Why I Became A Hippie

Over the past six months or so, I think I've become a hippie.  A few intentional changes to my life, and a few more planned in the near future, might warrant a few derogatory terms or critical glances.  After all, nobody really likes the tree-hugging organic urbanite except other tree-hugging organic urbanites, right?  What's the deal with those hippies, anyways?  I think a little explanation might be in order.

The story kind of begins last summer.  My wife and I abandoned our desks for twelve weeks to volunteer with a mission organization down in South America.  There were a variety of experiences in Bogota, Quito, the Amazon rainforest, and Lima, but most of our time was in the desert in north Peru.  Sometimes I think that taking a step away allows you to see things with a different perspective and learn a lot.  Then I read through Jen Hatmaker's book Seven.  It's a printed blog of a rebellion against excess, or, dare I say it...a hippie journal.  Then I enrolled in a new class at seminary reading the New Testament.  Reading it again was eye-opening in a number of ways.

All those things combined changed my perspective on a lot of things.  My first insight was that all of my life is interconnected spiritually.  Of course I've long known that my Christian faith isn't confined to Sunday mornings and just before mealtimes.  But I don't think I had ever thought about something as silly as recycling as part of my faith before.   I hadn't thought about how my purchases might be part of my faith.

Another insight came from periodically touring the city garbage dump in Trujillo, Peru.  Some friends had a ministry there, and we went a few times.  People worked there, in the dump, sorting through the trash to look for things of value to sell.  It was a pretty horrific scene - noxious fumes, smoke, smell, grime, animals...all you can imagine.  Startling but Obvious Realization: Trash goes somewhere.  Here in America we're great about pretending that trash bins are the final landing place for trash (they magically empty themselves too).  It's utterly invisible to us, but that stuff does end up somewhere.

I also realized that nature is a great thing we've tended to forget about.  There's a natural cycle to things, from soil to plant to plate, from season to season, so forth.  The earth yields a great deal of bounty that we don't see because it's not as marketable.  And I feel a bit more alive when I'm eating such natural and simple products.  My whole body feels different when cleansed of processed foods and artificial things.  Where we lived, most of our food was also almost entirely locally-created.  It's nice to think that when you buy something, your money is actually continuing to cycle into the community you are living in.

My parents raised me to be reasonably conscious of energy usage and whatnot, but with my newfound connectedness to the earth, I feel more responsible for my little segment.  Christian development literature speaks of breaking free from poverty in terms of four fundamental relationships: with God, yourself, others, and creation.  Now I think I have an understanding of what it means to be reconciled to creation.  Thus, the changes I've been making in my life that might be, I admit it, hippie-ish.

1. Consciousness of our garbage.  I am now working hard to recycle everything I can.  When we move into a house I will begin to compost.  My goal is to reduce our waste disposal to less than the combined amount of composting and recycling.  Shouldn't be too difficult.  Along with this comes saving trimmings from veggies to make broth and tossing meat trimmings and bones into a pot for stock.  Reducing waste comes in all form.
2. Better food choices.  It's worth paying a bit more to get local and/or organic food.  Our food prices are artificially low due to government subsidies, unhealthy shortcuts, and artificial ingredients.  I don't mind paying the real price to support a small business or get products that don't make me wonder what I'm putting in my body.  Part of this is knowing how an economy works, and being conscious of where my money is ending up, as far as I have control of it.  This, to me, is really what stewardship is about.
3. Loving the earth.  Our planet is beautiful, and full of bounty.  It's a miracle, and it supplies our every need, even those we take for granted.  We have got to appreciate it, admire it, and take care of it.  I look forward to composting and gardening, just to be more connected to the earth.  In our concrete jungles it's too easy to live separated from what gives us life.

Learning to Love the Church Again

This post is going to be hard to write.  It's hard because it's reasonably autobiographical.  The thoughts, however, apply to many.  The roots of church-dislike began outside the Christian world.  Secular humanism as a worldview naturally mixed with Christianity to produce a sort of spirituality that commonly espoused, "I am spiritual but don't like organized religion."  It's not a surprising philosophy, and many have commented that within it there may even be a kernel of something that could restore Christianity to the type of movement that Jesus founded.  Unknowingly, however, as this became the dominant American philosophy on religion, syncretism (the mixing of religious beliefs) re-appeared to allow the idea to take a strong hold within our churches.  This is where we find ourselves today with many church-hoppers and those, like me, who struggled within the churches we called home.  Our fervor for God hasn't diminished, but we are disturbed and sometimes angered by our churches.

