Jesus is Better but what is Best?

In the book of Hebrews there is a recognition of the faith of the Old Testament saints as a really good thing.  Then there is the recognition that our position in Christ "better."  It seems then there is a movement from good to better.  As a result, I've heard it taught that "Jesus is Better" when studying the book of Hebrews.  This is the statement that best describes Hebrews as many have taught.  Yet in Hebrews there is still a tension that projects that more is yet to come that is even better.  So is there a best?  If Jesus is better, then what is best? 

We see aspects of a realized eschatology present in the book and at the same time an unrealized eschatology.  There is an "already not yet" pattern throughout the whole letter.  So to whatever extent Christ's work accomplished better things through his incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension, there are still many things that need to happen in the future according to what has happened.  Is he the only one acting or are there others?  What place does the church have in all of this, a church that he has "sent?"  What about the other members of the Trinity?  So some better things have happened since the coming of Jesus yet some more things are still to happen.  Is it possible that these things might fit into the superlative, the best, aspect of what God is accomplishing in salvation history. 

So if Jesus is better, what is the best?  

The hopeless relationship between Faith and Reason

Reason and Faith are like two betrothed infants - totally unaware of each other in their early development or acutely unaware.  They may sit in the same classroom, play with the same friends and grow up in the same neighborhood but haven't been introduced to each other.  They eventually do grow up become introduced, check each other out and hate each other, have a few fights, and eventually avoid each other at all costs.  A few people try to reconcile them because they see a possible fit, others try to assist them to no end in avoiding each other through maligning, gossip and tearing down the "opponent's" credibility.  Secretly in their hearts, they are heavily attracted to each other and have pining moments of desire and a few fleeting chances to re-connect. 

At present they are living their lives pursuing their passions and secretly (though not so secret to some) they long for each other.  While some are hopeful and working tirelessly to set up environments for them to "encounter" each other, the enemies of their union work tirelessly in the opposite direction.. They demean one or the other in order to install their proponent as the innocent and more discerning member of the pair.  Often enough they cross paths in their vocations, their vacations and their favorite gas stations, and their posture towards each other is at times increasingly favorable, but they still haven't been able to sit down for coffee and just get to know each other. 

I am of the hopeless sort, but not hopelessness of this world, a hopelessness that is from God - hopelessness that is assured by what I believe to be true.  Faith and Reason will meet and actually I believe they will marry, based upon their prior betrothal as well as their coming marriage of love.  I also believe they will bear many children, healthy children who will create a legacy of love, revelation, transformation and beauty.  Love takes time, heritages take time, time to grow up and mature, time to become aware of oneself and of the other, time to interact - to hate, to love and time to make a decision.  Just because one is betrothed to another, that doesn't remove the necessary growth of the organism of love in your and the other's heart.  We have to both be committed and commit to the growth of our commitment, but that commitment requires love, a  love relationship between Faith and Reason.  Are they there yet?  No.  Will they be?  - to that I would say "I am hopeless romantic."

Interview with Dallas Willard

Dallas Willard responds to issues of Atonement.

Interview with Dallas Willard

The Evangelical Habitus*

This link is hilarious - it's good to laugh at ourselves.

The Evangelical Habitus*

Its' Healthy To Laugh At Ourselves - Christianese is a language.

I Can't resist posting this - have fun!

Going to Heaven in a Residential School bus

Left Behind but on the Bus

Left Behind - the eschatology of the 20th century, kick-started by promoting a disembodied view of what man really is, has had its profound Displacement effect upon us as Christians.  For so long we have thought and were taught that we were going to go to heaven, that our bodies weren't important, that earth wasn't important and that whether it was important or not, the point is to get us to heaven, because that is what we love, need and want.

We should not want this world, to renew this world, to care for the physical needs of others to appreciate what humanism offers in spite of its anti-God point of view.  What if humanism is just an extreme of a much more foundational view of how we are designed to view our own humanity - a design given by God?  N.T. Wright discusses this in his latest lecture at Wheaton's theological lecture from last week.

Depending upon God too much?

What if humanism is actually a pendulum swing that swung far enough in the opposite direction of an extreme Theism that had us depending upon God too much and ignoring the role that our humanity has always been set to play in this grand drama of redemption.  We are meant to, in our humanity, do a lot more, be a lot more and accomplish a lot more than we actually think possible.  This is best taught from the book of Ephesians.  Does this push God out of the picture - no but it pulls us into a picture that we were always supposed to be in.  We are the puzzle piece that we have tried to fit with God - yes the puzzle is about God and is full of pieces of God, but what if his design is that we are actually a bigger part of the puzzle than we initially thought possible?  I think we are and to dislocate our telos - the goal of redemption to a place up in the sky away from the good earth and the good bodies and the good creation that God has created and wants to restore is much the same experience that the First Nation children and their families experienced over 50 years ago through the Residential School system.

Civilizing our Way

In the 1900's all over Canada, the U.S., New Zealand and Australia, Indigenous people groups had their children literally kidnapped from them systematically by the acting governments and the Anglican and Catholic church (a meager attempt but destructive attempt at ecumenism).  The idea was that the only way to have the Indigenous people's of these westernizing nations "catch up" with civilization was to educate them.  Education is a great idea, if you remove the kidnapping, strategic displacement, sexual abuse, physical abuse, imperialistic religious instruction, beatings for speaking one's own language, and spiritual figures who don't give a $@#! about your identity unless you took on a "Christian" identity, spoke their language, wore their clothes, and haircuts and acted with "propriety" according to their customs and culture.  Becoming civilized sure could lose a lot its baggage - or as it should be called - pure evil.

