Kruse Kronicle

ReFrame: Following Christ in the Modern Era

What does it mean to follow Christ in our era? That is the central question for Christians in any era, but it is particularly challenging today. Some suggest that our postmodern and post-Christendom context is creating a level of disruption in the Church not seen since the Reformation. I think that is likely true. So how do we follow Christ today?

A new curriculum called ReFrame attempts a response. It is “A powerful 10-week film-based exploration of what it means to follow Christ in the modern era,” produced by Regent College (Vancouver, British Columbia) in cooperation with The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation & Culture. It is a truly exceptional series.

The curriculum features ten videos, each about thirty-nine minutes long. The first episode speaks of the increasing complexity and fragmentation of modern life. Our tendency is either to assimilate with our cultural context or to withdraw. We do not have a clear vision of how God might work in our midst. We do not know how to follow. The series uses the Emmaus Road story as a metaphor for being unable to see Christ among us until our vision is “reframed.” The second episode delves a little deeper into the specific challenges we face.

Beginning in the third episode, the series takes a narrative approach, moving from creation and fall to Israel, to Jesus the King, to new creation, to the Church and the Spirit, and so on, helping us see how our daily work and life is connected with God’s “story” at work in the world. The series concludes with guidance on how we might more authentically be disciples in light of our context and light of God’s unfolding narrative.

The format of each episode is built around the TED Talk concept. Half of the video is a speaker making an engaging presentation. There is a setup segment at the beginning and a wrap-up segment at the end. Interspersed throughout the video are commentary, testimony from biblical scholars and theologians, and vignettes by people from business, law, education, and science. People like Scot McKnight, Andy Crouch, Amy Sherman, and Eugene Peterson are among the contributors. Each episode is very well produced, moving along at an engaging pace.

I cannot emphasize enough how refreshing this curriculum is. I have served in various leadership capacities within the Presbyterian Church, USA, and various faith-based entities for most of my adult life. At some point in the late 1990s, I discerned that many Christians have difficulty seeing how their discipleship connects with daily life in meaningful ways. Church has become ancillary to “real life.” The Church is where to receive therapeutic care, get moral instruction for children, or join programs that offer opportunities for charity and the pursuit of justice outside of real life. The Church is not a place where we are formed for mission at the workplace and in the mundane affairs of the world. I am convinced that renewal in the Church will begin only when God’s mission and the whole of life are reintegrated.

Key to reintegration is reframing, yet I find precious few people in ecclesiastical structures and academic institutions who see the urgency and centrality of this need. When attempts are made, they usually proceed from a purely theological bent, without dialog with other disciplines like sociology, economics, science, education, and business. They lack winsome authenticity. ReFrame is a refreshing exception.

ReFrame acknowledges its Evangelical milieu, but I am convinced the curriculum would be well received across a wide range of denominational and theological communities. I am working out the details of doing multiple small groups with the series at Pine Ridge Presbyterian, starting at Lent. The idea is to buy a digital license and “flip the classroom.” Participants will watch each episode online at a password-protected site and then meet weekly to discuss and apply what was learned. The curriculum is a turnkey product complete with guides and promotional materials.

I have been following Regent College for at least fifteen years and am impressed with its innovation and quality of services. I know of few other institutions like Regent. The College offers classes and degrees that focus on the reintegration of life, and I am sure one purpose of the curriculum is to raise the profile of the academic and practical resources they provide. More power to them! I hope they are so successful that seminaries around the country will feel compelled to follow their lead. Maybe even the Presbyterians one day. ;-)

You definitely need to check out ReFrame. If you go to their site, you will find a two-minute promotional video. Episodes 1 and 5 are free to get a flavor of the experience. Thanks to the ReFrame folks for an exceptional product. I cannot wait to put it to use.

Followership: The Other Side of Leadership

Ivey Business Journal: Followership: The Other Side of Leadership

"... Followership is a straightforward concept.  It is the ability to take direction well, to get in line behind a program, to be part of a team and to deliver on what is expected of you.  It gets a bit of a bad rap!  How well the followers follow is probably just as important to enterprise success as how well the leaders lead.

The label “excellent follower” can be a backhanded compliment.  It is not a reputation you necessarily want if you are seeking higher corporate office.  There is something of a stigma to followership skills.  Pity because the practical reality is one does not reach progressively more responsible leadership positions without demonstrating an ability to follow and function effectively in a group.  The fact is that in organizations everybody is both a leader and a follower depending on the circumstances which just adds to the paradox of the followership stigma.

Followership may take the backseat to leadership but it matters:  it matters a lot!  Quite simply, where followership is a failure, not much gets done and/or what does get done is not what was supposed to get done.  Followership problems manifest themselves in a poor work ethic, bad morale, distraction from goals, unsatisfied customers, lost opportunities, high costs, product quality issues and weak competitiveness.  At the extreme, weak leadership and weak followership are two sides of the same coin and the consequence is always the same:  organizational confusion and poor performance. ..."

Prudent but not puritan (Religion and Spending)

Economist: Prudent but not puritan

...  After using a lot of fancy statistical tools, they came up with some expected findings, and some rather unexpected ones. Households "with a strong commitment to faith"— demonstrated by higher spending on religious activities—are less likely to be weighed down by excessive mortgage outgoings or loan payments for cars. Compared with other households, they are more likely to be home owners but their property tax burden tends to be less—suggesting that "some moderation in [the] selection of home in terms of extravagance or location...."

Devout households seem keener on mitigating risk and therefore spend more on life insurance and health insurance; they lay out less on alcohol and tobacco and more on domestic appliances, including cooking utensils. Such homely behaviour is most heavily correlated with religious belief in the American South and Midwest, which are also the regions with "the most conservative interpretation of scripture," Mr Showers notes, in an article in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion. (The research more-or-less conflates the term "religious" with "Christian" or "Judeo-Christian" which in the American context is only a smallish distortion.)

But religious families do allow themselves some earthly pleasures. Indeed, they are if anything a little more likely than other households to spend spare money on clothing or jewellery, although the amount each household splurges on jewellery is a bit less. Some of that jewellery, of course, might be devotional: silver crosses or stars of David. They are as likely as anybody else to be spending money on child support or alimony—a proxy for failed marriages—and they are as inclined as other folk to incur interest payments on credit cards. ...

"Nothing is Free: The Price Only Business can Pay to Protect Free Markets" by Dave Geenens - Book Review

Order at Amazon: Nothing is Free: The Price Only Business can Pay to Protect Free Markets.

What is the purpose of business, particularly as it relates to the welfare of employees? Economists, business leaders, and theologians engage in endless debate about this topic. Regrettably, it tends to be two separate debates with economists and business leaders talking amongst themselves and theologians talking to each other. The first debate tends to be long on economic ramifications but without considerable reflection on what moral imperatives might be at play. The second debate tends to be long on moral reflection but too often within the context of (sometimes profound) economic illiteracy. Each community tends to view the other with suspicion if not hostility. Layer on top of this the political divide between libertarians who see only a minimal role for government intervention in business and liberals who believe a primary purpose of government is to intervene in economic affairs to ensure equitable outcomes, and you frequently end up with unproductive heated debates.

This inability to reflect both economically and morally on such questions leads to significant compartmentalization, so well described in John Knapp’s How the Church Fails Business People (and What Can Be Done About It. See my blog series on the book here.) Businesses frequently dissuade people from bringing their morals into the workplace. Pastors are reticent to approach the topic, except in platitudes, feeling inadequate to wrestle deeply with economic implications. Some businesspeople prefer not to hear about such topics at Church (either distrusting the pastor’s understanding or because they see the Church as a safe haven from the cares of the world), and most pastors are content to oblige. (And from my experience, those pastors who aggressively raise the topic frequently do so from a variety of deep ideological convictions that tend not to generate helpful dialog and reflection.) Yet we need “courageous conversations,” as Knapp calls them, where we genuinely explore how work and faith interact. But how do we begin such a conversation?

Dave Geenens, Director of the School of Business and Graduate Business Programs at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, has given us a wonderful gift in starting courageous conversations with his new book Nothing is Free: The Price Only Business can Pay to Protect Free Markets. This is NOT an academic treatise. It is a fable.

Geenens prefaces the story by noting:

One of the first lessons I learned in business was that nothing is free. Free freight? There is no such thing. That simply means that the cost of freight is covered by profit made elsewhere. By one, get one free? The cost of the second item is covered in the margin of the first one. Interest free? The cost of interest is absorbed in the profit made on the sale of the item. Nothing is free.”

The book introduces Rebecca Morton, founder of the franchise business Cupcakes and Coffee, based in Atchison, Kansas, just as the corporation is about to go public. Rebecca is wrestling with what this means for her and her business, particularly with the increased focus on increasing shareholder value. Then she meets Brother Mark, a Benedictine Monk. Throughout the book, we listen in on Rebecca’s conversations and inner reflections as she tries to make sense of it all.

Geenens draws on Roman Catholic social teaching to highlight the good that business is intended to do. At the risk of spoilers, if the business fails to live out its charge to care for the well-being of its employees, other institutions (namely government) must intervene to correct the inadequacy. The advantage business gains through the neglect of employees and failure to do the good it is intended to do isn’t free. The cost is increased government intervention.

What is the good that business is to do, and how do we achieve it? It is a complicated question that Geenens does not directly answer. Instead, he invites us to consider the four cardinal virtues: justice, wisdom, courage, and moderation. How might these inform us as we think about the intersection of work and faith? I won’t give away the whole story here. Geenens’ ideas are pulled together into one image at the end of the book, but you’ll need to buy the book to see what I mean.

The book is well-written and accessible to most audiences. (No degrees in economics or theology required.) I can see this as a wonderful selection for a church book club, any community of business professionals interested in integrating faith and work, and a text for college or graduate classes. Despite the explicitly Christian context of the story, I think the book has merit beyond discussion in religious communities as we think about business ethics. The book is a wonderful discussion starter … a great starting place for a courageous conversation. Buy your copy now at Amazon: Nothing is Free: The Price Only Business can Pay to Protect Free Markets.

The Value of a Person Versus the Value of Labor (Part 1)

(Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Index)

On what basis should people be compensated for their work? Economists say the value of labor is a function of supply and demand. Wages should correspond to the economic value of work. Theologians often object. (Note: We are all theologians, but here I'm referring to those formally educated in theology.) They say it dehumanizes people. People are not faceless cogs in a machine to be differentially valued based on their economic contribution. Everyone is equal in God's eyes. Income and wealth should be shared equitably.

What do you think? How do we sort this out? Is one right and the other wrong? My short answer is that human beings are created in the image of God. We have intrinsic value that transcends any instrumental purpose we might serve. The goods we produce do not have intrinsic value. Value is set by the interaction of a community's subjective desire for a good and the good's objective availability with an hour of labor. God sets the value of people, while the community sets the value of particular types of labor. The value of a person's labor is not an indicator of a person's intrinsic value. And that leads to some important theological and economic challenges. Let us unpack this.

Humans are unique. We have a hybrid existence. On one side, we are like creation and unlike God. We are material beings. We share much in common with other mammals. We have bodies subject to the laws of thermodynamics, just like the rest of the material world.

On the other side, we are like God and unlike creation. We are spiritual beings. We have the ability to love, to see beauty, to reason, to create, and to discern morality and meaning. We are meant for eternal life.

We are a body and spirit fusion. These two realities must be held together. We are not spirits inside of bodies. Ultimately, we believe in "the bodily resurrection," not transformation into spirits. In the language of Genesis 1:27, we are the image of God … eikons … in the created order. Not eikons in the sense of lifeless statues, but rather as God's agents, discerning and acting in ways so integrated with God that God's character and purpose are evidenced through us.

As agents, we have a mission. Genesis 1 and 2 give us the grand stories of creation that highlight that mission, but we often seem to miss the point due to our preoccupation with what these stories might say about origins. I'm persuaded that origin is not the driving subject of these stories. These stories aim to articulate God's sovereignty and our mission.

I think analogy is the best way to understand Genesis 1 and 2. Imagine creating a garden in your backyard. There are two phases. First, we take a plot of ground that is "formless and void" of the vision we have in mind. We remove rocks and weeds. We loosen the soil. We might add some fertilizer. We plant some seeds. Maybe we put a protective border around the garden and a fence to keep animals out. Having done so, we are done with the first phase, and we "rest" from "creating" the garden. But the garden is not done.

In the second phase, the garden must be continually weeded. The fence must be monitored and repaired as needed. Plants must be protected from hard freezes or hail. There will be occasional watering. Some plants may need regular pruning, and others will yield fruit that needs to be harvested periodically. Only when the garden has come to full flourishing can we say the garden is complete.

Genesis 1 and 2 are phase one of God's garden project. When God is finished creating, Genesis says God rested. Phase 1 was done. Now it was time to enjoy bringing it to fullness. In keeping with this narrative, Hebrews 4:1-11 says that God has been living in this seventh day of rest since creation. But this second phase of work is not work God has chosen to do alone.

At the end of the sixth day of creation, God creates eikons of God's self and gives them the mission of exercising dominion over creation. Despite various perversions of "dominion" as a right to do as you please, the idea here is that human beings are God's agents participating with God in realizing God's vision. I will not unpack this all here, but in view is humanity as God's vice-regents over creation and creation as God's temple in which we serve as priests. Human beings are intended for loving communion with God as they and God go about bringing "the garden" to its full potential.

Now I do not understand the early chapters of Genesis to correspond to historical events. They are stories that relate profound truths about God's vision and mission and humanity's role in that vision and mission. In short, God is sovereign over creation, and human beings are God's image-bearing agents in the world, participating with God and each other to realize God's ends. Genesis 3 and onward reveal humanity's sin and failure to embrace this mission. The biblical narrative is the story of God's redemption and reclamation of that vision, even as God continues to "work the garden" and bring us into that work. Revelation records that in the end, "You have made them [redeemed humanity] to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth." (Rev 5:10) Priests and vice-regents.

Let us return to the question of value. Value is subjective. Nothing has value without someone to do the valuing. This is true in all cases but one. God alone has intrinsic value. No one can set God's value. "There is one God who is father of all, over all, through all and within all." (Eph. 4:6) All value ultimately extends from God.

The biblical narrative tells us that God values creation, but humanity is valued in a way that is apart from the rest of creation. Human beings are God's image bearers, springing forth from the love and communion of the Trinity. Human beings have immeasurable value in God's eyes. Because God values human beings, we have intrinsic value, by extension. God intends that human beings, individually and corporately, should thrive. Consequently, the measure of a shalom-filled community is one where all members thrive together. All human beings are precious in God's eyes. As Christians thinking theologically and economically, a key end must be a community where all have resources and opportunities to thrive. Sharing in material abundance is a component of that vision. But it is not the only component. … 

(Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4)

Two-thirds of churched adults say it has been at least three years or more since they heard church teachings on work and career

Barna Group: Three Trends on Faith, Work and Calling

I'm two months slow in posting this article, but it is important.

... Barna Group's new research shows that three-quarters of U.S. adults (75%) say they are looking for ways to live a more meaningful life. Whether such meaning is found in family, career, church, side projects or elsewhere, these are all questions of vocation—that is, the way in which people feel "called" to certain types of work and life choices. And in 2014, these questions remain as strong as ever for millions of Americans

Among Christians, there is an additional question: "What does God want me to do with my life?" According to Barna Group's study, only 40% of practicing Christians say they have a clear sense of God's calling on their lives. Christian Millennials are especially sensitive to this divine prompting—nearly half (48%) say they believe God is calling them to different work, yet they haven't yet made such a change.

Sermons are commonly preached on evangelism, discipleship, and spiritual disciplines—but what about vocation? It turns out that most churchgoers are craving more direction and discipleship when it comes to the theology of calling, especially as it relates to work. Barna research shows nearly two-thirds of churched adults say it has been at least three years or more since they heard church teachings on work and career, and yet, the workplace is where most Americans spend a the biggest share of their waking hours. ...

The implied message: Your work is irrelevant and without connection to your discipleship. Meaningful work is the purview of church institutions, and only the work associated with "ministry" (evangelism, charity, and justice activities) is of value.

Faith and Business - Michael Jinkins

Huffington Post Business: Faith and Business - Michael Jinkins

The church has a knack for depreciating the vocations of the laity. Well, perhaps not all vocations of the laity. The church routinely blesses vocations like the helping professions and education, especially if they are in the not-for-profit realm. But the church is ambivalent, at best, when it comes to blessing the vocations of those folks whose business is, well, business. I find this troubling, since the overwhelming majority of Christians I know are working in the business world just making a living.

The problem the church has with business has as much to do with an ignorance of economics as a flawed theology of vocation. When pastors and theologians begin talking about economic matters, I often cringe, not only because of their lack of knowledge in the fields of financial and economic matters, but because of the thinness of the theological reflections. Usually such conversations reflect little more than the individual's biases dressed up in theological language to dress down someone else's interests. ...

Michael Jinkins is the president of Louisville Presbyterian Seminary. I can't tell you what an encouragement it is to hear a Presbyterian seminary president come forward and raise this issue. I have made the case in public and private for just this emphasis for nearly ten years as I have served the denomination at the national level. I have made the case that church renewal begins when people begin to see the connection between what they do in their daily lives and God's mission. I occasionally caught an ear here and there, but I largely experienced acute indifference. To hear the president of one of our seminaries acknowledge the deprecating (and I will add "demonizing" in some contexts) attitude toward people in business and lack of economic understanding is such an encouragement. Blessings on you, Dr. Jinkins, and may your tribe multiply among our denomination's hierarchy.

Jinkins mentions Presbyterian John Knapp's (now president of Hope College) How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and what can be done about it). I blogged through the book two years ago, both here and at Jesus Creed. The index is here.

If you are interested in a couple of books about basic economics from a Christian perspective, I would recommend Bulls, Bears and Golden Calves: Applying Christian Ethics in Economics, written by John Stapleford, a professor of mine when I was at Eastern University.

Also, Economics in Christian Perspective: Theory, Policy and Life Choices by Victor Claar and Robin Klay.

Does God Ordain Us to the Hardware Business?

I preached at Pine Ridge Presbyterian Church, in Kansas City, MO, on March 16, 2014. The sermon begins by wondering if it is appropriate to ordain people to the hardware business. The sermon text is Genesis 12:1-4, and the real issue is the ministry of work in everyday life. I think this is the first time I have ever preached on this topic. See what you think.

PRPC Mar 16 2014 from Jay Waddell on Vimeo.

Business and Management Links

1. Huffington Post: The Unexpected Way Philosophy Majors Are Changing The World Of Business

... Despite a growing media interest in the study of philosophy and dramatically increasing enrollment in philosophy programs at some universities, the subject is still frequently dismissed as outmoded and impractical, removed from the everyday world and relegated to the loftiest of ivory towers.

That doesn't fit with the realities of both the business and tech worlds, where philosophy has proved itself to be not only relevant but often the cornerstone of great innovation. Philosophy and entrepreneurship are a surprisingly good fit. Some of the most successful tech entrepreneurs and innovators come from a philosophy background and put the critical thinking skills they developed to good use launching new digital services to fill needs in various domains of society. Atlantic contributor Edward Tenner even went so far as to call philosophy the "most practical major."  ...

... Here are a few reasons that philosophy majors will become the entrepreneurs who are shaping the business world. ...

2. BusinessWeek: Half of U.S. Business Schools Might Be Gone by 2020

Richard Lyons, the dean of University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, has a dire forecast for business education: “Half of the business schools in this country could be out of business in 10 years—or five,” he says.

The threat, says Lyons, is that more top MBA programs will start to offer degrees online. That will imperil the industry’s business model. For most business schools, students pursuing part-time and executive MBAs generate crucial revenue. Those programs, geared toward working professionals, will soon have to compete with elite online alternatives for the same population.

Lower-ranked business schools, rather than recognized names such as Harvard Business School and Wharton, are most vulnerable to this phenomenon. When the big players start offering online degrees, they’ll draw far-flung students who might otherwise have opted for the convenience of a part-time program close to home. ...

3. Huff Post Business: All Hail, Do-Gooding MBAs!

Don't look now, but it seems that some MBA students are increasingly interested in doing good as well as making money, and more business schools are happy to accommodate them. This is all to the, ahem, good, because we need all the smart, talented MBAs we can get to attack our biggest social, ethical and environmental problems.

While the vast majority of jobs for MBAs are still the traditional ones, I'm seeing evidence of a nascent shift. Indeed, no less a prophet than Michael Porter sees the same thing, and believes that there are opportunities a-plenty for companies that focus on solving there world's most urgent social environmental problems. "If we can get business seeing itself differently and others to see businesses differently," Porter said in a recent TED talk, "we can change the world. My students are getting [the fact that [sic] we can break down this divide, this tension and finally have solutions." As Porter (and C.K. Prahalad before him) suggest, there is plenty of money to be made in doing so. ...

4. Salary.com: 8 College Degrees with the Worst Return on Investment.

...While there's no doubt that a college degree increases earning power and broadens opportunities, today's high cost of education means it makes sense to more carefully consider which degree you earn. When it comes to return on investment (ROI), not all degrees are considered equal. This article exposes eight college degrees with poor ROI....

5. Forbes: 'Should I Tell You The Good News First?' The Feedback Employees Most Want To Hear

... Improving your capability for both giving and receiving feedback is a key factor for every leader. This assessment can help you to understand what you currently prefer and avoid. Living in extremes generally doesn’t lead to lasting success. Positive feedback helps you to know what went well and encourages you to move forward, while corrective feedback opens different options to explore. Whether you prefer one or avoid the other, next time you are faced with a feedback challenge, take the opportunity to be fully aware of the value of what you give and receive.

6. Forbes: How To Tell Your Boss 'No'--Without Saying 'No'

... Pushing back on a request from your boss can be intimidating (especially if you work for someone who’s, let’s say, not the most receptive to answers outside the realm of “Of course! When would you like it completed?”), but the truth is, it’s significantly better than setting yourself up to fail.

The trick is to push back more diplomatically—getting your point across without actually using the word “no.” Read on for how to approach some common situations, as well as one time you should probably just say “yes.” ...

7. Huffington Post: Women at Work: The Unspoken Rule of Meetings

... Men have the luxury of not having to worry about such details. Instead, they can devote their brains to developing cunning strategies to advance their own interests and careers. Men often see meetings as a chance to profile themselves, particularly if the boss or an important customer is in attendance. They will speak up, even if they have little of value to offer -- the main point is that everybody sees them talking. Women will often not speak up unless they have something important to say. Who's going to win the deal?