People have many reasons for disliking their own churches.  My church mishandles money, they say.  My pastor is dishonest.  Our leaders care more about numbers than about people.  The worship music is low-quality.  I feel lost in the crowd.  The church doesn't care about mission to the community or internationally.  What makes this anger at our own churches so prevalent and challenging is that most of the assertions are probably pretty accurate.  Our churches are, by and large, massively broken places where we mistake a family for an organization and go in a different direction than where the Holy Spirit is going.  We don't get mission, and don't care for people as we ought to.  All that is to say that when I speak of learning to love the church again, I don't mean learning to ignore its problems, or learning to realize that the church actually is on the right track.  I mean learning to love it.


Perhaps the task I'm up against is really to talk about the word "love."  It's probably being confused with "like."  I make a point to tell my wife that I love her, but I also make a point of telling her that I like her, because they're different things.  You can, and probably should, love things that you don't like.  Not liking something is a feeling you have based on yourself - your own preferences or values.  Love is entirely other-focused.  Love doesn't change based on what the other person does.

That's what I mean when I talk about learning to love the church.  When I left church-work to be a businessman at a ministry nonprofit, I actually left my church too.  For about a year and a half I hopped among a variety of churches.  I came back a few years ago because I felt God calling me to (it was part of the journey that inspires the title of this post).  It's taken me a while, however, to feel like I could love the church.  Still not sure I'm there, honestly.  And it doesn't stop at my church.  In my job we work with a number of broken churches, and I see some unfortunate situations.  I can look at many of them and think, "That's not the church that Jesus founded, that isn't what He wanted it to look like."  But I have to look at them and then think, "That's exactly the church that Jesus loves."  After all, that's what Jesus said.  He calls the Church as His bride, and there's going to be a wedding.

Some speakers have made much of the wedding traditions surrounding Jesus' culture when he called the Church His bride.  The marriage is arranged, and the "betrothed" are for all intents and purposes now married.  However, the groom leaves to go prepare a home, and the bride begins to prepare herself and the affairs of the wedding.  After a time, the groom comes back to get her, there's a procession to the new home, and then there's a huge party.  If we, therefore, are the bride of Christ, our role right now is to prepare ourselves.  I'm concerned, however, that in our (read: my) efforts to criticize the church into being what we think it ought to be, we've missed Christ's own instructions of what we are to be.

A Bible concordance search of the term "one another" leads to a quick survey of what God says the church should be like.  He doesn't, unfortunately, mention things in the way we wish ("Then Christ said, 'No church shall spend more than 50% of its annual budget on a new building.'").  He just doesn't.  Instead, He says:

"Be at peace with one another." - Mark 9:50

"How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?" - John 5:44

"You ought to wash one another's feet." - John 13:14

"Love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another." - John 13:34

"Outdo one another in showing honor." - Romans 12:10

"Live in harmony with one another." - Romans 12:16

"Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you." - Romans 15:7

"To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you.  Why not rather suffer wrong?  Why not rather be defrauded?" - 1 Corinthians 6:7

"When they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding." - 2 Corinthians 10:12

"Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace." - 2 Corinthians 13:11

"Through love serve one another." - Galatians 5:13

"Bear one another's burdens." - Galatians 6:2

"Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." - Ephesians 4:32

"...bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other..." - Colossians 3:13

"Encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing." - 1 Thessalonians 5:11

"See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone." - 1 Thessalonians 5:15

"Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works." - Hebrews 10:24

"Do not speak evil against one another, brothers...Do not grumble against one another, brothers." - James 4:11 and 5:9

"Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another." - James 5:16

"Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.  As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another." - 1 Peter 4:9-10

"Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another." - 1 Peter 5:5

"Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." - 1 John 4:11

I give such a long list on purpose.  If you just read a third of them and then skipped to this paragraph, go back and read them.  I know that's what you did, because that's what I always do.  In addition to being a great list of instructions - each one that could convict each of us at different moments - together as a whole they paint a great picture.  Even with omitting the verses that repeat a call to love one another (there's a lot), we can still see a picture of great love.  It's overwhelming love, in fact.  Counter-cultural love.  And it's the love that I'm not very good at, which is why I'm writing this post.

If we are thankful that God, through Christ, accepted us as we were - as messed up, broken people - then we ought to do the same for our brothers and sisters....and for our churches.  If we accept Christ's forgiving love, but judge our churches for not measuring up, the Spirit is quenched within us.  We are not allowing It to work, and we are being bullies.  You can't be forgiven a great debt then turn around and demand payment from others.  In the same way those of us who are married know that, when we were engaged to our spouses, we knew we were marrying very imperfect people.  We loved them anyways.  Christ is engaged to the Church, and He knows it's really messed up.  If we seek to be more like Christ, we will seek to love the Church the way He does.  He doesn't give up on the church and put His energy in parachurch ministries.  It's through the Church that God reaches into the world, and I would even go so far as to de-capitalize that and say that it's through the local church that God reaches into the world.  If we minister to people but never connect them to a church, we are not ministering fully to them.

