was more of a Platonist than a disciple of Aristotle; he resurrected dualism and demanded clear and distinct ideas; he identified the logical with the real: "Therefore, it is sufficient that I should be able to apprehend one thing clearly and distinctly apart from another to be assured that the two are really different and that the one can be created without the other". The result of this mistake was that the Enlightenment lost a sense of the limitations that sense perception imposes on human intelligence. We still suffer from that lack of awareness, even in Catholic philosophical circles. Not only are there many Aristotelians who think they are Thomists, there are many Platonists who think they are Aristotelians, who in turn think they are Thomists. We tend to believe that our grasp of reality is far more comprehensive than it really is. French economist Frederick Bastiat (19th century) and, especially, 20th century economist Friedrick Hayak, among others, bring us back to the knowledge problem, which is far more congruent with the very idea of religious faith than is the idealism of Plato, Descartes, and Hegel.

Most of what we do on a daily basis is based on natural faith, in the sense of trusting what someone tells you because you have evidence that he is informed and is trustworthy. We trust that the pilot will not down the plane; we trust that the driver in the oncoming lane will stay there and not turn into us head on, we trust the pharmacist that what he or she is giving us isn't going to kill us, we trust our teachers that they aren't making it all up as they go along, we trust the headlines (evidently a very imprudent act of faith), we trust the catering company that they have not poisoned the food, the mechanic when he tells us he fixed the brakes and the car is ready for the road, etc. We trust because we just don't know, we can't know, human intelligence is profoundly limited, and all we have are probabilities to work with (i.e., what are the odds that my pharmacist made a mistake or that my mechanic sabotaged my car?).

This universe mirrors the kingdom of God. The apparently infinite vastness of the universe is a symbol of the divine infinity. And the existing order with all its randomness that exceeds our ability to reduce to mathematical models, like the Gaussian bell curve, and that ever exceeds our ability to understand in all its complexity, is a symbol of the supernatural order of providence that can only forever exceed our grasp because God is not subject to law; He is a law unto Himself, the measure of all law. We so desperately want to give the real order contour, shape, delimitation, explanation; we desperately want to see a pattern, a narrative, and if we cannot find one, we construct one on our own.

We walk in the dark, but our narratives delude us into believing that we do not. We need to learn to walk in the dark without the constructs, without knowing, without "eating", that is, without feeding the mind with emotionally satisfying explanations that "make sense" but are not necessarily true.

I don't know why things are the way they are. I don't know why Jesus chooses to continue his work through us, unworthy instruments, stupid instruments, unfaithful, sinful, deluded, blinded by the moral and emotional disorder within, too lazy to learn from the past, and too proud to remain open to learning. I don't know why the world is the way it is, and I don't need to know. But, we do know there is a war going on, one that we don't understand, and it plays out here as well. We're part of it; it's as if we are the chess board. What's our role? Scripture answers this question: "The Lord himself will fight for you; you have only to keep still." We have to keep still. That's hard to do. It's a different kind of fasting. We have to do what we can, do what it is our duty to do, and leave it at that.

God is mystery, the unutterable mystery. He does not owe us an explanation, and He will not give us one. Everyone tries to figure things out, but we are fooled by our own explanations as we are continuously fooled by randomness. We are the lowest of God's intellectual creatures, and the vast majority of the inferences we make every day are wrong, but the experience drifts from our memory. We are wrong all the time, and that is because we live in a material universe, not a "world of forms". Matter is the principle of opacity, and human intelligence shares in the limitations of sense perception. We see the result, the evidence, the consequent, but there are a myriad of possible antecedents. We are always in the dark; we need to be led, and we are led and protected by angels who are vastly superior intellectually. The glory of the angels is intelligence, but man's glory is matter, that is, humus, or soil, from which the word humility is derived. Our glory is humility, and our task it to be still, to wait, to allow the Lord to fight, allow the Lord to move us as we would move a chess piece. We just allow ourselves to be moved in a spirit of faith and patience, a spirit that waits and prays. In the end there will be joy, and there is joy now, the joy of waiting and not knowing, the joy of hoping and of looking forward to the day we might share in the experience of victory.

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