In addition to the tedium and insipidity of the typical meeting -- dreaded by male and female alike -- women have to think about their voices, their gestures, their eye contact, their style and their very woman-ness. Men simply don't have to worry about these things. This is utterly unfair, but until women occupy more executive positions, these unspoken rules of meetings will remain a challenge for them. ...

8. Huffington Post: Why 'Follow Your Passion' Is Bizarre Advice

... In his TEDTalk, Rowe explains that the tradespeople he profiled on his show, Dirty Jobs, are surprisingly happy. "Roadkill picker-uppers whistle while they work," he said. "I swear to God -- I did it with them." To Rowe, these experiences began to challenge many of the "sacred cows" he had been taught to believe about work satisfaction. Perhaps foremost of these sanctified ideas he began to doubt was the importance of pre-existing passion.

"Follow your passion... what could possibly be wrong with that?" Rowe joked in his talk. "Probably the worst advice I ever got." ...

... In his talk, Rowe points out that many of the happiest people in the country have jobs that no one would ever identify as a pre-existing passion. He cited a sheep herder, a pig farmer ("smells like hell, but God bless him, he's making a great living"), and a guy who makes flower pots out of cow dung, as examples of unexpected professional contentment. These observations are powerful for a simple reason: They separate career satisfaction from the specifics of the work.

The pig farmer is not happy because he was born with a pig farmer gene, or because he grew up feeling a deep pre-existing passion for pork. He's instead happy because he's making a great living, has tons of autonomy, and does work that's useful to the world (he raises his pigs on food scraps from nearby casinos that would otherwise go to waste). You could replace pig farming with any number of pursuits, but so long as they yielded these same traits, he'd love his work. ...

9. NPR: Physicists, Generals And CEOs Agree: Ditch The PowerPoint

... The physicists are far from the only people moving away from PowerPoint-style presentations: The CEOs of and have eliminated the presentations from meetings. In his recently published memoir, former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates Gates writes that as CIA director, he banned slides except for maps and charts, but he could not do so as Secretary of Defense. Gen. James Mattis, former commander of U.S. Central Command, Maj. Gen. H.R. McMaster banned the presentations when he led a successful mission in Iraq, and he compared PowerPoint to an internal threat.

The main advantage of forgoing PowerPoint is that it forces both the speaker and the listener to pay attention, says John Paul Chou, an assistant professor of physics at Rutgers University who recently presented at one of the Fermilab forums.

With PowerPoint, he says, it's "easier to let your mind go on autopilot, and you start to lose focus more easily." ...

10. Huffington Post: Charitable Giving Could Harm A Company's Image, Study Says

Giving to charity may actually hurt a company’s reputation, a new study from the Yale School of Management has suggested.

Interested in how people view donors who make a profit while doing good, Yale professors George Newman and Daylian Cain presented a number of charitable scenarios to their research participants. Their findings, which have been published in Psychological Science, suggest that people are quick to dismiss those who benefit in any way while engaging in philanthropy.

"This work suggests that people may react very negatively to charitable initiatives that are perceived to be in some way 'inauthentic,'" Newman explained in a press release. ...

11. Business Insider: 15 Small Business Owners Share What They Wish They'd Known When They First Started

Building a successful business is typically done by trial and error, with many hurdles along the way. And when it's your first company, every day involves making mistakes and learning something new.

We asked small business owners around America to tell us the one thing they wished they'd known when they first started their businesses.

We've broken out some of the best to serve as a primer on getting as much as possible right the first time around. ...

12. Atlantic Cities: Why Some Communities Foster More Entrepreneurs Than Others

... But new research shows there's clearly more to the story than just individual skill, pluck, and ambition. The study, by Temple University’s Seok-Woo Kwon, the University of Missouri’s Colleen Heflin, and Duke University’s Martin Ruef, examines the relationship between self-employment levels and community support structures across America’s metro areas. Published in the December issue of the American Sociological Review, the authors argue that the strength of local social networks and trust — using the term “social capital,” popularized by Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam — plays a major role in whether a city is able to foster a culture of self-employment and entrepreneurship.

The study measures entrepreneurship using data on self-employment from the Census, and compares that to data from Putnam’s own Social Capital Benchmark Survey and the General Social Survey. The results get at how key aspects of social capital, such as membership in voluntary organizations or variation in trust across communities, affect rates of self-employment and entrepreneurial activity. ...

13. New York Times: For Many Older Americans, an Enterprising Path

... Kimberly Palmer, author of “The Economy of You: Discover Your Inner Entrepreneur and Recession-Proof Your Life,” said she had noticed that the most eager audience for the book was often people approaching retirement, or already in it. “They want to leverage their skills and experience into something entrepreneurial,” she said.

According to a recent study published by the Kauffman Foundation and Legal Zoom, in 2013, about 20 percent of all new businesses were started by entrepreneurs aged 50 to 59 years, and 15 percent were 60 and over.

And, in fact, over the last decade, the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity belongs to those in the 55-to-64 age group, according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity.

A desire to work for oneself and create a business that is meaningful and has social impact at this stage of life, combined with a job market that makes it tough for workers over 50 to get hired, has clearly pushed more people to pursue the entrepreneurial path. ...

14. Business Insider: 10 American Industries That Are Going To Boom In The Next Decade

... A new data release from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals which industries are going to grow the fastest between 2012 and 2022. Health care and technology, already giants today, are expected to keep up their rapid growth over the next decade. At the same time, manufacturing is expected to continue its rapid decline. 

So if you're looking ahead to the future, here are the industries that are going to boom.  ...

15. Business Insider: 10 Predictions For How Shopping Will Completely Change In The Future

Retail is an incredibly dynamic industry. 

"We will see more disruption in the next ten years of retail than we did in the previous one thousand," said Doug Stephens, founder of industry website Retail Prophet and author of The Retail Revival: Re-Imagining Business for the New Age of Consumerism. 

Stephens recently published his 10 predictions for how retail will change this year. 

He agree to share his list with us. ...

 16. Economist: The music industry will see better times in 2014

17. CNN Money: Inside the world of one-click grocery delivery

FORTUNE -- It all seems so simple: Hit the "place order" button online and get a head of lettuce, a dozen eggs, or a gallon of milk delivered to your doorstep within 24 hours. But behind the scenes, the burgeoning market of online grocery delivery involves a surprisingly delicate dance to ensure that perishable food gets from producer to consumer in just enough time to avoid (quite literally) a spoiled delivery.

With demand on the rise, giants such as Wal-Mart (WMT) and Amazon (AMZN) are jumping into the fray as investors bet millions on a crop of startups with names like Good Eggs, Relay Foods, and Farmigo. Yet actually turning a profit and managing the logistics of food delivery is tricky, says Leslie Hand, a director at IDC Retail Insights, a market research firm. Unlike shipping books or durable products via UPS, fresh food delivery requires specific short routing, planning, technology, and a race against the clock. ...

18. BloombergBusinessweek: Three Restaurant Chains With Happy, Low-Paid Workers

Low pay in the restaurant industry has spurred a series of one-day walkouts this year by fast-food employees demanding more, yet a trio of chains found their way onto a new list of the 50 best places to work. Starbucks (SBUX) (No. 39), Chick-fil-A (No. 43), and Texas Roadhouse (TXRH) (No. 47) made it onto the annual ranking by jobs website Glassdoor.com, derived from reviews submitted by U.S.-based employees. ...

19. Businessweek: Why the Gender Pay Gap Persists—and How to Really End It

Embedded in a new research paper (PDF) by Harvard economist Claudia Goldin is a valuable piece of news for anyone who is frustrated by the stubborn persistence of the gap in earnings between women and men. It has long been held that women earn only $0.77 for ever dollar that men do, in large part because of discrimination. But, Goldin argues, most of the difference comes down to factors that have nothing to do with sexism: The number of hours a person works and the degree of job flexibility.

This means that companies offering true, stigma-free flexibility and linear compensation—meaning the same pay per hour worked, regardless of when it is worked—have the lowest gaps in pay between men and women—and, in many cases, more women employees overall.

All that’s left is for corporate America to do something about it. ...

20. Forbes: What Happens When Leaders Only Care About Money?

... So yes, under any of the preceding conditions, a profit-is-all-that-matters approach will work.

But, under circumstance other than those above – it probably won’t work. If a leader needs to build a sustainably growing and profitable enterprise in an industry that requires a high degree of innovation or creativity and/or must provide excellent customer service – then the money-only approach will not work. I’ve seen profit-only leaders fail time and time again under such circumstances.

And the core reason – from my observation –  is that delivering innovation, creativity or extraordinary customer service demands talented, hardworking employees who are loyal and motivated, and who are supported to do their best.  And in this day and age, such employees are in high demand. As soon as they realize that a leader, or a company, cares about them only as a means to the end of raking in the dough – and will therefore consistently look for ways to give them as little of that dough as possible – their resumes will be on the street.

If you, as a leader, need to build a sustainably profitable business that relies upon innovation and/or great customer service to succeed,  then I’d suggest the following approach: hire the best people you can find, support their development and their creativity, and establish an environment that both demands and rewards great results.  I predict you’ll make lots of money – all without having to avoid telling your mom how you run your business.

Should Christians Really Stop Saying This?

A Facebook friend linked this article this week, The One Thing Christians Should Stop Saying. I get the gist of what he is saying, but I also have reservations. He is a businessperson and tells of how a friend asked how his business was going. He answered with his usual response:

"Definitely feeling blessed. Last year was the best year yet for my business. And it looks like this year will be just as busy."

But on further reflection, he has concluded that it is wrong for him to say that. Two reasons:

... First, when I say that my material fortune is the result of God's blessing, it reduces The Almighty to some sort of sky-bound, wish-granting fairy who spends his days randomly bestowing cars and cash upon his followers. I can't help but draw parallels to how I handed out M&M's to my own kids when they followed my directions and chose to poop in the toilet rather than in their pants. Sure, God wants us to continually seek His will, and it's for our own good. But positive reinforcement?

God is not a behavioral psychologist.

Second, and more importantly, calling myself blessed because of material good fortune is just plain wrong. For starters, it can be offensive to the hundreds of millions of Christians in the world who live on less than $10 per day. You read that right. Hundreds of millions who receive a single-digit dollar "blessing" per day. ...

He goes on to talk about the Beatitudes and talks about how it is the poor and the marginalized who are described as blessed. He concludes by noting:

My blessing is this. I know a God who gives hope to the hopeless. I know a God who loves the unlovable. I know a God who comforts the sorrowful. And I know a God who has planted this same power within me. Within all of us.

And for this blessing, may our response always be,

"Use me."

Since I had this conversation, my new response is simply, "I'm grateful." Would love to hear your thoughts.

There is a lot of truth in this. I find myself strongly identifying with his observations ... and yet ...

What about passages like Deut 8:17-19:

"17 Do not say to yourself, "My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth." 18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today." NRSV

I have been in small groups with countless businesspeople and entrepreneurs. What I hear from so many of them is profound gratitude for the opportunity to express what they understand as a God-given gift for creativity. They feel grateful because they can benefit their customers, workers, families, and, yes, themselves. When I hear them talk about being blessed, I don't hear them saying, "I did all the right stuff, now see how God rewarded me." Most are intensely aware of their shortcomings and make endless mistakes, yet they are still here in their businesses. They sense God's presence with them in their work, but I don't get the sense that they think that those whose businesses fail do so because of a lack of God's presence. They know people who have done everything seemingly right and don't make it. They feel blessed in the sense that they are where they are in God's grand scheme of things.

What I worry about is the compartmentalization of our faith and the business world. If the businessperson claims all credit for achieving success in creating a sustainable, profitable business, we chastise her for attributing success to herself alone. But if she talks about being blessed in her work (i.e., God had a hand in her success), then that also is taboo because she is saying God withheld blessing from someone else who didn't do well. In short, if you are in business, you are only entitled to have vague feelings of gratitude but not to see God as present in your daily life.

I'm not saying that the way "blessing" is used is without abuse. Someone in the article's comments section talked about "blessed to be a blessing" as a corrective, and I think that has merit. But I worry that the thinking in this article just drives a deeper wedge between faith and daily life. Maybe I read too much between the lines, but it seems that the thinking here is evidence of a deep ambivalence so much of the church has about business and the people who make their living there.

Any thoughts?

Social Science and Culture Links

1. Two informative articles in Forbes: A Tale Of Two Incomes: How To Handle Having More Money Than Your Friends and A Tale Of Two Incomes: How To Handle Having Less Money Than Your Friends

2. New Yorker: Why Your Name Matters

... The effects of name-signalling—what names say about ethnicity, religion, social sphere, and socioeconomic background—may begin long before someone enters the workforce. In a study of children in a Florida school district, conducted between 1994 and 2001, the economist David Figlio demonstrated that a child’s name influenced how he or she was treated by the teacher, and that differential treatment, in turn, translated to test scores. Figlio isolated the effects of the students’ names by comparing siblings—same background, different names. Children with names that were linked to low socioeconomic status or being black, as measured by the approach used by Bertrand and Mullainathan, were met with lower teacher expectations. Unsurprisingly, they then performed more poorly than their counterparts with non-black, higher-status names. Figlio found, for instance, that “a boy named ‘Damarcus’ is estimated to have 1.1 national percentile points lower math and reading scores than would his brother named ‘Dwayne,’ all else equal, and ‘Damarcus’ would in turn have three-quarters of a percentile ranking higher test scores than his brother named Da’Quan.’ ” Conversely, children with Asian-sounding names (also measured by birth-record frequency) were met with higher expectations, and were more frequently placed in gifted programs.

The economists Steven Levitt and Roland Fryer looked at trends in names given to black children in the United States from the nineteen-seventies to the early aughts. They discovered that names which sounded more distinctively “black” became, over time, ever more reliable signals of socioeconomic status. That status, in turn, affected a child’s subsequent life outcome, which meant that it was possible to see a correlation between names and outcomes, suggesting a name effect similar to what was observed in the 1948 Harvard study. But when Levitt and Fryer controlled for the child’s background, the name effect disappeared, strongly indicating that outcomes weren’t influenced by intrinsic qualities of the name itself. As Simonsohn notes, “Names tell us a lot about who you are.” ...

3. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Living with Discrimination Can Take a Toll on Health

"... The researchers wrote, "the anticipatory nature of vigilance sets it apart from traditional notions of perceived racial discrimination. For decades, a large body of scientific and lay literature has provided evidence of the pervasive consequences of interpersonal and societal discrimination. In qualitative studies, social scientists often report on the way Blacks continually think about the potential for discrimination."

"Overall, the work shows that in cases where racism-related vigilance is low or absent, Blacks and Whites have similar levels of hypertension. But when people report chronic vigilance, the rates in Blacks rise significantly. They rise a little in Hispanics, but not at all in Whites," Hicken explains." ...

4. Carpe Diem: Women earned a majority of 2012 doctoral degrees in 33 STEM fields, can we stop calling it a ‘national crisis’?

5. Gruntled Center: Men and Women Work the Same Total Hours (There is no 'Second Shift')

This is a finding reported in the excellent new book, The XX Factor, by leading British economic researcher Alison Wolf.

She says of all that she reports in this book, this fact is the one she expects readers to have the hardest time believing.  The belief that men and women now work equally outside the home, and then women come home to an unbalanced 'second shift' is very widespread, especially in the U.S. ...

6. The Atlantic: Why Don't More Women Want to Work With Other Women?

... Pew asked 2,002 people if they would prefer to work with men or women. Most—78 percent of men and 76 percent of women—said they didn't care. But for the 22 percent who did have a preference, "it’s men who get the nod from both sexes by about a 2-1 margin," Pew's Rich Morin writes. In fact, more women said they'd rather work with men than men did. ...

7. The Mercury: As Cohabitation Gains Favor, Shotgun Weddings Fade

... The share of unmarried couples who opt to move in together after a pregnancy surpassed what demographers call “shotgun marriages” for the first time over the last decade. That’s according to a forthcoming paper from the National Center for Health Statistics. ...

8. New York Times: The Childless Plan for Their Fading Days

... Ms. Tint’s situation is one that more and more elderly people will face over the next few decades as fewer women choose to have children. According to an August 2013 report from AARP, 11.6 percent of women ages 80 to 84 were childless in 2010. By 2030, the number will reach 16 percent. What’s more, in 2010, the caregiver support ratio was more than seven potential caregivers for every person over 80 years old. By 2030, that ratio is projected to decline to four to one. By 2050, it’s expected to fall to three to one. ...

... “Many people are extending the notion of family itself, to nieces and nephews, cousins and so on,” he continued. “But it’s also expanding to ‘pseudo kin’ of friends and neighbors. We see this in the L.G.B.T. community, many of whom have been alienated from their families.”

“While it’s great to have kids who are available to help, there are a lot of complications with having kids around,” said Audrey K. Chun, a doctor who is also a medical director at the Martha Stewart Center for Living at Mount Sinai Hospital, in New York. “A lot of the dynamics, decisions that have to be made around the end of life, disagreements that arise between siblings, what mom or dad may have wanted, can be very emotional. Many of my patients without kids are interested in not wasting resources at the end of life — when it’s their time, they don’t want unnecessary suffering, or to be a burden on society. They want to die naturally. Because they don’t have children to advocate for them, they’re much more open and direct about that.” ...

9. The Guardian: This column will change your life: gut feelings

... But how many of us would embark on a serious relationship based on a shared passion for The Shining? When it comes to judging character, we prefer to believe gut instinct beats box-ticking. "We have a deep-seated need to feel that we can judge character," Jason Dana, of Yale University, told the Boston Globe recently. But many studies suggest we can't – and a new paper co-authored by Dana is especially damning. ...

... Technically, the problem with unstructured interviews (or dates) isn't that they're insufficiently informative. It's that they're too informative. Bombarded by data, we seek refuge in "sensemaking", clinging to stories that seem to render things clear. But those stories might include racist or sexist stereotypes about who's good at what. Or they might be the seductive stories of candidates skilled at interviews, yet rubbish at the job itself. "Because of sensemaking," the researchers write, "interviewers are likely to feel they are getting useful information from unstructured interviews, even when they are useless." Settling on a coherent story feels good, but that doesn't mean it's accurate.

This gap – between what our guts say and what the data says – will only grow wider. As Big Data quantifies more of our lives, we'll increasingly face dilemmas: if your instincts tell you to date or hire Person A, but the metrics point to Person B, whom will you choose? ...

10. Associated Press: Accident rates improving for older drivers

... Today's drivers aged 70 and older are less likely to be involved in crashes than previous generations, and less likely to be killed or seriously injured if they do crash, according to a study released Thursday by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

That's because vehicles are getting safer and seniors are generally getting healthier, the institute said. ...

11. Conversable Economist: How Pedestrian Countdown Signals Cause Auto Accidents

Pedestrian countdown signals at crosswalks show how much time is left before the light turns yellow, thus letting pedestrians know if they should rush to cross the street--or perhaps wait for the next light. But when these signals were introduced in Toronto, the rate of rear-end auto accidents was higher at the intersections with pedestrian signals compared to neighboring intersections. ...

... In short, the pedestrian countdown signals were good for pedestrians. But some of the drivers were watching the signals, trying to squeeze through before the light changed, and rear-ending other cars.

There's are some narrow lessons here about pedestrian countdown signals and a broader lesson about how information works. Here are two narrow lessons, which come out of a  more detailed analysis of the data: "The first is cities might benefit from installing countdowns at historically highly dangerous intersections and from not installing them at historically safe intersections. The second conclusion is that while countdowns can improve safety in historically dangerous cities, they may be detrimental to safety in historically safe ones." Also, instead of having a pedestrian countdown signal that is visible to cars, it might make more sense to have a verbal countdown that could only be heard by pedestrians. ...

12. PBS: Residents of poor countries have greater sense of meaning in life than those in rich nations, research says

According to new research, people living in poor countries have a greater sense of meaning in their lives than those living in wealthy countries.

These new findings, published in the Association for Psychological Science’s academic journal “Psychology Science,” suggest that this greater sense of life meaning stems from residents’ strong family ties and solid connections to religious tradition. “Thus far, the wealth of nations has been almost always associated with longevity, health, happiness, or life satisfaction,” Shigehiro Oishi, a professor at the University of Virginia and original publisher of this study, said. “Given that meaning in life is an important aspect of overall well-being, we wanted to look more carefully at differential patterns, correlates, and predictors for meaning in life.” ...

13. Huffington Post: 13 Predictions About The Future That Were Spectacularly Wrong

While humankind has made great leaps in science and technology, we have yet to master the art of prophecy. It turns out that predicting the future is tricky business, but time and again, we insist on doing so.

In the spirit of learning from our foolishness, we've partnered with Hendrick's Gin to take a peek into the lofty predictions that turned out to be terribly, spectacularly wrong. ...

14. Washington Post: 40 more maps that explain the world

Maps seemed to be everywhere in 2013, a trend I like to think we encouraged along with August's 40 maps that explain the world. Maps can be a remarkably powerful tool for understanding the world and how it works, but they show only what you ask them to. You might consider this, then, a collection of maps meant to inspire your inner map nerd. I've searched far and wide for maps that can reveal and surprise and inform in ways that the daily headlines might not, with a careful eye for sourcing and detail. I've included a link for more information on just about every one. Enjoy.

This one is one interesting example:

  15. Huffington Post: Ancient Town Discovered In Israel Is 2,300 Years Old, Archaeologists Say

On the outskirts of Jerusalem, archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 2,300-year-old rural village that dates back to the Second Temple period, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced. ...

16. Scientific American: 4,600-Year-Old Step Pyramid Uncovered in Egypt

The pyramid, which predates the Great Pyramid of Giza, is one of seven for which its function remains a mystery. ...

17. Discovery: 11,000-Year-Old Settlement Found Under Baltic Sea

Evidence of a Stone-Age settlement that may have been swallowed whole by the Baltic Sea has resurfaced near Sweden, revealing a collection of well preserved artifacts left by nomads some 11,000 years ago. ...

18. Listverse: 10 Lesser-Known Ancient Roman Traditions

Depending on your personal view, ancient Rome was responsible for giving the modern world a number of traditions, including various legal ideas, democracy, and some of our religious celebrations. However, there are still many ancient Roman traditions that are slightly obscure, mostly relegated to the dustbin of history. Here are some lesser known ones. ...

19. Huff Post: CNN Morality Poll Reveals Surprising Trends In America

A recent CNN poll demonstrates the rapidly increasing support for the legalization of marijuana in America, but the survey also revealed American attitudes about the morality of various other actions.