If I sound angry it is because I am.  Some of my longest known friends and adopted family had to endure the most atrocious of these acts in their lifetimes and today find it very difficult to look with any sense of favor on anything to do with church, Christianity, the Bible or faith - a faith that I embrace and a church that I love by people I embrace and families that I love.

Tamar tells All

The fulcrum effect of this has left First Nation communities with layer and layers of shame, pain and disdain for their pain by those who caused it.  It is much like the story of Tamar - the daughter of David in the Bible.  She was "loved" by her half brother who couldn't control his raging lust so he raped her.  Afterward, she told him that he would have to marry her to compensate for the wrong (which was understood to be the way that this could be solved - wow) and care for her but instead he rejected her and the Bible said he hated her after more than he had loved her.  A nations abuse and rape of another's causes the offender's cultural sensitivities to be fully deadened and they begin to hate that which they were enamored by or at the least humored by.  There are many ways to deal with this growing and self-inflicted disdain - our nation chose the worst option - a second displacement - the displacement of our concern, guilt, our own shame and the people themselves.  Not only did we rape them of their culture, identity and family, but in order to deal with the guilt we hid from them and became indifferent toward the aftermath of their plight and we continue to do so today.  Like Tamar's offender, we have offended twice and the second offence is worse than the first.

The Second Cut is the Deepest

To know that one has offended the "other" and to be aware of the offended "other" right in front of your eyes and then to act as if the offense never took place - to attempt to normalize an obvious act of evil with the person whom you have wronged so deeply - is a greater and deeper offense than the first.  It is not even an act of deception because both parties are fully aware but only the offender has the power to do something about it but chooses to do nothing and moves to normalization and as soon as possible - to act as if it the offense had not even happened.  This is evil destroys oneself and the "other" at a level that is almost irreversible. 


 Resurrection on the 'Rez'


This description can mirror what we've done to ourselves through our previous eschatology - we have disdained our own identity - our embodied selves and have sought a gnostic emancipation from this "body of death" that only brings pain, suffering and loss.  In so doing we have split our identity and deemed that which God called good, evil or at the least - we have become indifferent that which God has given great attention and focus to.  We have displaced our embodied identity, dismissed its place in the good creation and the ever looming eschaton and have dreamed of a world where we won't have bodies, our earth, the good creation anymore.  We have displaced our identity?  The second evil - the evil of indifference towards our first offense can still be reversed, still be unlayered with the shame that we have piled onto our eschatological selves.

Guess who might be the best to lead us there?  That's right - our First Nations Brothers and Sisters.  They have travailed, torn away from the power of oppression, from the demise of identity, from the loss and are beginning to stand again, with pride, wisdom and forgiveness.  This forgiveness will be what heals us, what restores us.  God didn't intend for Tamar's offender to just come to Him, God, and ask for forgiveness, he was supposed to ask for forgiveness from her and to do whatever he could to restore to her what he had taken, as difficult as that may be.  As David so readily judged the wealthy neighbor who stole the only sheep from his poor neighbor to feed his guests, we too can so easily judge David's son who raped Tamar.  But where are we in that story?  We may need to begin asking.  This is not only for the sake of those we have offended but for ours too.  Mutual restoration is at hand.  Let's quit the one way benefits and pray that we don't colonialize our efforts.  This can't be done unless we ask, unless we know, unless we become aware.  The peace we desire, the shame we want to shed and holistic healing we need will need to be given and one cannot be given what they need until they are ready to ask and receive.

S. Kierkegaard's pedagogy

"God's education consists in leading one to being able to do freely what at first one had to be compelled to do"

Soren Kierkegaard, C.S. Lewis and narcissist "I"

"At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference."   - Soren K.


"The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference."   - C.S. Lewis


"Lack of intention rather than ill intention is the greatest evil."  - N. Smith
(can you quote yourself?  what?)

The Insecurities of God

In a recent blog roll started by Scot McKnight about Brian McLaren's new book A New Kind of Christianity, a comment made by John Sylvest (comment #60) had this to say mid way through...

"As Brian put it to me, for the gospel to incarnate into a culture is very different from a culture co-opting the gospel." 

They are discussing Scot's critique of Brian and his neo-liberation theology.  John's response is that Brian is proposing more of a Theology of Liberation that is faithful rather than a resurgence of liberation theology.

In his own words he writes, "I would counter that Brian has not embraced a subversive liberation ideology but has articulated a sound theology of liberation, as systematically consistent with his other Franciscan sensibilities ( see Leonardo Boff's Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor)"

We are faced with the temptation every day to domesticate God and the Gospel for our purposes and to allay our fears.  Our culture's greatest fears look to the answers which are most readily available - the ones that offer the path of least resistance.  The Good News that God has always been telling and that Jesus told best (better than Paul?) is part of this process of God's incarnational activity to introduce the Good Virus of the Gospel into our sick and broken culture in order to heal it.  The culture is good but broken and is being redeemed but how does God do that?

In reference to Sylvest's prior comment, I would say God actually co-opts human culture to incarnate the Gospel.  The problem for a lot of people of faith is that this does not allow God to be a strict purist or an originalist (He doesn't have any insecurities so he has no need to be wholly original as he communicates).  We want him to come up with most of his revelatory methods and rituals apart from co-opting the cultures that form our identity as humanity.  We want him to be completely other when he defines who He is to us.  We can't have that - it's impossible but we want it because of our innate human insecurities.  We need him to be original, not to hi-jack or borrow from the "world."   On the other hand, we do need fixed and formal categories to move forward in our understanding of who God is but as we do so, our moorings can tend to shift under our feet and we find more incomprehensibility than anything else.

