I was driving home yesterday after dropping Diane off with her sisters in Yuma, Arizona where Carol and Jack spend their winters. We had to cut our road trip short by two days as the Grand Canyon was being visited by a rather large blizzard. I wouldn’t have minded being hunkered down and we certainly had the gear but I didn’t relish driving in those conditions. Not at all. Regardless, it was a wonderful trip and the adventures proved all manageable as requested. It’s never a bad thing having to come home to San Diego, even with a storm raging outside.

Anyway, back to the driving along. I was listening to a playlist when a song I hadn’t heard in awhile popped up. My mind wandered a bit and I thought of the Lord’s Prayer.

Now, prayer is something to think about all on its own. Maybe I’ll get the call to write about it. But, now, I just want to focus on this most famous of all prayers. I suspect that many non-Christians are quite familiar with it. It’s just one of those things that persists, and for good reason.

After all, when his disciples asked Jesus to show them how to pray, this what he said. He followed up with a lot of other advice on prayer, but for now, I’ll just look at the core of his teaching.

Interestingly, it was common for Jesus to take a question and pitch it back as a parable, designed to frustrate the listener into deeper understandings. He masterfully wove stories that forced people to wrestle with the most compelling themes, hopefully breaking through to great insight. Not so with this request.

Jesus simply said in Matthew 6:9, “This then, is how you should pray.” Period.

I’ll come back to that.

But, first, a word about perfunctory prayer. At the risk of stepping on toes, I have a bias against repetitive liturgies (formulaic worship) to the degree that the words are expressed as a requirement rather than from the heart with the full force of meaning. I am of the mind that God is much more interested in what and how we’re actually thinking and feeling, rather than demonstrating the ability to repeat over and over again certain words because, well, that’s what we’re supposed to do.

Put a little differently, when we speak the words and own them as “our” words, then we are in relationship with God rather than as automatons dutifully performing a prescribed ritual.

Now, just because I’m saying I’m biased doesn’t mean I don’t recognize certain value in repetition and formulaic expression. When we enter into a rhythm that allows us to set aside much of the world’s distortions, we are able to focus much more clearly. And, it’s not the repetition that’s the problem. It’s the fact I believe we get lulled out of a place where the words or practice can cut to the very core of who we are, who God is and how we’re called to live our lives. It’s the lulling that’s the problem. And, this holds true for the most well known Christian prayer … the few lines we collectively refer to as “The Lord’s Prayer.”

So, there are no two ways about it. When Jesus responds simply to the disciples’ request on how to pray, I’m of a mind that he means what he says. And, if you’re of a mind that he is, in all actuality, God, then I suspect we ought to really try to wrap our heads around where he goes with it.

Disclaimer: Let’s set aside dispute over translations and how Catholics and Protestants tweak the language. The basics are the basics. Also, I am not even close to being an expert on either prayer in general of this one in particular. So, I will probably butcher my interpretation in some eyes. But, this is how I see it.

Back to Matthew 6-9: “This, then is how you should pray: Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

He sets the stage right out of the gate. I’d like to think I can go there when I pray this prayer, although I normally fall pretty far short. But, if I’m really of a mind to “pray” this prayer, then I need to start off well. And that means recognizing who I am and who I’m speaking to and with.

He is “our father.” Not “my” father but “our” father. I am one of many, bonded via our relationship with God. He is “father,” creator, protector, giver of life, and font of love and grace. That means I am as a child, receiver of life, beneficiary of unconditional love and grace. I belong to him.

Oh, and while he’s “here,” he’s also not “here.” There is the reality of this world and there is the reality of God’s Kingdom, a term we use to mean that “place” under which he reigns and rules.

Now, this can rub modern sensibilities terribly. The sensibly modern will bridle at archaic language and images that reflect ancient monarchies, made obsolete by obviously superior systems such as democracies. And the sensibly modern will also object to a concept that someone or something has the right to reign or rule over us. How primitive!!

Well, they have a point. In fact, this was a really big sticky thing for me for quite a long time. I couldn’t fathom a reality that was this non-egalitarian. As a freedom-loving modern, I wanted no part of kings reigning and ruling. No part at all.

Until a switch got flipped and it all made complete sense and I awoke from a dream.

I awoke to a reality that this thing called heaven is not some place of clouds and harps and streets paved with gold. It isn’t behind pearly gates with a saint standing guard. It is the realm wherein God is real and obvious and we exist fully in his presence. I have many thoughts about what heaven really is and what my life after death could be like but I know it will be both different and vaguely familiar. So, we pray to a God that is in “the heavens,” a place dramatically different than what we experience mostly, day to day.

And, now we get to the next piece in that brief phrase: “… hallowed be your name.”

The word “hallowed” really means “holy.” And, holy is a big deal. Even if it’s not a topic for polite dinner table conversation.

Something that is holy is sacred, set apart, pure, worthy of intense respect. I am not holy. Not by a long shot. God is holy. In fact, he is not us, he is set apart, pure and worthy of respect. And, here’s something I find interesting: Jesus didn’t introduce the prayer by saying, “hallowed are you.” He said, “hallowed be your name.” Now, we can split hairs but the distinction causes me to pause. In fact, the mere name of God is hallowed. Holy. How much more the whole deal?

As I write this, I’m reminded of something very personal.

I used to have a pretty foul mouth. I can date its origin pretty much to working on the docks of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography my second summer at UCSD. My friend, Bruce, and I were summer workers, pulling down $2.24/hr to be grunts around the ships and fork trucks and cranes and welding machines. It was hard duty and the regular guys were pretty coarse, to put it mildly. Former military or Teamsters, with names of Sonny, Killer and Tex (the ones I recall) they rarely completed a sentence without cursing. And they cursed with vehemence. While I later restrained my language for the most part except around people who knew me, I still let loose on many an occasion. And, I didn’t even think about it when others used similar language. It was just a natural part of communicating. Along with the F bombs and the S word or its amplified “That’s B… S…!,” I frequently resorted to “J…. C…..!” when really frustrated or “G.. D…..!! You get the picture. The name of Jesus was a swear word and I didn’t think a whit about it.

Many Christians pray fervently that God will change us and relieve us from bondage to this or that addiction, habits we recognize as destructive and not a reflection of the person we realize we were meant to be. After making the choice to follow Jesus and when everything changed in the blink of an eye, a number of very specific changes happened. Within a few days at most, I realized I couldn’t swear. I don’t mean that I realized it was wrong and I needed to restrain myself. I mean I couldn’t swear. Physically. Any inclination just vanished. It was taken away. I didn’t pray that this would happen, as in, “God, I now belong to you. Would you please help me with my foul mouth?” The thought never crossed my mind. I just couldn’t. And, for the past twelve years, nothing has changed.

And, while I do not judge others for their use of foul language (there but for the grace of God, goeth I!), I have a visceral reaction when I hear the words. And the hardest part is hearing the Lord’s name taken in vain. Diane agrees with me on this. It’s like a body blow. Some who read this might think I and we are overreacting … that we’re being Puritanical. OK. But, let me ask you this: Would you think a black person is overreacting if he or she is confronted with a loud “N…..!?” I suspect not. It’s the same thing. We learn to live with it but it hurts.

Holy are you. “Hallowed be your name.”

Now that we’ve recognized who we are addressing, we move to a declaration of fact:

Matthew 6:10, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

I’m purposefully not accessing commentaries to help guide me in this essay. I want to just call it as I see it, recognizing that many others have explored this phrase in great depth. So, what does this declaration say? Jesus tells us that the wait is over. God has arrived. No longer do either his Jewish listeners or any of the peoples of the world have to go to a temple or “sacred” place to find God. He does not reside in a church or in places of great natural beauty. He is here. By becoming the flesh and blood of a man, God has burst fully into the world we know.

On a high place in the city of Jerusalem, sat the Temple. The Jews reserved the innermost room of this extremely large facility for the residence of God. It was called the Holy of Holies. Only one person was ever allowed to enter it, the High Priest, and then only once a year on Yom Kippur, the sacred Day of Atonement. On that day, the High Priest would basically appeal to God for mercy for the sins of the people. There was a gigantic curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the rooms. Surviving documents indicate  it was 60 feet high, 30 feet wide and four inches thick. Imagine that! Christians believe that this veil, the physical device that separated the people from God, was completely torn in two at the moment of Jesus’ death. Doubters may doubt. For those who believe, the tearing or “renting” of the veil signifies that God is present to each of us, without the need for mediating influence or physical separation. And, he is as present and real in our world as he is in the heavens. And, being present, his will is manifest.

This latter statement is a hard one to grasp and I’ll defer from addressing it now as it can get really complicated. I’m not hedging, just deferring for now. But I will say this:

I firmly believe that I have one foot in this world and one foot in the other world. They are separated but connected. There are times when it’s hard for me to see or know the other world … the world of the heavens. And, at other times, the veil of my perception which can be rather thick and opaque, becomes as gossamer. I am granted a glimpse of the Holy of Holies and it is like nothing I could have imagined. For whatever reason, these moments are rare but they cannot be denied. They arrive unbidden and confirm what the decals on the back of our two cars say: “Not of this World.” We are in this world but not of it. Jesus tells us bluntly to acknowledge that God’s will is undeniable. Our task is to do whatever we can to determine it. Fortunately, Jesus’ entire ministry was build around telling us what God’s will is. And, that’s a very cool thing.

We now move from recognizing who and where God is to the most important requests we should make of God.

Matthew 6:11: “Give us our daily bread.”

Whoa there.

Jesus does not tell us that we should ask almighty God for happiness or for prosperity or to relieve suffering as our very first request. He says we should go before God and ask for the most basic form of sustenance. He is telling us to be content with the most basic of things. Yes, I think this is about contentment, something we hardly embrace in this material and fast paced world. I know I struggle with it. We have such wealth and are surrounded by bounty.

Bread is life. If I had time, I could really dive into the heart of what Jesus is saying here and how he is the bread of life (see communion) … our sustenance. But, in the simplest sense, this request is about realizing what is really important. There are many ways we are fed, metaphorically. Let us focus on what really sustains us. What brings us contentment and joy.

And, here we move deeper into the meaning of life as Jesus tells us. Here, we move into the nature of the Kingdom of God that is present on earth as it is in heaven. Here, we shift from a request for simple sustenance to a request that we be freed from bondage. And the first bondage is one of sin … a bad word in certain circles.

Matthew 6:12: “And forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors.”

(I am using the version common in Protestant churches. Catholics will insert the word “trespass” for “debt.” But, it’s the same thing.)

It is the recognition that we are the cause of offense. Our actions frequently run counter to what God wants for us. We regularly make choices, in both thought and deed, that hurt others, ourselves, and even God. Yes, God can be hurt. See the cross. Jesus cites many examples during the course of his three year ministry. The adulteress, the woman at the well, the judgmental Pharisees and keepers of the law. The Prodigal Son who denies his father and squanders everything. The Apostle Paul (formerly the murdering Saul) covers a lot of this ground in his advice to the various new communities springing up as Christianity began rapidly spreading. Yes, we need to recognize when we mess up. And, when we do and actually experience the pangs of guilt or shame and wish we had not done what we’d done, that is called Repentance. It is remorse. But, Jesus teaches that we should bring that recognition before God and seek his forgiveness. We understand that there has been a tipping of the balance. The hurt is an injury to another, to ourselves, to God. It is a debt. And, in honestly bringing these things to God … honestly, not perfunctorily … we are promised forgiveness. That’s sweet.

But, there’s a catch. It works both ways. It’s one thing to recognize when we mess up and desire the slate to be wiped clean. It’s another thing to act in Christ’s place and do the same for those who offend us. In the post script to the prayer, Jesus warns us that, should we choose to look at this thing as a one way street, we will be sadly found wanting. We have a choice on whether to live in this “Kingdom” that is defined by love and grace, forgiveness and redemption. Or we can choose to live outside of it. Forgiveness is the key to the exit door from bondage to sin … for living a life outside of the one God desires for us. For which we were created. The key is both a head and a heart thing. And, it’s very hard. While it’s hard, it’s not impossible to grow in the right direction. Freedom from debt is remarkably liberating, both for the one who carries the debt and the one who owns the debt. A burden is released and both sides are free. This is what Jesus is teaching.

