Re-Imagining

It's fun sometimes to dream of different things.  To get creative about different ways of imagining the world.  In our natural minds, we can only imagine the world in the ways that it has been modeled for us.  We feed off the examples in our past to determine how we look at the world.  It's very difficult to step outside of them!  You can see exactly where my spiritual life comes from by examining about a half dozen examples in my past.  You can understand my professional life by the same process.  The way I handle my money.  The purchases I make.  We, as social humans, get a lot of how we operate from seeing how others operate.  If it works for them, it must work for me too.  This is all well and good until one of two things happen: what if our examples aren't accurate, or what if all our examples agree?

Teresa of Avila

What if they aren't accurate?  Examples of commonly-accepted though well-rebutted groupthink are too numerous to mention here.  Recently I posted here about re-reading the Bible and suddenly having my eyes opened to different realities.  For the past couple of months I've really been asking a lot of questions about my life, because in some ways I wonder if the examples that have been set for me of spiritual life are accurate.  I see the same things examining the lives of remarkable spiritual leaders throughout history.  Some people just seemed to see the world completely differently, and live their lives in a totally different way.  What if I struggle to pray because I haven't seen an example of someone who gets it right, the way the Bible describes it?  It's not just spiritual things - maybe I organize my time because my society has shown me that productivity is the key to value.  What if that's just plain wrong - if my life would be more fulfilling and more significant to others if I sat at my desk less, neglected more "important" duties, and spent more time building community?

Pakistani Savings Group

Or what if all our examples agree with each other?  Wouldn't that cause us to stagnate, to get stuck?  Nearly every restaurant, when asked for vegetables, provides either a salad (of 1-2 types of greens) or a couple basic veggies in a bowl.  They, and the canning industry, have led us to believe that God's good earth only has about a dozen types of vegetables.  Or, if everybody I know says the way to be sustainable in retirement is to save 10% of your income every year in a well-diversified portfolio, wouldn't I assume that's the only way?  What if there were another way, one based on a community of generosity where people and family members owe so many financial debts to each other that they stop keeping track of them and just take care of each other?  In America, it's assumed that every adult needs their own car and if a place isn't on a road it's not accessible.  Why?  What if cities spent as much money on public transportation as they do on roads, and drastically decreased the number of highways?  Why can't that be a possibility?  I'm convinced that by expanding our horizons of examples and influences, we can unlock other potential scenarios.  We could see through the fallacy that there is one clear path through life, and discover great things.

Just give me this sunset
and I'm at peace.

This past summer, Katie and I spent twelve weeks in South America.  Sometimes I still struggle to know why exactly we did that, if I'm honest.  It was valuable for a variety of reasons, to be sure.  We felt God clearly leading us to do it, so we did.  One of the benefits was that we were presented with different realities and imagined life in different ways.  In one it was the rainforest, where muddy paths, daily rains, unreliable electricity, and no running water were the norm.  In another it was the desert, where you did a lot of walking, riding buses, and drying clothes on the roof and where the food was amazingly simple yet satisfying.  You avoided throwing anything in the trash because you had seen the city dump where it would end up.  We struggled in South America, but I think that subconsciously once returning we realized that we had felt a surprising sense of living when we were there.  The community was very refreshing.  It was amazing how clean our bodies felt eating simple foods.  Living with our few possessions was easy.

Sometimes culture tends to tell us a certain thing, and it's surprisingly hard to imagine things a different way.  I'm convinced, however, that there are beautiful worlds out there waiting for us to discover them if we can just stop to re-imagine, from the ground up, a different way of approaching life.  Don't just accept as true what people tell you, be grateful that it works for them and consider for yourself whether it's the only way.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It's Christmastime again, and it's a magical season.  The air is a bit brisker to welcome the lights that now adorn homes, trees, and businesses.  It's as if just before the land sleeps under winter's cold spell, everything erupts in one last bright, merry celebration.  No matter the frustrating things of the season and all the reasons that we have to be bitter.  For a short time, no matter how much we try to be dour, Christmas trees with a thousand lights and memories draw us back to an easy chair in front of a fireplace with a mug of hot chocolate.  We all know what a merry Christmas looks like, and none of us has completely buried it out of reach.

It's not the most joyous time of year for everyone.  This is the time of year that those who lost family in the last twelve months grieve the most.  Countless people will toil at work straight through the holiday, whether they work for a scrooge or provide an indispensable service to the world.  Shopping will certainly frustrate us, and family just has that wonderful way of making the best of us into a grinch.  But what's so magical about Christmas is that it's possible, even if for only a fleeting moment, to reach through the mess and discover that the world in fact has a bit of good in it, no matter how miserable it seems.

For this is the time of year that God saw the mess of His own creation and compassion finally moved Him to action.  Unable to wait any longer, he sent His own Son as a little baby into that world.  If the world hadn't a speck of good in it, He would be that good.  And just as a fearful child enters a dark room knowing what dangers could lurk behind every shadowy obstacle, Jesus knew that all the world was only waiting to be lit could he just make it to the other side to tear open the curtains and let the light pour in.  For God knew that the good had not been entirely driven out of His creation, and that no man was beyond hope.  At Christmastime, we remember that we are not without hope, and that even the darkest hour comes only right before dawn.

At Christmas, I'm convinced that if there is anything bad in this world, it is because those most able to make it good have withheld themselves from fixing it.  If there is meanness, it is because we have lost the spirit of Christmas.  If there is sadness, it is because we have forgotten the gift of this season.  At Christmas, it's just a bit easier to believe - to believe in good.  If this time of year we are kinder and merrier than any other, we can make this magical season last beyond the New Year.  In the next year we can show kindness and compassion, we can choose to believe in the good, and we can choose to dive into the dirt and mud with both feet and cultivate it.

