This is an expression that we may use to describe someone who is so deeply involved in the details of something that they lose sight of the overall, the big picture.
The movie, “The Bridge on the River Kwai”, was a great example of this. British soldiers are in a WWII Japanese prison camp. For the sake of their physical health and overall morale, their commanding officer leads them in constructing a bridge over the nearby river, demanded by the Japanese camp commander.
When the completed bridge is targeted for destruction by the British army, the prisoners’ commander, so deeply committed to the success of his project, blindly tries to impede the British action.
Losing sight of the forest because of the trees is always a danger for anyone, especially responsible, thorough, and thoughtful people. One can get so absorbed in the details of some construction, task, investigation, or analysis that it’s easy to lose sight of the overall goal—or even impede it.
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.” We shouldn’t get so immersed in what we are doing that we lose track of our overall goal. There’s only so much time, opportunity, and resources available to us.
Don’t spend so much time packing carefully that you miss the vacation flight!
There is a high degree of specialization in the field of medical care. There can be doctors who are so highly skilled in some very specialized medical fields that they almost lose sight of overall threats to the health, wellbeing, and life obligations of their patient.
This can happen in all fields, not just the medical. With all due respect, it seems to me that something similar sometimes happens in the religious field as well—to preachers, writers, theologians, biblical scholars, canonists, historians, and those with special ecclesiastical responsibilities.
Generally in the Eastern churches, the cross as a symbol of victory is often a golden or even bejeweled emblem. In the Western church, it is usually the crucifix, the cross with the tortured body of Jesus affixed.
During the Easter Triduum, we remember and celebrate in great detail—the passion narrative—the final few days and hours of Jesus’s life. Sometimes it seems that we’re so celebrating the details of the price he paid that we almost neglect why and for what purpose he paid the price.
Jesus didn’t seek or want to suffer or to die. Remember his prayer in the agony of the garden. He only sought to do the Father’s will, no matter what the cost.
Your goal and mine is not to be crucified, or to suffer, or to live a sacrificial life. Our goal is to live, to love, to serve, to celebrate and give thanks for the wonder of God’s works, and above all, as Jesus, to seek to do God’s will—no matter what, nor what the cost.
To become so fascinated, to empathize so deeply with the details of the price he paid can—not necessarily but may—distract us from his overall purpose. Even in this, we can lose sight of the forest because of the trees!
In our rapidly changing and divided and contesting world, we may become so comfortable, engaged, and defensive of certain concerns, values, customs, procedures, persons or institutions, that we may be in danger of losing sight of the overall goal or purpose that they once and may or may not still help us attain.
The harder you work, the greater sacrifice you make, the more responsible you may be—beware of not seeing the forest!
25 April 2021