Finally, we come to the last part of the prayer which, in my mind, is an extension of the part just mentioned.

Matthew 6:13: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”

Heavy sigh.

There’s nothing like concluding his too-the-point lesson on how to pray with this one-two punch. The first phrase, in my mind, is a plea to help us avoid temptations that pull us away from God and his will for us. And, boy, do they exist. Just a quick glance at the traditional “seven deadly sins” is a good place to start. Or, the Ten Commandments. Or, ignoring Jesus’ condensing down to two commandments. How about the oft-cited Sermon on the Mount? All of these and more help illustrate the nature of temptation … the call away from God’s will for us. So, this plea is for help to avoid those pathways, but to lead us toward him.

And, then the prayer gets really blunt. I can almost read this plea as a crying out. It seeks deliverance. Not avoidance but deliverance. I read a lot into this, although I know it’s risky to speak of this to modern sensibilities.

I’ll step out on a limb but I’m being transparent and honest. There is a widely held belief that God is Love. They are synonymous. While I believe there is a lot that is correct in that, I don’t believe it’s actually that simple. God is God. And love is his character. For some who believe that God is Love, the logic goes that evil is the absence of God. So when people do really bad things that some could characterize as evil things, the belief is that they are simply acting contrary to the nature of God. End of story. I don’t subscribe to this.

I have testified many times to the thirty odd years I wrestled and even fought with God, all the while sensing the truth of his existence. One of the areas of my greatest difficulty was reconciling an all-powerful God who is loving but who could simultaneously allow evil and suffering to exist. I was not alone in this deep reservation. It’s one of the most common reasons people reject the Christian framework.

Now, people who do not believe in evil probably don’t have this problem. Of course, the Naturist cannot believe in evil. Evil implies a moral force. A distinction that is universal and absolute. If one ascertains that an act of another is evil, no argument from the other that it is perfectly acceptable (not just justified but acceptable or even good) will hold water.

Do we have to look far to find examples of evil? Jeffrey Dahmer. Dachau. Sadism. Something told me long ago that there was such a thing as evil. Transcendent evil. The lusting after pain and anguish. No one has ever described an animal as evil. But, man, yes.

My battle was between my innate recognition that there was such a thing as transcendent evil (a force for destruction that existed outside of nature and was absolute) and my resistance to believe that it could be personified. I struggled with this immensely.

For a variety of reasons, I no longer struggle. I will not take the time here to detail how this came about. But, it did. And, I am completely convinced that there are what we can call demonic forces that influence human behavior.

Now, that statement alone might cause some to be repelled. But, as a literate and fairly scientific rationalist of the 21^st century, I can honestly say that I fundamentally believe in angels and demons. And, I believe my belief, or faith, is completely supported by reason. This places me at odds with modern sensibilities but I think I deserve the right after thirty years of looking at this from every angle. Yes, Evil exists and it exists to distract us from God. It exists to whisper and tempt that we are as good as God and do not need him. He is irrelevant. It exists to tell us that there is nothing greater than self-love (narcissism). That forgiveness is unnecessary and that grace is a sign of weakness. That the world exists for our benefits, for our personal pleasure and that we have a right to be happy however we decide to realize that happiness and at whatever the cost to others.

This concluding phrase of the prayer is commonly read as “deliver us from evil,” not, “deliver us from the evil one.” I opt for the latter translation. God has an antithesis and it is a battle, something I may write more about at some point. Regardless, the plea is for deliverance. Please pull us away from evil’s grasp. Please free us from its seductive tugs that tell us that the violence visited upon others (Dahmer and Dachau to suggest the extreme) is a good thing. And, for all of the lesser whisperings that tell us we are really not unconditionally loved, that we are masters of our fate (the world be damned), that we deserve all we can get, that everything is relative and nothing true … please deliver us.

Now, the public rendition of Jesus’ prayer adds this conclusion“For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory. Forever and ever. Amen.” The record doesn’t include this but, instead, Jesus goes on with his teaching on other matters.

Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come, your will be done,

On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

As we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from the evil one.

Amen.

Maybe some day I’ll pray this prayer with the discipline it took to record all of these thoughts.

Lord, thank you for helping us to know you better and to understand and live your will for us. Please forgive us when we rush right through the most basic of things, neglecting to pay them the attention they and you deserve. We are grateful that you are both holy and accessible. You, better than us, know that we face many difficulties and challenges in this life. Thank you for the simplicity of this prayer that simultaneously cuts to the core and shakes the world. May we honor it and you fully. Amen.

 

 

 

I couldn’t let the moment pass by. I stopped organizing and packing for the trip for a bit and picked up another remarkable book by Tim Keller that I’m reading. At the risk of possibly repeating myself (sometimes, I can’t remember exactly what I’ve written before), if you asked me to name three, four or five people, currently living that I’d like to have a two hour private dinner with, he’d be one. With a gentle rain falling outside, something he said in the current chapter, entitled “An Identity That Doesn’t Crush You or Oppress Others,” made me reflect back on our hour-long conversation this morning with my Monday Men’s group.

I have mentioned them before. We started ten and a half years ago, just five of us, in the aftermath of the suicide of the only child of kind and gentle Rex and Connie, who served in ministry at a local church. Todd suffered from mental illness and Rex and Connie devote much of their lives now to supporting mental health. We now have ten men, although we are losing one (and his young family) to the mission field in far north Alaska where he will be a pilot. Ostensibly, our weekly session now goes from 6:15-7:15am. It’s frequently quite dark when we begin but we all emerge with hearts lightened when we leave. These are all good and caring men as we wrestle with all of the issues regarding life as followers of Jesus.

This morning, we concluded the book we’ve been deeply into for the past several months. It is entitled A Long Obedience in the Same Direction and is a study on the 15 psalms, collectively known as the Songs of Ascent. I mentioned this in my first post in this latest flurry, on December 5. The last chapter has the theme of Blessing. The psalm which is the basis for this theme is the 134^th. It is very short and to the point.

As we are blessed, so we should bless God. That might sound simple but, as always, we had a robust discussion. What does blessing mean, actually? What is being blessed like? How have we experienced it? How do we bless others? And, interestingly, how can we bless God? As Tony (who is very bright and always keenly observant) commented something like this, “I mean, we can always use blessings, but how in the heck do you bless God? It’s not like he needs our blessings and after all, he’s God!” We laughed and nodded our heads, becoming silent for a few moments.

Something remarkable happens in a blessing. While I never really thought about the term much until ten or twelve years ago, I knew I had benefited from the care and kindness of others. I had received gifts that helped me immensely. And, I knew that I had offered similar gifts to others. But, I didn’t really understand the concept of Blessing.

I remarked to the group that I felt true blessing as an expression of the state of Grace, another unfamiliar concept until this latest period of my life. In the ideal, that state is when two or more individuals are incredibly close and the love pours out as a gift. It is a heart thing. It is received as the breath of life. It fills the lungs and soul. When, from God, there is nothing like it. A blessing is a gift of self, an opening and a deliverance. An outpouring that is grounded in love. And when that comes from God, oh my.

Yes, we can issue perfunctory blessings, of which I have no problem. The fact that people will pause to recognize they are not the centers of the universe, speaking words to that effect, is a good thing.

Most frequently, we ask for blessings, although with our annual Christmas/Holiday cards, we often share abbreviated forms of blessings, asking people to receive peace, love, hope and joy.

But, a blessing is a gift. It is not unattached. It is not just a thing that is out there.

A state of grace is living within a reality that says I am here as gift. Not as a gift but as gift. For those who make themselves open to receiving gifts, relinquishing the hard exterior that says I am the master of my fate and I don’t need handouts, a life of gift receiving and gift giving is the only kind of life worth living.

And, from within that life, experiencing God’s blessings is something that is only praiseworthy. It is worth the highest form of Praise. Which is what the psalmist means and it’s what the tens of thousands of Jews sang from their hearts as they tread up the hill to worship the one true God in Jerusalem. We are truly blessed. In good times and bad.

But, to get to Tony’s excellent question about how we can bless God …

I believe it’s just the same, but in reverse. Just as God adores us, we burst forth with adoration. Just as God surrendered himself to become flesh, live among us and die for us, showing us who he is and what life with him is like, we surrender in return, exclaiming, “Here I am, Lord. Take me.” We offer ourselves right back. That is blessing God. It is in the offering. Open. Full. Vulnerable.

Gary reminded us of one of his favorite songs (and mine), entitled “Blessed Be Your Name,” as sung by Matt Redman.

Here are its lyrics:

Blessed be Your name

In the land that is plentiful

Where your streams of abundance flow

Blessed be Your name

 

Blessed be Your name

When I’m found in the desert place

Though I walk through the wilderness

Blessed be Your name

 

Every blessing You pour out, Ill

Turn back to praise

When the darkness closes in, Lord

Still I will say

 

Blessed be the name of the Lord

Blessed be Your name

Blessed be the name of the Lord

Blessed be Your name

 

Blessed be Your name

When the sun’s shining down on me

When the world’s ‘all as it should be’

Blessed be Your name

 

Blessed be Your name

On the road marked with suffering

Though there’s pain in the offering

Blessed be Your name

 

Every blessing You pour out, I’ll

Turn back to praise

When the darkness closes in, Lord

Still I will say

 

Blessed be the name of the Lord

Blessed be Your name

Blessed be the name of the Lord

Blessed be Your name

 

You give and take away

You give and take away

My heart will choose to say

Lord, blessed be Your name

 

Blessed be the name of the Lord

Blessed be Your name

Blessed be the name of the Lord

Blessed be Your name.

Before leaving this topic, I should share that we discussed what it’s like to be in a dark place, not feeling any blessings, not feeling either praise-worthy or of offering praise. This is a hard one.

As the lyrics remind us, when the darkness closes in, still we can offer praise.

Diane and I have someone we’re very close to, a most wonderful woman we love dearly, who is suffering right now. Suffering terribly. It came on suddenly like a sledge hammer to disrupt a life. She has struggled nearly desperately to overcome this affliction. Just as she has been a beacon to all who know her, she is now surrendering to the love and care of others. And, throughout, she has not lost her faith and the knowledge that she is both loved nearly immeasurably here in this life and completely immeasurably by God.

And, it’s that knowledge that God is faithful, despite our afflictions … that he is loving despite not receiving love in return … that his grace is without bounds … all of this is sustaining. It is the breath of life.

For many years now, I am quite aware of the fact that I’m living on borrowed time. I’ve written about it. And, being borrowed, it doesn’t truly belong to me. I am dependent. My experience of a year ago only emphasizes this fact.

But, here’s the thing about borrowing. Although my life is borrowed, the mortgage has been paid in full. The debt is clear.

In my surrender and thanksgiving, I can’t help but praise. You are the breath of life. The living water. Only if I could learn how to be a better blessing to others … the people I come into contact with each day. I fall so short. But, just as the Psalms of Ascent describe a journey, a pilgrimage of transformation, so is this life.

Thank you for my life and all of the blessings You bestow. I can’t help but kneel in gratitude. In turn, I lift my hands up to you, Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be your name.

Well, this past month has been something, as least as far as my call to write. I just counted 18 posts in 33 days. From feeling little or no inclination to write since last spring, it was like someone turned on the firehose. As I’ve said repeatedly, I rarely know where I’m going when I sit down with my laptop. Very different from all of those academic papers where I conducted research, framed complex outlines and redrafted before completion. This is just basically stream of consciousness with a quick once over to correct typos. With that in mind, I apologize for times when I’m unclear … which could mean any number of things, all my fault.

