My boys usually take a two hour nap every evening, waking up to go for our nightly walk. Unfortunately for them, they don’t always go right to sleep when they should, so they’re still very tired when it’s time to get up. Sometimes, even after several efforts to rouse them, they just stay asleep.
Our tactic for handling this is to simply turn the fan back on, turn off the lights, and close their bedroom door, as if to let them sleep through the night. They respond by howling and screaming and immediately emerge to crabbily demand going for a walk.
What’s funny about their reaction is that all we’ve done is give them the fullest version of what they were already choosing. But for whatever reason, that end result was viewed by them as an unbearable punishment, and it elicited the behavior we desired all along.
Unless I am mistaken, this is the proper understanding of the doctrine of hell. And if repentance for any of our seemingly minor sins eludes us, it could be that we’ve simply never been shown their true and ultimate trajectory played out on an eternal time scale.
Thought of the Day 08.06.09
A friend’s recent email about the moral failures of American business got me thinking about the essential elements of leadership, one of which is restraint.
Sometimes this means declining to take as much advantage of a flawed system and foolish people as you can. Sometimes it means foregoing profits because there are more significant things to being human than the size of your pile of money. But sometimes leadership requires more than just restraint.
If the very system which feeds your children and clothes your neighbors is being jeopardized by everyone else doing the same insane things, it’s not enough to simply keep your own hands clean. Leadership in those moments means actively correcting others and fixing the system which is being abused.
This will likely cost you much more than just lower profits. But leadership at its core is knowing when to take risks for the sake of what matters, especially at great personal cost. That is what distinguishes true leadership from mere success.
Sometimes this means declining to take as much advantage of a flawed system and foolish people as you can. Sometimes it means foregoing profits because there are more significant things to being human than the size of your pile of money. But sometimes leadership requires more than just restraint.
If the very system which feeds your children and clothes your neighbors is being jeopardized by everyone else doing the same insane things, it’s not enough to simply keep your own hands clean. Leadership in those moments means actively correcting others and fixing the system which is being abused.
This will likely cost you much more than just lower profits. But leadership at its core is knowing when to take risks for the sake of what matters, especially at great personal cost. That is what distinguishes true leadership from mere success.
Thought of the Day 08.05.09
Have you ever heard someone say that Jesus was a great moral teacher whose purpose was to give us a set of wonderful moral instructions and then to serve as an outstanding example of them for us to imitate?
I think the people who say this genuinely believe they are being helpful. For my part, however, if I actually believed this, all I could do is weep. If my task is to try to measure up to Jesus, either in word or deed, then I am in deep trouble. Far from comforting me, Jesus as moralist condemns me every hour of my life. His doctrine made moral perfection seem so hopelessly unattainable that I might as well quit. Then, making things worse, He took away my excuses by living flawlessly Himself.
That’s why I always think that people who describe Him as our example know neither how surpassingly excellent He was nor how abysmally awful we are. What I need from Jesus is precisely what He offers: to give me what He deserves and to take from me what I deserve.
I think the people who say this genuinely believe they are being helpful. For my part, however, if I actually believed this, all I could do is weep. If my task is to try to measure up to Jesus, either in word or deed, then I am in deep trouble. Far from comforting me, Jesus as moralist condemns me every hour of my life. His doctrine made moral perfection seem so hopelessly unattainable that I might as well quit. Then, making things worse, He took away my excuses by living flawlessly Himself.
That’s why I always think that people who describe Him as our example know neither how surpassingly excellent He was nor how abysmally awful we are. What I need from Jesus is precisely what He offers: to give me what He deserves and to take from me what I deserve.
Change in Comments Protocol
Just an FYI. I have disabled anonymnous comments on my blogs. They are still open to anyone to post, but you have to identify yourself with a Google account or some other form of online ID. I didn't think I would need to do this, but I strongly prefer to know with whom I am speaking. I'm sorry for the inconvenience this may cause any of you.
Thought of the Day 08.04.09
It’s very interesting to notice what it takes to impress most people, and the thing it usually requires is to measure up on some scale they have adopted; a scale which winds up favoring them and their attributes.
For instance, a beauty queen will tend to find you valuable if you are beautiful. A professor will tend to find you valuable if you are smart. And a virtuous man will tend to find you valuable if you are good.
But compare this with the approach of our Savior. He is more beautiful than any beauty queen, smarter than any professor, and more virtuous than we dare imagine. Thus, if we were to try to measure up according to His example, we would be abject failures.
And yet He begins our relationship by telling us that we have supreme value for an entirely different reason: because He says so and confirmed the appraisal by what He sacrificed in order to get us. The most difficult and most exhilarating aspect in Christianity is simply this: to have value for no other reason than that He says we have it.
For instance, a beauty queen will tend to find you valuable if you are beautiful. A professor will tend to find you valuable if you are smart. And a virtuous man will tend to find you valuable if you are good.
But compare this with the approach of our Savior. He is more beautiful than any beauty queen, smarter than any professor, and more virtuous than we dare imagine. Thus, if we were to try to measure up according to His example, we would be abject failures.
And yet He begins our relationship by telling us that we have supreme value for an entirely different reason: because He says so and confirmed the appraisal by what He sacrificed in order to get us. The most difficult and most exhilarating aspect in Christianity is simply this: to have value for no other reason than that He says we have it.
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