Most of us would be a lot happier if we were to embrace the notion that human life is necessarily a trial-and-error reality. Its goal is eternal life. That is fixed. But the ways by which we attain that goal and the objectives we pursue en route are relatively flexible. We do not operate in a vacuum. Our course must be chosen in the context of all sorts of things that are happening within us and around us, over which we have no control. There is no means of verifying that a particular choice is guaranteed to be the right one. Such infallibility is the prerogative of hindsight. Faced with multiple options, all we can do is to make a judgment on the available evidence and act on that. Even with all the diligence and intelligence we can muster, we will often misjudge a situation, and a negative outcome will result, with varying degrees of damage to ourselves and others. At a first level, there is a limitation on how much we can know. We are fallible. Many mistakes are caused by ignorance. Obviously if we knew that a bridge was about to collapse, we would not cross it. Hard as it is for some people to admit, we do not know everything. If we did, we would be no better off, since we would still be obliged to make a choice between conflicting data. Add into the equation the unpredictability of human behavior and you have an impossible computation.
Michael Casey
Fully Human, Fully Divine, p. 236