The path of discovering God is a lot like someone being born in a sunken ship that has water which leaked into the ship as it sunk.  It rests at the bottom and lays there for years untouched.  A baby is born in the sunken ship and as it grows, the child learns about the water, its properties, its temperature, how it changes temperature, its taste, etc...  Those in the ship are in control of the water and can transfer it throughout the ship when needed but can never remove it.  One day the child decides to open the hatch to go outside and discovers that they are engulfed and crushed by that same water that was so tamed and tempered inside the sunken ship.  God knows that our capacity to understand him is a process of discovering more of his incomprehensibility.  Keith Yandell says that mystery is not a good category for describing God's incomprehensibility.  Though that may be helpful we can still use mystery as a category for describing God but only loosely.

God, therefore cannot be original because his originality would require too much of him for us to handle in our finite, fallen and I would add, infantile status.
 

Kenton Sparks presents this view extremely well in his book, "God's Words in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship" with the Scriptural view of Accommodationism.

He writes, "Accommodation is God's adoption in inscripturation of the human audience's finite and fallen perspective.  Its underlying conceptual assumption is that in many cases God does not correct our mistaken human viewpoints but merely assumed them in order to communicate with us." (p.230-31).

Later he points out that the need to think this way is because there are obvious errors in the Bible, but not errors that actually challenge its authority but point to a doctrine of inscripturation which he labels - Accomodation.

Accommodationists, he says, "are as interested as anyone else in allaying impressions of divine error in Scripture, they are uncomfortable with slavishly equating the mind of God with the mind of the human author, and have no fixation whatever on rescuing the Bible's human authors from error...God has accommodated his discourse to us, not by instructing the human author to express things simply, but by adopting the simple viewpoints of that human author, whose perspectives, personality, vocabulary, and literary competence were well suited to the ancient audience of Scripture."  (p. 245)

Taylor College and Seminary in Edmonton, AB held their Faith and Culture Conference in September of 2007 where Kenton presented the lectures that formed his aforementioned book.  The MP3 files are titled, Epistemology, Biblical Criticism, Accommodation and Path of Wisdom.  These lectures give a fantastic overview of the subject matter in his book. 


Our fear is that if our God isn't original to categories that we define him with then we, as Christians or Evangelicals, aren't out in front of the "world" and they might be "original" than us.  So we project our fixed and purist notions of God onto him while he's busy incarnating himself into the mess of the world.  We end up with a God that is shaped by our insecurities rather than by his mysteries while the world moves forward.  He is not unfaithful to his promise to work through us - so he does (another form of Accommodationism) but the goal is to become more faithful to the way in which He is doing his work of redemption rather than to what makes us "feel" the most safe or comfortable.  We all have insecurities and because security is in the top 3 needs of humanity if not the top need, we will generally design our approaches to God based upon those insecurities more than He would have us do so.  Though He is patient, he will eventually remove those in order to draw us to who He really is.  

Because idolatry is really our projection onto God of that which we believe will meet our most pertinent needs, we posture a God who meets those needs and does so to allay our fears (which are sourced in our insecurities).  To worship a God like that is idolatry, but he because he's patient, he works with what we give him.  Over time, the good virus of the Gospel should constantly reform our view of who God really is and at times cause radical shifts in that process.  So the question remains?  Will I approach God today more out of my insecurities or will I come to him in his mysteries.  Both require dedication but only one requires submission.

Evangelical Scholar Believes in Evolution?

ABC News covers Bruce Waltke's resignation from Reformed Theological Seminary and Ken Ham comes to the rescue with his absolutist version of truth that seems to ignore so much of what is being discovered about the Ancient Near Eastern Cultures that surrounded Israel at the time of the Old Testament's composition. It's only a matter of time.

What Are We to Make of Adam and Eve? | The BioLogos Foundation

Peter Enns discusses the topic of the need for a historical dude named Adam from the Genesis narrative. This is exciting dialogue for people who want to understand how the genres of Scripture interact with the reality of Scripture and the issues raised by Science. Very refreshing!

What Are We to Make of Adam and Eve? | The BioLogos Foundation

What I feel like lately...

Phil Nellis put me on to this video today.  Pixelated, frustrated, castrated, mandated, cremated, dated.  A reminder that my story is meant to be lived outside as well, not observed and created indoors.  Compelling piece - not sure what to do with it.

Focusing on Jesus can miss the Message of the Bible

In a class on the Pentateuch and Historical Books of the Old Testament, our professor evoked a question regarding Jesus and how the Old Testament is taught.  In more than one opportunity Tim Keller has pointed out that whenever the Bible is taught or preached, the Gospel of Jesus Christ needs to be shared and pointed towards.  The question that our professor asked or at least pointed towards made the point that we should not teach the Bible and then point to Jesus not matter where we are at.  His statement is that we should let the Bible speak for itself and if there isn't explicit material that deals with the Gospel and/or with Christ, we don't need to put it in there.  Let the Bible speak for itself and don't push New Testament categories and themes on every Old Testament passage is the basic idea.