Opinions on behaviors like drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana, cheating on taxes, and adultery have shifted since a similar poll was conducted by Time Magazine in 1987. ...

 

Social Science and Culture Links

1. Business Insider:  Meaningful Work — Not Money — Makes People Happy

... Decades of research have boiled human happiness down to just three factors: genes, events, and values. About half of how happy you feel is hardwired into your genetic make up, according to the article. Meanwhile, one-off events like getting married or landing a big promotion can contribute up to 40% of your happiness, but tend to offer just a temporary boost that lasts a few months. ...

2. Atlantic Cities: The Hidden Beauty of a Walmart Store

[4 minute video] A short documentary follows an artist as he paints the inside of the supermarket chain.

3. Atlantic Cities:  The Paradox of Diverse Communities

... Their simulations of more than 20 million virtual “neighborhoods” demonstrate a troubling paradox: that community and diversity may be fundamentally incompatible goals. As the authors explain, integration “provides opportunities for intergroup contact that are necessary to promote respect for diversity, but may prevent the formation of dense interpersonal networks that are necessary to promote sense of community.” ...

... After 20 million-plus simulations, the authors found that the same basic answer kept coming back: The more diverse or integrated a neighborhood is, the less socially cohesive it becomes, while the more homogenous or segregated it is, the more socially cohesive. As they write, “The model suggests that when people form relationships with similar and nearby others, the contexts that offer opportunities to develop a respect for diversity are different from the contexts that foster a sense of community.” ...

4. Time: Globalization Isn’t Dead, It’s Only Just Beginning

Once upon a time, globalization simply meant the export of Western culture to the rest of the world. Now the world is turning the tables. ...

... In the past, globalization was to a great degree a one-way street — from the developed to the developing world. Money and technology flowed from the U.S. and Europe into China, India and other low-income countries, drawing them into the global trading system. The process was the same with ideas (democracy, capitalism, Marxism) and culture (popular music, social networking, fast food, Hollywood movies). Emerging nations had few connections between themselves, and limited influence over world politics and finance.

Now, though, the rise of China, India and other emerging economies is shifting that old, one-way globalization into a new, vibrant multilateral globalization, with major consequences for how our world works.

Look at what’s happening in the global economy these days. ...

5. The Interpreter: Unfriending: Japanese public opinion on China <http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2013/01/22/Unfriending-Japanese-public-opinion-on-China.aspx?>

6. Atlantic: Countries With Higher Math Scores Have Unhappier Kids

Is there be a relationship between math and misery? Economist Justin Wolfers runs the math. The variation is pretty large (Eastern Europe seems egregiously unhappy, while southeastern Asian students seem to be having a unduly good time in class), but the correlation is statistically significant.

7. BBC:  Modern life 'turning people off sex'

A once-a-decade poll of 15,000 Britons found those aged 16-44 were having sex fewer than five times a month.

The figure compared with more than six times a month on the last two occasions when the official National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles was carried out, in 1990-91 and 1999-2001.

The study's authors say modern life may be having an impact on libidos. ...

8. Atlantic Cities: Across Europe, a Growing Sense That Legalized Prostitution Isn't Working

... France is not alone in its fresh efforts to curb prostitution. The move follows similar bans in Sweden and Norway, while other European countries are also scaling back laissez-faire prostitution policies. Germany is poised to change its liberal sex trade laws, while Ireland is also debating a measure similar to France's. Is the end of legal prostitution in Europe in sight?

It may partly depend on how well France's new laws work. Unlike historical prostitution bans that penalize sex workers, the new laws target customers, making the purchase of sex illegal rather than its sale. Anyone caught paying for sexual services in France will be subject to a fine of €1,500, rising to a maximum of €3,750 for repeat offenders. This follows a model established in Sweden in 1999, but no country as large as France has yet tried anything similar. ...

9. Atlantic: Modern Moms Aren't as Busy as 1960s Moms Were

Moms now spend more time on activities like TV and the computer than on housework, playing with kids, and exercising combined.

 

10. NPR: Forget Golf Courses: Subdivisions Draw Residents With Farms

When you picture a housing development in the suburbs, you might imagine golf courses, swimming pools, rows of identical houses.

But now, there's a new model springing up across the country that taps into the local food movement: Farms — complete with livestock, vegetables and fruit trees — are serving as the latest suburban amenity.

It's called development-supported agriculture, a more intimate version of community-supported agriculture — a farm-share program commonly known as CSA. In planning a new neighborhood, a developer includes some form of food production — a farm, community garden, orchard, livestock operation, edible park — that is meant to draw in new buyers, increase values and stitch neighbors together. ...

 11. Gallup:  Majority in U.S. Say Healthcare Not Gov't Responsibility

12. Business Insider: Americans Don't Trust Each Other Anymore

... These days, only one-third of Americans say most people can be trusted. Half felt that way in 1972, when the General Social Survey first asked the question.

Forty years later, a record high of nearly two-thirds say "you can't be too careful" in dealing with people. ...

13. Atlantic: Homelessness Is Up in New York City, But It's Down Everywhere Else

14. Archaeology: Top 10 Discoveries of 2013

15. Business Insider: 25 Books That Changed The Course Of History

Every reader knows that a book can change your life.

But what about the lives of an entire generation? Can a book change the future?

Miriam Tuliao, assistant director of central collection development at the New York Public Library, helped us come up with a list of 25 books that changed the course of history.

From the Torah to Orwell's "1984," these 25 titles have had a major impact (listed here in alphabetical order).

16. Seth's Blog: What do we get when we give to a good cause?

Why on earth would a rational person give money to charity--particularly a charity that supports strangers? What do they get?

A story. ...

... If people aren't donating to your cause, it's because you're not telling a story, or telling the wrong story to the wrong people (in the wrong way). Non-profits make change, and the way they do this is by letting us tell ourselves stories that nurture our best selves.

17. Also on the topic of giving, here is some practical advice. Forbes: How To Give Away Money When It Feels Like You Don't Have Any

Why 'Follow Your Passion' Is Bizarre Advice

Huffington Post: Why 'Follow Your Passion' Is Bizarre Advice

This is an excellent article on an important TED Talk!

A couple years ago, I launched a simple experiment. I identified a large group of people, from a variety of different professional fields, who all self-reported to love what they do for a living. I then gave them a straightforward prompt: "tell me your story."

My goal was to better understand how people end up passionate about their work. I succeeded in identifying some common patterns, but perhaps equally interesting is what I didn't find: very few of these happy workers knew in advance what they wanted to do with their life -- their path was more haphazard.

This conclusion is surprising to many in our culture where "follow your passion" has been canonized as unimpeachable advice. ...

... "Follow your passion... what could possibly be wrong with that?" Rowe joked in his talk. "Probably the worst advice I ever got." ...

... In his talk, Rowe points out that many of the happiest people in the country have jobs that no one would ever identify as a pre-existing passion. ...

... The pig farmer is not happy because he was born with a pig farmer gene, or because he grew up feeling a deep pre-existing passion for pork. He's instead happy because he's making a great living, has tons of autonomy, and does work that's useful to the world (he raises his pigs on food scraps from nearby casinos that would otherwise go to waste). You could replace pig farming with any number of pursuits, but so long as they yielded these same traits, he'd love his work. ...

... The alternative explanation -- that it's what you get out of your job, not the specifics of the work, that matters -- begins to seem a lot more reasonable. ...

... Don't follow your passion, let it follow you in your quest to become useful to the world.

The Evangelical Work Ethic

Christianity Today: The Evangelical Work Ethic

Forget Weber. We don't need social science to know that God cares about our work. ...

... American evangelicals have been rediscovering the precious truth that all honest work serves as a spiritual calling to fruitful and worshipful service (Gen. 2:15; Col. 3:22-24). That means everyone – not just religious professionals – has the opportunity to glorify God with their work. We shape ourselves into the kind of people God wants us to be in everything we do, not just in the few hours we spend engaged in church activities. Most of life is work, because God designed us that way. ...

... That doesn't mean all the issues are clear and simple. Nothing shows the difficulty of understanding the relationship between work and faith more than our continued insistence on framing this issue as a debate over Max Weber's long-discredited theory of the Protestant work ethic. Weber argued that Protestants value work because they think prosperity is proof that you're saved; as anyone who knows anything about church history can tell you, this was and is slanderous nonsense. He also argued that teaching people that God values their work created an economic system that thrives on greed and materialism; as anyone who knows economic history can tell you, this is just as preposterous. Weber's theory has been almost universally dismissed by a century of theologians, historians, and economists.

Nonetheless, Weber's terms and categories continue to dominate popular discussions, because his approach strictly separates "facts" from "values." This allows secularists to think about possible cultural connections between faith and work while preserving a comfortable work/spirit dualism in their own lives. That dualism is exactly what the faith and work movement seeks to challenge. As long as Weber dominates the conversation it's difficult to get people to understand the message. 

However, the idea that Protestantism impacts attitudes about work—which the recent research investigates—is not misplaced. The Protestant Reformation brought unique advances in our understanding of God's purposes for work and vocation. ...

... Our culture's hunger for meaning and dignity in everyday work is a window through which Christians can shine the light of the gospel. No civilization can grow and flourish when its people spend the vast majority of their waking hours in an activity they find meaningless. The deepest root of our economic crisis is that people no longer find a worthy purpose in the daily practice of diligence, honesty, self-control, generosity, and service. This creates a timely moment for people to rediscover how God brings dignity and meaning to daily life. ...

The author is right about Weber. I read several of his works in grad school. His significance was in the kinds of questions he asked, not in his particular theories. "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" is no longer accepted as valid social analysis; it wasn't when I was thirty years ago in grad school. It apparently takes some folks a few decades to get the memo. I particularly think the last paragraph quoted above is a keeper.

The Evolution Of Work

Forbes: The Evolution Of Work

David Fitch on a New "Order" of Clergy

Reclaiming the Mission: Create a New ‘Order’ of Clergy: A Recommendation to Denominations - David Fitch

... I suggest there is a need for a new order of clergy (if I may call it that): a missional leader who can understand the relationship between work and ministry so that it is seamless. He or she dedicates 10-15 hours a week to organizing the Kingdom community in their local context.  He or she knows her gifting and can lead out of that gifting. He or she has a job that he/she can support her/himself and her family with. He/she can develop a job skill that can adapt to changing circumstances. Often, he or she adjust their work hours so that she can work a tad less than the average 40 hour week. He or she can then give time to the leadership of their community without disrupting a daily/weekly rhythm of being present with family and neighborhood as well. The small church community can offer a small stipend to make up the difference. He or she does all this with 3 to 4 other leaders who do the same. Each is recognized for one of the five-fold giftings out of which they minister and lead in relation to the other leaders. They are apostle, prophet, pastor-organizer, teacher-organizer, evangelist working together, 15 hours plus 15 hours, plus 15 hours, plus 15 hours plus 15 hours. They are doing more out of multiple giftings than one single pastor ever could. They are bearing each other’s burdens. They are a “band of brothers and sisters.” This becomes a sustainable missionary kind of ministry that changes the whole dynamics of ministry because they are present in jobs, families and neighborhoods and makes possible long term ministry in context. It is, in essence, a new version of the old monastic orders of mission adapted to the capitalistic societies in the West while providing the means to resist (and provide witness) to its more oppressive sinful patterns.

Denominations need to define a new order of clergy because anyone seeking to operate in ministry this way will easily get defeated. Some of the more obvious ways they will get defeated are: ...

... For all these reasons we need to fund a new imagination for a new emerging clergy class that are in essence self sustaining contextual N. American missionaries. But the denominations for the most part have not navigated this. My guess is, if the denominations formed a new order of clergy, helped developed imagination and supporting structures for it, there would be untold numbers flocking to this group. There are literally thousands of second career people, and thousands of younger seminary graduates  dissatisfied with current options (dying small church senior pastor or mega church staff person) who would gravitate towards this kind of commissioning.  But we have no larger imagination for it. A new order of clergy could help and support these kind of missionaries and stir up such an imagination. Such an order of clergy could seed a whole new mission for a renewal of the Kingdom in N America. ...

The Gospel According to ‘Me’

New York Times: The Gospel According to ‘Me’

The booming self-help industry, not to mention the cash cow of New Age spirituality, has one message: be authentic! Charming as American optimism may be, its 21st-century incarnation as the search for authenticity deserves pause. The power of this new version of the American dream can be felt through the stridency of its imperatives: Live fully! Realize yourself! Be connected! Achieve well-being!

Despite the frequent claim that we are living in a secular age defined by the death of God, many citizens in rich Western democracies have merely switched one notion of God for another — abandoning their singular, omnipotent (Christian or Judaic or whatever) deity reigning over all humankind and replacing it with a weak but all-pervasive idea of spirituality tied to a personal ethic of authenticity and a liturgy of inwardness. The latter does not make the exorbitant moral demands of traditional religions, which impose bad conscience, guilt, sin, sexual inhibition and the rest.

Unlike the conversions that transfigure the born-again’s experience of the world in a lightning strike, this one occurred in stages: a postwar existentialist philosophy of personal liberation and “becoming who you are” fed into a 1960s counterculture that mutated into the most selfish conformism, disguising acquisitiveness under a patina of personal growth, mindfulness and compassion. Traditional forms of morality that required extensive social cooperation in relation to a hard reality defined by scarcity have largely collapsed and been replaced with this New Age therapeutic culture of well-being that does not require obedience or even faith — and certainly not feelings of guilt. Guilt must be shed; alienation, both of body and mind, must be eliminated, most notably through yoga practice after a long day of mind-numbing work.

In the gospel of authenticity, well-being has become the primary goal of human life. Rather than being the by-product of some collective project, some upbuilding of the New Jerusalem, well-being is an end in itself. The stroke of genius in the ideology of authenticity is that it doesn’t really require a belief in anything, and certainly not a belief in anything that might transcend the serene and contented living of one’s authentic life and baseline well-being. In this, one can claim to be beyond dogma. ...

Saturday Links

1. The Myth of a Stagnant Middle Class

A favorite "progressive" trope is that America's middle class has stagnated economically since the 1970s. One version of this claim, made by Robert Reich, President Clinton's labor secretary, is typical: "After three decades of flat wages during which almost all the gains of growth have gone to the very top," he wrote in 2010, "the middle class no longer has the buying power to keep the economy going."

This trope is spectacularly wrong. ...

... Americans are also much better able to enjoy their longer lives. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, spending by households on many of modern life's "basics"—food at home, automobiles, clothing and footwear, household furnishings and equipment, and housing and utilities—fell from 53% of disposable income in 1950 to 44% in 1970 to 32% today.

One underappreciated result of the dramatic fall in the cost (and rise in the quality) of modern "basics" is that, while income inequality might be rising when measured in dollars, it is falling when reckoned in what's most important—our ability to consume. Before airlines were deregulated, for example, commercial jet travel was a luxury that ordinary Americans seldom enjoyed. Today, air travel for many Americans is as routine as bus travel was during the disco era, thanks to a 50% decline in the real price of airfares since 1980. ...

2. Grow, Baby, Grow! GMOs And the Future of Industry

... We can imagine a future in which GMO agriculture is producing a whole range of things we now think of as industrial products and chemicals. Over the 21st century we seem headed for dramatic, and even mind-blowing, progress in gene technology. It's not too much to think that this revolution will be as big in the future as IT is today. This will be a much more efficient way to create a complex array of substances without the kind of environmental impact that refineries have today. Solar power's future may be much less about replacing oil as a way of producing electricity than about circumventing traditional industrial processes: the fusion of the factory and the farm may be the chief technological business of the new century.

This whole process opens the door to a huge reduction in the costs, economic and environmental, of producing the materials we need for civilized life. It will further reduce the need for human employment in the extractive, refining and processing industries. It will also represent a growing challenge to countries with extraction based economies, much as the development of synthetic rubber was a challenge for rubber tree plantations in places like Malaysia and Brazil. Like all truly powerful new technologies, this one is going to cause massive social change and upheaval in all kinds of hard-to-predict ways. ...

3. Economists Have A One-Page Solution To Climate Change

... "If you let the economists write the legislation," Jacoby says, "it could be quite simple." He says he could fit the whole bill on one page.

Basically, Jacoby would tax fossil fuels in proportion to the amount of carbon they release. That would make coal, oil and natural gas more expensive. That's it; that's the whole plan. ...

4. World GDP Change, 1998 to Present

5. 24/7 Wall St has great piece on the oldest U. S. company logos. The oldest?

6. Why Machines That Can Do Human Things Won't Replace Us Anytime Soon

I believe the answer lies in a fundamental understanding (or lack thereof) of what automated technology is supposed to do for us as a society. In a nutshell, it's like this: Automated technologies are supposed to help human beings become better human beings, not help machines become better human beings.

7. 60% Of Self-Proclaimed Vegetarians Ate Meat Yesterday

A poll conducted by CNN surveyed 10,000 Americans about their eating habits, and roughly 6% of the respondents self-identified as vegetarians. The researchers then asked individuals to describe their eating habits, and 60% of the "vegetarians" reported having eaten meat within the last 24 hours.

Okay, that could've have been a fluke (or just a really, really dumb sample group). Then the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted a similar study. This time, they telephoned approximately 13,000 Americans, and 3% claimed to be vegetarians. When they followed up a week later, 66% of the self-proclaimed veggie-lovers had eaten meat the day before.

8. New Online Christian Magazine Offers Funding for Entrepreneurs

New Christian entrepreneur magazine goes live online with plans to offer seed funding for new startups and small businesses.

The online format of hot new Christian entrepreneur publication G-Code Magazine has gone live featuring an exclusive interview with Christian music artist and songwriter Cornell Jermaine, and a mission to provide startup capital to at least 100 new small businesses in the next 18 months.

9. Things for United Methodist laity to unlearn — from a layperson's POV

1.  While our church leaders, Pastor, church staff, are responsible to give vision, direction and guidance, they are not charged with keeping us happy. ...

2.  The church building does not belong to us; it is an asset for ministry.....

3.  Worship on Sunday is not entertainment, and we are not the audience.   Worship is a time for us to gather, hear God's word, get filled up, and go in the power of the Spirit to change the world. ...

4.  There are a lot more of us (laity) than there are of them (clergy).  Why did we ever decide sharing the Gospel was only for the 'professionals'? ...

10. Two Paths for Charitable Giving: From the Head or From the Heart

Mr. Friedman said donors who give emotionally were like people who spend money on an expensive dinner. "It's too focused on the donor so it will naturally not be focused on the most effective causes," he said. "It's being directed by some other criteria. There is nothing wrong with that. I describe it as consumption."

Mr. Tempel said that it was fine to ask organizations to be accountable, but that it could go too far. "People who follow their head looking at return on investment — they will be most disappointed if they have unrealistic expectations on what is possible," he said. "Some things are just difficult to deal with, like solving illiteracy in a community."

11. Pew Research with an interesting piece on Americans' reading habits over time

The population of e-book readers is growing. In the past year, the number of those who read an e-book in the past year increased from 16% of all Americans ages 16 and older in December 2011 to 23% in November 2012. At the same time, the percentage of Americans who read a printed book in the previous 12 months fell from 72% of the population in 2011 to 67% in 2012.

12. Just in case you have been living under a rock, the Supreme Court made same big decisions this week. One Catholic leader, Msgr. Charles Pope, has an interesting response to the decisions on gay marriage:

Msgr. Charles Pope lamented that since 1969, when it became easier to divorce, contraception became widely available and now that the legal standing of gay marriages had been put on equal footing of those of heterosexual couples, that the word 'marriage' no longer has resonance within the Catholic faith.

It is a simple fact that word “marriage” as we have traditionally known it is being redefined in our times. To many in the secular world the word no longer means what it once did and when the Church uses the word marriage we clearly do not mean what the increasing number of states mean.

The pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian then went on to suggest that the Catholic church drop the word marriage altogether and use "Holy Matrimony" in its place.

I propose that we should exclusively refer to marriage in the Church as “Holy Matrimony.” According to this proposal the word marriage would be set aside and replaced by Holy Matrimony. It should be noticed that the Catechism of the Catholic Church refers to this Sacrament formally as “The Sacrament of Matrimony.”

13. How Much Time Do Pastors Spend Preparing a Sermon? The median time spent in preparation is 13-15 hours.

14. What Happened to the Mysterious Humans of the Sahara 7,000 Years Ago?

15. DNA Buried 7,000 Centuries Is Retrieved

16. Mouse cloned from a drop of blood

Saturday Links

1. Loved this one: 22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From Each Other. Here is one example.

2. In print and on stage, the Bible makes surprise comeback in secular Norway

3. Japan enters the African aid game: Japan $1 billion aid earmarked for northern Africa

4. The Economist had a great editorial: Towards the end of poverty

Nearly 1 billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in 20 years. The world should aim to do the same again.

5. Global Wealth Grew 7.8% In 2012, Driven By Developing Economies

BCG found that global private financial wealth grew at the impressive clip of 7.8% in 2012, besting the 7.3% and 3.6% expansion logged in 2010 and 2011, respectively.

And which countries are driving global growth? Tyler Cowen reports that China and India for half of the growth. He also lists these nations as the fastest growing:

South Sudan	32.1
Libya	20.2
Sierra Leone	17.1
Mongolia	14.0
Paraguay	11.0
Timor-Leste	10.0
Iraq	9.0
Panama	9.0
The Gambia	8.9
Mozambique	8.4

source: IMF

6. 5 Maps That Show How Divided America Really Is. Here is an example:

7. Toward a Self Employed Nation?

The United States labor market has been undergoing a substantial shift toward small-scale entrepreneurship. The number of proprietors – owners of businesses who are not wage and salary employees, has skyrocketed, especially in the last decade. Proprietors are self employed business owners who use Internal Revenue Service Schedule C to file their federal income tax. Wage and salary workers are all employees of any establishment (private or government), from executives to non-supervisory workers.

From 2000 to 2011, the number of non-farm proprietors grew by 10.7 million. Total wage and salary employment grew by only 105,000 between 2000 and 2011. Government employment, including federal, state and local, grew 1.36 million, while private employment declined by 1.26 million (Figure 1).

8. This looks like an interesting read: Living Faith: Everyday Religion and Mothers in Poverty. Christian Century writes:

For her award-winning book Living Faith: Everyday Religion and Mothers in Poverty, Susan Crawford Sullivan interviewed a diverse group of women who were living in poverty. She asked them about the challenges of parenting, working and surviving on little income. She discovered that many drew on strong religious beliefs as they struggled with everyday problems. Sullivan teaches sociology at the College of the Holy Cross.

