Ending on a Good Note

I went to hit some golf balls last weekend with my dad. At the end of these outings we always practice putting, which eventually turns into a putting contest between us. My dad always wins (although I am getting much closer). This time, on the last hole, I completely botched my shots and just did not do well at all. So, my dad made us do one more hole on the reasoning that you should not end on a bad note.

I have also been reading through the minor prophets of the Old Testament and have been struck with one repeating feature. To start, they are typically very negative. The prophet is laying it on the Israelites (or other nations); 'it' being how mad God is at them and all the terrible stuff He is going to do. We get a very detailed account of all the ways they have sinned and rebelled against their God. But then at the end, almost as an afterthought, the prophet adds how God will restore Israel (For example: In the 9 chapters of Amos, only the last 5 verses are positive), that the sin leading to punishment is not the end, that despite all the bad stuff going on, the real end will be a good note.

I guess God doesn't even like ending on a bad note.

This pattern can also be found in many psalms. The psalmist may be crying out to God verse upon verse, lamenting the sufferings of his life and the absence of God, but as he nears the end of his prayerful song, he begins to turn to God's goodness and the hope of restoration.

I wonder why this is. No matter how bad we are doing at something, whether that is golf (or any sport), musical performance, life, etc. why must we end on a good note?

I asked my dad this after our putting game, and I think it took him a little by surprise. And the more I think about it the more unnatural questioning this phenomenon seems to be. Why wouldn't you want to end on a good note? But he basically told me that it's good for morale, especially when that last shot is the one you are most likely going to be thinking about all the way up to the next time you hit a ball.

Cognitive psychology does show that you remember the first and last items of a sequence the best - like an inverse bell curve:

They call this the serial position effect – the culmination of primacy and recency effects. The experiments are usually memory recall tests (i.e. having subjects try to memorize a list of words and then waiting a few minutes before writing down the ones they remember – people generally remember the first couple of words and the last couple the best), but I guess you could loosely extrapolate those findings to something like a practice round of golf. Maybe that last shot really does stick with you more than all the other crappy ones you hit.

But I think ending on a good note arises out of something deeper than a desire to boost our morale. It surpasses any attempt to cognitively trick ourselves into believing things are better than they are.

We know that things are better than they sometimes seem to be. Or at least that they will be better.  We know that there is something better in us or around us that we can connect with.

And I'd say that that seeming afterthought in the minor prophets is not an afterthought at all. Instead, it is the central element of the prophet's message. The culmination of the prophet's entreaty is that hope of restoration. The prophets know that the end will be a good note – or rather a chord of faith, hope, and love that is pleasing to both God and man. It is hard to imagine the dissonance resolving, but the prophets and the psalmists have left their reminders that it will happen. Good will win out in the end.

God not only wants us to end on a good note, He is in fact that very good note, present at the beginning and the end and beyond each.