Anyway, we’re off on our long-planned road trip this Wednesday. It’s the same trip we’d set up last year that had to be called off at the last moment due to my illness. Wednesday night in Cedar City, UT, before heading to Edwards, CO, to stay five nights with our dear friends, Sharon and Rich Brower. Our other dear friends, Tim and Anita Asfazadour are flying to Denver on Thursday. We’ll hopefully have four days of snowshoeing (probably at 10,000 feet) and enjoying God’s beautiful creation. On the following Tuesday, Diane and I head off to the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, home of the Indian cliff dwellings. We’ll spend two nights and a full day there, exploring. Then, off for a quick stop over at the Grand Canyon National Park, another two nights and a full day. Finally, over to Yuma where Diane’s sister Carol and her husband Jack are wintering. Diane’s other sister, Mary, will drive over from Idyllwild so the three sisters can be together. I’ll only spend a single night in Yuma before returning home on the 22nd. Diane and Mary will arrive here three days later.

Until then, blessings upon each and every one of you.

Brad

 

I said at the conclusion of my last post that I would share my answer in this one.

Unfortunately, that may not be exactly true. You see, my answer is more a sort of haze of experience and reflection that pulls me from one place towards another. In a sense, my answer continues to be made up of a bunch of questions born from the dissolution of previous answers.

That may seem just way over the top obtuse. I’m sorry. But, my answer will hopefully involve others asking similar questions as we sift through prior assumptions to seek what’s behind. Oh, it may not be of a Wizard of Oz magnitude. We’ll have to see.

I grew up a kind of early social justice warrior before that term became commonplace as both lauded and decried. As a SJW, I looked out for the poor and oppressed and tried to promote liberty, opportunity and justice for all, marching, working in the barrios and ghettos, campaigning for this or that cause. So, teaching and learning in schools was a place to represent the associated ideals and to inculcate their values. Only when I experienced a school falling apart at the seams that had worked hard at this, did I begin to question if I was really missing something.

In the years that followed, as I was asked to help build and open a brand new large high school as principal and to structure its curriculum and culture top to bottom, I began to experiment with a shift in my approach to school leadership. We started that school with two simple core values. While simple on the surface, they were deep in potential and meant to be integrated everywhere. By focusing on just two and agreeing they were core, no mistake could be made as to what we were about and what was important. We wanted solid ground. Not sand. They were (and remain after I departed): Challenging everyone to do great things and to be nurturing of one another. We would both expect the best and care the most. That’s it. The goal was to infuse all meetings, conversations, endeavors and programs with these as the fuel. Despite our many lapses and our inability to always live by our two core values, we did OK. Well, more than OK. It’s not surprising the school flourished.

Do really good stuff. Be kind, compassionate and loving. Figure it out. Stay focused. Everything proceeds from those two things.

I left that school a different person than when I began. And, now, some five years later, my thinking has continued to evolve. What had begun in the crises of that one year of 2000-2001, and morphed into experiment about culture and core objectives in subsequent years, is continuing to percolate as I ask, “what’s the point?”

Because, you see, I want to know what’s behind the curtain of Oz.

We all suffer from a kind of Oz syndrome (I just thought that up as I’m typing and am not sure if it’s silly or relevant!). We think something is real and profound until we search and work and suffer and find out we were mistaken. What was promised just didn’t deliver.

What is the truth that lies obscured? What is it that makes a human fully human and why is that something you can take to the bank?

Because if we can’t answer that question, what business do we have saying we know how to “grow” young people into adults?

Yes, what business do we have?

Here’s what I believe.

Humans are meant to be unique individuals, each endowed with very specific gifts. We are all not the same in that we have different gifts but that we are completely equal in our value. Our gifts are manifested as skills, and when expressed, seem natural and without effort. We are not accidents nor mere physical/chemical/biological groups of particles that happen to coalesce in random moments. We have meaning.

Does that sound religious? Oh well. You are welcome to the alternative.

We are meant for purpose and that purpose is profoundly good. It is not bad. While this is of course debatable, it is also non-negotiable. A fundamental truth. Contrary to the belief of some that we are born good and learn bad, we are born into nature which is cold and unforgiving, ultimately heartless. While remarkably beautiful and majestic, it is a violent place that rewards the strong and cunning and defeats the weak and vulnerable. This is the state of nature. Humans are the same flesh and blood as beasts yet we have something different. We have a conscience and the will to be different. We are given the ability to think and make judgments, to develop principles and the morality that those principles demand.

To construct a society that ignores this truth is to deny this truth and set out on a different path. That path ultimately leads to a place of value neutrality, no matter how you try to deny it. We can construct platforms of rules based upon principles that, in the end, are subject to the question upon which they ultimately rest. Oz.

What does this mean for schools and learning? Well, it means we need to be honest.

Had I to do it over again, I would do it differently.

I would be honest to teach that material wealth does not lead to happiness, nor is happiness an ideal that should be at all recognized as a reasonable objective in life. It is fragile and ephemeral and, honestly, a pretty unsatisfying deal. In its place, I would ask students to explore the idea of contentment, even when faced with major struggles. And, I would ask them to consider the idea of joy and the conditions under which joy appears.

I would teach that the most important thing we could do each day is look at the person next to us is seek to know what they hope for and what they worry about. To see if there is any way that we can bring a little bit of joy or light into their life. That is the most important thing we could do each day and every day for the rest of our lives. Period.

I would require every student to serve an internship in a place where people suffer, whether from extreme poverty, neglect, illness, harsh disability, or any other condition where life has dealt a bad hand. I would ask them to learn what these people fear and what they hope for, what hurts them and what they enjoy. I would require these students to reflect on their experience and write extensively on what they believe the meaning of human life is.

I would teach that our job as young adults is to be extremely wary of pride as a distractor from what is most valuable. Instead, let us, as young adults, see ourselves as the least of those around us. Let us open our hearts to empathy and compassion in exchange for minds bent upon conquest. I would teach that.

I would teach that we are all captives to lies. To the lies that a treadmill of productivity and creativity and wealth generation, while leading to comfort or better health, you name it, are not what is important. While certainly, yes, we want to feed and clothe and assist people in pulling out of pain and destitute circumstances, the primary goal is to free them from the lie that they exist without hope and that hope lies in consumption. No, hope lies in the realization that we are free to love and be loved.

I would teach that careers and financial independence are but chimeras, things hoped for but illusive. They are means, not ends.

I would teach the concept of community, not as something government imposed or a utopian concept, but as an organic thing that springs up naturally, because we are hard-wired for relationships. I would ask students to define the values of a good community and to do some very specific things to strengthen the community of their choice.

I would require every student in their last year to develop a vision for their life. They would have been working towards this for years. It will be founded on fundamental principles and incorporate a set of values. They would articulate the knowledge and experience that support this vision. Additionally, they would consider the pathway ahead and the means they would employ in order to achieve that vision. And, I would require that all of their teachers would share their own vision as we model the importance of being grounded and this is not just an academic exercise.

I would teach every day that we should be slow to judge and quick to love. Period.

What is the point? That’s the point.

For, to choose any other path is to ignore the fundamental reality that that’s what we’re meant for. That’s what it means to be fully human. Loving, Kind, Patient, Compassionate. Focused on what’s really important.

Oh, and, strong and resourceful and courageous. For that’s what it takes to live this kind of life in a world that teaches something very different. Just ask Martin Luther King. Just ask Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Just ask Jesus. These people are celebrated. Do we really ask what made them tick?

So, we can build and run schools that teach creativity, productivity, citizenship, critical thinking, teamwork and the whole litany. We can and should teach a vast array of important skills, both basic and advanced. But, beneath and beyond it all, do we teach that which is so much more important? How to live humbly, patiently, kindly, compassionately? Do we teach that happiness is but mist and can dissolve at the blink of an eye? Do we teach that equality means we are all of the same value, although we demonstrate vastly different native skills and inclinations? Do we teach that freedom can only happen when we let loose of the fiction that material gain will truly make a difference in our lives?

Do we teach that the measure of a person is the relationships they nurture, the lives they are part of, both in joy and sorrow? That an appropriate epitaph is not one that says,”he who dies with the most toys, wins.”

Yes, maybe we should teach that the core of being human is to fight hard to gain the most advantage over everyone else. Dominance is the highest virtue. Climb the ladder at all costs.

Or, maybe we should teach that we humans are perfectible, not flawed, and the way to achieve perfectibility is to slice away at the imperfections, especially in others.

Or, maybe we should teach that there is no absolute value in the work we do. That it’s all in the cause of something greater down the road, even if it’s unseen. Yes, let’s not consider the consequences of our work because that takes too much work in itself. “I am important and my work is important, therefore it does not make a difference what it leads to.” Zyklon B. Look it up.

I see it differently.

I regret that I did not realize many of these things earlier. I’m convinced I’d have been a better father, husband, friend, teacher and principal.

On the other hand, I rest in the knowledge that I was born with a caring heart and a discerning mind. I also rest in the knowledge that my life is a journey, just as it is for everyone, and I need to keep my eyes focused on the most important things. I may stumble and fall short. I may examine my behavior and find it lacking and others may have good cause to look at me critically. But, I’m grateful for a voice that calls me to deep and helps me to shed the things that distract me from what really matters.

What’s the point? I think I’ve done what I can to make my case. Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I ended Part I with the question of what we replace the sand with.

I was referring to my belief that we build the foundation for our inclinations too frequently on a house of cards … another way of saying they are fundamentally based on the sifting nature of sand.

We build castles of understanding and complex structures of ideas and programs and assumptions that we way too frequently don’t take the time and energy to dissect. We rush off to expound this or that set of really profound ideas that get us TED talks or assignment as Thought Leaders of temporary import as if we have come up with something unique in the course of human history. I observe as this fact intersects with current technologies that make conversation happen at light speed. This is the reality of current discourse on, you name it, the subject of the moment.

But, presently, I’m here to talk about schools and learning and the point of it all.

We can put our money on creativity or productivity or the creation of critical thinkers or problem solvers or the formation of citizens who are tolerant or appreciate freedom or equality or tolerance or who are prepared to function as responsible members of a democratic society, all noble sounding goals.

But, still, we have to ask what is our principal objective?

As I tried to outline before, in close examination, these values are means towards something that has to be more foundational.

If a student asks, “why is it important that I acquire knowledge?” we should have a very good answer that holds up to layers of precise dissection.

I covered some common responses in my last post. I’m afraid they end up as hollow points.

If that point is Happiness, come on. Happiness is as ephemeral as mist if anyone is honest about it. Nice mist to build a statement that it’s an unalienable right around. Don’t get me started.

Really, what is it that we should want everyone to know and experience and build their lives around? Isn’t that the point? Shouldn’t that be the basis of education?

Or, put slightly differently, of all the things we want young people to acquire in terms of the core things we believe are foundational for leading a good life, what does it come down to?

Of course, we have to determine what the core principles of leading a good life are!

I guess that means we have to define what a good life would look like, in theory.

Absent all of that, I wonder what the point of education is?

Well, here is where the rubber hits the road. Here is where I challenge every policy maker, every parent, every culture to consider what they want from their schools and bureaucracies that support them.

Name it.

And, then, question it to see if it’s truly a foundational value upon which all other values can stand solidly against all obstacles.

Morality gets a bad rap. That wasn’t always the case, of course, but these days it does. As it should in a post-modern world that defines truth as just being honest with one’s self about how you feel. More and more people seem to take umbrage at any suggestion that there are principles extrinsic to their own inclinations. How oppressive! “Who or what has the right to tell me what is right or wrong, good or bad?”

Well, my handy dandy little dictionary app defines morality as “principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.”

That’s a mouthful. First of all, it’s about principles (defined as “fundamental truths or propositions that serve as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning”) that are actually the guidelines whereby we can make judgments. And, then, it’s about the concepts of right and wrong and good and bad.

So, what we “value” is based upon guiding principles that help us to determine what we believe are good and bad and right and wrong.

What does this have to do with school and learning?

As we’ve seen by dissecting a hypothetical mission statement that says schools are about “producing” creative and productive young adults who are able to demonstrate critical thinking (sound reasoning) and who are prepared to assume a constructive role in a society that believes in freedom and liberty and some form of democracy, we need to determine what we actually “want” about those things.

These terms and concepts are actually “value-neutral” when viewed practically. And, something that is practically value neutral makes a very bad ideal because it tends to collapse.