 9. Business Insider reports that Millions Of Seniors Are Moving Back To Big Cities

10. Forbes explores How To Use Pinterest For Small Business

11. Atlantic explores Why the Boomers Are the Most Hated Generation. (I think part of it might be that we are obnoxious.)

12. RJS at Jesus Creed with another great post about the historicity of Adam and Eve: Jesus on Adam and Eve (RJS)

... There are ways to reconcile a literal Adam and Eve with the scientific data. I have posted on the question of Adam many times. See for example the last part of Evolution, Entropy, and Human Beings 2 or other posts on the question of Adam listed about 3/4 of the way down the Science and Faith index. Reconciling a literal Adam and Eve with the scientific data requires something of a stretch, but is not impossible if one feels that the theological teaching of the sweep of scripture requires Adam, Eve, and the Fall.

There are also ways to understand the sweep of scripture and the fallen nature of mankind without reference to a historical Adam and Eve. These do not necessarily diminish the inspiration and authority of scripture as witness to the work of God in the world.

This shouldn’t be a make or break issue. Rather, it is an issue where we need to spend more time and thought.

Dying and Booming Industries in the Next Decade

Business Insider: 12 US Industries That Will Collapse In The Next Decade

The long decline of American manufacturing isn't over yet.

Fifteen of the 20 fastest shrinking industries are in the manufacturing sector, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report on job growth from 2010 to 2020.

Government jobs, especially in the postal service, are also getting axed. ...

• Glass and glass product manufacturing
• Metalworking machinery manufacturing
• Miscellaneous manufacturing
• Federal government jobs except for the Postal Service and electric utilities
• Pesticide, fertilizer, and otheragricultural chemical manufacturing
• Metal ore mining
• Pipeline transportation
• Computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing
• Communications equipment manufacturing
• Postal service
• Leather and hide tanning and finishing, and other leather and allied product manufacturing
• Apparel knitting mills

14 US Industries That Will Boom In The Next Decade

There are lots of jobs in America if you know where to look.

The fastest-growing industries — according to a 2012 Bureau of Labor Statistics report — include ones tied to the aging population, like home health care services and offices of health care practitioners.

High tech industries are also doing well, and there's even a steady comeback happening in construction.

Between 2010 and 2020, the BLS projects an overall gain of 20.5 million jobs in America. ...

• Community and vocational rehabilitation services
• Facilities support services
• Other professional, scientific, and technical services
• Commercial and industrial machinery and equipment rental and leasing
• Construction
• Software publishers
• Offices of health practitioners
• Outpatient, laboratory, and other ambulatory care services
• Cement and concrete product manufacturing
• Computer systems design and related services
• Veneer, plywood, and engineered wood product manufacturing
• Management, scientific, and technical consulting services
• Individual and family services
• Home health care services

Business as Calling

Last summer, I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Thom Thomson, professor of finance at the University of Texas. Dr. Thomson was in Toronto a week ago preaching at his brother's church, Every Nation, Greater Toronto. The topic was "Business as Calling." This is a wonderful presentation! You can find the 30 sermon at Faith & the Marketplace Part 2: BUSINESS AS CALLING or by clicking below. For some reason, my player indicates it will be 78 minutes long, but it is actually about 30 minutes. (Disclosure: At 11:40 into the sermon, the author of the controversial Facebook post was me. I was intrigued that Dr. Thomson picked up on this post because I have privately used the responses to the post as an example of the deep cynicism toward business held by so many theological professionals.):

Here is the sermon setup:

A leading personal finance magazine published its list of the 10 best fields of study based on the potential they had of offering a steady, well-paying career. Some of you may already be pursuing these studies or are in these business areas, such as Pharmacy and Pharmacology, Nursing, Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Management Information Systems and Treatment Therapy Professions. As we read the New Testament in the Bible, we come across other popular professions: Jesus was a carpenter. Paul was a tentmaker. And Peter was a fisherman. All noble business pursuits providing a valuable service to the community and offering a means to make a good living. Our city – Toronto – is built on business. So how does faith enter the equation? Does it have a place? This week Dr. Thomas Thomson, a finance professor at the University of Texas, continues our series by giving us a fresh perspective on how faith can positively affect business and how business can be a worthy calling. Join us, and bring a friend, to Innis Town Hall at 10:30 a.m.

Mothers now top earners in 4 in 10 US households

AP: Mothers now top earners in 4 in 10 US households

WASHINGTON (AP) -- America's working mothers are now the primary breadwinners in a record 40 percent of households with children - a milestone in the changing face of modern families, up from just 11 percent in 1960.

The findings by the Pew Research Center, released Wednesday, highlight the growing influence of "breadwinner moms" who keep their families afloat financially. While most are headed by single mothers, a growing number are families with married mothers who bring in more income than their husbands.

Demographers say the change is all but irreversible and is likely to bring added attention to child-care policies as well as government safety nets for vulnerable families. Still, the general public is not at all sure that having more working mothers is a good thing. ...

 

The Active Life - 8. “Threatened With Resurrection": Acts of Death or New Life. Parker Palmer

Today we come to the eighth and final chapter in Parker Palmer's The Active Life: A Spirituality of Creativity, Work, and Caring, titled "' Threatened With Resurrection': Acts of Death or New Life."

The Horizons of Action

In this final chapter, Palmer offers insight into the meaning of resurrection. He opens by reminding us that we live our lives in view of a coming horizon. How we view that horizon shapes our action. If all we see is death on the horizon, we can become fearful and despondent.

But when we envision a horizon that holds the hope of life, we are free to act without fear, free to act in truth and love and justice today because those very qualities seem to shape our own destiny. (139)

The hope of resurrection can set us free. Yet Palmer offers an interesting insight into resurrection.

I have sometimes feared life itself, and the movement toward new life, more than I have feared death in its various forms. (140)

We are prone to become accustomed to our pain and dysfunctions, and losing them … dying to them … threatens our very identity and ability to make sense of the world.

Death in various forms is sometimes comforting, while resurrection and new life can be demanding and threatening. If I lived as if resurrection were real, and allowed myself to die for the sake of new life, what might I be called upon to do? (142)

Who Threatens Us?

In the second section of this chapter, Palmer turns to a poem by Julia Esquivel titled They Have Threatened Us With Resurrection. (You can follow the link to read the poem.) The context for the poem is the murder and repression of peasants in Guatemala from the 1950s to 1980s. Her poem suggests that both the oppressors and the martyred oppressed threaten us with resurrection.

"… On the one hand, we fear the killers, but not simply because they want to kill us. We fear them because they test our convictions about resurrection, they test our willingness to be brought into a larger life than the one we know. On the other hand, we fear the innocent victims of the killers, those who have died for love and justice and peace. Though they are our friends, we fear them because they call us to follow them in "this marathon of Hope." If we were to take their calling seriously, we ourselves would have to undergo some form of dying."

And …

So we huddle together in our conspiracy of silence, trying to ignore both the death and their murderers, trying to ignore the ambiguous call of the new life that lies beyond death. (148)

As Palmer notes, the "Us" in the poem's title isn't just about the killers and the killed. We, the ones observing this, are part of the "Us" as well.

The Meaning of Resurrection

Toward the end of this section. Palmer writes:

For Esquivel, there is no resurrection of isolated individuals. She is simply not concerned about private resurrections, yours or mine or her own. Each of us is resurrected only as we enter into the network of relationships called community, a network that embraces not only living persons but people who have died, and nonhuman creatures as well. Resurrection has personal significance – if we understand the person as a communal being – but it is above all a corporate, social and political event, an event in which justice and truth and love come to fruition. (152)

I think Palmer writes some important stuff here. Resurrection isn't simply being raised into a new life and a personal relationship with Jesus. Resurrection is the consummation of the Kingdom of God. It is the realization of the world that God intended from the beginning. Resurrection is threatening to our complacent existence, but it is also the hope that animates us.

Resurrection Into Community

Death is our constant companion. We can live in denial of it, or we can embrace it as our companion.

… if we try to gain life by denying death, the paradoxical result is that we become lifeless. This is why "disillusionment" is so important, for by losing our illusions we can tap the energy of the reality that lies beyond them. Once we are thoroughly disillusioned we can say, with Thoreau, "Reality is fabulous!" No matter how difficult reality may be, it contains more life than any illusion.

And …

The reality is that sooner or later all we have will be taken from us by death. But if we can live with the threat of resurrection in our bones, then we will live truly and well. Then we will join in a corporate witness that is immortal, a witness that is only strengthened by the forces of death, a witness that is in itself the resurrection life. (155)

Palmer goes on to say:

For many of us, the life we need to lose is the life lived in the image of the autonomous self, and the life we shall then find is that of the self embedded in community – a community that connects us not only to other people but the natural world as well. No wonder resurrection is threatening … (156)

He wraps up the chapter with this:

In the active life of work, creativity, and caring we are given endless opportunities to lose ourselves so that we may find ourselves, to join with others in the great community so that free from the fear of isolation, we may become who we are. It is the testimony of Julia Esquivel that by joyfully embracing the threat of resurrection we can work, create, and care in ways that take us not toward the futility of death but toward the fullness of new life for ourselves and for the whole of creation. (157)

As I reflected on this chapter and the whole book, it drove home a very important point to me: it is too frequently overlooked. Living the resurrection life is frequently cast in terms of getting on board with some "big deal"… going to an unreached community with the message of Jesus or losing ourselves in some great struggle for justice or compassion. I do not doubt that the resurrection life leads some of us for a period into such "big deals." But as I've read Scot McKnight write about other topics, "This is true but not true enough." I read Palmer to say that resurrection life penetrates all our work, creativity, and caring, which means all of our work, creativity, and caring is mission. The "big deal" is not an escape from secular and trivial life into a sacred and meaningful life. When it emerges, the "big deal" springs from having ALL of life deeply embedded in resurrection life. Our most menial daily acts are opportunities for service in the Kingdom of God. The big deal turns out to be the daily small deal.

 

Questions:

How have you been threatened by resurrection?

How do react to the idea of "resurrection into community," rather than simply an event tied to your personal narrative?

Do you experience your daily life as deeply connected to the resurrection? Why or why not?

Previous [Index]

Saturday Links

1. The Atlantic says Just 27% of BA's Have Jobs Related to Their Major? Don't Believe the Fed's New Stat

2. 100 fastest growing inner city businesses

From a pet relocation service, a wine lifestyle marketer, to a scrap metal regenerator, America's urban core is home to a variety of fast-growing companies. Here's the top 100, as ranked by the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City.

3. Factory safety: Battle of the brands

... This approach has been criticised by the Workers Rights Consortium because, unlike its plan, it contains no binding commitment to help fund improvements to make factories safe. Yet it is debatable whether wealthy factory owners really lack funds to make factories safe, as opposed to the lack of incentive due to the Bangladesh government's failure to enforce its own building code. WalMart points out that the government has now started to close unsafe fatories, 19 so far (presumably because of the constant protests by locals since the collapse of Rana Plaza). It says its new approach will detect unsafe factories significantly faster than the Workers Rights Consortium's plan.

Perhaps it would be better if everyone agreed on a common approach. But if there must be competition, it is surely better that it is over how to make factories safer than the alternative.

4. Economist Timothy Taylor with some interesting thoughts on Spending on America's Pets

5. Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

While psychologists can't know exactly what goes on inside our heads, they have, through surveys and laboratory studies, come up with a set of traits that correlate well with conspiracy belief. In 2010, Swami and a co-author summarized this research in The Psychologist, a scientific journal. They found, perhaps surprisingly, that believers are more likely to be cynical about the world in general and politics in particular. Conspiracy theories also seem to be more compelling to those with low self-worth, especially with regard to their sense of agency in the world at large. Conspiracy theories appear to be a way of reacting to uncertainty and powerlessness.

6. Why You Feel Smart Around Some People But Dumb Around Others

... Experiments show that when people report feeling comfortable with a conversational partner, they are judged by those partners and by observers as actually being more witty.

It's just one example of the powerful influence that social factors can have on intelligence. Research in this area should prompt us to think about intelligence not as a "lump of something that's in our heads," as the psychologist Joshua Aronson puts it, but as "a transaction among people."...

... This research has important implications for the way we educate children and the way we manage employees. For one thing, we should replace high-stakes, one-shot tests with the kind of unobtrusive and ongoing assessments that give teachers and managers a more accurate sense of people's true abilities. We should also put in place techniques for reducing anxiety and building self-confidence that take advantage of our social natures. And we should ensure that the social climate in schools and workplaces is one of warmth and trust, not competition and exclusion.

Professor Aronson calls the doltishness induced by an uncomfortable social situation "conditional stupidity." We should use that insight to create the conditions for brilliance. ...

7. Do those who doubt climate catastrophism lack scientific credibility?

8. Everything Wrong With America In One Simple Image (INFOGRAPHIC) The article is a bit over the top, but this graphic was interesting:

9. America's Declining Teen Birth Rate, Explained in 3 Charts

10. Suburbia Needs Jesus, Too Interesting piece that has caused some buzz in social media. Her point about the centrality of everyday life is something I resonate with.

11. Teenagers Are Actually Starting To Use Twitter... In Part To Escape The 'Drama' And Parents On Facebook

12. Methodists May Discourage Those Over 45 from Becoming Pastors

13. How does copyright work in space?

CHRIS HADFIELD has captured the world's heart, judging by the 14m YouTube views of his free-fall rendition of David Bowie's "Space Oddity", recorded on the International Space Station (ISS). The Canadian astronaut's clear voice and capable guitar-playing were complemented by his facility in moving around in the microgravity of low-earth orbit. But when the man fell to Earth in a neat and safe descent a few days ago, after a five-month stay in orbit, should he have been greeted by copyright police? Commander Hadfield was only 250 miles (400 km) up, so he was still subject to terrestrial intellectual-property regimes, which would have applied even if he had flown the "100,000 miles" mentioned in the song's lyrics or millions of kilometres to Mars. His five-minute video had the potential to create a tangled web of intellectual-property issues. How does copyright work in space? ...

The Active Life - 7. “Loaves and Fishes": Acts of Scarcity or Abundance. Parker Palmer

Today we come to the seventh chapter in Parker Palmers’ The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring, titled “’Loaves and Fishes’: Acts of Scarcity or Abundance.” We will begin with a review of Palmer’s main points. I agree with his general conclusion in this chapter, but I find his path to his conclusions problematic (more below.) The story in this chapter is the story of the Loaves and Fishes from the Gospel of Mark:

The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes

The apostle returned to Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a lonely place by themselves. Now many saw them going, and knew them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns, and got there ahead of them. As he landed he saw a great throng, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a lonely place, and the hour is now late; send them away, to go into the country and villages round about and buy themselves something to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?” And he said to them. “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” Then he commanded them all to sit down by companies upon the green grass. So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. And taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples to set before the people; and divided the two fish among them all. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces and of the fish. And those who ate the loaves were five thousand people. (Mark 6:30-44, RSV. Inclusive language by Palmer.)

Palmer sees action and contemplation as inseparable in this story. Jesus and the disciples intend to take a break, but the crowds follow them. This pressed home ever clearer the gifts they had to give and their own need to give them. But unlike the Angel in Buber’s story, these actions are not from “above.” The passage says Jesus acted out of compassion. It was responsive, not reflexive. It sprang from a sense of inner truth, much like the experience of the woodcarver.

But the focus of the story is this:

Hunger and food, of both the literal and metaphorical sorts, are the dominant images of this story. I want to translate these images into generic terms of scarcity and abundance. … In this story, as throughout his active life, Jesus wanted to help people penetrate the illusion of scarcity and act out the reality of abundance. (124)

The Scarcity Assumption

The quality of our active lives depends heavily on whether we assume a world of scarcity or a world of abundance. Do we inhabit a universe where the basic things that people need – from food and shelter to a sense of competence and of being loved – are ample in nature? Or is this a universe where such goods are in short supply, available only to those who have the power to beat everyone else to the store? The nature of our action will be heavily conditioned by the way we answer those bedrock questions. In a universe of scarcity, only people who know the arts of competing, even of making war will be able to survive. But in a universe of abundance, acts of generosity and community become not only possible but fruitful as well. (124-125)

From here, Palmer enters a critique of contemporary economic systems. He views competition as a result of false consciousness about scarcity. He says:

When we Americans, who comprise some six percent of the world’s population, consume over a third of the world’s resources, we create real scarcity for others.  (125)

By extrapolation, I understand him to believe that there is a fixed amount of resources in the world. Those resources would be more than sufficient for all if redistributed. A direct consequence of some having too much is that others do not have enough. Furthermore, he complains:

The cash-exchange mechanism makes it so much easier for us to ignore the gross inequities in the distribution of food and shelter around the world. (126)

In contrast …

When we are in community, many things we think we must buy in the marketplace suddenly become available free of charge. (127)

… and …

Community and abundance go hand in hand; the two words are nearly synonymous. (128)

… and …

… the first step in any action that assumes abundance and wants to amplify it is to perceive, and receive, those resources already present to us in the abundance of life itself. (129)

In my estimation, Palmer is a profound philosopher/theologian but not a very good economist. More on that at the end.

The True Miracle

Many people focus on a “magical” quality in this story. But they may be missing the intended personal application. Like the woodcarver in the earlier story, we might say, “the Spirits did it,” seeing ourselves as bystanders. Palmer writes:

What Jesus does instead of magic is to act on the assumption of abundance. First, he divides the crowd into “companies” of hundreds and fifties and commands them all “to sit down … upon the green grass.” His miracle begins with the simple act of gathering the faceless crowd of five thousand into smaller, face-to-face communities. This is the stock-in-trade of every good community organizer, this clustering of people into more intimate settings where everyday miracles have a chance to happen. (130)

… and …

In the faceless crowd we experience scarcity – a scarcity of contact, of concern, of affirmation, of love. But as the crowd is replaced by community, an invisible sense of abundance arises long before the community produces any visible goods or services. True abundance resides in the simple experience of people being present to one another and for one another.  (130)

Palmer says he feels no need to dismiss a supernatural interpretation of the story, but he suspects a different miracle was happening. As the small groups of people saw the disciples being generous, they were inspired to share what they had with each other.  He writes ...

… the experience of community it is itself abundance. In the faceless crowd we experience scarcity – a scarcity of contact, of concern, of affirmation, of love. But as the crowd is replaced by community, an invisible sense of abundance arises long before the community produces any visible goods and services.

… and conversely …

Our refusal to believe that we have enough is one cause of the competition that has resulted in such an inequitable distribution of resources at home and around the world. (132)

Leadership for Community

Palmer closes the chapter by noting how action and contemplation are intertwined in this story. The presenting issue is the need to feed so many people. That leads to contemplation of the problem. That contemplation informs Jesus that there is enough. There is abundance. But the realization is pointless without action. So by active participation in the truth of God’s abundance and sending his followers to act on such a basis, a miracle happens. That miracle transforms individuals and communities, leading them into deeper contemplation of God and the truth of the world God created. Abundance requires our participation, but it is not our creation. So also, with community.

“But even as we act to evoke community, we must remember that community itself is a gift to be received, not a goal to be achieved. We have a strong tendency to make community one more project among many, to struggle and strain to come into relationship with one another, only to find that the stress of the very efforts exhausts us and drives us apart. Still, time after time we try to “make” community happen in the same effortful and self-defeating ways. Why? Because as long as we are the makers, we remain in control; and as long as we are in control, we will not be vulnerable to the risks of true community.” (136)

A Rejoinder

Palmer has some very important truths in this chapter, but his misunderstanding of economics shades things in some unfortunate ways.

First, scarcity is real! God may have created a world of abundant natural resources, but none are useful to humanity without human action (apart from air and sunshine). Matter, energy, and data must be transformed from less useful to more useful forms through human imagination and labor. Everything we need cannot be fabricated at once. Each human being has a finite level of labor, combined with a finite number of hours to work on any given day. Priorities must be set. Production capacity is scarce relative to what we need at any given moment. How will we decide which things to do in which order? How can abundance best be realized given the absolute scarcity of goods and services? Economics studies how we go about these decisions. We can acknowledge the abundance of resources God has entrusted to us. But economics acknowledges the scarcity of goods and services with the appreciation that generation of abundance is humanity’s aim.

Second, Palmer says, “When we Americans, who comprise some six percent of the world’s population, consume over a third of the world’s resources, we create real scarcity for others.” (125) This statement is incorrect in two technical ways.

• The USA may have consumed one-third of the resources the world consumed in a year, but it did not consume one-third of the world’s resources. Each year, only a small fraction of global resources is consumed.
• At the time Palmer was writing twenty years ago, the USA percentage of the global economy was about 23%, and the USA share of the world population was about 4.5%. Since 1999, the USA share of the global economy has been shrinking by a fraction each year, down to about 19% today. The share of the world population is only slightly smaller.

But his statement and analysis are indicative of a deeper conceptual flaw: Palmer sees the world economy as a zero-sum game. The world has a fixed number of goods and services (not just resources). That number is constant from year to year. If someone has more than the average, others must have correspondingly less. With generosity, we would equal out the imbalance in the zero-sum game.

The world economy is not a zero-sum game. Since Palmer wrote his book, the world economy has grown by about 50%. The USA share of the world economy has declined to 19% over the last two decades. The share has also dropped for Europe (27% to 21%) and Japan (9% to 6%). Yet all of these economies have grown over the same period. How is it possible for their shares of the world economy to decline as their economies become larger? Because regions outside these nations are growing even faster (like China, 2.5% to 12.5%, and India, 2.5% to 5%), the size of the global economy is growing. Again, the world economy is not a zero-sum game.

Mohammad Yunnis, “Banker to the Poor” wrote Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism.

“To me, the poor are like Bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a six-inch deep flower pot, you get a perfect replica of the tallest tree, but it is only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted; only the soil-base you provided was inadequate.

Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong with their seeds. Only society never gave them a base to grow on.”

Just as there are bonsai people, there are also bonsai economies in nations across the globe. They can flourish just as much given the right soil as the other trees.

(I know some will interject here that such growth will exhaust our resources. It will not … or at least it need not. Such thinking discounts human creativity and imagination. That discussion is for another day.)

Third, Palmer fails to distinguish between face-to-face community and commercial society. He correctly identifies the need for face-to-face interaction with others if community is to emerge. I affirm all he has to say about community. Within such community, we come to know each other truly. We can share and care based on personal knowledge of need and merit. Attempts to substitute market exchange to fulfill many of the things we find in community are rightly challenged. But each of us can only be in true community with a few dozen people, at most. How do we coordinate economic activity beyond the scope of face-to-face community?

