Past performance is no indicator of future performance.
In the realm of the stock market and mutual funds, the phrase “past performance is no indicator of future performance” is always seen at the bottom of all prospectuses. Unfortunately those very documents ignore this caution and immediately start to show similarities between “past performance” and current numbers and then start predicting what the “future performance” will likely be. Ironic that they say one thing and then immediately turn around and contradict what they just said.
As I was pondering the statement “past performance is no indicator of future performance” I started thinking about it in spiritual terms. Our “past performance” as sinners (before we knew Christ) really is “no indicator of future performance” once we have become followers of Christ. The Bible says:
2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
In my pondering I realized how often Christians seem to do just what the stock market analysts do and that is ignore this statement by focusing mostly on the past.
Yes there are many things we can learn from the past, and we must do that, but once we have learned all there is to know about the past, then we should be looking and moving forward.
Maybe you have seen this too, but I’ve seen people walking down the sidewalk and then stumble or fall over something. They end up lamenting the thing that caused them to stumble/fall with the end result being they get so focused on what caused them to stumble/fall that they often forget why they were on the path in the first place and where they were going.
How often, in a spiritual sense, do we do the very same thing after “stumbling” over something (in other words we sin). We stand there lamenting the sin that caused us to stumble not realizing that while we are doing that we not only are no longer walking on the path the Lord has laid out before us, but we are also (often) continue to stand in the middle of that very sin.
We need to learn all lessons the Lord has to teach us regarding what we stumbled over and then we need to get back on the path moving forward.
Even if we do start back on the path, for years and years after we often drag behind us those “things” we’ve stumbled over. We lie to ourselves (and others) saying that we have left our “past performance” behind us when we are just dragging it along with us resulting in our “future performance” being affected (slowing us down a lot).
We need to let go of the past because as the scripture quoted above says, the “old things have passed away”. We have let them go. We have to stop dragging them behind us to the point that they get so far behind us that they have “passed” from our even being able to see them. We need to remember and embrace the fact that “all things have become new.”
If you are a Christian and you have stumbled over something today, I want to encourage you to remember, from a spiritual perspective, that “past performance is no indicator of future performance”. Tomorrow is a new day and can be different from all of the many yesterdays.
One Comment
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June 12th, 2011 at 12:05 PM
True. We shdnt stand thinking of the past. Past should pass…