Just to be clear for us ministry folks, I do not believe that we have to connect people to megachurches, or even mid-sized churches.  I believe there is a lot of promise in home-based churches, just like they looked for much of the first century of the Church.  But we must establish churches if we won't connect new disciples to existing ones.  We cannot live and operate as Christians seeking to do ministry without engaging with the local church.

So, back to me.  I frequently don't love the church.  Disagreements over direction, actions, priorities, and more cause me to put up a wall, and sometimes when I show up on Sunday morning my heart is far from ready to worship God.  This is my sin.  My job on Sunday morning is to worship God.  Anything I've let distract me from that has become, by definition, an idol.  I need not gloss over challenges, but I must not become disgruntled, cynical, or divisive.  None of this means that we can't disagree strongly with a brother or sister at a voter's meeting.  It has to do with our attitudes, not our preferences.  This is how I'm learning to love the church, despite the challenges.

What can we do?

1. We need to reconsider our mental states on Sunday morning as we drive to church.  It's easy to focus on the things we don't like, or the people we don't like.  As we drive to church, we need to redirect our thoughts to, "I look forward to being with God this morning, and I'm thankful for the unique opportunity that my church gives me for that."  We can of course be with and worship God any time.  The music, the sermon, the sacraments, and the community, however, are unique.
2. We need to accept one another in brotherly love.  We don't have to agree or even entirely like each other.  When I read the list of instructions above, however, I see a family.  We love each other despite our disagreements and differences.  Christ accepted the ugliness that I was and am, and I ought to similarly accept others.  If I'm avoiding somebody on Sunday morning or harboring anger, the love of Christ is not in me.  A disagreement I'm having with someone should not even begin to affect the warm handshake or hug with a smile that I offer them at church (what's the modern translation of a holy kiss, anyone?).
3. We need to spend real time together.  If I'm really generous with my time and get to church 15 minutes before the service starts, and leave 10 minutes after it ends, that's only 25 minutes I've granted to the community, likely with at least a dozen people.  How much relationship, or honesty, or love, have I shared in the 2 minutes I had with each person?  Almost none.  Unity, which Christ calls us to, requires honesty, and honesty is impossible with these sorts of shallow relationships.

Practical Advice for Managing your To-Do List

I've been asked by some people for my system of organizing my tasks that I've developed.  Over the past several years of working at LINC North Texas, my job description has continually had more and more things added to it.  I work in a variety of different areas and tasks at once, constantly juggling projects as diverse as building maintenance to accounting reports, and from video production to researching in scholarly journals.  I've had to constantly have an eye toward enhancing my capacity, continually monitoring and giving myself feedback to improve.  I believe that anyone can grow their own ability to work efficiently and effectively.

One common criticism is that personality rules the day when it comes to effectiveness at work.  This is undoubtedly true, and different types of responsibilities also require different ways of managing work.  If your job is to develop relationships, the way you organize your work will look very different from someone whose job is to keep the wheels of a warehouse running.  However, whether the task is a person or a form, it's still a task, and it still needs to be managed well.  My own personality isn't nearly as high-organization as you'd think - my dominant characteristic is relational and I chafe in high-detail organization and management duties.  Still, here's a few of the things I've learned, with my own systems included for example.  Hopefully there are universal applications in some of these things, and some adaptation can work for a variety of different types of personalities and roles.

1. Environment matters.

The very definition of productivity.

Or is this your preferred work environment (Jack included)?

It's not surprising, but the environment you're in makes an enormous difference in how productive you are.  I, as an extrovert and team-oriented person, shrivel into near-worthlessness if I'm stuck alone for 8 hours...unless I have a single, exciting, and results-bound project to work on.  If I know I'm going to be alone in the office, I can't have 5 different minor tasks planned, or some really mundane data entry, or a long-range ongoing maintenance task that will never go away.  It needs to have a definite finish point.  I also know that my mindset will be affected by the clothes I wear.  If I wear jeans and a polo, I have a very different mindset at my desk than in a dress shirt and slacks.  It's just subconscious.  Lighting matters, though in the office I'm in I am unable to make it what I want it to be.  I could go on, but you get the point.