Most things we use today, from #2 pencils to high-tech gear, require the seamless coordination of countless thousands (millions?) of people scattered across the planet. We cannot accomplish them in face-to-face community. Prices in a market system help people know the demand for their work and the goods they produce. Prices are an information system that coordinates our behavior. Without prices and monetary exchange, people cannot know how much to buy or sell. Without this information, there is no way to achieve substantial prosperity. People are left only to the resources immediately available to them in local community. There is much less to be generous with.

Palmer writes:

“The cash-exchange mechanism makes it so much easier for us to ignore the gross inequities in the distribution of food and shelter around the world.” (132)

No! As I said above, employing the cash-exchange mechanism in face-to-face community is often inappropriate, but the cash-exchange mechanism is absolutely essential for commercial society and for reducing inequities around the world. Certainly, generosity in the form of aid to relieve immediate need is required, but the bigger issue is that bonsai people need to be transplanted into better soil. They need to be included in networks of productivity and exchange. Just as it is foolhardy to make face-to-face community a matter of market exchange, so too is it foolhardy to view commercial society as face-to-face community writ large.

My Application

With all this in mind, what do we make of the story? I begin with a question: If the story is about people being inspired to share with others based on the actions of Jesus and the disciples, where did the bread and fish come from that the people had stashed away? The bread came from the labor of clearing a field, planting seeds, nourishing a crop of wheat, harvesting the crop, adding ingredients to make dough, and then baking that dough into bread. The fish came from putting a boat into the water, dropping a net, hauling in a catch, salting and preserving the fish, and then retrieving the fish for such an occasion. Because of human imagination and labor, people had something they could share with others in face-to-face community.

Jesus inspired generosity by offering the loaves and fish. Elsewhere in the New Testament, Jesus tells us we will accomplish much greater things than he did. If generosity in face-to-face community is first grounded in productive labor, then how much greater can the generosity be if each of us were radically more productive, generating more to share? We can’t be in community with millions of other people. But we can be sure that bonsai people are given better soil and included in networks of exchange and productivity, making the most of their imagination and labor, allowing them to be generous with each other in face-to-face community.

I think Palmer is right about scarcity and abundance in the sense that we too often mistake want for need. Our drive for these “needs” inclines us to depersonalize others, abuse nature, and become stingy with what we have been given. This is not to say the only things we are to pursue are minimalist needs. Rather, we must prioritize our wants in relation to other considerations within the Kingdom of God. We need to be grateful for what we have. When superfluous wants to rise to the status of needs, we experience a scarcity created by our imagination. We become fearful and turned inward. Community is lost.

Leadership for community is not just about inspiring generosity. It is also about inspiring and creating the optimal conditions for expanding abundance, about ever-increasing the fruitfulness of the garden in ways that honor God. Like the woodcarver, it requires delving deep into the reality of our context (economics in this case) to know how to act truthfully.

 

Questions

In what ways have you felt scarcity? When have you felt scarcity the strongest? When have you been most aware of abundance? What do these experiences teach us about action in our daily existence?

 Does my critique of Palmer ring true with you? Why or why not?

 What do you think Jesus intended to communicate with his actions on this occasion?

 

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The Active Life - 6. “Jesus in the Desert": The Temptations of Action. Parker Palmer

Continuing our series on Parker Palmer's The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring, we look at Chapter 6, "' Jesus in the Desert': The Temptations of Action." The story in this chapter is the temptation of Jesus in the desert as given in Luke 4:1-15, (Jerusalem Bible, modified by Palmer with inclusive language.)

Temptations of Jesus in the Desert

Filled with Holy Spirit, Jesus left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit through the wilderness, being tempted by the devil for forty days. During that time he ate nothing and at the end he was hungry. Then the devil said to him, "If you are the Chosen One, tell this stone to turn into a loaf." But Jesus replied, "Scripture says: 'People do not live on bread alone.'"

Then leading him to a height, the devil showed him in a moment of time all the kingdoms of the world and said to him, "I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms, for it has been committed to me and I give it to anyone I choose. Worship me, then, and it shall all be yours." But Jesus answered him, "Scripture says, 'You must worship the Lord your God, and serve God alone.'"

Then he led him to Jerusalem and made him stand on the parapet of the Temple. "If you are the Chosen One," he said to him "throw yourself down from here, for Scripture says: 'God will put angels in charge of you to guard you,' and again: 'They will hold you up on their hands in case you hurt your foot against a stone.'" But Jesus answered him, "It has been said: 'You must not put the Lord your God to the test.'"

Having exhausted all these ways of tempting him, the devil left him, to return at the appointed time.

Jesus, with the power of the Spirit in him, returned to Galilee; and his reputation spread throughout the countryside. He taught in their synagogues and everyone praised him. (100)

So far, Palmer has used stories from outside the Christian tradition for his reflections. We are so familiar with Christian stories it is hard to see them anew. As we turn this story from Luke, he wants us to listen carefully to the story and not to minimize the struggle and the suffering presented in the story, both for Jesus and, by implication, for us. He also reminds us that "The temptations story makes it clear that God's Spirit is not safe but dangerous, that those who act on the Spirit's urging will sometimes find themselves hungry and thirsty and filled with fear." (102) Reflecting on last week's story by Martin Buber, Palmer wonders:

"Is the devil in this biblical story an angel who tried to set things right but refused to learn from his failure? Is this devil still trying to set things right by finding an ally who is willing to risk the same mistake? Let us keep these questions alive while we explore the temptations that Jesus faced as he embarked on his active life." (103)

Turn This Stone to Bread

Palmer says this is, in part, the temptation to prove our identity. The devil begins, "If you are the Chosen One, …"

"Jesus does not regard himself as accountable for his calling to any voice except God's, so in his refusal to "prove" anything to the devil he is actually proving that his is the Chosen One as he himself understands it." (106)

But there is more. It is a temptation to be relevant, to meet a surface need.

"Like the woodcarver, who fasted not merely from food but from praise and criticism, gain and success, Jesus' real need is for inward confirmation of his mission, a confirmation he is more likely to fine in the emptiness of fasting than in gratification of bodily needs." (107)

By pressing to be relevant, we can sabotage true needs. "The temptation to be relevant is often the temptation to deal with only the external illusion of a problem and ignore its internal truth." (108)

I Will Give You Power

Palmer says, "The power that tempts us is never power with or for others, but always power over something or someone." (109) The imagery of "height," being above it all, is critical here. Height gives us two illusions.

"The first illusion is that once we are above it all we need not be immersed in the suffering of those who are under our power. … The second illusion is that a power that keeps us above it all is a power that will not corrupt us." (109)

But possibly the most disarming response to the devil's offer would have been to ask the question, "Does this guy really have the thing he says he can give me?" (110) Too often, we strive for things believing they will bring us benefits beyond the thing itself … freedom, status, belonging, or meaning. What is being offered is not capable of delivering what is promised. Palmer remarks that, "Were Jesus to worship the devil in this case, it would not be so much immoral as just plain foolish." (111) Such temptations should not entrap us, yet they so easily do.

Throw Yourself Down

Palmer notes that Jesus was "led" to these various tests by the devil and that it is interesting that Jesus offers no resistance. Earlier in the chapter, he says that the root Latin word for temptation, "tempartare," means to touch, to try or test, to feel experimentally. (103)  Palmer writes:

"… Resisting temptations does not mean refusing to go into place where one is tempted, does not mean evading the quandaries of one's life. We must go to those places because we have to, because they are necessary way station on the journey, because the journey requires energy that should not be squandered on fighting the journey itself. The real work is to go where we are led, to see what is there, to respond out of our own truth." (112)

Once again, Palmer thinks that Jesus' response is not out of an ethical "ought" but out of wisdom concerning the circumstances. "I do not think it would be morally wrong to test God by jumping off a high building to see if God would save you. It would be stupid." (113) To me, Palmer is not very clear about what he means in this discussion. I gather that he is saying that God could intervene, but God does not intervene to protect our petty agendas. God intervenes to further God's agenda. Acting as though we have the power to compel God to serve our ends is stupidity. That, at least, makes sense to me.

Palmer writes that "Henry Nouwen calls this third temptation the temptation to be spectacular, and it may be the most difficult of the three to resist." (113) He writes:

"This is, perhaps, the temptation to be charismatic, to inspire the sort of awe in people that leaves your ego continually inflated but that lacks the obligation that might pull you back to earth." (113)

The Temptation to be Inadequate

Palmer closes with this important observation in the chapter's final section.

"… But the temptation that afflicts many of us is that of weak ego—the temptation to think of ourselves as irrelevant, powerless, and utterly mundane, as people in whom Satan would never have the slightest interest.

On the surface, the temptations of the strong ego and the weak ego seem quite contrary to one another. But paradoxically, their origins and outcomes are the same. Both destroy our capacity for right action because both proceed from the same mistaken premise: the assumption that effective action requires us to be relevant, powerful, and spectacular, that only by being so can we have a real impact on the world." (114)

And later:

"Right action requires only that we respond faithfully to our inner truth and to the truth around us." (115)

But this is not the end of the temptation problem. Anyone who rightly rejects the call to be relevant, powerful, and spectacular will end up compellingly impacting people. Such a person will receive praise, just as news of Jesus spread through the countryside and he received praise. Then we are tempted to pursue praise. This passage was especially insightful about such praiseworthy people:

"There are two problems at work here. One is the public's tendency to project onto this man a quality that they want to possess but are unable to find in themselves, so they burden their hero with the impossible task of living out a part of their lives for them. The other problem is that their hero, like most of us, may find the hero role attractive, may seek to keep those projections coming, may even be willing to give up the solitary life that he finds so valuable for the sake of praise and fame – as I might, if given the chance." (118)

And finally:

"Right action demands that we find a deeper and truer source of energy and guidance than relevance, power, and spectacle can provide." (119)

 

Questions

In what ways have you experienced the temptation to be relevant, powerful, and spectacular? Have you experienced the temptation to be inadequate? How so?

Can you think of people in your own life who seem to be both the extremes of the temptations of Christ and the temptation to be inadequate? How would you characterize their lives?

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[Index]

Saturday Links

 1. The High Calling published an article I wrote. I linked it earlier, but here it is again in an act of shameless self-promotion. It goes to some core issues I'm trying to put into a book. Six Ideas on How to Lead Congregations to Integrate Work and Discipleship

2. Should Pastors Know How Much Church Members Give?

A recent study found that churches where pastors know how much is donated and by whom were more likely to be doing well financially. However, only half of the 3,000 responding congregations (and only 39 percent of evangelical ones) told the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving that their pastors knew this information.

What experts said (starting with "yes" and moving to "no" ): ...

3. Model for megacities? Mexico City cleans up its air.

... With urbanization advancing, economies expanding, and climate change a concern, Mexico City has emerged as an unlikely environmental example for cities in developing countries suffering similar air quality issues.

Mexico City recorded only eight days with air quality considered "good" in 1992. That compares with 248 "good" air days in 2012, reflecting the success of initiatives to relocate industry, kick clunkers off the capital's streets, encourage cleaner technologies, and expand public transit and cycling options. ...

4. Unmanned Drones May Have Their Greatest Impact on Agriculture

Talk about beating swords into plowshares. The mention of drones may conjure up images of Star Wars-like spacecraft or hell-fire war machines. But the controversial technology may prove to have its greatest impact in a peaceful endeavor: farming. ...

... The market for agricultural drones lies in the technology's ability to provide farmers with a bird's-eye view of their land. Historically, farmers have walked their land to survey it—looking for areas that need more fertilizer or water. More recently many have begun using small passenger planes to look at their lots from the air. But since airplane rental and fuel costs can quickly run into five figures, there's strong demand for cheaper alternatives. ...

... "Eighty percent of the utilization, once we are allowed to have Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the national airspace, in the first 10 years is going to be in precision agriculture," said Michael Toscano, CEO of AUVSI. "You will have a situation where you can spray crops by a UAS that flies 2 or 3 feet above the plants. You can control the downwash because you can put the pesticides on the plants and not in the ground where it gets to the groundwater."

"It sounds trivial but those numbers really add up a lot," said Rory Paul of Volt Aerial Robotics. "If we could save farms 1 percent on inputs like herbicide and pesticide and increase their yields by 1 percent, you are looking at multibillion dollar savings."...

5. Fascinating piece about the The Historical Horror of Childbirth

... Such stories were not at all shocking, as a woman's chances of dying during childbirth were between one and two percent -for each birth. If a woman gave birth to eight or ten children, her chances of eventually dying in childbirth were pretty high. The infant mortality rate was even higher. The chances of a child dying before his fifth birthday were estimated to be around 20 percent, depending on the community (accurate records are scarce). In addition to the fear of death or the fear of the child dying, there was no pain relief during labor, except for whisky in some places. ...

6. "INDIA will soon have a fifth of the world's working-age population." India's moment

7. 'Late-life crisis' hits the over-60s

"Of the 33% who went through a crisis, bereavement was the most common trigger, followed by personal illness or injury."

8. Hispanic High School Graduates Pass Whites in Rate of College Enrollment

 

9. Atlantic Cities asks the question that has interested me for years: Why Do So Many People Think Gun Violence Is Getting Worse?

"Twenty years into this safer era, we still don't know quite how we got here. Perhaps in absence of a logical narrative, many Americans simply find it hard to believe this is true."

10. People Don't Wear A Shocking Amount Of Their Clothes.

"The average person only wears about 20% of the clothing in his or her closets. Most clothing goes unworn because it's the result of an impulse buy or doesn't fit correctly, Ray A. Smith at the Wall Street Journal reports."

11. This week was the 20th anniversary of the birth of the World Wide Web. The Day Distance Disappeared

12. Great piece! The Tech Trends to Fear the Most: It's Not All Good

13. The market 'bubble' you've never heard of: "Some economists are worried that farmland prices are nearing bubble territory. How bad can it be if no one's heard of it?"

14. Michael Barone says College Bubble Bursts After Decades of Extravagance

15. Whatever happened to these Fortune 500 companies? "Here are seven companies from the first Fortune 500 that have since been merged, split up, or put out to pasture."

16. Dwight Lee has a thought-provoking piece about The Two Moralities of Ebenezer Scrooge.

17. The global economy: Welcome to the post-BRIC world

18. Development finance in Africa

19. Toxic Waste Sites Take Toll on Millions in Poor Nations

New studies attempt to quantify just how harmful the rampant exposure to lead and other chemicals is in the developing world.

20. James Pethokoukis with a provocative article about income inequality: Why A Decline In Income Inequality Would Be Bad News

Why has income inequality been rising in advanced economies — it's not just the US, people — over the past few decades? The economic consensus mostly explains the phenomenon as a race between accelerating technological change and expanding education. And the rise of inequality shows, as JPMorgan economist Mike Feroli puts it in a new report, that the "pace of technological advance has outstripped the ability of the educational system to supply the human capital skills needed to utilize this technology, leading to out-sized earnings gains for those who have such skills (the so-called college wage premium)."...

Six Ideas on How to Lead Congregations to Integrate Work and Discipleship

The High Calling: Six Ideas on How to Lead Congregations to Integrate Work and Discipleship

“How can we create a congregation where work and discipleship are truly integrated?” This is a question I am hearing more often, even though much has been written about a theology of work in recent years.

Pastors and church leaders are looking for a programmatic strategy. I don’t think there is one. ...

This is a piece I wrote for the High Calling. They posted it yesterday. What do you think? What ideas do you have?

The Active Life - 5. “The Angel”: Action, Failure and Suffering. Parker Palmer

Today we move to chapter five, "The Angel": Action, Failure and Suffering, in Parker Palmer's The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring. This chapter features a story by Martin Buber, "The Angel and the World's Dominion."

To preface this story, Palmer notes that Martin Buber was a Jewish philosopher, and what he writes comes out of that perspective:

From the outset Jews have had to confront suffering and holocaust, to wrestle continually with the stark question, Why? In the midst of Jewish history, Hasidism arose as a mystical affirmation of the spark of light that is always found in the heart of darkness, a spark that can ignite human hope and action even in the deadliest of times. (79)

Here is Buber's story.

The Angel and the World's Dominion

Martin Buber

There was a time when the Will of the Lord, Whose hand has the power to create and destroy all things, unleashed an endless torrent of pain and sickness over the earth. The air grew heavy with the moisture of tears, and a dim exhalation of sighs clouded it over. Even the legions that surround God's throne were not immune to the hovering sadness. One angel, in fact, was so deeply moved by the sufferings he saw below, that his soul grew quite restless. When he lifted his voice in song with the others, a note of perplexity sounded among the strains of pure faith; his thoughts rebelled and contended with the Lord. He could no longer understand why death and deprivation need serve as connecting links in the great Chain of Events. Then one day he felt to his horror that the eye of All-Being was piercing his own eye and uncovering the confusion in his heart. Pulling himself together, he came before the Lord, but when he tried to talk, his throat dried up. Nevertheless, the Lord called him by name and gently touched his lips. The angel began to speak. He begged God to place the administration of the Earth in his hands for a year's time, that he might lead it to an era of well-being. The angelic bands trembled at this audacity. But at that same moment Heaven grew bright with the radiance of God's smile. He looked at the supplicant with great love, as He announced His agreement. When the angel stood up again, he too was shining.

And so a year of joy and sweetness visited the Earth. The shining angel poured the great profusion of his merciful heart over the most anguished of her children, on those who were benumbed and terrified by want. The groans of the sick and dying were no longer heard in the land. The angel's companion in the steely armor, who only a short time before had been rushing and roaring through the air, stepped aside now, waiting peevishly with lowered sword, relieved of his official duties. The earth floated through a fecund sky that left her with the burden of new vegetation.  When summer was at its height, people moved singing through the full, yellow fields; never had such abundance existed in the memory. At harvest time, it seemed likely that the walls would burst or the roofs fly off, if they were going to find room to store their crops.

Proud and contented, the shining angel basked in his own glory. For by the time the first snow of winter covered the valleys, and dominion over the earth reverted into God's hands, he had parceled out such an enormous bounty that the people of the earth would surely be enjoying his gifts for many years to come.

But one cold day, late in the year, a multitude of voices rose heavenwards in a great cry of anguish. Frightened by the sound, the angel journeyed down to the Earth and, dressed as a pilgrim, entered the first house along the way. The people there, having threshed the grain and ground it into flour, had then started baking bread—but, alas, when they took the bread out of the oven, it fell to pieces, and the pieces were unpalatable; they filled the mouth with a disgusting taste, like clay. And this was precisely what the Angel found in the second house and in the third and everywhere that he set foot. People were lying on the floor, tearing their hair and cursing the King of the World, who had deceived their miserable hearts with His false blessing.

The angel flew away and collapsed at his Master's feet. "Lord," he cried, "help me to understand where my power and judgment were lacking."

Then God raised his voice and spoke: Behold a truth which is known to me, and only to me from the beginning of time, a truth too deep and dreadful for your delicate, generous hands, my sweet apprentice —it is this, that the Earth must be nourished with putrefaction and covered with shadows that its seeds may bring forth — and it is this, that souls must be made fertile with flood and sorrow, that through them the Great Work may be born." (79-81)

Where Angels Fear to Tread

So was the angel caring and compassionate or full of arrogance? Palmer believes he was both:

Our action is often a mixture of ego and innocence, and we will not become whole until we can embrace that simple fact. If we wait for purity of motive, we will never act, or our action will be immaterial. If we abandon hope for a 'second innocence,' our action will merely multiply cynicism. (82)

And later:

Our most constructive impulse is often accompanied by a destructive impulse, made all the more destructive by the fact that we usually remain oblivious to this sinister energy within us. (82)

This duality was present in the angel, as it is with us. But Palmer reminds us that the angel is not the same at the end of the story as he was at the beginning. If we embrace the presence of this tension, we can grow to greater wisdom as the angel did.

Some see the angel motivated by compassion at the story's start, but Palmer does not. Compassion means being with another. But the angel's "… relation to that suffering was both visual and vertical: he saw it rather than touched it, and he kept himself above it rather than entering into it." (83) Only at the end of the story is he motivated by the horror to "journey down to earth" to understand what has happened.

And here is the rub. "What we usually learn, once we are there, is that there is no "fix" for the person who suffers, only the slow and painful process of walking through the suffering to whatever lies on the other side." (84) Our attempts at "fixing" things is really an effort to distance ourselves from the pain of others.

If you take my advice, and do it right, you will get well and I will be off the hook. But if you do not follow my advice, or do not follow it properly, I am off the hook nonetheless: I have done the best I could, and your continued suffering is clearly your fault. (85)

Meaningful action requires coming close to others with compassion.

The Healing Power of Failure

Key to the angel's transformation is his willingness to enter into his failure, to understand it, and learn from it. He does not run away from it and minimize it. Palmer tells a wonderful story about a wealthy white suburban congregation yoked with an urban black congregation. After three years of making money and skills available, nothing meaningful happened for the black congregation. The white congregation asked Palmer to do a sociological analysis to help them "fix the problem." Palmer writes:

… In fact, I did not view the situation as a problem to be solved. I suggested that in a congregation as wealthy as theirs, among people with so much power, the one kind of poverty that they could experience was the poverty of being unable to achieve the results they wanted. Their frustration with their sister church was, perhaps as close as they would ever get to the daily poverty of inner city blacks who can achieve so few of their cherished goals. (88)

Only by thoroughly embracing failure can we grow in understanding. Palmer concludes this section with this observation:

Rather than holding his [the angel] failure at arm's length and trying to move on, he entered fully into the pain of it and sought help from the only source left. That is all we can do when we fail so miserably – but if we do it, it is enough. (90)

What Kind of God is This?

Palmer notes that many people are put off by the characterization of God in the story. God seems to be in total control and yet allows seemingly unnecessary cruelty. Why did God not tell the angel if God knew how the story would end?

Palmer counters that the angel did know something of the truth from the start. The problem was that the angel "could no longer understand why death and deprivation need to serve as connecting links in the great Chain of Events."

… The problem from the beginning is that the angel knew the truth but "could no longer understand" it. That is, he refused to accept what he already knew.