I first heard of this in college when it was discussed that Medieval theologians were faulted for using the allegorical method of interpretation too much.  Some saw Christ in the tent pegs of the Tent of Meeting = too far.  The Neo-Reformed/Tim Keller approach is an interpretive method of a different order.  What Keller and others like him are doing is trying to bring the Gospel into every passage of the Bible because of their Christo-centric hermeneutic.  Have they gone too far?  I think so and it would seem my professor agrees.  Karl Rahner in his book, Trinity, explains that most Christians are functionally Unitarians and that they focus attention too exclusively on the second person of the Trinity, Jesus, and ignore the Father and the Spirit all too much.  Roger Olson points this out in his book, Questions to all you Answers, and further points out the instead of saying, "Jesus is the answer," we should say, "the Trinity is the answer." Isaiah 53 is about Jesus, but it is also about Isaiah 53 and about the Father.  We bypass the beauty and profundity of Scripture when we look for our preconceived belief to overlay passages in Scripture.  If this happens too often, we bypass the ability for Scripture to speak on its own and begin to overlook and avoid the ability of the Bible to confront us with something other than what we're already looking for.  If you know what you want to get out of a passage, i.e. the Gospel, then you may be less and less open to allowing the Bible to speak to you on its own terms. 

This previous point was brought out by the professor.  To him, if we focus on getting to the Gospel and Jesus every time we preach or teach from a passage, then the richness of each passage can be circumvented and the Bible can turn into one big message about the New Testament reality about Jesus.  There are so many passages, especially in the OT that do not directly point to or deal with Jesus Christ.  If that's the case, then there is nothing wrong with teaching or preaching that passage without pointing to Christ each time. What if the messages of the Bible aren't always about Jesus?  They are indirectly of course but many messages don't point towards Jesus.

If the Bible were about one member of the Trinity, wouldn't it make more sense that the most important person to consider in the Trinity would be the Father.  These passages seem to point to that...

I Corinthians 15:26-28
²⁶The last enemy to be destroyed is death. ²⁷For he "has put everything under his feet."^[c] Now when it says that "everything" has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. ²⁸When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

Hebrews 1:1-4
In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, ²but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. ³The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. ⁴So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs. 

John 1:1;14

 ¹In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was with God in the beginning...¹⁴The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.




So should we focus on one member of the Trinity for every passage of Scripture - should interpretation be directed by Christo-centrism?  What if we were to look at each passage and look at it through the lens of the Trinity?  We could then discern who might be the most important figure to consider, whether one, two or all three of them when looking at a pertinent passage.  We need a Triune-centric interpretation of Scripture which will include Christo-centricism.  The Bible isn't about Jesus, it is about the Trinity and though Jesus is a central figure throughout the Bible and a member of the Trinity, the Bible isn't about Jesus.  It has to be about the Trinity and the life of the Trinity as they carry out their ongoing plan.  Are there important implications to consider because of this?  Does it matter?  Yes.  But that's a whole different post.

We cannot minimize the storyline to one member of the Trinity or give pre-eminence to one member unless that is done with Yahweh himself.  He's the one who sends Christ, is the Father, is obeyed by Christ, is given all that Christ accomplishes, is the person of the Trinity who creates through his Son, is whom we access through Christ.  He is the Goal and He has the first and final Word.  But the point is that we don't need to pick one - we look at Scripture, as much as possible, through the eyes of the Trinity not just one member of the Trinity.

The 8 Marks of a Robust Gospel | Scot McKnight | The Christian Vision Project

The 8 Marks of a Robust Gospel | Scot McKnight | The Christian Vision Project

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Peter Rollins' Insurrection Pub Tour Audio

Peter Rollins came to Chicago with Padraig and Johnny for the Insurrection Tour and left a whirlwind of questions, ponderings and hope.  If you missed it or would like to hear it again, the audio is right here.  I'd love to hear any responses to the presentation and what you heard.  Warning - there is some use of strong language and provocative prose but well worth hearing.

Vanilla flavored Gospel and SandCastles

Vanilla is a complicated and wondrous spice. The process to cultivate this flavor is extremely complex and requires excellent precision and timing. The processes that are used to cultivate the vanilla properly are largely un-related to any other cultivation process. The uniqueness of Vanilla cultivation sets it apart from the rest of the spices and plants. On a recent visit to a spice plantation in India, the process was explained, while we stared down at this simple looking plant. Each procedure to procure the spice was almost totally unrelated to the process that preceded it until finally the vanilla plant produced its yield. Interestingly, the process seemed to involve steps that would have required thousands and thousands of experiments to discover. I have no idea how that was done, nonetheless all the steps are necessary.

In reflection upon this, I was brought to the eras of the Bible and how we transitioned from era to the next. From our perspective, the process of God's revelation in the Old Testament seems to have little to do with the culture or our time today. For example, when was the last time, an angel visited you to inform you that your neighboring city was going to be destroyed or when was the last time a prophet in your midst was told to lay on his side for months on end to communicate a message from God. Take the sacrificial system for instance. When was the last time that you sacrificed a goat as an offering to the Lord or brought a grain offering in and had it offered by a priest to God to show your love and devotion to God.

Theologians talk about continuity and discontinuity, but if we are honest, there is little continuity in the structure and rituals of the Old Testament with our faith expressions today. Yet, there is overarching narrative that ties our chapter to theirs, but it seems so unrelated in so many ways.

Vanilla theology is theology that recognizes that what we begin with is going to go through so many different phases, that require the same vigilance and timing and radical transitioning that is required for this process to actually yield the final goal. The movement from era to era, though so different culturally, is telling the same story and projecting the same narrative. What I think isn't so sure, is the claim of continuity. C'mon - the process of salvation and revelation is bizarre and at points seemingly unrelated to what came before.

There is continuity - that is obvious but the foundation for this post is to provoke us to also realize how much discontinuity is required between eras in order for the next era to come to fruition. The ability for the core values of our faith to transition from era to era, generation to generation or culture to culture may require less continuity (though some is necessary) than we think and a lot more discontinuity.