Organize your physical space as well.  I have 4 different types of papers that I constantly deal in - bills, contributions, receipts, and HR papers.  So I have 4 filing trays for them, plus a fifth for other stuff that I should probably hang on to for a while but don't want sitting out.  There's always those papers you are currently involved in, so I have one stack for those.  There's also always those papers you are working on, but you are waiting for something before they become relevant to you again.  Those go in a different stack so they don't clutter my direct workspace.  You can also think about what you're looking at.  Your mindset at work will be different if you're looking at a computer, a bookcase, a picture of your spouse, or a window.

Make sure some things are not immediately convenient to you.  Researchers have long known that sitting at a desk for long periods of time is not good for you in a variety of ways.  Frequently getting up will help you physically and also mentally.  For me, the copier and my files are in a different room.  I also recently removed the trash can from my desk.  I found that the majority of my stuff was recycling anyways, so now I have to get up every time I throw something away or recycle it.  A final note - figure out whether music helps you, and if so, what kind.  Music helps me a lot, but only if it's reasonably gentle and light on vocals.

2. Don't let things fall through the cracks.

One of the quickest ways to non-verbally inform a coworker that they are not important to you is to ignore them.  Whether it's not replying to an e-mail, or forgetting things they've asked you to do, when we let things slip through the cracks we are not just decreasing our effectiveness, we are letting our teammates down.  A little bit of systems thinking is necessary here.  How does communication happen in your workplace?  If e-mail is heavily used, you've got to become a master at managing your e-mail.  Set up a system for yourself - an e-mail in the Inbox means one thing, an unread item means another, an archived item still another thing.  Yes, you can mark items "unread"!  My system is not to delete something out of my inbox until no more input is needed.  Thus, my inbox constantly carries around a manageable list of items that will need followup at some point.

From time to time, audit yourself to see if things are falling through the cracks.  Think through the system - how could something get lost?  Patch any hole you think of with some kind of plan.  The solutions will be as varied as the problem and as varied as your personality.  Your workplace of course contributes to this.  I have one coworker who builds armies of different-colored post-it notes around her on her desk.  Everything is somewhere visible there.  If the communication in your workplace is more verbal, have a designated "meeting" notebook where you take notes every time you sit down to talk with someone.  Once you get back to your desk, incorporate the notes into some sort of a to-do list.  Which brings me to:

3. Manage your action items in three ways.

There are three ways of seeing your to-do list.  The first is as a broad overview of everything you are working on or need to work on.  This can include some very long-range projects and things that are permanently on your desk.  The second is as a "Steven Covey First Things First" way, where you identify and prioritize the things that need to get done.  The third is as a simple to-do list of what you plan to get done in a set period of time.  If you have a wide variety of responsibilities like me, employ all three methods for optimal effectiveness.  For me, I have a piece of paper permanently on my desk where I have a list of projects organized by area of my job.  Currently I have 4 large sections, 12 projects, and 21 action steps on it.  I also have other areas of the page marked out as a shopping list (since I do purchasing for the team), as a "parking lot" (things I'd like to do someday, but not for a while), and for "open items" with my supervisor that we need to discuss at some point.

For the second way of seeing the list, I flip to the back side of that list of projects.  I have five weeks at a time (that's how much fits on the page).  For each working day over the five weeks, I decide on one "goal" for the day.  One project that will be the majority of my focus for the day.  I usually plan out the week on Monday, sometimes leaving the last day or two to plan once I get closer to be more flexible.  I've learned which days I won't accomplish any big tasks on, and I've learned each week needs a "catch up" day for all the little things that didn't fit elsewhere.

For the third way of seeing it, I keep an online "to-do" list.  It's a daily list.  Each day before I go home I plan the next day's to-do list, based off my first two planning pages.  If something didn't get done, I leave it on there for the next day.  Over time you learn to realistically understand how much you can get done with the other demands that will appear unexpectedly.

These ways of seeing your tasks will vary widely based on your role and personality.  I have known people who have a list on their to-do of people - anyone who comes to mind that they want to connect with for any reason.  Your projects may take the form of questions or problems if your job requires more critical thinking.  Perhaps an entire day is devoted, not to "Do all the expense reports," but to "How do I improve the teamwork within the accounting department?"  An entire week may be dedicated to "What can we do to regain market share?"

In conclusion....

This is all about finding something that works for you.  These general headings are universal - environment, plugging the holes, and managing tasks.  The systems, however, will be widely varied.  The one constant throughout, however, is awareness.  You have to be aware of your own systems, however they've developed.  Not having a plan is, in fact, a system in itself, though an inefficient one.  Improving capacity and effectiveness in these ways will take some time and some creative thinking, and some time developing the systems.  You may have to do some major cleanup of your e-mail box, or design a Word document you can use as a graphical illustration of projects.  This kind of work, however, will always prove worthwhile.  Covey calls it "sharpening the saw," as you are taking time away now to make your future work better and easier.

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.