In other words, we can say that this or that creative expression or produced object or service is quite good or we can say it is quite bad. We do this naturally all of the time. And we can say that this particular line of reasoning has brought us to hope or to despondency. It has brought us to loving others or hating others. This particular act of initiative has resulted in saving thousands of lives or it has destroyed thousands of lives.

So, please no one tell me that they don’t believe in guiding principles or morality. We all do, all of the time. And, in fact, a lot of the actions taken by adults in schools are designed to promote principled living and moral behavior, although most of it is through behavior modifying techniques that, at least to some extent, are meant to keep the place from blowing up.

But I have to say that I have seen little evidence of curriculum built around teaching our young to be good as opposed to bad and why they should be good as opposed to bad. Furthermore, we don’t spend much time at all talking about character traits we believe are good or bad and what right and wrong behavior really look like and how a person develops a set of principles by which to guide the rest of their lives.

Oh sure, we do touch on a number of them. These days, we spend time dealing with the concept of Tolerance (which is taught as a good), although I have real trouble with it as a principle. To tolerate is such a passive concept, as in “I can live with that.” It doesn’t mean support. It doesn’t mean “believe in.” It doesn’t pull me to something greater. Of course, it only gets worse. I can go off on how it’s actually taught and reinforced in some venues, turning it into a bludgeoning tool in the extreme forms.

We do teach character traits that are bad. We teach that racism is bad, however we define the term. We teach that it’s bad to “discriminate” against anyone on the basis of their skin color, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. We teach the histories of discrimination and the battle for equal rights. In other words, we teach that the value of discrimination (really, a form of oppression) is bad while the value of equal rights is good. This is probably the one area we come closest to invoking guiding principles in school. In principle, everyone and their beliefs deserves some kind of respect and everyone deserves equal rights.

As legislatures and school boards who determine what it is we’re supposed to teach, largely, these are the most dominant values-based principles incorporated into regular formal learning. Of course we teach other values, such as it’s good to tell the truth and bad to lie. It’s good to resolve conflict non-violently. Fighting is bad. It’s good to respect one another. It’s bad to use drugs, alcohol and tobacco unless you’re an adult and can control your intake. And, then, it may still be bad, depending.

The point is, we do teach a handful of principles and values, both formally and informally. As those who control the school’s environment (government, administrators, teachers, support staff), we accept these as part of the job. Nearly all schools do this and have been doing this. I should know. That’s where I lived and I’m married to a teacher.

But, I contest, we’re leaving a lot on the sidelines and that’s why I’m writing these pieces.

* * *

Allow me to tell a story. A rather long one that dramatically reshaped how I looked at my job and the job we were all tasked to do.

I had been principal of Grossmont High School in the eastern portion of San Diego County for just less than a year and a half, my first job as principal. I assumed leadership of the oldest school in the region, founded in 1922. It was the flagship school (the first of ten high schools in that district) and had a long and proud history. While the campus was in desperate need of modernization and their academic performance had been slowly falling off, it was a proud school, diverse ethnically and socio-economically. A good staff who cared about their work and a student body for the most part who liked coming to school. It was November 2000 when one of our students jumped from the Coronado Bridge, killing himself.

Now, any student death is mourned deeply on a high school campus. In my experience, we will lose one every two or three years, to either accident, illness or drugs. Suicides, however, are much more rare and especially difficult to process. But, we took all of the appropriate measures, requiring a lot of resources, and started the new calendar year with the event largely behind us.

In February (now in 2001), we lost another student to suicide. I believe it was an intentional drug overdose. This is highly unusual and ripped the bandage off our healing scar and brought us right back into a dark place. Again, we applied all available resources as our community tried to process the grief and ask questions about how these two things could have happened. Where were the signs? What could we have done differently. It was rough.

On March 5 at maybe around 9am, I was down in the band room, meeting with a teacher when I was called on the radio to return to the office immediately. There, I learned there had been a shooting at neighboring Santana High School and it was bad. I had participated in a daylong SWAT simulation as a vice principal in the aftermath of the Columbine shooting and those experiences were fresh in my mind as I rushed to the adjacent campus to see how I could be of support. The principal and one of the vice principals were very close friends.

The principal asked me to stay by her side as the world descended on her school. Law enforcement everywhere. News stations gathering by the dozens. Hundreds or thousands of people milling around in the shopping center across the street. The principal asked me if I would accompany her to the Taco Bell to tell two parents that their son was dead. I sat in the little booth, just the four of us, overcome with the enormity of the tragedy. I quickly learned that my other good friend, the vice principal, had held one of the two boys who were killed that day, dying in her arms. That evening, my friend, the principal, was on national television, under the kliegs, holding the press conference like so many we’ve come to accept. I was a few feet away, still trying to offer support.

The shock wave spread everywhere and school became really hard. Staff, students, parents all overcome by grief. And of course, we had just lost two of our own.

Seventeen long and very difficult days later, on March 22, a student who I had asked be removed from my school, shot up Granite Hills High School, another school in our district, the principal of which was another friend. The shooter wounded a number of people, including a teacher and a vice principal, as well as other students. Fortunately, none died. It was a Thursday.

I received a call late Sunday night that one of my own students had attempted to hang himself in a public park Friday night and was on life support. I went to his bedside in the hospital early Monday morning and was with him and his family for quite awhile. He died that day.

That same Monday night, another of my students committed suicide by overdosing. It was now Tuesday morning. For all practical purposes, my school was ceasing to function. Four suicides in four months. Two shooting deaths. Another school shot up. Students and staff weeping uncontrollably, bomb and shooting threat graffiti appearing on restroom stalls, parents refusing to let their children come to school. I was losing the school.

No words can describe what we were going through. How does anyone describe when the system begins go fall apart? When whatever had bound a community together was now being shredded? We were a good school with good people and good kids, teaching the right stuff. How could this happen? In any event, during that week, we were only in survival mode. The spring break started on Saturday but what were we to do from Tuesday through Friday?

To make a long story a bit shorter, we completely improvised and I made the decision that we would focus on just one thing. Caring for one another. Just one thing. We had but one core value, one guiding principle that transcended or underlay all other values and principles. We would care for one another. So the next days were fevered activity as we put together the elements to infuse the entire school community with care. We brought in scores of resources, from the San Diego Chargers to social services to restaurants to anyone who would assist us with our core value. And, on Friday, after all of the Geometry students had figured out how our entire student body and staff could line up in a circumference around the entire campus (all 2600 of us!), holding hands, we did just that, with helicopters flying overhead, with me on the public address system (holding hands) talking about love and the importance of community and caring for one another. It was an indelible moment.

In the following months, we built resource centers, worked with big foundations and government services, restructured how we spoke with kids and parents and how we could implement strategies for kids to process fears and anxieties. We made it to summer.

We returned to school just after Labor Day and on that first day, we recreated the linked hands and arms to demonstrate to ourselves and the world that we were a community that cared.

Less than two weeks later, on September 11, 2001, school was just starting when I was alerted. I watched as those terrible events unfolded and went on the public address system to tell 2600 people that we were under attack and at war, at the same time trying to calm them and help them to make sense of it.

That night, one of my freshman girls put a gun to her head and killed herself.

10 months. Five student suicides. Two neighboring schools shot up with multiple wounded and two dead. 9/ll.

We can talk all about creativity, productivity, critical thinking, citizenry, democracy, equality.

What’s the point?

Next: I hope to conclude with my answer.

 

Most of us know more than one or two things about school. After all, when you spend anywhere from thirteen to seventeen or more years involved in the thing, you acquire a certain expertise. And opinions.

I used to have to exercise more than a little patience with parents and people at large who wanted to assert their expertise on this or that dimension of the whole thing. I’d sigh in private and couldn’t help thinking it would be like yours truly who has driven cars for many decades … without a single ticket I might add … sharing all sorts of wisdom about how the vehicle actually works, when in fact my knowledge is extremely limited. Is there any other field where so many people have so much experience and so many opinions?

I have written several books on education in my head. And, many people who have worked with me have urged me to do the real thing. Some of those thoughts have been flights of fancy. Say after a 16 hour day as a high school principal or assistant principal when any single hour, pick it, would have stunned the uninitiated into silence. As in they’d never believe it. Probably not that different from the reflections of an ER physician or nurse in an urban hospital or a soldier boots on the ground in a forward base. You need to have been there …

In my twenty years leading schools I can pretty honestly say I wasn’t bored for five minutes. Way too much going on. Way too much to do. Life often on overdrive as thousands congregated at all hours, bringing all of their wonder and dread and hopes and fears and abilities and disabilities. Oh, and yes, we were charged with educating them. Taking something limited and malleable and fashioning it into something … well, something.

I’m a veteran of both private and public education, although not in equal measure. Not counting nursery school, I spent something around 25 years in school to get my degrees and various credentials, all but four years of which were in public schools. I also spent approximately 35 years working in and with schools, all but 9 years of which were public. That’s 60 years (some contiguous) engaged in education as student, teacher, site and district leader and consultant.

I’ve written countless papers on education, taught and run countless workshops and trainings, trained countless students, teachers and educational leaders, have developed boatloads of programs and contributed to a massive supply of curriculum and instructional materials. I’ve probably considered every piece of educational philosophy there is and have watched as a seemingly endless supply of initiatives have been developed and frequently discarded. I’ve been desperately chilled by the magnitude of issues facing the entire thing while being filled with immense joy at the many successes (most small but some large) that occur on a regular basis.

So, I think I’ve gained the right to ask, “What’s the point?”

Oh, we can discuss all of the points and there are many. But, I’m asking what’s THE point?

I’ve heard all of the lesser points and agree that many of them are extremely worthy, even fundamentally necessary. But, in the latter part of my career, more and more I pondered what’s the underlying and organizing principle upon which all else stands?

If you’ve been reading my musings, you’ll probably recognize where I will be going. We pay attention to all sorts of things, prioritizing this or that, considering the value of this or that thing. But, I’ll toss it out that, for most of us, we don’t spend the time and energy to really inquire what’s behind our motivation to do or value these things.

As a quick aside, every school is supposed to have a mission statement in some form or other. In fact, while great deliberation goes into developing these for all sorts of reasons, only rarely do they actually mean anything practically. And, frequently for good reason.

Some of us used to get jaded and try to create the perfect mission statement that reflects every other school’s mission statement. I’m a bit rusty but it may have read something like this: “The Mission of Albert Einstein School is to create lifelong learners who will become productive and creative citizens in our democratic society.”

You like it?

What’s not to like? Who’s going to stand up and say lifelong learning is a bad thing? Who’s going to say we don’t want our kids to become productive (make stuff or make stuff happen) or creative (think on their own, show initiative and demonstrate unique qualities)? Who’s going to say we don’t want them to be citizens (people who have a stake and share some equivalencies)? And, who is going to argue against democracy (that complicated political philosophy that says everyone should have some kind of voice in the way things get done)? Great!

Except, I have to ask, where does all of this lead?

Let’s step back for a moment but, first, I’ll gladly say there’s a lot I like about our standard mission statement for schools as they express their purpose for existing. I’m a big fan of humans being both productive and creative. I’m a big fan of people participating in making decisions about how their lives should be lived and how we organize structures to enhance our lives. And, I’m a big fan of people learning throughout their lives. I’d have to object to someone telling me in my dotage that it’s time to stop learning anything!

So, what’s the problem? Well, bluntly, none of the operatives in that mission statement says anything about what they’re for, with the possible exception of creating citizens for a democratic society, whatever that means.

For starters, let’s take productive. What do we want them to produce? Are we comfortable with students who graduate from our schools and universities producing anything? Anything at all? Well, most people would say we want someone to produce the cure for cancer or cold fusion or anything to make us live life more comfortably and cheaply. Probably not much argument there and I’ll probably come back to that. Are we comfortable with them producing guidance systems for military drones? Whoa. Hmmm. Well, maybe some of us are fans of drones and some aren’t. Are we comfortable with them producing genetically modified organisms to do all sorts of creative thing with life forms? Whoa. Again, some yes and others no. Are we comfortable with them producing media accessed by millions that objectify women, ethnic minorities, religious groups, and the list goes on.