Some of us do a lot of that, I think. We know things that we do not want to accept, and so we act as if we do not know them – until our actions and their outcomes force us to acknowledge what we already knew. … (91)

Furthermore,

… We are often ready to receive a false blessing no matter what the eventual cost; it takes unusual maturity to turn down. … (91-92)

Palmer writes:

So Buber's God might be acquitted of irresponsibility on at least two counts. One, God gave the angel freedom, even to mess up. Two, even if God had reminded the angel at the outset that life demands suffering, the angel still would have tried to circumvent that truth. But those understandings of God do not go deep enough. The truth about God in this story – and, I believe, about God in our lives – is far more radical and unsettling: God is in this mess with us and has the same unfulfilled yearnings that make our human hearts ache. (92)

I have no doubt many will find this controversial. Personally, I think there is an angle from which this must be true. If God has created beings with whom he desires a loving relationship, then those beings must be able to choose to love God (or not) freely. God can still be sovereign with confidence that God's love will prevail and still be open-ended in honoring our freedom to choose, including us as co-creative partners of the new reality God is calling us.

Jesus says, "I am the vine and you are the branches." Vines do not bear fruit. Branches do. It is through his community that Christ makes himself known. Paul says that we are the body, the physical presence, of Christ. Again, it is through Christ's community that God is made known. In the Buber story, God awakens something in the angel to take creative action, not God acting independently or sending an automaton to execute instructions. "… God in this story is a trusting and risking parent who gives the child the power and freedom to live his or her life to the fullest, no matter what." (94)

A Great Work to be Born

In the final section, Palmer writes:

On one level, the lesson God has to teach is simply the truth about nature itself: Seeds do not grow if they are not "nourished with decay." That is what composting and fertilizing are all about. By ridding earth of decay for a year, the angel destroyed the conditions that allow true grain to grow, and the result was grain that could not nourish people once it was made into bread. This law of nature, God tells the angel, is the law of human nature as well. Decay and shadow, flood and sorrow, must fertilize souls as well as seeds if the fruit of our inner life is to nourish us and others.

But God's teaching has a more immediate, less abstract, meaning. With it, God is trying to help the angel understand the very process that God and the angel are going through. The Great Work is the work the angel is engaged in – the work of developing compassion by suffering the fires of failure. God is engaged in this Great Work with us, continually expanding the scope of God's own compassion and experiencing the failures of love. (95)

With all this being true, there is hope that this inescapable reality can somehow be escaped. Enter the vision of a messiah. God does enter into our circumstances to overcome this reality, not over and against us, but with and through us. It is a process of sanctification and learning to become more compassionate.

 

Questions

What parts of the story resonate with you? Which parts trouble you? Why?

Can you recall when you or others sought to achieve great works only to end in disappointment or even horror? How have those experiences shaped you?

What do you think of how Palmer frames God? What encourages you or troubles you about seeing God in this way?

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The Benefits of Servant Leadership

Harvard Business School's "Working Knowledge" has a post, Why Isn't 'Servant Leadership' More Prevalent?, which is a bit strange because the article never addresses the question. However, I did think this was interesting:

Now it appears that a group of organizational psychologists, led by Adam Grant, are attempting to measure the impact of servant leadership on leaders, not just those being led. Grant describes research in his recent book, Give and Take, that suggests that servant leaders are not only more highly regarded than others by their employees and not only feel better about themselves at the end of the day but are more productive as well. His thesis is that servant leaders are the beneficiaries of important contacts, information, and insights that make them more effective and productive in what they do even though they spend a great deal of their time sharing what they learn and helping others through such things as career counseling, suggesting contacts, and recommending new ways of doing things.

Further, servant leaders don't waste much time deciding to whom to give and in what order. They give to everyone in their organizations. Grant concludes that giving can be exhausting but also self-replenishing. So in his seemingly tireless efforts to give, described in the book, Grant makes it a practice to give to everyone until he detects a habitual "taker" that can be eliminated from his "gift list."

The Active Life - 4. "The Woodcarver": A Model for Right Action. Parker Palmer

This week we are looking at chapter 4, “’The Woodcarver’: A Model for Right Action,” in Parker Palmer’s book, The Active Life. Palmer draws on another story by the ancient Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu.

 

The Woodcarver.

 

Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand

Of prescious wood. When it was finished,

All who saw it were astounded. The said it must be

The work of spirits.

The Prince of Lu said to the master carver:

“What is your secret?”

 

Khling replied: “I am only a workman:

I have no secret. There is only this:

When I began to think about the work you commanded

I guarded my spirit, did not expend it

On trifles, that were no to the point.

I fasted in order to set

My heart at rest.

After three days fasting, I had forgotten gain and success.

After five days

I had forgotten criticism.

After seven days

I had forgotten my body

With all its limbs.

 

“By this time all thought of your Highness

And of the court had faded away.

All that might distract me from the work

Had vanished.

I was collected in the single thought

Of the bell stand.

 

“Then I went to the forest

To see the trees in their own natural state.

When the right tree appeared before my eyes,

The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.

All I had to do was to put forth my hand

And begin.

 

“If I had not met this particular tree

There would have been

No bell stand at all.

 

“What happened?

My own collected thought

Encountered the hidden potential in the wood;

From this live encounter came the work

Which you ascribe to the spirits. (55-56)

Palmer suspects that many people will find this story a bit romantic. Does it really apply to our contemporary work world?

Many people feel hampered by the hierarchies in which we often must work, by institutional structures that curtail the independence that we think we need to do our creative best. But few people work in a setting as demanding as the woodcarver’s. … When I ask Chinese scholars what would have happened if Khing had failed to produce a bell stand acceptable to the prince, they usually answer with a sweeping movement of the forefinger across the front of the throat. (57)

Few of us work under such demanding circumstances, yet the woodcarver seems to take an odd approach in completing his task. After years of reflection on this story, Palmer writes that he sees four “critical junctures” in the story where an element of work is revealed that we can learn from. “The four elements are motives, skills and gifts, ‘the other,’ and results.” (58) Palmer unpacks these four elements during the rest of the chapter.

Motives

Each action has a motive behind it. Khing is not making the bell stand out out of some whimsical desire to create but in response to a command by the prince. He must do this to survive. This may not be the most desirable motivation for action, but it is what it is. However, once the action is set in motion, Khing can choose how to complete his task. He begins by fasting to cleanse himself of all the destructive pressures and motivations hindering him from authentically engaging in his task. By forgetting the details of his present context, he was able to re-member … join back together the authentic pieces of his identity … and act out of who he truly was. Palmer writes:

 … If we are to transcend the motives and context that so often limit and distort our action, we must enter into our versions of fasting, forgetting, and dying. (64)

As I read this section, my mind kept going to this passage in the Bible:

Col 3:22-24

Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord. Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ.  NRSV

R. Paul Stevens notes that ministry is defined not by what we do but by who we serve. It is critical to continually “re-member” our identity as servants of Christ in the face of a world that endlessly seeks to dismember us with other motives.

Skills and Gifts.

Khing resists the adulation thrust upon him for his work and, thereby, the temptation to unreflectively throw himself into his task. His skill is not superhuman. His workmanship comes from experience, practice, and awareness. People often give such accolades (“the work of the spirits”) to an accomplished craftsman because ascribing high-quality work to supernatural sources frees them from reflecting on how poorly devoted they have been to their own development. Khing is not letting others off the hook.

Palmer goes on to reflect on a distinction between innate abilities we possess and skills we have learned. He writes:

The skills we are most aware of possessing are often those we have acquired only through long hours of study and practice, at considerable financial or personal cost. Precisely because these skills once cost us effort to acquire, and still cost us effort to employ, we are acutely aware of owning them. Ironically, these self-conscious skills are often not our leading strengths; if they were, they would not be so effortful. But they are our strengths upon which we sometimes build our identities and our careers – though we build on an anxious, uncertain foundation. Meanwhile, our native, instinctive gifts either languish unused and unappreciated or get used unconsciously without being named and claimed. (66)

Concerning the woodcarver, Palmer observes:

… the woodcarver possesses several other gifts [other than technical woodcarver skills], all of which are essential to the mastery he demonstrates: the capacity to wait patiently for insight to emerge, the capacity to trust in the outcomes of uncertain process, the capacity to take risks under pressure, the capacity to speak his truth even when it is not what people want to hear. (67)

To discover our innate abilities, Palmer suggests we might want to reflect on our earliest childhood memories and remember how we spent our time. What things pleased us, and what things could not abide? By returning to early memories of ourselves, we can recapture what we naturally did before we were socialized to conform to particular norms or ground our identity in acquired skills. I was counseled to do this a few years ago. I think the exercise was one of the most important acts of self-discovery I have ever done.

The Other

Action always involves an “other,” whether other people or other objects. “Right action requires knowledge of the other’s nature, which means knowledge of its potentials and limits, of what it can and cannot do.” (70)

In this section, I think Palmer is wrestling with a polarity. We are not intended to leave the world untouched in a pristine primitive state, but neither are we to treat the “other” as only raw material to be shaped for utilitarian purposes. In this sense, I’m reminded of Darrell Cosden (Theology of Work), who reminds us that the natural order is simultaneously the raw material from which we fashion artifacts and our home. Embracing either pole without the other is dehumanizing. Our human existence is one of correctly discerning how we work in harmony with the other, even as we reshape it.

Results

Palmer does not deny that achieving results is important, but he pushes back against the idea that the only meaningful, or even primary, thing is the results.

“… As long as ‘effectiveness’ is the ultimate standard by which we judge our actions, we will act only toward ends we are sure we can achieve. People who undertake projects of real breadth and depth are very unlikely to be “effective,” since effectiveness is measured by short-term results (never mind the fact that such people may be creating cultural legacies by their “failures”). But people with small visions will win the effectiveness awards, since those projects are so insignificant that they can almost always ‘succeed’ (never mind the fact that they contribute nothing of real merit to the commonweal). (75)

Palmer tells of a friend who said, “I have never asked myself if I was being effective, but only if I was being faithful.” (76) But Palmer goes on to add:

Again, results are not irrelevant. We rightly care about outcomes; we have to live with them, and being accountable for them is part of right action. But to make results the primary measure of action is a sure path to either inanity or insanity. The only standard that can guide and sustain us in action worth taking is whether the action corresponds to the reality of the situation, including the reality of our own inward nature.

The paradox is that faithful action does get results. …  (78-79)

Finally, Palmer reminds us that when we act, we are not only shaping the “other” but also ourselves.

 

Questions

Do you feel trapped in your work, compelled to do work that may not be your first choice, or work for which your employer is seeking to motivate you in ways that dismember your true identity? What do you think of Palmer’s idea of “re-membering” ourselves?

Have you ever deeply reflected on your childhood to discover what things brought you pleasure or dissatisfaction? What does such reflection tell you about the innate abilities God has given you?

In what ways do you experience a tension between seeing the world as raw material and as a home that nourishes us?

How have you seen the tension between results and faithfulness play out in your own life?

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Why Tim Keller Wants You to Stay in That Job You Hate

Christianity Today: Why Tim Keller Wants You to Stay in That Job You Hate

There are few better places in the world where Tim Keller could write a book about career and calling. "New York City is a place where people live in order to work," says the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan and author most recently of Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work (Dutton). "They basically live more in their work than in their neighborhoods. That . . . means that if you start talking about work, you get right at their hearts."

In a recent sit-down conversation with This Is Our City executive producer Andy Crouch, Keller explained why he wanted to write a more comprehensive book about faith and work, how he learned to answer congregants' questions about their work, and what Redeemer has done to equip laypeople to live into their vocations outside the church.

Andy: What's been missing from faith-and-work books that Every Good Endeavor was designed to address?

Tim: When I read faith-and-work books, they tended to pass by each other. I had the sense that they were drawing on different streams of thought, maybe different biblical or historical themes. I tend to be a complexifier. I like to hold the different biblical themes in tension. I got the sense that most books on faith and work tended to isolate a certain idea. This book is trying to bring the different streams together.

What streams of thoughts have been most missing when we talk about faith and work?

It depends on who you're talking about. It seems to me the evangelical tradition tends to talk a lot about how faith essentially spiritually helps you deal with the troubles and the stresses of work. You need help to face challenges.

Mainline churches tend to put more emphasis on social justice and basically did a critique of capitalism early on, so whenever the mainline churches or ecumenical movement did faith-and-work stuff, it was usually critiquing the market, not "how's your heart?"

The Lutheran stream emphasizes that all work is God's work. Worldview doesn't matter. You make a good pair of shoes, then you're doing God's work, because work is God's way of caring for creation.

The Calvinist stream was more like yes, it's not just you are caring for creation through work, but you are shaping it. and therefore your beliefs have an impact.

When you put those four streams together, I think they're very comprehensive. If you isolate them from each other, they can create idiosyncrasies at best and imbalances at worst. ...

The Truth About Entrepreneurs: Twice As Many Are Over 50 than Under 25

PBS: The Truth About Entrepreneurs: Twice As Many Are Over 50 than Under 25

... Myths abound about the young entrepreneurs who dreamed up crazy ideas while in their dorm room, raised millions of dollars in venture capital, and started billion-dollar businesses. But these are just the outliers. The typical entrepreneur is more like Albert -- a middle-aged professional who learns about a market need and starts a company with his own savings.

Research that my team completed in 2009 determined that the average age of a successful entrepreneur in high-growth industries such as computers, health care, and aerospace is 40. Twice as many successful entrepreneurs are over 50 as under 25; and twice as many, over 60 as under 20. The vast majority -- 75 percent -- have more than six years of industry experience and half have more than 10 years when they create their startup. Nearly 70 percent start their companies to capitalize on business ideas that they have -- which they see as a way to build wealth. ...

The Active Life - 3. "Active Life": The Shadow Side. Parker Palmer

Today we are looking at the third chapter in Parker Palmer's book the Active Life, "Active Life": The Shadow Side. The first two chapters lay out preliminary thoughts regarding contemplative and active lives. The final six chapters begin with a piece of ancient wisdom, followed by Palmer's reflections. Today we are looking at a piece by the Chuang Tzu, a Chinese philosopher living in the fourth century B.C.E. It is called, "Active Life." Palmer uses a portion of a version translated by Thomas Merton and John C. H. Wu (to which Palmer has made some gender-inclusive edits.) Here is the translation. Following it is a video of the complete work as Merton presented it:

 

Active Life by Chuang Tzu

 

If an expert does not have some problem to vex him, he is unhappy!

If a philosopher's teaching is never attacked, she pines away!

If critics have no one on whom to exercise their spites, they are unhappy.

All such people are prisoners in the world of objects.

 

He who wants followers, seeks political power.

She who wants reputation, holds an office.

The strong man looks for weights to lift.

The brave woman looks for an emergency in which she can show bravery.

The swordsman wants a battle in which he can swing his sword.

People past their prime prefer a dignified retirement, in which they may seem profound.

People experienced in law seek difficult cases to extend the application of laws.

Liturgists and musicians like festivals in which they parade their ceremonious talents.

The benevolent, the dutiful, are always looking for chances to display virtue.

 

Where would the gardener be if there were no more weeds?

What would become of business without a market of fools?

Where would the masses be if there were no pretext for getting jammed together and making noise?

What would become of labor if there were no superfluous objects to be make?

 

Produce! Get results! Make money! Make friends! Make changes!

Or you will die of despair.

 

Distilling the poem's critique to one sentence, Palmer writes: "Too much of our action is really reacation." He says,

"Such 'doing' does not flow from free and independent hearts, he says, but depends on external provocation. It does not come from our sense of who we are and what we want to do, but from our anxious reading of how others define us and of what the world demands. When we react this way we do not act humanly; we become cogs in a machine whose every move is forced by what is happening elsewhere in the interlocked system of cogs. 'All such people are prisoners in the word of objects." (39)

We seek situations and manipulate the world into scenes that showcase our skill. The world and the people in it become objects we use to get praise and find meaning. It makes us feel alive. And it is addictive.

Palmer writes:

At root, a professional is one who makes a profession of faith – faith in something larger and wiser than his or her own powers. The true professional is the opposite of someone who makes objects of other people by creating dependencies. Instead, the true professional is a person whose action points beyond his or her self to the underlying reality, that hidden wholeness, on which we all can rely. (44)

This is the positive side of the professional, but there is a dark side as well. In one passage, Palmer asks, "What meaning would life have for some mental health professionals if there were not people who depended on their help?" (43) Should the health professional actually be successful in increasing mental health, demand for her expertise would diminish, and therefore her identity. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and there must be nails if the hammer is to have meaning. Only if you see yourself as something more than a hammer do you have the freedom to hammer nails as needed but then to engage in other actions as circumstances change without losing identity.

Another challenge the reactive life presents is the tendency to create self-fulfilling prophecies. "Action based on false beliefs has the power to bring those falsehoods into being." (45) Someone addicted to bravery seeks out and creates circumstances where bravery is required. The fighter seeks out and creates conflicts where fighting is needed. The helper seeks out and creates situations where help is needed. We tend to shape the world to fit our professional skill, reinforcing our identity and creating a world where more peril, conflict, and need exists than need be.

Palmer warns that "… 'goodness' driven primarily by the actor's needs is unlikely to be good at all. Such goodness is often imposed on people who have no desire for it and become objects of the actor's self-serving charity." (47) As someone who has been a student of economic development for most of my adult life, I can't say strongly enough how important this statement is and how resistant so much of the Church is to hear these words.

I remember one pastor telling how his Church would prepare Christmas dinners and buy presents to deliver, in person, to families who lived in a Section 8 housing complex. What began to dawn on him was that fathers were never home when the meals and gifts were delivered. Why? The fathers slipped out the backdoor in humiliation about being unable to provide for their household. The program was revised. The Church still prepared meals, but recipient parents came to the Church to collect a meal for a minimal fee and then brought it home to their families as providers of the feast. The Church bought gifts, but parents came to a store where, for a minimal fee, they could select toys to bring home to their children. Until we escape the lie that what makes us feel helpful is always helpful, we are caught in a self-fulfilling prophecy where our "help" never really helps, wounding people in need while simultaneously generating more opportunities for us to feel helpful to people who are trapped in need, in part due to our own comfortable illusions.

Palmer closes the chapter with an interesting reflection on how we use the verb "make." We make money, make friends, make changes, make time, make love, make peace, make a deal, make our way, make things right, make meaning, make a living and … the all-inclusive … make "it." (49) We see ourselves as fabricators of everything around us, including things over which we clearly have no control. He says, "We seem to regard much of the world as raw material that waits passively to be given shape by our own designs and energies …" (49) While there is no doubt that part of what we do as humans is fabricate, it is also true that we receive from the world things over which we have no control, from a world that is dynamic and shapes us. It is our false belief that we are in control, or ought to be in control, that leads to frenetic behavior and objectification of the world and others.

I thought one of Palmer's most important lines was, "True despair is the failure to learn before we die that the water eventually closes up over everything, that we never manage to leave the indelible marks of our dreams." (51) I'm reminded of Woody Allen saying, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality by not dying." We have immortality in God, not through our work. Attempting to achieve immortality through work is a form of idolatry. It is an illusion. But when we embrace this limitation, we are freer to receive what has been given and to participate in transforming our physical and social world into more useful forms with joy and celebration, to be more alive in our work.

Questions

In what ways have you felt your life is driven by reaction? Do you sometimes feel objectified by others? In what ways do you think we might objectify others?

Can you recall instances of creating self-fulfilling prophecies in your own life or the life of others? What were the consequences?

How does Palmer's observation that "water eventually closes up over everything" make you feel? Does it feel more threatening or freeing? Why?

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The Active Life - 2. Action and Contemplation: A Living Paradox. Parker Palmer

Parker Palmer spent the first chapter of his book The Active Life defining the active and contemplative life. He sees the active life in terms of work, creativity, and caring. He briefly explores the dualism that often develops, favoring one. In Chapter 2, he wants us to see how the two are inseparably integrated. He describes it as a “living paradox.” I might have called it a polarity. Rather than “contemplation and action,” Palmer suggests it might be more helpful to speak in terms of “contemplation-and-action,” symbolizing the interconnectedness.

The Living Paradox

Throughout our spiritual formation, Palmer believes we often experience the paradox in terms of separation, moving to alternation, and finally moving to integration. We typically are drawn to one pole or the other. Activity can fly off into frenzy. Contemplation can become escapism. Excess creates a desire for balance, so we move to alternation. Burned out, we take a “vacation” from action to contemplate. Restored, we move back into action until we are so worn out that we move to a contemplative mode again.

While alternation is an improvement, integration is optimal. Palmer defines action and contemplation this way:

• Action – “I understand action to be any way that we can co-create reality with other beings and with the Spirit.” (17) And as we saw in the previous chapter, work, creativity, and caring are forms that our action takes.
• Contemplation – “I understand contemplation to be any way that we can unveil the illusions that masquerade as reality and reveal the reality behind the masks.” (17)

Both action and contemplation have at their root a “ceaseless drive to be fully alive,” but neglect of either undercut the drive for aliveness.

The Nature of Action

Palmer devotes the second part of Chapter 2 to “The Nature of Action.” He opens with this important observation.

“If you are unemployed, if you are forced to do work that brings neither enough money or recognition, if you are young and uncertain about where you are going, or if you are unhappily retired, one of the most painful questions anyone can ask you may be simply “What do you do?” If you are unprepared, if you have not reflected on your situation and found ground to stand on, that simple question can open a dangerous chasm beneath your feet and trigger fierce defenses. Why so?” (19)

His conclusion?

“Perhaps the primitive fear that some of us feel when we cannot answer the question ‘What do you do?’ comes from a deep, unconscious intuition that inaction is a sign of death. When we are not “doing” we are forcibly reminded of our own mortality; we experience a sort of dying through inactivity. But when we are acting we can say to the world and to ourselves that we are here, we are alive, we are making a difference. Indeed, by acting we imagine that we can leave something of ourselves behind, marks that might give us a kind of immortality. In raising a child or shaping an institution or writing a book we may carry the silent hope that our mortal lives can somehow defy the barriers of death.” (20)

But we cannot escape death, and death will sweep away all we have done. We should not count on our work to achieve immortality, but we must not err in another direction by becoming passive, dying before we are dead. God has made us for co-creative work in the world, but we do so as mortal creatures. Furthermore, pride often accompanies our work. Here we face a dilemma in avoiding prideful behavior but not to the point that withdraw from action for fear of pride. Action is risky. “The greatest risk in action is the risk of self-revelation, and that is also action’s greatest joy.” (22) It is in the risk of self-revelation that we are most fully alive.