The success of a core value is not the maintenance of the edifices that are built around it, but the ability of those who build those edifices to transition the essentials of the core values from edifice to edifice without without transitioning the actual edifices.

In short, we are all building sand castles - but it is not the castle that matters, it is what we do, gain and learn each time we build a sand castle - anticipating that what we have learned will be transferred to tomorrow's day on the beach after the evening's tide has washed away our castle.

To yield the vanilla that we want from the plant that we begin with, we need to be okay with transitioning to completely different yielding methods. These methods maintain the core essence of vanilla while at the same time shedding the unnecessary elements that keep us from reaching the goal. What is the goal? - pure vanilla flavor, a flavor and fragrance that can only be released at its full potential once the plant has transitioned through these increasingly unrelated but absolutely necessary steps of procurement.

Our Gospel is growing and transitioning in much the same way and it is doing so through the ongoing study and evolution of Scriptural interpretation, through the maturing transitions of the Church - Christ's body and bride, and through God's common grace revelation and work in history.

So the need then is to be a lot more comfortable with discontinuity and less comfortable with continuity. Human nature does the opposite, but if we want the true essence of the Gospel, both as it is as well as what it is continually unveiling about itself over time, we will need to embrace discontinuity more than we lean on continuity. This does not eject what is supported in the Gospel by continuity, but it does communicate to us that our default setting - our conventional thinking towards how this works - may not be as valuable as we "conventionally" and naturally think it to be.  To produce the purest and most potent yield may require passionately avant-garde methods of transition, methods that not only challenge status quo but transform it into a new status quo, that also anticipates the need for future methods of transition.  What we need are more builders, not protectors, of our sand castles.

How the Might Fall and Why Some Companies Never Give In

This is a great review done by David L. Mays on Jim Collins' book, "How the Might Fall and Why Some Companies Never Give In"  David has helped with the page numbers for those who would like to reference the original work.  Of course, this analysis can be applied to more than just companies.

Jim Collins, student of companies, is the noted author of the highly regarded leadership books Built to Last and Good to Great.  "Decline, it turns out, is largely self-inflicted, and the path to recovery lies largely

within our own hands."  (back flyleaf)  For effective teaching, "don't try to come up with the right answers; focus on coming up with good questions." (2)

"I've come to see institutional decline like a staged disease: harder to detect but easier to cure in the early stages, easier to detect but harder to cure in the later stages.  An institution can look strong on the outside

but already be sick on the inside, dangerously on the cusp of a precipitous fall." (5)

"Every institution is vulnerable, no matter how great . Anyone can fall and most eventually do." (8)

"Clearly, the solution to decline lies not in the simple bromide 'Change or Die'; Bank of America changed a lot, and nearly killed itself in the process.  We need a more nuanced understanding of how decline happens." (22) This study is done by comparing pairs of companies that succeeded and failed

within the same businesses and the same time frame.

Five Stages of Decline:  Stage 1:  Hubris Born of Success

"Great enterprises can become insulated by success . and lose sight of the true underlying factors that created success in the first place."

Stage 2:  Undisciplined Pursuit of More 

Companies in stage 2 may overreach by making undisciplined leaps into areas where they cannot be great or growing faster than their ability to fill key spots with capable people. 

Stage 3:  Denial of Risk and Peril

Companies in stage 3 begin to discount or explain away disturbing data, blame outside forces, and take outsized risks without giving enough weight to the consequences.

Stage 4:  Grasping for Salvation

Instead of getting back to the disciplines that made them great, companies take dramatic action, seeking a silver bullet solution.

Stage 5:  Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death

Some companies move quickly through the stages while others take years or decades.

"One of the keys to sustained performance lies in understanding how greatness can be lost." (24) "Great companies can stumble, badly, and recover. Most companies eventually fall.  Yet our research indicates that organizational decline is largely self-inflicted, and recovery largely within our own control." (25)

Stage 1:  Hubris Born of Success

Past accomplishment guarantees nothing about future success.  (28)

"A core business that meets a fundamental human need rarely becomes obsolete."  (32)  Unless your primary flywheel faces inevitable demise or you have lost your passion for it, "continue to push your primary flywheel with as much imagination and fanatical intensity as you did when you first began."  This means never-ending creative renewal.  (35) Foster a productive tension between continuity and change.  Adhere to the principles that produced success but continually evolve and modify with creative and

intelligent adaptation.  (36)  Maintain humility and a learning orientation.

Stage 2:  Undisciplined Pursuit of More

Big acquisitions that do not fit your core values or undermine your culture or defy economic logic can bring you down.  The problem is not necessarily complacency or lack of energy.  Overambitious growth targets and frenetic innovation, while failing at the basics, can start a downward spiral. Undisciplined pursuit might be action inconsistent with your core values, launching into activities that do not fit,  addiction to scale, neglecting your core business, focusing on your own personal success, compromising your values, or losing sight of your core purpose are all examples of undisciplined pursuit.

Perhaps the best warning sign is a declining proportion of key seats filled with the right people.  (57)

"Leaders who fail the process of succession set their enterprises on a path to decline."  ".one of the most significant indicators of decline is the reallocation of power into the hands of leaders who fail to comprehend and/or lack the will to do what must be done--and equally, what must not be

done--to sustain greatness." (60)

"overreaching tends to increase after a legendary leader steps away."  "But whatever the underlying dynamic, when companies engage in Stage 2 overreaching and bungle the transfer of power, they tend to hurtle downward toward Stage 3 and beyond." (61)  ".the wrong leader vested with power can

almost single-handedly bring a company down."  (62)

Stage 3:  Denial of Risk and Peril

Making big bets in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary.  Luck is not a reliable strategy.  "The greatest danger comes not in ignoring clear and unassailable facts, but in misinterpreting ambiguous data in situations when you face severe or catastrophic consequences if the ambiguity resolves

itself in a way that's not in your favor."  (70) (Read Challenger O-rings.)