To be honest, we like when people produce things that we like and we don’t like it when they produce things we really don’t like. But, we can maybe still support the value-less concept of productivity because we can’t conceive of not promoting it. Where would we all be, then?

And, the same goes with creativity. In the modern and current post-modern eras, creativity is a really big thing. Expression is a biggy. Freedom to express is right at the top of the most valued things. Except when someone else’s creativity impinges upon my creativity. Then we have problems.

When you think about it, Mein Kampf is a pretty creative piece of political literature, the production of which was accomplished despite prison conditions that resulted from Adolf Hitler’s arrest after some considerable disobedience. Much like Letters from a Birmingham Jail were produced by Martin Luther King while imprisoned for considerable disobedience. Both were watershed documents whose gestations were similar, the results of fertile minds.

Or, take for example the creative production of the atomic bomb, whose “father” Robert Oppenheimer quoted Hindu deity Vishnu at the first Trinity explosion:

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Let’s now shift momentarily over to the citizen/democracy dimension before getting to the real meat of where I want to go.

At the risk of being incredibly simplistic, I’ll lay out that I think a citizen is one who is invested in the community. He or she has a stake in the community and feels both a responsibility to contribute to its functioning (or even flourishing) with the right to receive some kinds of benefits. The political philosophy that best represents this is a thing we call democracy, however misunderstood that concept is. (After all, everyone uses it, even brutal dictators who argue they’re only being brutal because they have to oppress people’s freedom in order to eventually get them to be free. Before leaving that line of thinking, however, this logic is also used by non brutal dictators to push limitations on freedoms in the name of enhancing freedom and democracy. The Libertarian Party has a small place at the table of American politics because of this issue.)

Back to our point. The concept of citizen is to be invested in the community. Now, interestingly, the concepts of community and individuality can often act as contradictions. Not necessarily so but they certainly can. A citizen in a community voluntarily gives up freedom for the greater good. This sacrifice is seen as a responsibility so that society can function and the rising tide will lift all boats, as the saying goes.

But, do we actually teach this? I mean, really invest in this?

Interestingly, to some degree we do. While we don’t do a particularly good job teaching history and “civics” anymore despite valiant attempts to do so, our 18 year olds as a whole are not graduating with a very developed sense of what being a citizen really is. Sure, we can teach some foundational principles but how much time and energy do we invest in training them for how to give as well as receive from the various communities they align with?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of compulsory education, subsidized through taxes in that education can produce good things, although not necessarily so. Interestingly, I do not believe a lack of what we would see as formalized education necessarily precludes the production of good things.

Now, the German people were arguably about the best educated people in the world in 1938. Compulsory education. Top universities.They certainly produced a whole lot of stuff and had lifted themselves out of the worst of all economic downturns. Did they make good citizens? Well, if you use Nietzsche’s metric, perhaps. The majority was certainly unified in their idea of their collective role and scope of responsibilities. And, the party that they ceded power and allegiance to was the National Socialist German Worker’s Party … very egalitarian in their terms. How is that?

So, we get to the heart of the matter. I used to think creativity and productivity were ends in themselves. After all, we were trying to “create” creative and productive young adults. But, just as our educational practices are means to something else (that is what education is “for” after all!), so are the so-called values of creativity and productivity. We can add to them things like critical thinking or taking initiative. Each of these are values, things we almost give lip service to as foundational truths to guide our practice in school. But, they only have value in relation to other things. What are those things?

For starters, Knowledge gets high marks. Most people would reflexively say that Knowledge is ipso facto a good thing. Uh, maybe. Or, maybe not necessarily.

Ok, let’s move the needle a little closer to what it is we value about Knowledge, say Wisdom. Now, one way of looking at Wisdom is to see it as good knowledge with the added feature of good judgment. We don’t typically refer to poorly constructed knowledge or knowledge that is destructive as wise.

There’s a certain attraction to thinking we want to create wise people through our compulsory educational system. These people will have the ability to think through things that are beyond our abilities and to help guide us in ways we’re not set up to consider. Unless, of course, their wisdom is extremely selective and under the influence of values more fundamental than wisdom.

As an aside, I’ve come across people that other people would consider very wise. At one time or another, I might have thought them wise. Now, I consider them only deluded. How is that?

It must be that we use different metrics. Different values that are essential to help us to determine what it is we want people to learn.

One of the hot topics these days is Artificial Intelligence. We are devoting unbelievable amounts of resources into its development, for all sorts of reasons. Tens of thousands, maybe even millions of young people are being trained in the skills that can help advance these technologies. You have to be a pretty creative, productive and knowledgeable person to work in these areas. Through AI, we can reach new levels of material wealth, better health, greater comforts, and who knows what else. I read about these things.

From The Singularity is Near homepage:

The Singularity is an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity.

Or this from the beginning of the definition in Wikipedia:

Singularity is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial superintelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.

Wow. The dawning of a new civilization. Runaway technological growth. Transcendence of biological limitations while amplifying our creativity. Heady stuff.

Is this my job as an instructional leader and an educational expert? To assist in the radical transformation of what it means to be human? To foster runaway (out of control) growth? To help usher in the dawn of a new civilization?

After all, that would mean the old concept of being human is assigned the trash heap. I guess that just might have some sort of impact on a thing like citizenship or democracy.

Oh yea. It also might have some kind of impact on such things as the notions of good and evil, any semblance of the moral kinds of structures that have guided all human civilizations, especially those in the Judeo-Christian traditions that value highly the importance and sanctity of the individual.

Or let’s just take Materialism. Is this a foundational value? There are, of course, some groups and cultures (largely non-western) that seek escape from the material world, some of whom profess it as an illusion. But most of the world is pretty absorbed in a material reality. Both Karl Marx (communist) and Adam Smith (capitalist) built their economic and political systems around some variation of the value of materialism. As does Madonna. 🙂

Is the goal of education to create material wealth in order for everyone to live longer or more comfortably or both? Is that what we should say to our students when they ask why we are seeking for them to be creative and productive and lifelong learners? And, what if the inquisitive young person asks how they will benefit from comfort or a long life? What do we say?

Will we say it will lead to you being happier? More content?

Now, we’re getting somewhere.

And, if they ask, “does comfort equal happiness? Are comfortable people happier? Is that the basis of happiness? Are people who have more material wealth and the goods that come with that wealth more content?”

“Are people in poverty less happy or content?” a bright student might ask. “And what of those whose lives were cut short from disease, disability or privation or who did not have the occasion to learn to read very well or to practice the scientific method? Their lives were certainly shorter and less comfortable. Did their lives contain less value?”

Anyone who professes easy answers to these questions, I insist, is jumping to conclusions too readily.

I have said before, we all value something or many things. We sometimes value things heavily of which we are unaware. Think on that. So, let’s peel away the outer layers and try to get to the kernel. Because, absent that, we are building our houses on sand, sorry to say. I should know. I happen to be quite the expert on education. 🙂

Next: What do we replace the sand with?

 

 

I stumbled across a really good article yesterday morning, written by a very bright guy. I liked it for a number of reasons. For starters, it was measured and it unfolded in a clear fashion. The title caught my attention but its true theme snuck up slowly but surely, making the title just a foreshadow of its depth. As anyone who is reading this knows, I have always liked to read and retirement has given me much more flexibility. While the internet drowns in all sorts of garbage, without a lot of difficulty I can find fascinating pieces that address my many interests (hopefully with the side benefit of staving off early onset dementia!). Well, this particular article touched on a wide range of disciplines, including politics, economics, science, history and psychology. I found it in a generally respected journal that puts out quarterly reviews. On a pretty consistent basis, I search for this kind of thing, relying on a few aggregating sites to provide me with a well-rounded supply of links to news and analysis. I’d say I’m more than a little diligent in trying to do two things: (1) Get multiple perspectives on the issues of the day, without consigning myself to the bubbles that popularly characterize most current information gathering and (2) seek knowledge in many different disciplines, including the ones mentioned in this article and more. As one who is stimulated by learning, I set out with these principles as guides.

I have rarely mentioned particular articles in these blogs and would have to take the time to go back to see if that’s even happened. I have tried to steer away from politics and some issues that people find so divisive, instead choosing to address themes that I believe we should all consider in some fashion.

Which brings me to this one. When it popped into my mind to write about Worry, I was struck with the irony that I’d do so in the first week of January, with the acclaims of “Happy New Year!” still ringing soundly. The most common image during the passing over of one calendar year to the next is of the old, decrepit man, wounded and stumbling, being replaced by the fresh infant, alive, and a sign of hope. We do this like clockwork, lamenting all of the terrible things that have occurred over the last twelve months, yet looking forward to the next as “it has to be better.” Well, maybe not all of us do this but many do so.

This recent election, of course, represents the swinging of a pendulum with a not-small percentage of our population truly anxious or worse about what’s going to happen next. Coupled with everything else (while a not-small percentage of our population is more hopeful than they’ve been in a long time) a whole lot of people are on edge.

Which brings me to the true basis of the article and the theme for this blog.

The author had picked a well-known issue that some people (a relatively small number of Americans but a high number of some influential international leaders) are extremely worried about, some claiming that it’s the issue we should be MOST worried about. Instead of doing what some people do by saying that this or that thing is the MOST important thing, he covered a lot of ground by examining how we choose what to worry about and then how we address those worries. By a lot of ground, he hit on most of the threats to our well-being that exist out there. And, there are some truly big ones. At the risk of really being depressing, when you hit on the dangers of nuclear proliferation (increasingly controlled by unstable leaders and governments), the spreading threats from terrorists who have access to all kinds of weapons and strategies, climate change and other environmental concerns including species extinctions, the fragility of economies and the possibility of economic meltdowns, pandemics of drug-resistant strains compounded by nearly instantaneous global travel, the possibilities that nanotechnologies and/or artificial intelligence will overwhelm our humanity, asteroid impacts, the massive migrations of peoples, dropping fertility rates that threaten the stability of economies, families and cultures, changing value systems, and …   Well, you get the picture. It’s enough to make us want to go back to bed and pull the covers over our heads.

And, oh, did I mention the things that consume us with worry that don’t qualify as existential threats to humanity? Our kids. Our jobs. Our standard of living. Retirement. Our marriage. Our lack of a marriage or life partner. Poor schools. Health. Violence in our community. You pick it.

In a very erudite way, he talked about how to measure worry and then the need to balance our worries so as not to get caught up in some isolated feedback loop. Obviously, there’s more than enough big things to worry about but we need to forge ahead and recognize the danger of getting caught up in the worry de jour and marching out to tell everyone that they have to worry most about the exact same thing. As he smartly points out, it doesn’t work that way. We really have a choice to do one of two things and this is my characterization: We can run around screaming “The Sky is Falling,” as Chicken Littles or we can take a breath and pick the alternative.

As attractive an alternative it is to be Chicken Littles (dystopian imagery is everywhere and takes many forms as we seek outlets for our nightmares), there’s a better way.

As hard as it can be, we can choose the things we feel the need to worry about. While this is much easier said than done, it is a choice.

I’m sure I wrote about this awhile back. It might have been when I wrote about Hope. (As I do this writing, I don’t like to stop, but instead forge ahead with the thought so I apologize for not going back to check.) I remember reading about this really smart cosmologist astronomer who thinks about very big and deep things about the universe who was almost paralyzed with the worry that eventually (many billions of years from now when the whole universe could end up being cold and dark) humanity would be wiped out. He saw it as inevitable and he’s probably right with a current scientific understanding of the universe. It made it difficult for him to get up in the morning. While this is an extreme example, many of us can relate to that kind of response to certain kinds of worry.

Ok, so yelling out warnings or responding with despondence is one direction. What is the other? What is meant by choosing what to worry about or choosing to set worry aside?

I’ve read some sage advice over the years (not that I’ve always taken it) that says we should only worry about the things over which we have control. So, let’s look at this for starters.

First, if we believe we are always supposed to be IN CONTROL, this can be a big problem. When we choose the path of rugged individualism and believe that our value is a derivative of what we feel and experience in the moment, that places us in a difficult situation. What alternative do we have to decry our predicament? When we feel that we need to be in control of our destiny yet are confronted by the obvious fact we’re not, we lash out. “If only I (or my current group of like-minded people) could get in control, I wouldn’t have to worry as much or anymore.”