Palmer distinguishes between Instrumental and expressive aspects of work:

• “The instrumental image, which dominates Western culture, portrays action as a means to predetermined ends, as an instrument or tool of our intentions. … Instrumental action traps us in a system of praise or blame, credit or shame, a system that gives primacy to goals and external evaluations, devalues the gift of self-knowledge, and diminishes our capacity to take the risks that may yield growth.” (23)
• “An expressive act is one that I take not to achieve a goal outside myself but to express a conviction, a leading, a truth that is within me. An expressive act is one taken because if I did not take it I would be denying my own insight, gift, nature.” (24)

Palmer’s concern is not that all action should be expressive but that life becomes deadening when all our action is collapsed into instrumental acts. Expressive action is how we contribute to the larger scheme of things because it brings our unique qualities into play.

The Nature of Contemplation

The third part of Chapter 2 is devoted to “The Nature of Contemplation.” Palmer reminds us that:

“Every action originates in some assessment of reality, no matter how mistaken. No action will have lasting effects if it is inconsistent with reality.” (25)

He also astutely points out that “Contemplation is difficult for many of us because we have invested so much in illusion.” (25) Illusions are usually a joint project between us and society. They keep things orderly. He highlights three circumstances that tend to promote contemplation.

Disillusionment – When someone lets us down, or when some vision we had fails, we become dis-illusioned. We see life more fully for what it is, or at least what it is not. Palmer says, “Pain is one of the sure signs that contemplation is happening.” (27) Contemplation may eventually lead to a happier reality, but emptiness and pain are frequently part of the journey.

Dislocation – “This happens when we are forced by circumstance to occupy a very different standpoint from our normal one, and our angle of vision suddenly changes to reveal a strange and threatening landscape.” (27) A change in our health or employment or sometimes just coming to the world through someone else’s eyes, breaks us out of our limited perspective into a more full-orbed view.

Unbidden solitude – Sometimes, we find ourselves in isolation from the collective life and the reality our community reinforces for us. Sometimes solitude is forced upon us. We may need to make our way without collective support for any number of reasons. But unlike the first two, solitude is something that can grow on us. In fact, disillusionment and dislocation can take us into deeper appreciation of solitude. It can render us less needy and more capable of authentically giving of ourselves. Palmer writes:

“The healthy community is one that leaves the solitude, the integrity, of each individual intact; if its members do not respect their own solitude, they will continually violate the solitude of others. The only thing we have to bring to community is ourselves, so the contemplative process of recovering our true selves in solitude is never selfish. It is ultimately the best gift we can give to others.” (29)

The Hidden Wholeness

In the final section of the chapter, Palmer writes about “The Hidden Wholeness.” We are frequently taught that wholeness can be found in escape or retreat from the world into ethereal abstractions. Palmer says no. It is found by entering more fully into the difficult reality of this world. The answer lies not in getting out of it but in getting into it. Instead of trying to outrun the “monsters” that frighten us, we must turn and embrace them, recognize them as part of us, and be willing to learn what they might teach us. He concludes the chapter with this:

“When we live a full life of contemplation-and-action, the monsters will always be aroused, and we will be compelled to search the depths. It is good to know that those very monsters can take us to the depths we need to explore. It is even better to know that in those depths we can find the hidden wholeness that unites and energizes us, the source and the power that make us fully alive.” (34)

Summary

To summarize, contemplation and action are poles in a polarity that bring wholeness. Through action, we participate in co-creating reality with others and the Spirit. Instrumental work is an inescapable part of our existence, but a life absent of expressive work fails to bring what is unique about ourselves into the mix. But our world is a mixture of truth and illusion. How do we know who we truly are and what we might authentically bring to the world?

Contemplation is what unmasks illusion and reveals truth. Contemplation is often painful, prompted as it often is by disillusionment, dislocation, and solitude. Yet our culture is all about pain avoidance. We are inclined to deny pain, to medicate it, or to seek escape. But only by entering deeply into these painful circumstances do we find truth. With a better appreciation for the truth, we are capable of more authentic action. That action will lead to more disillusionment, dislocation, and solitude, but it will also empower us to be more truly alive in all aspects of our lives.

 

Questions

Have you had the experience of moving from separation to alternation to integration? What happened that moved you along in this progression?

Do you identify with the scariness of being unable to say what you do? Does it unnerve you that you and all you’ve done will soon be forgotten after your death? Why do you think that frightens so many of us?

What experiences of disillusionment, dislocation, or solitude have you experienced as gateways to better understanding yourself and the world?

What do you think about Palmer’s idea of embracing the monsters within us? Does that empower you? Terrify you?

Previous/Next [Index]

The Active Life - 1. Spirituality in Action: On Being Fully Alive

(Today, I'm beginning an eight-week book study on Parker Palmer's, The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring at Pine Ridge Presbyterian Church from 11:30 to 12:30. If you are in the area and want to attend, please join us. Bring lunch if you like. In addition to the face-to-face study, I will post a blog on each chapter here at the Kruse Kronicle every Tuesday, hopefully broadening the conversation.)

Parker Palmer begins The Active Life with this statement: "This book – this exploration of work, creativity, and caring in the world of action – is the result of my long journey toward the knowledge that I am not a monk." (1) Writing a decade ago, Palmer points to a spiritual renaissance in monastic spirituality over the preceding thirty years, a development he attributes to the influence of notable people like Thomas Merton. He welcomes the positive contributions of this renaissance but finds some aspects troubling:

"In the spiritual literature of our time, it is not difficult to find the world of action portrayed as an arena of ego and power, while the world of contemplation is pictured as a realm of light and grace. I have often read, for example that the treasure of the "true self" can be found as we draw back from active life and enter into contemplative prayer. Less often have I read that this treasure can be found in our struggles to work, create, and care in the world of action.

Contemporary images of what it means to be spiritual tend to value the inward search over the outward act, silence over sound, solitude over interaction, centeredness and quietude and balance over engagement and animation and struggle. …" (2)

Palmer says that, like many others, he retreated into a contemplative life when the coherence of his active life became ambiguous. The contemplative life can become a counterweight to, or even an escape from, the activist orientation of our age instead of being an avenue for discovering significance in the active life.

This divide between the contemplative life and the active life has been with the Church almost from the beginning. The ancient Greeks considered work as a means to survival, while contemplation offered the opportunity for transcendence. That mindset influenced Christianity from an early date. Palmer writes:

"Rooted in this bias, the church and the university became the preeminent institutions of Western culture, in part because they harbored the life of contemplation in a world where the active life was merely what the masses did to survive." (6)

But with Enlightenment came the rise of science and technology:

"Now we can use the tools of action to change the world, to invent our own reality, to make an historical mark. Knowledge, once seen as an end in itself, becomes the pathway to personal virtue, social status, and even to "salvation" for many modern men and women."

There is a tendency in our time for people to either embrace one mode (active or contemplative) over and against the other or to compartmentalize the two. Palmer sees the two as a polarity where both poles must be embraced and celebrated, even though we may have a call that gravitates to one another. I don't think Palmer doubts for a minute that our culture has typically overemphasized the active life to the detriment of the contemplative life. But his concern here is that so many in the Church elevate the contemplative life in unhealthy ways as a response. He writes:

"I struggle with those parts of our spiritual tradition in which the energies of the active life are more feared than revered, pictured as wild horses to be brought under control rather than life-giving streams that flow from the source. The feelings of diminishment and guilt that such spiritualties can engender may have some short-term role as prods to self-discovery. But they have no-long-term place in the life of the spirit. People called to the active life need to nurture a spirituality that does not fear the vitalities of action." (7-8)

He then follows with this paragraph, which I think is key:

"The core message of all the great spiritual traditions is "be not afraid." Rather, be confident that life is good and trustworthy. In this light, the great failure is not that of leading a full and vital active life, with all the mistakes and suffering such a life will bring (along with its joys). Instead, the failure is to withdraw fearfully from the place to which one is called to squander the most precious of our birthrights – the experience of aliveness itself." (8)

Palmer says that most of us are not so much seeking meaning, though there is likely an element of this, but seeking the "rapture of being alive." He affirms this quest not in some "narcissistic celebration of self" but in the sense of being connected to life that transcends us.

Finally, Palmer identifies three forms the active life takes:

• Work – "Work is action driven by external necessity or demand. We work because we need to make a living, because we need to solve a problem, because we need to surmount to survive." (9)
• Creativity – "Creativity … is driven more by inner choice than by outer demand. … In creative action, our desire is not to "solve" or "succeed" or "survive" but to give birth to something new …" (9)
• Caring – Caring is freely chosen action where "… we aim not at giving birth to something new; we aim at nurturing, protecting, guiding, healing, or empowering something that already has life." (9-10)

These are not mutually exclusive categories and are often intertwined. Palmer acknowledges that these definitions may seem a little abstract, but that may be partly because they are so deeply embedded in everyday life … we barely notice them. He is also keen for us to know that while a deep richness to life is connected to each of these modes of action, so is there an opportunity for violence and destruction. Palmer writes:

"My aim in this book is to celebrate and criticize the active life, to explore its joys and pains, its problems and potentials, to understand the forces that both drive and deform our activity – but to do all this with reverence for the mystery of self-discovery and creation which is at the heart of human action." (11)

 

Some questions for discussion:

What are some moments when you have felt truly alive? Do you see any connection between those moments and the active or contemplative life? Do you agree with Palmer's statement that what we are seeking most is a sense of aliveness?

Does Palmer's framing of work, creativity, and caring ring true for you? My experience has been that the Church does a much better at identifying value in creativity and caring but much less so in work. Do you agree? Why do you think this is so?

Next in the series. [Index]

Gene Veith on Vocation

Intercollegiate Review: How to Find Your Vocation in College - Gene Veith

... These are all struggles about your vocation. That word has become a synonym for "job," so that colleges debate the extent to which higher education should be primarily vocational training or whether it should have higher goals, such as cultivating the intellect. But vocation is simply the Latinate word for "calling." It is one of those theological words—like inspiration, revelation, mission, and vision—that has been taken over by the corporate world and drained of its meaning. The idea is that what you do for a living can be a calling. From God. That He has made you in a certain way and given you certain talents, opportunities, and inclinations. He then calls you to certain tasks, relationships, and experiences.

Your job is only a part of that, and sometimes not the most important part. We have vocations in the family (being a child, getting married, becoming a parent) and in the society (being a citizen, being a friend). There are also vocations in the church (pastor, layperson), but even if you don't believe in religion, the vocations are operative. Not only that, according to Martin Luther, the great theologian of vocation, God works through vocation, including the work of people who do not believe in Him. God gives us our daily bread by means of farmers, millers, bakers, and the person who served you your last meal. God creates new life by means of mothers and fathers. He heals by means of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. He protects us by means of police officers, judges, and the military callings. He creates works of beauty and meaning by the talents He has given to artists.

The purpose of every vocation—in the workplace, the family, the church, the society—is to love and serve our neighbors. These are the "good works" that we are given to do. That may sound idealistic. Surely in our participation in the economy we are motivated by our enlightened self-interest. And yet it is surely true that if we are not helping someone by the goods or services we provide, we will not stay in business very long. Even our self-interests are taken up into God's providential workings. In serving ourselves we also find ourselves serving others, whether or not that is our intention. Thus our work, our families, and our citizenship can be charged with moral and even spiritual significance. ...

... College students are often so fixated on what their future vocations may be that they forget that they have vocations right now.

Slinging burgers may be a dull and boring occupation with the sole purpose of earning tuition money. While it won't be your vocation forever, it is still a calling, a sphere of service to one's neighbors–customers, the boss, fellow workers—and a meaningful human enterprise.

College students also have a vocation as members of their family, with obligations to their parents, brothers, and sisters. They also have a vocation as citizens of the various communities they inhabit (their hometown, their college community, their state, their country). They also have vocations in their religious communities, if they have one.

Most notably, they have the vocation of being college students. This calling, like all the others, has its proper work—namely, to study, read, go to class, discuss ideas, and write papers. ...

Good stuff! In the popular vernacular, we typically think of "vocation" as an "occupation." "Vocation," or "calling," is a mission God gives us. R. Paul Stevens talks about three vocations. 

Human vocation - Doing all the things we do that make our world run and contribute to human flourishing that God called us to do at creation.

Christian vocation - Carrying on the work of Christ in the world.

Personal vocation - Our particular response to the first two vocations in our particular time and context.

Our occupation is an important application of our vocation, but our occupation can change. It is only one among many possible applications. And vocation includes much more than our occupation.

A Theology of Work by One Businesswoman

Ampersand Photography: Thursday Q & A // Theology of Work

It’s Thursday! Time for another Q & A post!

A question someone posed to me a few weeks ago (I’m sorry, I forgot to write down who asked this…):

“I am a fellow photographer desiring to make a business and have been thinking through things such as: What is work according to God? What does it look like? What does rest look like? How have these two been redeemed by Christ? What are they going to look like for my life? … I would love to hear your mission statement: the reason you work and the way you should work.  I would also love to hear any edifying words you have for someone starting a photography business.

This is such a great question, and a necessary thing for any person to think through, whether Christian or not— regardless of whether you are an artist, a businessman, a homemaker, or a student. I’m going to answer this in points, that could, perhaps, be an entire blog series, but I have so many other questions to answer that I’m just going to do this all in one shot. ...

1. Defining Work

What is work according to God? What does it look like? What does rest look like? How have these two been redeemed by Christ? 

Answer: work is an expression of God’s character. It’s original purpose is the “advancement of human flourishing to the glory of God.” We were made to work, because we were made in th image of God, who is a Worker.

I attended The Gospel at Work Conference back in January. The opening session was entitled, “The Theology of Work,” and is to date, one of the best sermon’s I’ve ever heard. You can download the message here (and I highly recommend that you do so… like, NOW). A few basic points from that message: ...

Read the whole thing. You may not agree with her at every point, but I love how she is wrestling with a practical theology of work in her in own context and being intentional about integrating her life.

Saturday Links

Have a wonderful Easter weekend!

1. Rewriting the story of polarized debate: He got Tea Party and Occupy to talk

Nabil Laoudji's Mantle Project puts citizens on stage to tell stories of the experiences that led them to their positions on tough issues. That's how he got members of the Tea Party and Occupy movement to speak on the same stage in a civil – and entertaining – exchange.

2. Next Reformation presents Barna's six reasons young Christians leave the church.

3. Forbes: The Happiest And Unhappiest Jobs In America

4. Mozambique: From Marxism to market

British journalist Paul Fauvet came to Mozambique in 1980 just as the country was plunged into a civil war. He has witnessed every key event since. Here he describes the transformation of his adopted country from revolutionary Marxist state to embracing the market and the exploitation of its resource riches.

5. Poor Americans Are Driving The Evolution Of The Banking System

We've reported on how people in emerging markets residents are opening bank accounts and paying for things with their mobile phones, transforming business in those countries. 

But the US Federal Reserve would like you to know (pdf) that the changes aren't all in other parts of the world.

Poor people in the US are some of the most avid users of mobile banking and mobile payment systems. ...

6. One In Four Teens Plan On Relying On Mom And Dad Till Age 27

7. Gen Y Isn't The 'Entrepreneurship Generation'

We all keep hearing that Gen Y's are the "entrepreneurship generation," but new research states otherwise. I worked with Monster.com on a new study focused on multi-generational worker attitudes to uncover the state of entrepreneurship through the eyes of different generations of workers. The report found that 41% of Gen X employees (ages 30-49) and 45% of Boomers (ages 50-69) consider themselves to be more entrepreneurial, compared to only 32% of Gen Y workers (ages 18-29 years). ...

8. Work Is More Than a Means to Evangelism

As already discussed, Matthew Lee Anderson's recent Christianity Today cover story on "radical Christianity" has been making waves. This week at The High Calling, Marcus Goodyear offers a healthy critique of one of Anderson's key subjects, David Platt, aligning quite closely with Anderson's analysis about the ultimate challenges such movements face when it comes to long-term cultural cultivation.

Focusing on Platt's latest book, Follow Me, Goodyear notes that, despite Platt's admirable efforts to get Christians "off their seats," he often "emphasizes the great commission so much, it overshadows all other teachings of the Bible."...

9. I don't know if I'm convinced, but here are The 21 Principles of Persuasion from Forbes.

10. Mental Floss with a great list of 30 Things Turning 30 This Year.

11. Few People Understand The Difference Between Risk And Genuine Uncertainty

What are the odds that your new idea will succeed?  If it does, what will the return to you be?

One of the problems that we have in business (and life!) is that we often can't know the answer to questions like this in advance.  And this drives us nuts.  Consequently, a lot of people invest a great deal of effort into reducing uncertainty.  There are two problems with this approach.  The first is that we often don't understand uncertainty very well, and the second is that profitably opportunities only exist where outcomes are genuinely uncertain. ...

12. Christopher Hitchens wants to know Has militant atheism become a religion?

... In my interactions with religious and nonreligious people alike, I now draw a sharp line, based not on what exactly they believe but on their level of dogmatism. I consider dogmatism a far greater threat than religion per se. I am particularly curious why anyone would drop religion while retaining the blinkers sometimes associated with it. Why are the "neo-atheists" of today so obsessed with God's nonexistence that they go on media rampages, wear T-shirts proclaiming their absence of belief, or call for a militant atheism? What does atheism have to offer that's worth fighting for? As one philosopher put it, being a militant atheist is like "sleeping furiously."...

13. Econbrowser has a detailed analysis of Declining U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

14. David Shukman wants to know Why such a fuss about extinction?

What is wrong with extinction? I realise this question is the conservation equivalent of a landmine - or an elephant trap. And that it is likely to ruffle a lot of fur.

But I ask because I am merely wondering whether we sometimes forget a grim reality of the story of life on Earth - that extinction has always been with us.

In fact, it has quite often been good for us. ...

15. Is Google Maps Changing Our Behavior?

... The people who used the digital navigation device demonstrated pretty good route recognition and rather poor survey knowledge. By comparison, the paper map users scored better on the survey test and almost perfect on the route test. What's happening here, Münzer and colleagues argue, is that pedestrians who use computer navigation fail to envision, encode, and memorize the cognitive maps they otherwise would have. The cost of convenience, in other words, is spatial orientation. ...

16. 18 obsolete words, which never should have gone out of style

Want to be Missional? Equip Those in the Workplace

The High Calling: Want to be Missional? Equip Those in the Workplace

I was recently invited to teach a session of a seminary class called “Pastoral Functions” at an extension of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. In this class, the pastors-in-training had been discussing such topics as Worship, Disciplemaking, Evangelism, Visitation, Funerals, Weddings, Pastoral Counseling, Children’s Ministry, etc.—topics we’d expect in a class like this.

But I was invited to talk about something significantly different and paradigm-shifting. Pastors need to recalibrate their ministry philosophy so that the members of their congregations are affirmed, encouraged, and equipped to serve God through their various vocations. I challenged the students to help the people of God participate in God’s mission on earth through their vocations. Thankfully, seminaries are beginning to understand that they will need to transition their curriculum beyond the traditional topics if they want to train pastors to lead missional churches. ...

An excellent piece by Bob Robinson. Spot on! Read the whole thing.

Saturday Links

1. Conventional wisdom says wearing the red shirt in Star Trek will get you killed. Not so fast. Statistical analysis in Significance Magazine disagrees. (Keep your redshirt on: a Bayesian exploration)

"... In spite of wearing a redshirt, there is only an 8.6% chance of a member of the operations or engineering departments becoming a casualty. These personnel should ensure that their life insurance plans are based on their departments and not their uniform color.

Although Enterprise crew members in redshirts suffer many more casualties than crew members in other uniforms, they suffer fewer casualties than crew members in gold uniforms when the entire population size is considered. Only 10% of the entire redshirt population was lost during the three year run of Star Trek. This is less than the 13.4% of goldshirts, but more than the 5.1% of blueshirts. What is truly hazardous is not wearing a redshirt, but being a member of the security department. The red-shirted members of security were only 20.9% of the entire crew, but there is a 61.9% chance that the next casualty is in a redshirt and 64.5% chance this red-shirted victim is a member of the security department. The remaining redshirts, operations and engineering make up the largest single population, but only have an 8.6% chance of being a casualty.

Red uniform shirts are safe, as long as the wearer is not in the security department."

 2. Interesting piece on automation in the Economist: Robocolleague

Robots are getting more powerful. That need not be bad news for workers. ...

... Historically, technological advances have been relatively benign for workers. Labour-market trends through the 19th and 20th centuries show surprising continuity, according to Lawrence Katz of Harvard University and Robert Margo of Boston University. In recent decades, for example, computerisation and automation have displaced “middle-skilled” workers at the same time as employment among high- and low-skilled workers has increased. This “hollowing out” is not new, Messrs Katz and Margo note. Early industrialisation had similar effects. Middle-skilled artisans, like trained weavers, were put out of work by industrial textile production, but the fortunes of less-skilled factory workers and white-collar factory managers steadily improved. Mechanisation’s insatiable appetite for routine work of all types has yet to create mass unemployment. Quite the opposite.

The worry is that technology now has its sights set on non-routine tasks as well as mundane ones. Yet Mr Autor notes that just because a skilled job can be automated does not mean it will be. The number of workers used to build Nissan vehicles varies a lot between Japan, where labour is expensive, and India, where it is abundant and cheap. The relative cost of different types of workers matters for firms as they choose how to deploy new technologies. ...

3. Speaking of technology and its impact on industries Technology Upends Another Industry: Homebuilding

4. Businessweek has a piece about Indie Capitalism

Indie Capitalism has three foundational principles:

• Creativity generates economic value. Creativity is the source of profit. Yes, efficiency can squeeze more out of what exists, but creativity gives us originality, which translates into a market advantage and big margins.

• Creativity drives capitalism. These past few years we have been victimized by the disastrous results of “creativity” applied to the financial sector (mortgage-backed securities, for starters). What we lost sight of is that the scaling of creativity to actually make things of value sold in the marketplace is the true heart of our economic system. It is the true generator of net new jobs, wealth, and tax revenue.

• Creative destruction is crucial to economic growth. Crony capitalism, which relies on monopoly and political power, is antithetical to entrepreneurial capitalism. A faster cycle of birth, growth, and death of companies boosts creativity, economic value, and growth.

5. Business Insider reports on Why Manufacturing Jobs Are Returning To America For The First Time In Decades

 The bottom line: For the first time in decades, several key economic drivers have created a competitive advantage for the U.S. that will encourage corporate strategic decisions on capital allocation and acquisitions for generations to come.

Here's why:

1. Cheap and abundant natural gas. ...

2. Innovation. Despite talk of a brain drain, the U.S. remains the global innovation leader, maintaining a position enjoyed for 50 years. ...

3. Rule of law. Without the means to protect intellectual property, it cannot be exploited for competitive advantage. ...