"For businesses, our analysis suggests that any deterioration in gross margins, current ratio, or debt-to-equity ratio indicates an impending storm . Customer loyalty and stakeholder engagement also deserve

attention."  Externalizing blame is an indicator.

"Reorganizations and restructurings can create a false sense that you're actually doing something productive." (80)

Stage 4:  Grasping for Salvation

Stage 4 begins when an organization reacts to a downturn by lurching for a silver bullet.  This can take a wide range of possible forms, such as betting big on an unproven technology, pinning hopes on an untested strategy, relying upon the success of a splashy new product, seeking a 'game changing' acquisition, gambling on an image makeover, hiring consultants who promise salvation, seeking a savior CEO, expounding the rhetoric of 'revolution,' or in its very late stages, grasping for a financial rescue or

buyout.  The key point is that they go for a quick, big solution or bold stroke to jump-start a recovery, rather than embark on the more pedestrian, arduous process of rebuilding long-term momentum." (89)

"The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change.  The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency." (92)

"rebuilding greatness requires a series of intelligent, well-executed actions that add up one on top of another.  Some decisions are bigger than others, but even the biggest decisions account for only a small fraction of the total outcome that makes a great company.  Most 'overnight success' stories are about twenty years in the making." (94)

"our ongoing research.shows a distinct negative correlation between building great companies and going outside for a CEO." (95)

"If you want to reverse decline, be rigorous about what not to do." (97)

One marker is confusion and cynicism.  "Instead of passionately believing in the organization's core values and purpose, people become distrustful, regarding visions and values as little more than PR and rhetoric." (101)

Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death

The company either capitulates or runs out of options and cash.  Hope alone is not enough; you need resources.

Near this stage, ask, "What would be lost, and how would the world be worse off, if we ceased to exist?"  If the noble course is to fight on, it should be "to build an enterprise that makes such a distinctive impact on the world it touches, . with such superior performance, that it would leave a gaping hole.if it ceased to exist."  (111-12)

Well-Founded Hope

"The path to recovery lies first and foremost in returning to sound management practices and rigorous strategic thinking." (117)  ".lack of management discipline correlates with decline, and passionate adherence to management discipline correlates with recovery and ascent." (118)

"If you're still strong, be vigilant for early markers of decline." Remember that "circumstances alone do not determine outcomes." (120)  ".the main message of our work remains: we are not imprisoned by our

circumstances, our setbacks, our history, our mistakes, or even staggering defeats along the way.  We are freed by our choices." (120)

Following Churchill's speech, "Never give in.  Be willing to change tactics, but never give up your core purpose.  Be willing to kill failed business ideas, even to shutter big operations you've been in for a long time, but never give up on the idea of building a great company.  Be willing to evolve into an entirely different portfolio of activities, even to the point of zero overlap with what you do today, but never give up on the principles that define your culture.  Be willing to embrace the inevitability of creative destruction, but never give up on the discipline to create your own future.  Be willing to embrace loss, to endure pain, to temporarily lose freedoms, but never give up faith in the ability to prevail.  Be willing to form alliances with former adversaries, to accept necessary compromise, but never--ever--give up on your core values."  (123)

Appendix 3: Fannie Mae and the Financial Crisis of 2008

"Whenever people begin to confuse the nobility of their cause with the goodness and wisdom of their actions-- 'We're good people in pursuit of a noble cause, and therefore our decisions are good and wise' --they can perhaps more easily lead themselves astray.  Bad decisions made with good intentions are still bad decisions." (148)

Appendix 5: What Makes for the 'Right People' in Key Seats?

The right people

* fit with the company's core values

* don't need to be tightly managed

* understand that they do not have 'jobs'; they have responsibilities

* fulfill their commitments

* are passionate about the company and its work

* display 'window and mirror' maturity (they give credit to others and take blame themselves.  (159-60)

We must first love what we want to change

"A true radical must be a man of roots. In words that I have used elsewhere, 'The revolutionary can be an "outsider" to the structure he would see collapse: indeed, he must set himself outside of it. But the radical goes to the roots of his own tradition. He must love it: he must weep over Jerusalem, even if he ...has to pronounce its doom.' " 

 

- John A.T. Robinson

Resurrection - It's only just begun

The transfomative power of inspiration, affirmation and imagination is beyond our comprehension - we can never get enough of a life lived under the banner of these values.  Everything matters and it's only just begun!




Resurrection: Rob Bell from The Work of Rob Bell on Vimeo.

Imagination keeps us from insanity!

“Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess players do...Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea and so make it finite...Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as there is mystery, there is health.” 

- G.K. Chesterton

Indian Colors!

MC Boogalu and Moral One make it to India and come back with a song.  Don't be sipping any chai when you listen to this one - it's hot and makes you move - maybe a head shake or two.  Thanks Alert for esteeming India - makes my wife proud!

Deconstruction - the Father of all Learning

Some say that "Repetition is the mother of all learning."  Well at least the dean at my conservative Christian college used to say it.  I didn't like hearing it said, because I am not a repeater.  I don't like repetition.  It's boring and uncomfortable.  I remember trying to beat a Native American group drum with a group of men and realized that I couldn't keep time with them and to do so was killing me.  Over time, I'm sure I could get used to it, but regardless, I'm not a repeater and so I didn't get on with the mother of all learning.

