^{On the desire for certainty that no financial tool was designed to satisfy — and the One who already holds what we’re looking for.}

The Longing Underneath the Algorithm

Why the restlessness underneath your financial decisions is pointing at something real.

Most people who pay careful attention to their finances carry a quiet anxiety that the attention itself doesn’t seem to resolve.

You do the right things. You check the accounts. You read the analysis. You adjust the portfolio when the signals shift. And still, somewhere underneath all of that careful management, there is a low-grade restlessness that the next disruption — the one nobody saw coming — could unsettle everything you’ve built. More information doesn’t seem to quiet it. Better tools don’t seem to close it. The anxiety runs deeper than the data.

I want to name that honestly before we talk about anything else, because I think the anxiety is telling us something true.

A new generation of AI-powered financial tools has arrived promising to address exactly this feeling. They promise not just better analysis but something closer to comprehensive, forward-seeing knowledge — precise salary valuations, optimized portfolio returns, real-time probability pricing of competitive outcomes. The language used to describe them is the language of certainty: exact numbers, mathematical precision, algorithmic confidence.

That longing for certainty is not foolish. It is one of the most persistent features of human life. And the Christian tradition has a name for the kind of knowledge that would fully satisfy it.

It is called omniscience. And it has always been located in God alone.

What Qohelet Knew

The writer of Ecclesiastes — Qohelet, the great observer, the collector of more experience and more wealth than almost anyone in recorded history — opens his account with a word that stops readers cold.

Hebel. Breath. Vapor. The English translations say vanity, but the Hebrew is more precise: the thing that dissipates the moment you try to grasp it. He uses it to describe everything he has accumulated, everything he has achieved, everything the world offers as a substitute for the knowledge we most want.

Ecclesiastes 1:14 (NIV) I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

Qohelet is not a cynic. He is the wisest investor in the ancient world, and he is doing something careful: he is naming the structure of the desire before he tells us what to do with it. The longing is real. The thing being chased is not adequate to satisfy it. That is not despair. It is the beginning of clarity.

What we are chasing, when we reach for comprehensive financial foresight, is not really better data. It is the assurance that the future is manageable — that if we have the right tools, we can protect ourselves from the consequences of uncertainty. That assurance is the one thing no algorithm was ever designed to provide, because it is not a function of information. It is a function of trust.

The anxiety underneath careful financial management is not a data problem. It is a trust problem.

The tools are genuinely useful. We will talk in the chapters that follow about what good financial analysis actually does, and what it cannot do, and why that distinction matters more than most financial commentary acknowledges. But the place to begin is here: with the honest recognition that the longing driving the demand for AI-powered financial certainty is reaching for something no AI was built to provide.

Not because the technology is inadequate. Because the longing is asking the wrong instrument for the right thing.

Proverbs 3:5–6 (ESV) Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

That word — acknowledge — is the beginning of financial wisdom, not the end of financial engagement. It does not mean disengage from the markets or stop using the tools. It means see clearly what the tools are for and what they are not for. See clearly what kind of creatures we are and what kind of God holds what we cannot.

That clarity, it turns out, is the most useful thing you can bring to any financial decision you will ever make.

P.S. As always, please reach out with thoughts about the above or anything else that may be on your mind or schedule a visit so we can talk through whatever is most important to you. 

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If something in this issue opened a question worth exploring together — about your portfolio, your financial plan, or simply where you are right now — I'd welcome the conversation. Book a time →

Sources & Further Reading

Hayek, F. A. (1945). The use of knowledge in society. American Economic Review, 35(4). econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw.html

Kirzner, I. M. (1973). Competition and entrepreneurship. University of Chicago Press.

Mises, L. von. (1949). Human action: A treatise on economics. mises.org/library/human-action-0

Ammous, S. (2018). The Bitcoin Standard. Wiley. saifedean.com/tbs

Sosnoff, T. (2026). One Lucky Dog LIVE! [Public broadcast]. LossDog Network. lossdog.com

Scripture quotations marked NIV: Holy Bible, New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. ESV: The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®. Copyright © 2001 Crossway. All rights reserved.

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