Second, how do we pick and manage the things we believe we have some control over? That can still be a lot of stuff. But, at a minimum I know I can’t control asteroids or nuclear proliferation. In other words, at least we can begin to reorient our thought-lives so as to give up ownership of some of the beasts over which we really don’t exercise anything but the most miniscule influence. Now, the rebuttal to this says that we can ALL do something, even a little something, to help alleviate a problem. A good example is the environment. I can do my piece. I can buy a hybrid vehicle. Recycle. Vote for leaders who are against coal and other fossil fuels. Support international treaties by casting my vote for officials who think like me and trying to influence others to think like me. All of these things are reasonable but with a problem as complex as the environment, no solution is truly reassuring and there’s always more to do. (Should I stop flying which pours pollutants into the environment? Support wind energy that slaughters tens of thousands of birds, some of whom are protected? Buy batteries the manufacturing of which is terribly polluting?) Where does it all end?

Well, I can exercise some control over my health in that I watch what I eat and get some cardio in, maybe some weights. But, then, you always hear of people who do this getting cancer or dropping dead of a heart attack at a relatively young age.

I can love my kids, get them into decent schools, teach them right from wrong and all of that and then they go off and do something stupid, maybe even really stupid. Of course, there’s no correlation between good schooling and not doing stupid things. Most of us are good evidence of that!!

I can work hard at my job, conscientiously doing what is expected only to find myself laid off. I’ve seen it happen and despite my best efforts, I know it can happen to me.

Actually, I like this line of thinking a lot more than Chicken Little. At least, we’re narrowing the circumference. Sort of like tossing some things overboard in the lifeboat that are less necessary to survive, allowing us to move ahead with the workable stuff. We’re not standing up in the lifeboat, looking at the featureless horizon and shrieking “We’re all going to die!”

Yes, this is a workable strategy and in my opinion better than going down the road to either despondency or the realization that, eventually, we’re powerless to affect things that cause major worries.

The best way I’ve found this to work is to talk about the things that worry me with others who know me well and with whom I share a reasonably common set of values. By sharing and listening to others share, we gain perspective while also having the chance to prioritize and problem solve. This, of course, requires strong relationships built on trust where we give time and opportunity to live our lives in close community. Social media is not the answer, I’m afraid. While these kinds of relationships don’t erase cause for worry, I’ve found they reduce the tendency to unrealistically perseverate.

None of this is to suggest there are not big things that are happening in our lives right now that any reasonable person will worry about. Things that cause intense pain, either physical or emotional or both. But, having a community within which that pain can be processed is a very strong antidote.

Over coffee and discussion this morning, my good friend, Gary, reminded me of one of his favorite analogies. A simple story you might have heard and one of my favorites, too.

It goes something like this:

A man is walking down a long beach that is strewn with seemingly thousands of starfish. As he is considering the scope of what he sees, he observes another man, alone, who is carefully picking up single starfish and tossing them back into the sea. Puzzled, the first man approaches the second man and asks him how he can possibly think he is making a difference as the scope if far too great and his solution far too small. To which the second man replies as he tosses one more into the sea, “It makes a difference to that one.”

And that brings me to the more radical solutions, one of which I reject and the other to which I aspire.

I reject the fatalist who lives a life of abandonment. “Why should I worry? Nothing I do will make a difference. What will happen will happen. I will not be concerned about it. I am choosing not to care.” This line of thinking is seductively close to the next one I’ll raise but they are not the same. And the key is the nature of the abandonment. What and to what (or whom) are we abandoning? Connections in the world? A rejection that what is happening around us or to us or others is meaningless or an illusion? A rejection of the concept that I have a free will and can impact, to some extent, the world around me in a meaningful way?

The seduction here is in the belief that, in the end, we do not have purpose or meaning.

I can understand why this is compelling and has lured many. It is a reasonable alternative to the powerlessness we can feel when faced with so many threats.

And it’s those threats that are the bridge to the other radical solution.

Cutting away at all of the things we worry about, what lies at the center of each?

Is the threat to our physical safety or health? We’re all going to die. Do we fear loss of love? Isn’t all human love frail and fraught with pitfalls? Love is not equivalent with bliss. Do we fear loss of material wealth? What does that wealth provide for us? Food, Shelter, Clothing? Those are relatively easy to come by in very modest amounts these days … amounts that dwarf the common experience of people only a generation or two ago. What else does wealth provide? Security? Security from what? (See existential threats above.) Happiness? Nope. That’s been proven to be a fallacy. Experiences? Well, maybe but what kind of experiences? Anyway, we’ll lose our material wealth when we die. You can’t take it with you. Do we fear pain? Yes, most of fear pain, especially if it’s long lasting or permanent or very severe.

Full Disclosure: I worry about a lot of these things. I have an active mind, am engaged in the world, am inclined to be a problem solver and know more than a little about a number of things, some of which can easily drive me to worry.

So, it’s difficult for me not to worry. Sometimes very difficult. But, I have to say, I worry a lot less now than I used to.

You knew I’d get here. Matthew quotes Jesus in his chapter 6, verse 27: “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” And in 6:34: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” In between these two phrases, Jesus talks about how God looks out for us and cares for us in ways that are far greater than exist in this material life.

The person who does not share my beliefs may call me deluded. I may be criticized for manufacturing fantasies in order to assuage my well-grounded fears, by masking the realities with wishful thinking resting on the shakiest of foundations.

To which I answer, this reality is the only one I know now. While I do not understand it anywhere close to completely, I understand enough so that this rational mind is completely convinced.

Yes, I have died in order to be born. I never would have thought that possible in my wildest thinking. In fact, I thought it exceedingly foolish. It still sounds foolish but it’s not. And the reality is that there’s nothing I can do to escape the love and infinite favor our the God of all. Yes, I will suffer in this life and maybe greatly. Yes, I and others will face pain and calamities, some of which may be existential threats to our species.

One of the most powerful pieces of scripture is contained in the letter Paul (formerly the arch-enemy of the young Christian community) wrote to the church in Rome. We can make a choice to completely disbelieve what he says for all sorts of reasons. This is a man who suffered unbelievable pain and persecution. Beaten nearly to death multiple times, imprisoned repeatedly and eventually executed, probably by decapitation. In that letter he writes at the conclusion of Chapter 8, in verses 38 and 39: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither in height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

If God who Jesus describes is real (and you know where Diane and I and many others stand on that), then I need to get up each morning, thankful for the many gifts I have, thankful for the joys that abound, steeled to meet the suffering that surrounds me and all of us with a hand of kindness and compassion and with a resolve that is firm and unyielding. And to greet that day as it might be the last or maybe the first in thousands more, facts over which I lack any kind of control. To get my head to worry less and to get my heart to love more. I sometimes feel I fall back more than I move forward. But really looking backwards into my past, I see no comparison.

This is what I mean to get my head to worry less and my heart to love more: If we can awake each day, ready to enjoy even the smallest of things and to consider the kinds of specific things we can do, not to make the world a better place, but to make someone’s life better in this world, then we are leading with our hearts. We will always have things to worry about and we will always need to pay attention to the things that matter. We are in this world and currently bound to it. But, we are not of this world and by understanding the incredible implications of that, we can begin to get a healthy perspective on the real problem we have with worry.

Lord, we are flesh and blood, with active minds and hearts. We try to carve out a life for ourselves and others we care about that reduces anxiety and breeds hope. This is always hard and, sometimes, near impossible. We are daily confronted by challenges both small and large that can disturb or even overwhelm us. Help us to see them in perspective and we ask for the guidance and tools to respond appropriately. And, thank you for reminding us who is really in charge. Amen.

I just realized that it was a year ago tonight that Diane and I traveled to Sharp Memorial Hospital, the aftermath of which led to the beginning of these reflections and this blog.

So much has happened in just a year, which in fact is just a blink of an eye. I expect that’s the case in most lives.

Nothing in this past year has changed my understanding of the reality of things in an iota.

I want to thank anyone who is reading for your love and faithfulness. God bless. Brad

In Part I, I started by calling out a behavior that I believe is representative of a significant cultural shift. Of course, it would be ludicrous to base my hypothesis on something so simple as an uptick in red light runners. In that post, I attempted to begin addressing the issue of how we know something to be true and whether we ought to organize our lives around that thing or things. We ended with a brief summation of the last few centuries of western thought, in juxtaposition to the preceding history of mankind, as expressed in the conflict between belief in absolute and relative views of truth. We actually generated a healthy little discussion that promises to continue and carry over to subsequent posts. (For those who are not particularly interested in this series, don’t give up hope. It won’t last forever.) 🙂

In Part II, we looked at the foundational principles of freedom, equality and tolerance as metrics by which we judge whether something is true or not. We also briefly touched upon the Naturalism vs. Spiritualism conflict and my contention that, in the end, we need to put our trust in one or the other. They can coexist nicely to a point before they can’t. Through the course of the post, I felt I jumped around a lot before coming back to rest on the challenge of understanding what is happening in western culture and how we should respond. And, that’s where I hope to go now.

* * *

In a society with agreed upon foundational ideals, values and principles, behavior in its many forms (from artistic expression to interpersonal relationships to the way we organize ourselves into communities and institutions) will be reflective. For those of us interested in any of these things, I suggest it’s a good idea to pay attention.

As I implied before, I can live in a world where truth is seen as both relative and objective. I can respect someone who sees beauty somewhat differently than I do. I can similarly respect and appreciate how some will find ultimate meaning in something other than what I do … for instance a practicing Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist or Atheist, among others. I am a BIG fan of free will and, accordingly, not a fan of oppression. I know that perspective is an expression of humaneness and offers us a window into the complexity of all that is. I also honor those who do not know what to think and hope that they will find answers to their questions … the ones that are known and the ones that remain hidden under layers.

I urge those with strong opinions to routinely test their assumptions about the way they think reality is organized (or not) by interacting with others who both share and disagree. I find it immensely disturbing that the trend is in the opposite direction and that this is a precursor of both very bad things and, just maybe, a very good thing.

The bad news (as both my brother Grant and my friend Shack suggested) is that there is a current descent into relativism whereby we lose touch with certain lodestars that govern civil behavior. The recent election is but a current expression of this but the election is only the natural effect of a cause that has gained considerable traction for awhile. That causality contributes to red light runners. 🙂

For the last four hundred years we’ve been carving away at the objective edifice. And carve, we do. In the name of freedom, equality, independence, and tolerance, we reject a position that says that these things are not ends but means … means to the recognition that there is something more foundational than they are.

And, so we are lost in the cul-de-sacs created by our own lack of capacity to discern the ultimate outcomes of our thinking.

We continue searching. For years, I wore that as a badge of pride. I was a searcher after truth. But, I never believed I’d find it. I knew there would always be a small nuance to be dissected, an argument to refute and that the label of Searcher was, in fact, the highest calling. I never considered the possibility of Finding. What a crazy scenario!!

Imagine a 15^th or 16^th century explorer who actually did not expect to find anything (this is different from not knowing what one will find … it’s all in the expectation). How absurd.

Now, imagine the 21^st century relativist who believes that nothing permanent will ever be discernible. Or, contrarily, the relativist who believes the only permanency to be discovered is Perfect Man.

For some, this will be a comfort. “I cannot know the end of the story and that’s fine. I will live my life the best I can. Of course, I need, then, to accept that others have the right to live their lives the best they can and I have no fundamental right to consider theirs inappropriate.”

I could spend hours and hours talking about Nietzsche, Kafka, Picasso, etc… About how, on the one hand, the degradation of humanity is manifest and, on the other, it is glorified. Either way, we end up repulsed.

Absurdity is treated as beautiful (Picasso was an unrepentant hedonist who worked hard to dispossess the west of its traditional values of love and beauty) while the concept of a moral code is treated as tantamount to slavery. Renaissance art is an anachronism as a thing beholden to corrupt mythology. We ooh and aah at the most ridiculous things and apportion our approval to the meaningless. What, in our artistic expression, will stand the test of time?

