After Action Review

C.S. Lewis famously as a kid tried to come up with a vivid realization of God each time he prayed. A pretty silly thing to do. Mr. Lewis was a bit of a theater kid in his youth.

Some time ago I added repentance to my list of things for nightly prayer. Like a silly fellow, my idea of repentance was trying to come up with vivid realization of remorse.

Yesterday I realized that my time would be better spent doing an after-action review.

After all, if I consult my own history there were any number of sins I had a dramatic horror for, and still kept doing. And any number of sins I have barely any feelings about at all and still don’t do.

If in prayer I have the basic will to repent, that is enough. What I need next is an understanding of why I was less than I would be and what might help me be more.

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But let’s pocket that insight and think more about after-action reviews.

Suppose a unit in some army, a company, has finished an exercise. A small group of officers is gathered. “What could have gone better?” the captain says.

His executive officer, a lieutenant, speaks up. “The men spent two hours horse playing in a creek last evening. That’s two hours wasted because we winked at it.” He speaks sharply and is staring directly at the captain.

The captain responds mildly. “Before we decide what we could have done better, perhaps we should discuss what we were trying to do. The creek was great for morale and unit cohesion. Is there a way we could have done it better . . .”

But the lieutenant isn’t having it. The AAR isn’t a vehicle for discussion or reflection. He already knows what went wrong. They wasted time. The AAR is for fixing it.

Our captain is displaying that elusive quality called humility. In what does his humility consist? It isn’t just his mild response to the Lieutenant. It’s his suspension of preformed conclusions. It’s his willingness to enter into the process of the AAR without knowing for sure how it would turn out. He’s not mild with the Lieutenant because he is patient or self-effacing. He’s mild because the AAR is supposed to be a time where people can blurt stuff out.

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Humility in repentance consists of telling God, “All right, lets review. Tell me what you think went well and what could go better.” Listening, then offering your own ideas, then listening again. Pretty simple, actually. No vivid realization of inner humblitude needed.

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In what does the humility of Christ consist? I submit that it was his willingness to become mortal. He knew how it would turn out, he knew what conclusions he would reach based on the experience—he had already reached them—but he was willing to go through with it anyway. An odd conclusion, I know.