Do you, as coach, knowing the game will be lost before it's even played, forfeit the game? Or do you get your team out on the field, have them play as best they can, and learn lessons from it for the next game? It's the same with God and us. It's not that He doesn't know we'll screw up; it's not that He has an obligation to prevent us from making idiots of ourselves. It's that He wants us to go ahead and play our best, learn, and get better for the next game. To forfeit the game would be to rob us of our growth and education. We're all God has to work with; He didn't create us to be doofuses, we are the eternal beings we've always been, and He patiently tries to help us become better, by sticking to the games as scheduled.

Back to a more mundane, but, I think, important aspect of the eschatological outlook. Among other things, as we try to balance the material aspects of this world with the eternal, please note I'm not advocating becoming a fasting and starving monk dressed in rags. This temporal, mortal life is a gift from God, and He expects us to make wise use of it. Aristotle expressed it best in his "Golden Mean", though he didn't name it that; the name came later, but he tried to define the right area between such wrongs as foolhardiness on one end of the scale and cowardice on the other. The proper mean would be courage.

Historian Will Durant gets the following from Aristotle's “Ethics”, wherein Aristotle said, “The qualities of character can be arranged in triads, in each of which the first and last qualities will be extremes and vices, and the middle quality a virtue or an excellence. So between cowardice and rashness is courage; between stinginess and extravagance is liberality; between sloth and greed is ambition; between humility and pride is modesty; between secrecy and loquacity, honesty; between moroseness and buffoonery, good humor; between quarrelsomeness and flattery, friendship; between Hamlet’s indecisiveness and Quixote’s impulsiveness is self control.” (“The Story of Philosophy”, Will Durant, pages 75-7. Aristotle wouldn’t have been quoting Hamlet and Quixote, of course; this is probably Durant’s interpretation.)

A favorite definition: “Courage is walking naked through a cannibal village. Foolhardiness is walking naked through a cannibal village . . . with a sprig of parsley tucked behind your ear.” Be brave, but don’t push your luck. Balance.