We spend countless hours glued to “reality” TV that is basically voyeurism because we are insecure in our own skin. We elect a reality TV guy President who builds casinos for a living (hope built upon pure fantasy and the reality of exploitation) and offer up as a messiah a one term congressman with no government experience who sells us hope and change and delivers on neither, instead practicing the religion of self-aggrandizement. (I’ll be happy to engage that debate.)

The greatest abusers of human rights are accorded seats on the UN Human Rights Council. Currently, Cuba and Venezuela are members. Really??

Hollywood is ascendant in all of its bling and vapid fantasy. People with no moral authority or deep understanding are attributed great wisdom and are courted for their approval. Hypocrites Leonardo Dicaprio and Al Gore spout the existential danger of global warming and climate change while cavorting around in private jets or on yachts with incredibly large carbon footprints while taking petro dollars in support (Gore). People who are immersed in a culture of drugs, violence and sexual exploitation are seen as role models. Musicians who scream out the most hateful racist and misogynistic invective are worshipped by people who claim they hate racism and sexism.

And, on the other side, religious leaders spout out platitudes that are anything but loving and forgiving, denying the principles that their God claimed as inviolate. The religious press constantly has to report the failings of this or that pastor or priest, exposed for the most blatant hypocrisies.

We say that our side is for peace and hope and the other side is doing everything possible to obstruct peace and hope.

Where are the measured voices calling out their own as opposed to fingering the opposition for their tremendous failures?

We read about small wars and the potential for bigger ones. We drown in threats from nuclear proliferation to climate catastrophe to deeply ingrained racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christianphobia, poverty, superbugs and bio-terrorism, the rise of nationalism and the rise of globalism. Voices claiming that their position is the correct one and, inversely, the position of others is incorrect.

It’s no wonder people are running red lights.

On the other hand, we hold out hope that these warning lights are just inconveniences, nothing to be alarmed about. We’re fine and our civilization is on the right trajectory. And, there is certainly some truth in that, given the appropriate metrics.

For instance, worldwide poverty rates are substantially dipping, in no small part to the widespread availability of relatively cheap energy and very large supplies of food (both of which were predicted to largely disappear decades ago). Of course, there is a lot of debate about the place for fossil fuels and on climate issues, especially how governments can regulate anthropogenic impacts on nature. And, despotism still reigns in much of the world, making the distribution of food and other critical goods a challenge, to say the least. We are continually finding new ways to fight disease, thereby positively affecting life spans and the overall quality of life. In other words, in a strictly material sense, the trajectory appears very positive, with no end in sight as technologies bring far-flung communities and societies into instant contact, helping them to problem solve and complement one another’s strengths. I’m not even scratching the surface of possibilities here for improving the condition for many or even most of the world’s population. Through this lens, the future is bright and a cause for hope.

The optimists will basically just stop there. After all, it’s a nice narrative with a neat ending, as if we are in perpetual sunrise. There is great allure here. Maybe it’s like we’re always on Christmas Eve, anticipating the opening of presents in the morning, or else we’re always in Christmas morning, excitedly opening one present, the completion of which gives us the opportunity to open another present. Life is full of promise.

Until it’s not.

In what are we putting our hope? More material prosperity? Less physical discomfort? The opportunity to know more about more things (much of the knowledge of which has absolutely no impact on our quality of life)?

I have read of study after study that shows there is no positive correlation between material prosperity and happiness. In fact, there is often the inverse: Material wealth breeds higher levels of loneliness, more anxiety and more suicides. And, don’t get me started again on happiness.

I believe what is happening here is the confluence of relativistic thought with a propensity towards materialism as the guiding force of modern and post-modern western culture. It is no coincidence that the relativism given great life in the Enlightenment lived side by side with Karl Marx’s fundamental tenet, termed Dialectical Materialism (the belief in which guided a significant portion of our world’s population in the last century and is still a magnet for the far left).

I use the word, “lodestar” a lot because it’s helpful to clearly identify the thing or things that act as stationary guides pulling us towards a far off point. As I’ve either implied or just plain out stated: We all have them, even the relativists. We all search for that which gives us meaning, be it material prosperity, happiness, a perfectly egalitarian world, a world at peace wherein violence and its causes have disappeared, a world of freedom wherein humans can fulfill their desires without coming into conflict with others’ pursuit of their own desires, a world where reason reigns supreme wherein knowledge and wisdom are perceived as basically synonymous … and the list goes on.

The lodestar for dialectical materialism is a vision of utopian life where material needs are fulfilled by a neat economic theory regarding the means of production and people’s inherent goodness to do their part and where their “spiritual” needs are fulfilled by the achievement of perfect equality where no one owns anything and everyone owns everything. In other words, harmony and the perfectibility of man once the chains are removed (which, ahem, requires a whole lot of oppression in the meantime). In this vision, there is no external truth except for the truth of economics (where does that come from?) as expressed through historical relationships and where morality is completely man-made and man-enforced. And, of course, this is all made possible by the famous maxim: The Ends Justify the Means.

And, that’s a mouthful. Is there a more perfect way of articulating the relativist position?

The end of cutting two minutes off of my commute because I neither had the discipline to organize my time appropriately nor the respect for agreed upon conformities in the name of community safety, justifies the means enacted in my refutation of the law. Of course there may be something of “you mean me? I think red lights are good things.” That’s called hypocrisy which is the inverse of integrity.

We’re all guilty of this. All of us seek to cut corners in order to get around the constraints laid down by guiding principles. A little white lie at one extreme and fire bombing Dresden on the other. This is the problem for relativists. Where do we draw the line and what do we make of it when we cross it?

But, then, in order to cut corners we must be grounded in something greater than our own wish fulfillment. You can’t justify the means if there’s nothing by which we can determine the justification.

I said earlier that when we take relativism and objectivism to their logical ends … which I argue we must do to give us proper perspective on what the thing actually is all about … we should be afraid.

The objectivist must confront the fact that there is a truth so transcendentally powerful and meaningful that it overwhelms our ability to be independent. Think about it. This is why monotheists who even see God as perfectly loving, can experience fear and trembling at the enormity of it all. Given the premise of objective evil and objective good, then there has to be a standard of justice, or else good and evil are irrelevant in the end which negates their objective status. And judgment (justice implemented), which we all crave in this life for others and for our world, can be a scary thing when applied to one’s self.

The relativist must confront the fact that there is no meaning beyond what we create via our own feelings and thoughts, always at the whim of transient things. And, the end of this road is very scary. Where all things are equivalent, there can be no judgment or a concept of justice. The concepts of good and evil evaporate. This end place is called Nihilism, the rejection of all religious or moral principles, even to the point of the belief that life is truly meaningless.

Let Victor Frankl help us draw a conclusion. As a Jewish doctor, he survived the horrors of Auschwitz and chronicled his experiences, concluding that it’s important to find meaning in existence, even in the worst circumstances. And, thereby, give us a reason to live. He writes:

If we present a man with a ‘concept of man’ which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, heredity and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone. I became acquainted with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment–or, as the Nazi liked to say, of ‘Blood and Soil.’ I am absolutely convinced (my emphasis) that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Majdanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.“

Be afraid.

So, we can put our trust in material gains, which is just a form of putting our trust in ourselves. We can trust that man is inherently good and needs to just throw off the chains of oppressive structures in order to reach our full idealized potential … the throwing off of which will require oppressive structures because mankind is conditioned not to be good until we become good. We can put our trust in pure naturalism, whereby we are just particles engaged in some form of progress, no different than any other groupings of elemental substances, animate or inanimate. We can put our trust in ideals such as freedom, equality or tolerance, elevating them to the status of idols in that they are ends in themselves, deserving of worship however we choose to do so.

Or, we can put our trust in something that is independent of man, although somehow linked.

And, trust we do and trust we must. Pick your lodestar, knowing there will be consequences.

If it’s Happiness, know that it will always disappoint and never persist. If it’s Equality, know that there is no evidence to suggest mankind is at all predisposed to the concept when push comes to shove. In fact, we viscerally react against it at some point (absent some quality that is transcendent). If it’s Freedom, we must realize that laws and norms always exist as a limiting factor that keep us from the horror of anarchy. If it’s Tolerance, be aware that allowing others the right to exercise their beliefs does not mean we have the right to not tolerate their expression. If it’s Gaia or the harmonies in nature, realize that the laws of animate nature are basically the strong and cunning tend to survive better while not having the load of carrying a conscience. Nature can be a very stark and unforgiving place as well as beautiful and inviting.

As we begin to wind down, those of you who know me personally or through these writings know that I’ve searched for meaning and truth since I was in my teens. I’ve read the histories of most civilizations and I’ve trained in historiography (the study of how to study history). I’ve studied economics, political science, sociology, classical philosophy, economic philosophy, epistemology, psychology, theology, and biology. Beyond those studies, I’ve read physics, astronomy, cosmology, a little bio-chemistry, a little medicine and probably a number of other disciplines that don’t immediately come to mind. And beyond all of that, I’ve investigated all of the major religions and have actually practiced a number of them, believing at least a significant portion of their doctrines. I’ve tried to do all of this with an open mind and willingness to test my own assumptions. I have lived a portion of my life with the practical belief that truth cannot fully be known and that the relativistic approach offered the best match to my Idol: The Search is an end in itself.

(I hope you will not take this as an expression of arrogance in the vein of “look at me and all I’ve learned and done.” Instead, I’m humbled by my relative incapacity to understand many things, realizing there’s always more just around the corner. I included this background to illustrate how challenging the road has been for me and the level of effort it’s taken to arrive where I am today. The irony is that the house of cards collapsed under its own weight.)

Somehow, through all of this, I was more afraid of nihilism and anarchy than I was in an omnipotent being. Somehow, I remained convinced there was a moral code that existed externally to man, that there is such a thing as evil and that evil can become personified. I remained convinced that there is justice, although I did not know (and still do not know wholly) what that means. Somehow, I continued to have experiences that could not be explained through any of the disciplines I’d studied, including psychology.

I do not need to rehash what happened, what changed, when in fact everything changed. I came to the knowledge that there was Objective Truth and that tendencies to relativism were both natural to our existence and potentially dangerous. And, this knowledge has only been confirmed and increased in its depth as I’ve continued to explore and welcome honest conversations that could test my assumptions and beliefs.

They say that God cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. You can’t prove what you cannot see. Perhaps. But you can’t disprove his existence. We can come close to a foundational belief in the competing objective truths of Monotheism and Atheism through applied reason but we have to resort to something beyond reason to rest assured. But, just before that point, we have to ask the question, is there any other system of thought that better explains reality than the one I’m investing in?

The relativist can be either whole or half hearted, just as the objectivist can. We are now in an age where relativism has the upper hand in the west, although there is certainly evidence of a trend in the other direction.

You may think this is a stretch but I want to connect red light runners with the phenomenon of our current political climate. Tens of millions of people dismiss character and truth-saying with the hope that their dismissal will be justified in the end. We’ve nominated liars and cheats for the main political parties while the fringes spout absurdities and attract large numbers. We drown in information, making it difficult to judge veracity, while also rejecting informed dialogue, resting in the comfort of our predilections. Our arrogance seems to know no bounds. We celebrate the vapid as worthy and reject a moral code as oppressive. We teach all sorts of things in our schools but how much time do we spend on loving our neighbor as ourselves? Wouldn’t that be something?

We cannot have it both ways. While we can live within the tension of a world punctuated by both versions of truth and we can even organize our lives trying to balance the principles, we can’t ultimately connect them in the end. The relativist red light runner must honestly say either, “I don’t believe in the rule,” or “My needs are greater than the rule.” I suspect almost all of them/us will choose the latter. When merely applied to running red lights, the consequences will largely be annoying, while sometimes tragic. When applied to the greater forces at work in the world and in our personal lives, the consequences can be much further reaching.