On the other hand, I resonated immensely with the father of all learning.  Some would call him chaos or disorder, but I warmly call him "Deconstruction."  I am so comfortable in his presence.  We get on just fine and I love prating around in his nurturing environment.  I get the sense that not many others do though, but maybe not.  It seems that he isn't a favorite for some but for others, he spoils them rotten.  I know that he's the grandfather who sneaks candy to his grand-kids when grandmother is not watching - always upsetting the status quo for a little fun.

So if "repetition is the mother" and "deconstruction is the father" who is reconstruction?  Reconstruction is me, it is my identity.  It is the time and place in my life when I take all that my mother and father have given me and I make something of it.  In my response I take each repetition seriously but repetition by itself is mind numbing - for me at least.  You see, each repetition must come to an end but not necessarily an end.  It must come to a hill, a hard hill to climb and that's where deconstruction takes over.  One of the aspects of deconstruction is that it likes a challenge, a hill to climb, an unexpected situation that causes it to respond 'in the moment.'   It does not like the plains, the plateaus or the prairies - they are numbing.  But repetition or as she is otherwise known - "construction" - she loves the prairies - the flatland of predictability, the status quo highway - "practice makes perfect" she likes to quip and she quips it often, almost predictably.

The great thing is that mother construction and father deconstruction love each other.  They are distinct and have very unique features that make them so different from each other, but there's a cuteness about them.  Without them being together, I guess I would feel a deep sense of loss.  Divorce is out of the question though it has happened to some of other "reconstructing friends."  Either they get stuck with mother repetition and can't be found anywhere else except for where they will always be or they get lost with father deconstruction and just can't be found at all.

I have noticed that I really needed my mother, a lot.  I have to say that when I'm done reconstructing, I'll lean more easily on my father's side of the family but without my mother, I would be lost, lost deconstructing and never getting to that point in my adult life of reconstruction - or it may just take a much longer time.  I really enjoy hanging out with my dad, but honestly, left to himself, he's a mess.  I don't want to end up like him unless I can have a wife like my mom.  I'm so glad that they are there for each other when each of them gets stuck or lost in their own little worlds.

Each time there is difficulty or a mountain, my mom climbs on my dad's back and they begin their nascent ascent.  They always arrive at some new place, that generally speaking - only my dad has the courage to discover and bring my mom towards.  But upon arrival, it is she who knows what to do.  She begins her rhythmic process of bringing them both across the prairie - guiding him back onto the flat path that will lead them to the next mountain where once again they will ascend.

It hasn't always been like this.  Dad was always stamping about, to and fro, looking for more mountains to climb, problems to solve and chaos to swim in, not entrusting himself to her swooning glide across the prairie floor - so rhythmic, so smooth, so guided.   Mom would haggle and complain at the base of the mountain, repeating her complaints over and over, refusing to get on his back and just let him climb - wanting to circle again and again so as to avoid the fearful climb.  Funny thing is, she'd rather continue going around in circles at the base of the mountain than going up the mountain. She wanted the comfort of her plateau, to go straight once more again and not to have to climb the difficult slopes.   He wanted to climb, to know something new and novel and never seen before.  After short spurts across the plain, he would eventually ease into a depressive gait drawing his strength from her loyal love.  Over time, they learned, they learned that there will always be mountains to climb and plateaus to traverse.  They learned to trust each other when at the mouth of the trail, she might get lost, or in the wide open, he might get tossed.

When all's been walked and climbed, what caused them to retreat from the battle of "I'm better than you," was my birth.  I began to walk with them, climb with.  They found that if they were right and the other oh so wrong, that my very life would suffer years beyond their ego's death. They found that my reconstruction required them both - dancing and whirling, rhythmically free around each other.  This not for their hope or future or joy, but for mine - they gave up the fight for me and now I must honor them with this plea - Whether meant for the straight plateau of your mother, or the upward bounding of your father, until you know what you are, honor each by being the reconstruction of you. 

-Nathan Smith

Can we worship love?

love from God can be worshiped because in some ways, it is inaccessible, unexplainable and non-repeatable and of a kind, genre and capacity that humans don't even have categories for. 
 
To love is also human but a kind of love that we have capacity for, can access and is repeatable - something we grow into. 

We have the leaf he has the forest. Christ limited himself to carrying and passing out leaves while on earth, but remained the Creator of the forest.

4th Member of the Trinity?

We have learned that there are at least 3 members of the trinity, but what if there are more?  At least one notable theologian has gone "off-record" to say that it's possible that the numerical persons of the Trinity are at least 3 but philosophically and Biblically there could be more.  What if there were?  Would that cause problems and what would they be?

The "second" person, classicly understood as the Son, Jesus Christ, is both divine and human at the same time.  As we celebrate and reflect upon his resurrection today, I've have a serious lingering question.  What if Jesus could be approached as two people.  Of course he is both human and divine united in one person, but the problem comes from a question a friend of mine had.

"If we are supposed to live life in the way of Jesus, then how am I supposed to worship his humanity.  If I am supposed to become like him, then how I am supposed to worship that which I am to become.  If I become what I've been worshipping, then I will no longer need to worship what I will one day become?"

My tentative suggestion to this great question was that we aren't supposed to worship the humanity of Jesus, because we will eventually become like him in his humanity, but we can still worship his divinity because, though we may share in his divinity, we will never be divine. 

So the fourth person of the Trinity (figuratively speaking) could be the humanity of Jesus that we aren't necessarily supposed to worship.

