I Hope You Are Right

In the spring of 1981 my family business received the opportunity of a lifetime: an invitation to sell a large steam pile driver to the Petroleum Corporation of the People's Republic of China. They were to use this to assist their offshore oil platform construction in the Bo Hai (the gulf between Beijing and Korea.) Mao Zedong hadn't been dead for five years and American business was just starting to make some kind of entry into China. The Japanese were way ahead of us; they had already sold the Chinese the derrick barge they were to use and felt as though they had the hammer sale "in the bag" so to speak.

The rest of our negotiating team: Jesse Perry (hammer,left) and Lloyd Berwald (boiler, right.) We used their "suite" in the old Beijing Hotel for our own meetings between negotiating sessions.

We had sold this kind of equipment all over the world to all kinds of customers, but in discussing things with our representative it became clear the Chinese were in a "league of their own." They brought the people into the negotiations that would end up using the equipment, so they would want to know every detail on how it worked. We decided that the best way to handle this would be for us to send our service representative and that of the steam boiler manufacturer so they could get the answers they wanted.

This turned out to be a good decision. The Chinese team (there were about a half a dozen of them to the three of us) asked questions about every piece of the hammer and boiler they could think of. What did a part do? How long did it last? How did you repair it? How do you use it in the field? Now a steam pile driver isn't a very sophisticated piece of equipment. There are no electronics, not even any kind of robotics or fancy linkages like a camshaft on a car. At that time we had hammers to last eighty years in the field and still be in use; our largest offshore customer's equipment manager said that you could repair one of our hammers as long as Methuselah lived. They even wanted to know whether a man could get through a manhole in the boiler. (Our answer: the Chinese could, but the boiler serviceman was too fat to get through.)

As we went through everything they wanted to know, their confidence in us increased, but there are always sceptics. One in particular couldn't believe that our machine was that simple or could last that long. After an extended session where we told them that some of the moving parts could last twenty years, our sceptic passed the group translator up and told us in clear English, "I hope you are right."

Critical thinking is a skill that seems to be lacking these days. Today our ethos is "If it feels good, do it." There is no reference to objective truth, not even to long range consequences. The people who contract AIDS and other STD's feel good in the moment but the aftermath isn't so pleasant. Breaking up our marriages is a painful process, but someone feels better when its over. (One Florida lawyer thought his wife's divorce papers were the best thing to happen to him since he survived the Holocaust!) Unfortunately the children carry the pain with them as long as they are on the earth, this author included.

Such are the consequences of "following the feelgoods." Ultimately, however, when the party's over, when the hormones (or whatever else we've consumed) have rushed through our veins, when the mind altering substances have worn off, we are faced with the hard reality that hard reality is where we have to live. We want to crawl out from our situation, but we've come to the realisation that the "feelgoods" are not enough. We want something that works in our lives. We want something that will last, and will take away the pain rather than just kill it. There are many proposed solutions out there, and we want to say to them, "I hope you are right."

"There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death." (Prov. 14:12) We need to find a way that goes beyond seeming like it's right, or feeling like it's okay. We want a way that works, that will give our life purpose and direction.

Jesus Christ is that way: "Thomas said to him, 'Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?' Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'" (John 14:5-6) He is the way we are looking for and the one we need for this life and the life to come. If you want to know more about this way, click here.

And the Chinese? After nearly two weeks of negotiations, we sold them the hammer and boiler. They worked fine. The Japanese barge, however, was another matter. When we visited the barge in Tanggu, we noted that its freeboard was inadequate, i.e., there wasn't enough distance from the deck to the surface of the water, critical in storms when the waves come over the side. (There's a sermon in that, but we'll skip it: click here for another nautical kind of story.) Sure enough, in one of those nasty storms the Bo Hai is famous for, the barge sank. There's nothing wrong with saying "I hope you are right," but after that we need to find someone who actually is.