4. Human capital. The wage gap between the U.S. and China has been shrinking. ...

5. De-complexity. Western multinationals continue to struggle with management of operations in developing countries. ...

6. Public policy and abundance. The federal government appears to be seizing the opportunity to promote job growth at home.

7. Credit, currency and the coming wave of mergers and acquisitions.

6. 3-D Printed Car Is as Strong as Steel, Half the Weight, and Nearing Production.

"Picture an assembly line not that isn’t made up of robotic arms spewing sparks to weld heavy steel, but a warehouse of plastic-spraying printers producing light, cheap and highly efficient automobiles.

If Jim Kor’s dream is realized, that’s exactly how the next generation of urban runabouts will be produced. His creation is called the Urbee 2 and it could revolutionize parts manufacturing while creating a cottage industry of small-batch automakers intent on challenging the status quo. ..."

7. And more about 3-D Printing. 3D Printing On The Frontlines — Army Deploying $2.8M Mobile Fabrication Labs.

Throughout history, war and innovation have gone hand in hand, whether it’s breakthroughs out of heavily funded R&D programs or makeshift contraptions thrown together with spare parts. Soldiers are trained to use the technology on hand to get the job done, one way or the other.

But how would military operations change if soldiers on the battlefield could have the best of both worlds: access to expert engineers able to fabricate custom-designed fixes right on-the-spot and in very little time? ...

8. And how about 4-D printing? 4D Printing Is The Future Of 3D Printing And It’s Already Here

"It may sound strange and far out, but it’s actually quite simple. 4D printing is being billed as a process where synthetic objects can change and adapt themselves to the environment. In a recent TED interview, Tibbits compared the process of 4D printing to the process of natural adaptation:

Natural systems obviously have this built in — the ability to have a desire. Plants, for example, generally have the desire to grow towards light and they generate energy from the translation of photosynthesis, carbon dioxide to oxygen, and so on. This is extremely difficult to build into synthetic systems — the ability to “want” or need something and know how to change itself in order to acquire it, or the ability to generate its own energy source. If we combine the processes that natural systems offer intrinsically (genetic instructions, energy production, error correction) with those artificial or synthetic (programmability for design and scaffold, structure, mechanisms) we can potentially have extremely large-scale quasi-biological and quasi-synthetic architectural organisms."

7. The New York Times reports that Music Industry Sales Rise, and Digital Revenue Gets the Credit

The music industry, the first media business to be consumed by the digital revolution, said on Tuesday that its global sales rose last year for the first time since 1999, raising hopes that a long-sought recovery might have begun.

The increase, of 0.3 percent, was tiny, and the total revenue, $16.5 billion, was a far cry from the $38 billion that the industry took in at its peak more than a decade ago. Still, even if it is not time for the record companies to party like it’s 1999, the figures, reported Tuesday by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, provide significant encouragement.

The Economist also posted this chart this week:

8. Teleworking: The myth of working from home from the BBC. "Yahoo has banned its staff from "remote" working. After years of many predicting working from home as the future for everybody, why is it not the norm?"

9.  Europe's Youth Unemployment Nightmare Started Long Before The Euro Crisis 

"Reasons for high unemployment among the young include ineffective education systems (the share of early school dropouts is 20% in Italy and 30% in Spain) and dual labour markets with highly protected jobs for older employees. The good performance of Germany is not least a result of the German apprenticeship system, which facilitates labour market access for school leavers by lowering the company’s costs for employing them. The OECD’s latest “Going for Growth” report recommends reforms to strengthen the vocational training systems as one of the most effective ways to fight structural youth unemployment. This would also be a reasonable starting point for the EU’s youth employment programme."

10. Benjamin Wright - Book Review: God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life by Gene Edward Vieth, Jr.

11. Rough Type: Students to e-textbooks: no thanks

"What’s most revealing about this study is that, like earlier research, it suggests that students’ preference for printed textbooks is reflects the real pedagogical advantages they experience in using the format: fewer distractions, deeper engagement, better comprehension and retention, and greater flexibility to accommodating idiosyncratic study habits. Electronic textbooks will certainly get better, and will certainly have advantages of their own, but they won’t replicate the particular advantages inherent to the tangible form of the printed book."

12. How Many Ph.D.'s Actually Get to Become College Professors?

13. Top 10 Causes of Death in the U.S.

14. ABC reports that Young Hispanics Leaving Catholic Church for Protestant Faith

The Catholic Church has struggled to bring in young members in the United States. Less than half of U.S. Hispanics between 18 and 29 identify as Catholic, compared with the 60+ percent of Hispanics older than 50.

15. Robert Jones says Don't write off mainline Protestants

The narrative of decline in the mainline church underestimates the continuing influence of its members, says a religion researcher.

16. Some interesting observations by NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He says we tend to process our social world through three lenses: Social distance, hierarchy, and disgust. Conservatives tend to have a lower threshold of revulsion, while liberals, and particularly libertarians, have a higher threshold.

17. Bruce Fieler has an interesting piece in the Atlantic. Want to Give Your Family Value and Purpose? Write a Mission Statement

Rise of the Freelance Economy

Atlantic Cities has an interesting piece about the rise of the freelance economy. The Geography of America's Freelance Economy.

... Slightly more than 10 million American workers, or seven percent of the workforce, are self-employed, according to estimates compiled by Rob Sentz and his colleagues at Economic Modeling Specialists (EMSI, for short). EMSI's figures are based on data from the United States Census (American Community Survey and Non-employer Statistics). More than four million (43 percent) of those self-employed workers are members of the creative class of scientists and technologists, knowledge workers and professionals, artists, designers, entertainers, and media workers.

... It's high time we temper the the mythology of freelance work with a dose of reality. While the popular image of self-employment is technology or knowledge working free-agents, the reality is that the ranks of the self-employed are populated by a mix of high-skill knowledge work and low-skill, much lower wage service work. Not only do they often earn less money, self-employed Americans lack the basic protections and security that workers and a middle-class society require.

Given the flexibility that has come along with the knowledge and service-based economy and the preference many Americans have for doing their own thing, it will be next to impossible to go back to the old system of long-term employment tenure in "real jobs" of the past. The number of full-employed independent workers is projected to swell to 30 million in the next decade and the total number of freelancers could reach as many as 70 million when as much as half of the workforce could be involved in some sort of freelance work. What's more, 57 percent of freelancers chose to go independent in 2012, as Johnson reports, and only 13 percent say they want to go back to traditional employment.

What's needed is nothing less than a new social compact which reflects the new realities of work. ...

Then Ross Douthat, writing in the New York Times, has this piece: A World Without Work

If such a utopia were possible, one might expect that it would be achieved first among the upper classes, and then gradually spread down the social ladder. First the wealthy would work shorter hours, then the middle class, and finally even high school dropouts would be able to sleep late and take four-day weekends and choose their own adventures — "to hunt in the morning," as Karl Marx once prophesied, "fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner ..."

Yet the decline of work isn't actually some wild Marxist scenario. It's a basic reality of 21st-century American life, one that predates the financial crash and promises to continue apace even as normal economic growth returns. This decline isn't unemployment in the usual sense, where people look for work and can't find it. It's a kind of post-employment, in which people drop out of the work force and find ways to live, more or less permanently, without a steady job. So instead of spreading from the top down, leisure time — wanted or unwanted — is expanding from the bottom up. Long hours are increasingly the province of the rich. ...

Whether or not either of these stories has things framed just right, I think we are amid a major upheaval in what work and employment look like. I remember reading once that Americans made or grew more than 80% of everything they consumed in 1885. By 1915, it was less than 20%. I suspect this last decade is the leading edge of changes that may be just as profound and hard to anticipate as those on the horizon in 1885.

The 20 Greatest Songs About Work

The Pessimist: The 20 Greatest Songs About Work

You might hate your job, but there’s nothing like a good song to make you feel like you’re not alone. (I mean, except when you think about it, and realize that the musicians who performed the song probably no longer have to work in an office, and are most likely drinking Champagne with supermodels in a brand-new Learjet 85, while you’re eating off-brand corn chips you bought from a convenience store that the health department should have closed down a long time ago.)

The point is, labor has been the single most popular subject of pop songs for decades (besides girls, cars, alcohol, parties, religion, and about 10,000 other things). So below, we’ve collected 20 of the best songs about the working life. Think of it as an extremely depressing playlist, like if your local radio station hired a German film director as its morning drive-time DJ. If we missed anything, let us know in the comments! (But be nice, or we’ll tell your boss you’re goldbricking again.)  ...

Take a look at the list. Any songs you would add?

 

Happiness Means Being Just Rushed Enough

Scientific American: Happiness Means Being Just Rushed Enough

... However, despite this broad consensus, and its obvious health and quality-of-life implications, there seems little empirical survey evidence that daily life is truly speeding up. ...

... In that 1965 survey, we found 24 percent of respondents aged 18-64 said they “always” felt rushed, and 48 percent said they had no excess time. When we repeated the questions in the 1990s, these figures had risen to 35 percent “always” rushed and 55 percent with no excess time, where they remained, more or less, until we last asked the questions in a 2004 survey.

This set the stage, then, for our repeating these questions in two separate surveys in 2009-10. Quite contrary to our expectations, both of these surveys now show decreases in Americans feeling “always” rushed particularly among the busiest group of those aged 18 to 64 — a 7-point drop in feeling always rushed to 28 percent — and a drop to 45 percent in those feeling no excess time. ...

... Almost 50 percent of respondents who feel least rushed and who also feel least excess time report being “very happy”, almost twice as high as the rest of the US public. It is an elite group, making up less than 10 percent of the population. They not only seem happier by ignoring the “rat race” and subscribing to a philosophy of “Don’t hurry, be happy,” but by organizing their lifestyles to minimize spells of boredom and lack of focus as well. Thus, there seems dysfunction in having either too much or too little free time. In a society that otherwise seems obsessed with speed and the latest IT gadgets, this would seem to offer a path to a more contented lifestyle.

Ten Ways to Encourage Vocational Stewardship in Your Church

Re-Integrate: Ten Ways to Encourage Vocational Stewardship in Your Church

Over the years I've had conversations with pastors who want to do more to integrate faith and work but struggle to know where to begin. Re-Integrate has a post with some very practical ideas.

Originally published at www.vocationalstewardship.org

1. During corporate worship services, pray for members by vocation. This could take a variety of expressions:

• pray aloud for a different occupational group (e.g., educators or businesspeople) each week
• invite congregants who are facing difficulties on the job to come forward during or after the service for prayer
• pray for individual members by name and vocation

2. Visit church members at their places of work.

3. Recognize vocational achievements and awards of congregants in the church’s newsletter or on its website. ...

Read the whole post. Excellent ideas!

Saturday Links

1. I don't know much about Common Good RVA, but I like their vision. Christianity Today published a piece featuring them, Why the Rest of Your Week Matters to God

"In general, the church has done a fine job equipping Christians for the "private" areas of their lives: prayer, morality, family life, and so on. However, in general, the church has done a poor job equipping people for the "public" parts of their lives: namely, their work, their vocation. The reality is, most people spend the majority of their time in this latter, "public" area."

And I like this video clip:

CommonGood RVA from This Is Our City on Vimeo.

2. Can we Survive Technology? Written 57 years ago, Fortune resurrected this article by John von Neumann. The editor's note begins:

Editor's note:   Every Sunday, Fortune publishes a favorite story from our magazine archives. This week, to mark our Future Issue, we turn to a feature from June 1955 by John von Neumann tackling the profound questions wrought by radical technical advancement—in von Neumann's day the atomic bomb and climate change. von Neumann was one of the twentieth century's greatest and most influential geniuses. The polymath and patron saint of Game Theory was instrumental in developing America's nuclear superiority toward the end of World War II as well as in framing the decades-long Cold War with the Soviet Union. In his time, von Neumann was said to possess "the world's greatest mind." Here is his characteristically pessimistic look on what the future holds.

It is amazing how much of what he wrote remains true today!

3. Human beings are notoriously bad at evaluating probability and risk. I hope to do some blogging on this in the not-too-distant future. For now, Business Insider has 'The Birthday Problem' Shows How Terrible We Are At Estimating Probability.

4. The Atlantic reports on a study concluding Wanting Things Makes Us Happier Than Having Them

"CONCLUSION: Although "materialists' perceptions that acquisition brings them happiness appear to have some basis in reality," that happiness is short-lived, Richins concluded. As such, "The state of anticipating and desiring a product may be inherently more pleasurable than product ownership itself.""

5. One of the most difficult topics to understand in economics is comparative advantage, especially why outsourcing jobs to other countries often is advantageous for both countries. Forbes has a creative piece this week, Is Outsourcing American Jobs Wrong? However, as the BBC reports, American manufacturers come back home, a trend that has been true for a few years now.

6. Whole Foods Founder Says Too Many Companies Get Capitalism Wrong

"In order to fight that perception and reclaim capitalism and business as positive words, businesses have to find a purpose beyond just making money. Profit is necessary for business, Mackey said, but it's necessary in the same way that his body has to produce red blood cells. It's needed, but it's not the sole purpose."

7. Fortune has a great piece on Why innovation is so hard.

"Most business leaders don't understand what makes innovation so different from everything else they do at work -- and they haven't adjusted their behavior to accommodate these differences."

8. We've all been watching Lance Armstrong this week. Beware! Study Finds That Having Power Can Make You Stupid

9. More on the continuing evolution of the print industry in The Growing Adoption of Creative Commons Textbooks and Nation's First Bookless Public Library Could Be in Texas.

10. Paper-Thin Computer Debuts at CES

11. Scientists reveal that Star Wars And Star Trek Got Warp Speed Totally Wrong.

"The science fiction vision of stars flashing by as streaks when spaceships travel faster than light isn't what the scene would actually look like, a team of physics students says.

Instead, the view out the windows of a vehicle traveling through hyperspace would be more like a centralized bright glow, calculations show. ..."

That's all for this week. Like the Kruse Kronicle on Facebook.

Happiness, Meaning, and a Theology of Work

The Atlantic: There's More to Life Than Being Happy  This is a fascinating piece on happiness written by Emily Esfahani Smith as she reflects on the difference between happiness and a meaningful life. I've got some thoughts below but here is one powerful excerpt:

... This is why some researchers are cautioning against the pursuit of mere happiness. In a new study, which will be published this year in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Positive Psychology, psychological scientists asked nearly 400 Americans aged 18 to 78 whether they thought their lives were meaningful and/or happy. Examining their self-reported attitudes toward meaning, happiness, and many other variables -- like stress levels, spending patterns, and having children -- over a month-long period, the researchers found that a meaningful life and happy life overlap in certain ways, but are ultimately very different. Leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated with being a "taker" while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a "giver."

"Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided," the authors write.

How do the happy life and the meaningful life differ? Happiness, they found, is about feeling good. Specifically, the researchers found that people who are happy tend to think that life is easy, they are in good physical health, and they are able to buy the things that they need and want. While not having enough money decreases how happy and meaningful you consider your life to be, it has a much greater impact on happiness. The happy life is also defined by a lack of stress or worry.

Most importantly from a social perspective, the pursuit of happiness is associated with selfish behavior -- being, as mentioned, a "taker" rather than a "giver." The psychologists give an evolutionary explanation for this: happiness is about drive reduction. If you have a need or a desire -- like hunger -- you satisfy it, and that makes you happy. People become happy, in other words, when they get what they want. Humans, then, are not the only ones who can feel happy. Animals have needs and drives, too, and when those drives are satisfied, animals also feel happy, the researchers point out.

"Happy people get a lot of joy from receiving benefits from others while people leading meaningful lives get a lot of joy from giving to others," explained Kathleen Vohs, one of the authors of the study, in a recent presentation at the University of Pennsylvania. In other words, meaning transcends the self while happiness is all about giving the self what it wants. People who have high meaning in their lives are more likely to help others in need. "If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need," the researchers write.

What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of happiness, which occurs all across the natural world, but the pursuit of meaning, which is unique to humans, according to Roy Baumeister, the lead researcher of the study and author, with John Tierney, of the recent book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. Baumeister, a social psychologists at Florida State University, was named an ISI highly cited scientific researcher in 2003.

The study participants reported deriving meaning from giving a part of themselves away to others and making a sacrifice on behalf of the overall group. In the words of Martin E. P. Seligman, one of the leading psychological scientists alive today, in the meaningful life "you use your highest strengths and talents to belong to and serve something you believe is larger than the self." For instance, having more meaning in one's life was associated with doing activities like buying presents for others, taking care of kids, and arguing. People whose lives have high levels of meaning often actively seek meaning out even when they know it will come at the expense of happiness. Because they have invested themselves in something bigger than themselves, they also worry more and have higher levels of stress and anxiety in their lives than happy people. Having children, for example, is associated with the meaningful life and requires self-sacrifice, but it has been famously associated with low happiness among parents, including the ones in this study. In fact, according to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, research shows that parents are less happy interacting with their children than they are exercising, eating, and watching television.

"Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not necessarily make us happy," Baumeister told me in an interview.

Meaning is not only about transcending the self, but also about transcending the present moment -- which is perhaps the most important finding of the study, according to the researchers. While happiness is an emotion felt in the here and now, it ultimately fades away, just as all emotions do; positive affect and feelings of pleasure are fleeting. The amount of time people report feeling good or bad correlates with happiness but not at all with meaning.

Meaning, on the other hand, is enduring. It connects the past to the present to the future. "Thinking beyond the present moment, into the past or future, was a sign of the relatively meaningful but unhappy life," the researchers write. "Happiness is not generally found in contemplating the past or future." That is, people who thought more about the present were happier, but people who spent more time thinking about the future or about past struggles and sufferings felt more meaning in their lives, though they were less happy....

And this is where the church does a great disservice. We form people into clients who look to the church as a route to personal happiness rather than as people who can discern meaning. And this is especially true for a theology of work and daily life. I perceive that the vast majority of Americans either see no meaning in their work as it relates to God's mission in the world, or they find great meaning in their work precisely because it is such an important component to achieving the happiness that comes from getting what we want.

For the most part, the church confirms that daily work has no meaning. Meaningful work, as it relates to God, is the stuff that happens within the four walls of the church or as an extension of some ecclesiastical initiative. Christian service is framed as an alternative to work-a-day life, an escape from meaningless work into meaningful work. Church leaders correctly perceive that many people see no meaning to their daily existence, but the ecclesiastical impulse is to answer the question of meaning over and against daily life, not to find meaning within it.

I see one of two strategies typically at work. One is to simply avoid saying too much about daily work while offering therapeutic spirituality and service opportunities that (for some) supplement a daily meaningless existence or (for others) enhances the meaning we find apart from God and God's mission in the world (essentially supporting idolatry.) The other is to offer prophetic pronouncements against greed and selfishness … correctly challenging idolatries that give false meaning to life … while steering people to participate in just causes like eco-justice, gun control, or poverty advocacy. False ideologies may be challenged, but, once again, the answer is to pursue the meaning question over and against daily life, not to find meaning within it.

Until the church is willing to wrestle with the meaning of work and daily life honestly, the church will never be an effective expression of the Kingdom of God.

Saturday Links

1. Too often, Westerners perceive the African economy as a monolithic basket case. There are actually many very hopeful regions. Ozwald Boateng explains Why entrepreneurs are back in Africa

2. Want a higher-paying occupation? Here Are The Jobs With The Biggest Wage Growth Right Now

3. Lots of recent talk about whether or not e-books will ever actually totally supplant hard copy books. This week Mashable explores Why Are People Still Buying CDs? (And people are still buying them.)

4. Speaking of transitions to digital media, Business Insider shows that Old Media Is Alive And Rocking

5. This fascinating chart shows Inflation Since 1775 And How It Took Off In 1933

6. Want to live to a ripe old age? US News reports on What People Who Live to 100 Have in Common.

7. I almost didn't link this article because I could swear I've linked it before. Why Does Deja Vu Happen?

8. Several months ago, I saw a speech expert interviewed has offered voice training to several famous figures. One was Margaret Thatcher. They showed her speaking in the 1970s and then in the 1980s, after receiving voice training. A big piece of the change was lessening the modulation in tone and pitch, which tends to vary more widely with female voices. The changes were intended to make her sound more authoritative, which both men and women, unjustified as it may be, more often associate with male vocal traits. But apparently, the thing that really triggers gender detection in our language is the way we use S's. Change Your Perceived Gender by Pronouncing S's Differently

9. This has to be a new low technological achievement: a sensor-filled smart fork that tells you when you're overeating. Medieval Tines: A Brief History of the Fork

10. And this has to be the Holy Grail of technology cool! Star Trek-Inspired 'CommBadge' Gives You Handsfree Access to iPhone, Android

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The Top Seven Regrets of Pastors - Thom Rainer

Christian Post: The Top Seven Regrets of Pastors - Thom Rainer

I recently interviewed more than twenty pastors who had been in ministry for at least 25 years. All of these men were over 55 years old. A few of them were retired, but most of them were still active in full-time vocational ministry. ...

1. Lack of practical training for local church ministry. "I was not prepared for 80 percent of my day-to-day ministry after I graduated from seminary. ...
2. Overly concerned about critics. ...
3. Failure to exercise faith. ...
4. Not enough time with family. ...
5. Failure to understand basic business and finance issues. ...
6. Failure to share ministry. "Let me shoot straight. I had two complexes. The first was the Superman complex. ... My second complex was the conflict avoider complex. ...
7. Failure to make friends. ...

I'm certain that #8 was failing to spend enough time reading blog posts. ;-) What else should be on the list?

 

Only one of the top 9 occupations expected to create the most jobs this decade (nursing) requires a 4-year college degree

Carpe Diem: Only one of the top 9 occupations expected to create the most jobs this decade (nursing) requires a 4-year college degree

The chart above shows the 30 occupations that are expected to experience the largest job growth between 2010 and 2020, according to employment forecasts from the BLS. Between 2010 and 2020, the BLS estimates that the total number of U.S. jobs will increase by 20.4 million, from 143 million in 2010 to 163.5 million by 2020. The number of jobs created this decade in the top 30 fastest growing occupations – 9.3 million – will represent almost half of all of the new jobs created by 2020.

What’s really interesting is that only five of the top 30 occupations expected to create the most jobs by 2020 require a college degree or more (nursing, post-secondary teachers, elementary school teachers, accountants and physicians), and ten of the fastest growing occupations don’t even require a high school diploma. Moreover, of the top nine occupations expected to create the most jobs this decade, only one (nursing) requires a 4-year college degree. ...