Adeste fidelis, and a very merry Christmas to you.

Phrases We Should Stop Using, Pt. VII: Good and Great?

It's been a while since I've added to my series on "Phrases We Should Stop Using."  Check out the previous posts below.  This time, I'm thinking about how we sometimes say that "Good is the enemy of great."  Like many of the posts in this series, the phrase definitely has some truth to it.  There's no doubt that settling for something good can rob you of the opportunity to enjoy something great.  However, I'm wondering today first whether it's worth it, and second whether it's a bad thing.

Saying "Good is the enemy of great" is usually an encouragement to leaders struggling in decision making.  The recipient of the advice may be facing a few "good" options and wondering whether there's an even better one out there.  Is it worth it, however, to delay until a best option is found?  Maybe something better is out there, but what if the situation is one in which doing nothing at all is the worst option?  In that case, by waiting on good options until the best is found, the advice-giver is actually encouraging the person to de facto take the worst option.  I'm concerned that, in many situations, the delay in decision-making may not be worth the potential upside from an improved slate of options.  Thus, before we take this advice, a wise leader will realize the full array of pros and cons facing him or her, weighing the degree to which the unknown "best" option could be better versus the pain from avoiding a decision.  The leader will decide how long they are willing to wait before the pain outweighs the gain.

Another angle I'm wondering about is whether or not it's even a good thing to avoid "good" options in search of a "great" option.  Is there always a great option even out there?  Are we proven fools if we avoid a "good" option, only to eventually have to come back to it after spending a great deal of time looking for a better plan?  The wise leader needs to also weigh the probability that there even is a "best" option out there before taking this advice.  Leaders must be highly comfortable with making decisions without all the available facts if they want to remain nimble and quickly effective.  Otherwise they will move slowly and miss many opportunities.  I'm further convinced that it's a testament to wisdom when someone makes a decision without looking back and frequently questioning themselves.  The outcome will generally be best by applying fully to one option, rather than continuing to waffle after stepping out.

Isn't life filled with opportunities to make the best out of the options we have?  Isn't character developed by committing to one thing and sticking with it?  If we aren't careful with the advice of "good is the enemy of great," we'll apply it to the wrong situations.  Marriage isn't about finding the perfect option, it's about choosing to love an imperfect person just like yourself and turning a blind eye to other potential "options" once you've made the choice.  Looking for the perfect job either leaves you with an empty resume or one where you've clearly hopped from job to job on a whim.  We need to be more comfortable with recognizing, "You know, all these options are good ones and I am capable of realizing good things in any of them."  Instead of a perfectionist preoccupation with the perfect, wisdom is the ability to make the best out of what we have, flexibly and quickly making decisions and moving forward.


Previous posts in the series:

1. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade
2. You can do anything you set your mind to
3. Live like you were dying
4. The least of these
5. Don't judge a book by its cover
6. Time is money

Reading the Bible Again

I've read the whole Bible twice before, and I've studied various parts of it to varying degrees of depth.  I've heard countless sermons and read a hundred Christian books.  There's nothing, however, quite like returning to the Word and reading it again for the big picture.  There's a lot of truth to the idea that you can never see both the forest and the trees.  As I write this I'm wrapping up an intro New Testament course where, in 3 months, we took an overview of Romans through Revelation.  We've read the whole thing, along with a basic intro supplement, a book on Paul's theology, and a book on interpreting Revelation.  It's been awesome to see the forest in a short period of time, and three big ideas have jumped out at me more strongly than I'd ever seen before.

The teachings of Jesus and the apostles were amazingly counter-cultural.

We know this, instinctively, but the degree to which it's true amazes me.  When the apostles realized the extent of the "mystery" of the faith that God has welcomed the Gentiles into his covenant, their teaching went against a couple thousand years of understanding by the Jews.  The degree of controversy might be on the same level as if we suddenly realized the sun wasn't actually the center of our galaxy.  When Jesus and the apostles redefined the family roles for Christians and flattened the social order, they were going against the entire cultural arrangement of the Roman empire.  Today's equivalent would be if some group started arguing that capitalism wasn't the ideal economic system.  That Christianity was multicultural was about as confusing to Romans as could be.  The teaching of Christianity was turning the entire known world upside down because it was so counter to what culture taught.

The Bible is far more focused on good works than we often speak of.

Martin Luther endowed us Protestants with a strong conviction of "sola fide," or faith alone.  Indeed, the Bible teaches clearly that we are saved by faith alone.  However, this was never to the downplaying of good works - usually talking about the marginalized.  Paul, who said in Ephesians 2 that we are saved by grace through faith, not by works, immediately in the very next sentence says that we are created by God to do good works.  All of the New Testament agrees: faith that doesn't produce good works is not saving faith.  Jesus and Paul, not just James, taught the importance of good works.  We don't emphasize this nearly enough.  We talk a lot about having a relationship with God, and His forgiveness, but we don't talk much about what kind of life we need to live if we are to claim to follow Him.

Christianity in the New Testament was uncompromising and radical.

While Paul famously talked about being all things to all people, and Jesus' prayer in the Garden is the basis for people saying "in the world but not of it," the wholesale message of the New Testament is one of extreme refusal to compromise with the world.  The New Testament authors envisage or assume Christians who look radically different than the world.  I'm not sure what they would make of Christians who look just like atheists and agnostics all week long.  As I study Revelation, in fact, I'm coming to realize how radical it is - John only allows for two options - either you are one who "overcomes" (really his language is that of sacrificial death - martyrdom) or you are cast out.  Jesus does the same type of separation.  This book that we follow and believe is unbelievably radical in its propositions, and we soften their blows at our own peril.