And, the objectivist carries an equivalent burden. When we spout platitudes or point legalistic fingers at others as we seek to raise the thing we worship to the top of the heap, we run the risk of making a really big mistake. The objectivists who resort to oppression in order to enforce their ideal (Idol) on others only invites scrutiny into how they live out their truths which is a hard thing to do if you’re human. Historically, many religious leaders (but by no means all or even most if we look closely enough) only alienate those who seek guidance, thereby filling the ranks of those who embrace relativism.

In the end, I’m a very cautious and humble objectivist who hopefully has eyes wide open to my many failures and inadequacies. I reject a view of reality that says there is no Objective Truth beyond what humans construct or what can be discerned through examining nature and the physical/material world. I reject it out of hand. For me, it not only doesn’t make sense, its implications for organizing human life are left somewhere between sadly wanting and disastrous.

I remember embracing, in my 20s the compelling variation on the Christian faith called Liberation Theology. It appealed to my extremely strong allegiance to notions of social justice, much of which I certainly retain. However, it only partially explained the full Gospel, the richness of which is both simple and exceedingly complex. I have spent the last decade diving deeply into its core, untangling the intricacies and rejoicing in the clarity. As I wrote a week or so ago, it turns everything upside down. No one could make it up. It can’t possibly be the explanation for all of reality because it’s crazy. Viewed through common lenses, it must be crazy. In fact, though, it’s anything but. I’ve never found something so authentic and complete. So totally encompassing as it weaves together all of the themes we’ve been looking at: Freedom. Equality. Tolerance. The Material World. Happiness. Each of them accorded primary status in the eyes of some, they are repositioned as expressions of something else and as signposts pointing to something greater. And, I haven’t found one shred of evidence to say that it is false or inappropriate.

We all place our trust in something or things. We all organize our lives and our decisions around guiding principles, each of which must be grounded in a centralizing truth. We need to ask ourselves what that truth is and what it means for us.

As we end, I feel the need to apologize. Typically, I write what comes to my mind, without taking time to really deliberate. After all, I am not writing a book. This theme has proved my most difficult and, while connected to other themes, as a standalone I know I have probably made statements that are not exact enough or do not flow appropriately. I have given pretty short shrift to topics that deserve a much more deliberate and careful examination. I have largely kept to my practice of just allowing my thinking to flow, typing as fast as that happens. I suspect there may be more holes than exist in a large slice of Swiss cheese. Oh well! 🙂

Lord, this is hard stuff. We want every question answered, every doubt allayed. Many of us are, with good cause, repulsed by the concept that you exist. Many take comfort in a world where it’s easy to refute any belief that good and bad, good and evil, right and wrong, judgment and justice, exist outside of the human dimension. Help those of us who place our trust in you to live peacefully side by side with these and those of all beliefs and to be slow to judge and quick to love. Help us to forgive as we seek forgiveness. Help us to resist the temptation to give into the voice that says these other idols and some not mentioned are superior and more authentic than you. Having said these things, we rejoice in the fact that you are who you claim. And, what rejoicing that is. Amen.

 

Whew!

This stuff can get complicated and take a long time to unpack. I’ve chosen to take a stab at it because I think it’s important and, when unpacked, can help us understand the best way to live our lives.

I want to thank my brother, Grant, and my dear friends Gary and Shack for your contributions to the discussion.

To recap: An Objectivist is one who believes that certain things in the matter of knowledge and morality (the nature of good and evil, right and wrong) can be or are independent of human perception. The Relativist is opposite: these things are humanly constructed and dependent only upon human perceptions. On the largest scale, this conflict is at the center of civilizations and cultures. On the much smaller scale, this conflict is at the core of how we choose to live our lives each day.

Let’s get something out of the way. I think I may have touched on this many months ago in a brief way. It’s the notion of Tolerance.

What are often the competing principles of Freedom and Equality (although they need not be and maybe we’ll eventually get there) have something to say about tolerance. The freedom-oriented person understands the importance of tolerance because we should celebrate the freedom of others to choose to live life as they see fit just as we trust they will respect our right to do so even if we don’t share many beliefs. The equality-oriented person understands the importance of tolerance because I should humbly live side by side with competing ideologies without lording my beliefs over theirs.

Unfortunately, the well-meaning inclination to be tolerant gets perverted when tolerance is elevated to an ideology of its own. It becomes Tolerance, the perfectibility of which is sought and celebrated as its own absolute. Freedom, Equality and Tolerance are the idols upon which we pin our hopes and try to structure out lives, not understanding the inherent ironies and the ultimate fall of the house of cards.

In the name of Freedom, we institute the Reign of Terror (see the French Revolution) and slaughter all in opposition. In the name of Equality, we establish communism and slaughter countless millions who commit the sin of saying maybe I should be able to have my own little garden (see the Soviet Union c.1930). In the name of Tolerance, we oppress and restrain speech and beliefs that do not align with our view of what is right, thereby exemplifying intolerance. These three idols (and they are that, in fact!!!) obfuscate the underlying reality of human existence.

And that is, that freedom, equality and tolerance are means rather than ends. They have both interior lives and exterior lives for us. But none of them is the whole story. None lives in isolation. None is in fact achievable in human existence. They never have been and never will be.

All of us desire limitations on freedom (we act to restrict the desire of the murderer to murder, the rapist to rape and the arsonist to burn). All of us desire limitations on equality (who among us would agree to submit to brain surgery by someone without training who claims to be equal in proficiency to the trained surgeon because, well, he’s just equal?). All of us desire limitations to tolerance (because who among us would tolerate as legitimate the man who says it’s completely justifiable to machine gun my children in order to achieve his ideological objectives?).

But, if we can’t count on these foundational principles to offer secure guidance, what do we do? Well, most of us realize there’s a balance and we try to live in that tension, getting anxious or angry when things swing too far one way or the other according to our line of thinking.

And, that can be well and good enough. All I can say is, it wasn’t for me.

And it certainly isn’t ok for all sorts of other people, some of whom are truly distasteful and with whom I share little or nothing in common with the exception that I believe in absolute truth and am willing to say so. (Unlike all of the people that deny they believe in absolute truth but don’t see the inherent fallacy of making such an absolute statement).

The problem for many people is that they look out at others who claim knowledge of objective truth (Jesus is Lord, Mohammed is the prophet of Allah, Socialism or Marxist-Leninism is the natural and ultimate result of the march of history, the Force is real, etc…) and are repulsed. Often for very good reason, in my opinion! And those very good reasons (many of which I completely share) give objective truth a very bad name. In fact, the result is the belief there can be no objective truth because look what happens when people believe such a dangerous thing. Good point.

Except throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not the solution. One should want to keep the baby, after all.

And, that’s a neat way of summarizing my thirty years of struggle. Not bad, eh? J

Well, just because we need to muck things up a bit more before trying to emerge with some sort of clarity, we have to turn to another conflict that seeks our attention.

And that’s one I’ve touched on before.

Either we are the result of some cosmic natural (non-rational) accidental collision of forces or we’re the result of something akin to intelligence or a creative force that exists outside of observable nature. If the former, we have no meaning outside of what we construct from the particles we are and if the latter, we have some meaning outside of the particles we are. I cannot see a middle ground. This is not to say that humans are incapable of creating meaning on our own but within the first view, the meaning is like smoke: Now you see it and now you don’t. The latter viewpoint looks a little like Mt. Everest. It was here before we were born, is undeniably a very big thing and will be here long after we die. The former is ephemeral. The latter is permanent. The former says we are born from meaninglessness and die into meaninglessness. The latter says we are born into meaning and die into meaning.

These two competing viewpoints struggle for out attention and just like with Freedom, Equality and Tolerance, what we can call Naturalism on the one hand and Spiritualism, Faith, or Religion on the other hand make it a fine soup for us to make heads or tails out of.

But choosing heads or tails we do. Or at least we try.

In fact, we’re doing it all of the time, either actively or passively, knowingly or unknowingly.

If science and reason make the concept of an all powerful personal God obsolete (as many claim) then why are so many brilliant and top scientists believers in a personal God and why are so many other such believers gifted philosophers and logicians?

Oh, is my bias showing?

My point here is that buying into ultimate meaning/objective truth can be both an act of reason and faith (they are not mutually exclusive) just as choosing the alternative of naturalism/relativism is an act of reason and faith.

Just be careful what you wish for.

And, let no one evade this decision. An evasion is the only thing that is dishonest. To say you don’t care is dishonest. Of course we care. (I’m not directing this at you the reader but just as a generality.) We care about right and wrong. Good and bad or good and evil. We probably think we normally can tell it when we see it. Until it gets confusing.

Maybe young people don’t think about dying that much but most older people do. And, no one doesn’t care. And, I wouldn’t believe it if they told me so. The prospect of being permanently snuffed from existence in any form requires a certain kind of opinion and behavior prior to death, just as the prospect of somehow surviving in some form after what we call death requires a different kind of opinion and behavior before hand.

Why do I insist that an evasion of the issues framed by this discussion is basically dishonest? It’s because we are naturally afraid of what we will find once we go down one road or the other. And well we should be.

I’ll say that again, we should be afraid of what we’ll find if we decide to discover what underlies our judgments about what is right or wrong, good or bad, good or evil. And I don’t discriminate about the direction. It’s sound reasoning to fear what lies at the end of each road.

I don’t say this lightly. When it comes to trying to figure out the basis for making our judgments, we can try to balance objectivism and relativism for some things (as I do and know that many do, rightfully), but in the end we must abandon one for the other. We’re left no alternative. We are born. We live. We die. What’s the point? And, even deeper, what’s the meaning beyond the point?

The frustration for science is there’s no answer to the point, other than procreation. We live to procreate. One might ask what’s the point to procreation and the only answer is to live. OK. That certainly means that we’re on the plane of an amoeba or a fungi. Adherents to the ideology/religion of Gaia believe in the objective truth that all life is basically the same. We’re all, practically speaking, the same organism. (This is really in vogue right now.)

So, science can define a point but is incapable of articulating a meaning beyond what it is and nothing else. One thing is the same as everything.

This is in the realm of something called Epistemology, the theory of Knowledge … an esoteric field for most people and really the basis for my Master’s degree.

The relativist ultimately stands on quicksand, believing it’s solid ground. Sort of like being in The Matrix. Relying on ever changing standards at the whim of opinion, they end up reaping what they sow. “You have no right to refer to that person with a Y chromosome as male because he/she/it says he/she/it is a female or something that is neither.” To say that is to be intolerant with an objective truth claiming primacy over a social construction of reality. “I am black because I want to be black.” “I endured shelling in battle,” because that would advance my career. “That courageous and suffering POW is a coward because I say so.” What they reap is a calamity of doubt and heightened anxiety as people search for something upon which to honestly live their lives.

The objectivist stands on rock that, in fact, can prove to be made of dust. In the West, we’re born into relativism and, in our post-modern age, it is our collective lodestar. Hence objectivists are viewed as a kind of alien force that will corral us into a place that destroys our independence. As many objectivists disdain those who don’t see pure truth as they do, we rightfully rebel against much of their dogmatism and view of truth that doesn’t match much of what we perceive to be true.

Where to go? What can we count on? How do we sift through all of the muck? Our world is awash in these battles which are played out in war zones, inner cities and farms, schools and universities and churches, in laboratories and boardrooms, in Silicon Valley and Appalachia, on magazine covers, TV shows and movies, in social media and traffic intersections.

What does History tell us? What do Literature and Art tell us? What do science and reason tell us? What do sunsets, rainbows and nebulae tell us? What does love tell us?

I have begun an essay on Integrity. I hope to finish it sometime soon. Integrity is the opposite of hypocrisy. It means living a truth without concern for the consequences.

I have come to the conclusion that some things are true regardless of what people (including me) think or want to think. I don’t arrive at this lightly as it’s a most humbling conclusion. I have a pretty good antenna for falsehood, even when packaged as truth. Sometimes it takes a lot of work to sift through the layers of deception. I fear that many people don’t have the patience or will to do so constantly. I fear the devaluation of the virtues I wrote about recently, pieces of the truth I hold so dear.

Next, I’ll try to more concretely tie all of this stuff to things that are important to us like politics and government, schools, churches and whatever else I can think of!