The question is further provoked by the unique aspects of what it means to be human.  As a member of humanity, I am a member of a community whether I like it or not.  As part of that community (humanity), I have a communal as well as a separate identity.  As a member of that community I have an inherent need for that community, i.e. if I'm a human being, then de facto, I need other human beings and they need me.  To be a member of the human race requires that I "need" other human beings.  From birth to death and life, my humanity requires the humanity of others.

If the third member of the Trinity entered the community of humanity, it is inherent to his existence then to need other human beings.  He continues to this day to exist as  a human being and therefore continues to "need" us as the community of humanity that he belongs to.  Does he need us because without us he wouldn't exist - not at all.  That's not necessary.  He chose to need us, not to exist, but simply as a result of how he created humanity to need each other continuously.

So we can conclude from this at minimum, that a member of the Trinity "needs" us.  Though He chose for it to work this way, the entailment from this is that God needs us.  Why would he choose to need us?

Again, it isn't a need based upon his ability to be God, but a need based upon a decision that he made - the decision to enter the human race.  The result - God so esteems humanity, our identity and role in his Creation, that he chose to become one of us with the ensuing implication that he would always need us at some level.

We should not worship then that which needs us?  The need to worship God, the triune God, must exclude the need to worship his humanity.  Why does it seem like I'm splitting hairs?  Because I might be, but if I am not, there might be a form of idolatry that accompanies how we worship God in Christ's humanity not if we worship God.

The point of this is actually positive.  God so esteems humanity and wants to elevate our view of humanity to its proper evaluation through his eyes.  He knows that  that cannot happen without physical incarnation, without him becoming one of us.  One of the purposes of the incarnation and the resurrection was God's desire to so esteem humanity in the eyes of humanity that we could envision a future where our existence matters and our actions have cosmic implications - because that is the way God planned it to happen, not because the universe is dependent upon us to exist.

Left to our own devices, our retributive view of God, our selfishness and self-hatred, we could never envision what humanity is actually supposed to become.  God chose to incarnate himself to esteem humanity by his presence within humanity and give us a glimpse of our future by resurrecting himself into his resurrection body - a bodily existence that surpassed what all humans had ever experienced or could ever dream of existing as.  The resurrection is the projection of the endless opporutnities that our bodily identity actually has latent within us.  Sin's implications do not only need a Redeemer to free us from our past death, but also a Future Vision that will project the possibilities that we have been entrusted with in our yet-to-be resurrected humanity.

Someone has said, "we become what we worship."  First thing to note is that that isn't in the Bible.  It may actually be wrong.  We could actually re-phrase it to say, "we worship because God is causing us 'to become.'"  What are we becoming?  We are becoming what humanity was intended to become, the very process that sin spoiled, the process that Christ came to rescue and then to release us back into.  This process of becoming always returns the glory back to God, so becoming the human race that we were meant to become is worship.  We don't become like God because we worship him, we are becoming who we are supposed to be in the way of Christ because God is doing a work in our lives that we aren't in control of even though we participate with the process.  If I become like Christ it won't be because I was worshiping God.  That is ultimately spitting in the face of the sufficiency of what Christ accomplished.  I worship God because he is making me like the human Christ.  I don't worship Him so that I can become like the human Christ.  It's a response to God's action and love, not an action that produces God's response.  That would be idolatry.

So should we worship the "4th person" - the humanity of Christ?  I'm not so sure.  Should we worship his divinity - absolutely Yes!  Is he one person, both divine and human, yep.  Can you or I explain how the incarnation actually works - nope.  But we can talk about how to respond to the incarnation.  Because this is a theology in process, I invite any kickbacks or disagreement or elaborations.  Resurrection Sunday is a day to rejoice in - not only for what we get from it, but also for how it invites us to see the potential of our humanity through God's eyes and consequently, our incredible role in his plan.

He is Risen - it's only just begun...

Holy Saturday Keeps My Head out of the Sand

Holy Saturday tells us something about our desire to bury our heads in the sand. We know death and what it does.  If we follow Christ, we have faith that our resurrection is coming. But Holy Saturday represents this era - the era of 'in-between' death and resurrection.  It is the time of exile, of pilgrimage - the need to return 'home' and the journey towards a 'home' we've never seen. To believe in Jesus' death and resurrection requires faith, but it is a more unique and difficult faith to live in the tension of the 'in-between' and that tension is what we're living in right now.  

What do we do with unresolved tension?  We ignore it, deny it, look straight through it, anesthetize it, medicate it, store it in a box in the closet or build moats around our hearts of certainty and hope that it really isn't out there holding our city at siege.   The harder we fight to keep it out, the more creatively invasive it becomes until we are forced to wage an all out war on the "in-between."  When we realize we can't win, we can't run and we can't hide, we bury our heads in the sand and hope that it goes away. 

What if the "in-between" were our friend, our comrade, our ally, our tutor, our teacher, or our mentor?  Holy Saturday teaches us that it's okay - that our era of waiting yet wanting so much more is good.  It's part of the plan and the plan is good.  What do we do in the meantime?  We wait, we work, we give courage, we hope-monger and we pursue peace.  We rest in the exile as we pursue the peace of the city and we pilgrimage onward towards the Heavenly city.  

If Holy Saturday were to speak to us, she'd say, "Embrace the 'in-between' and for Christ's sake, keep your heads out of the sand."

Restoring Pangea

Restoring Pangea

This morning I heard about the new draft pick for the lowest ranked team in Major League Baseball, the Washington Nationals.  I don't know much about sports, but apparently, they got the best pick of the season - 1st round pick or something like that.  The funny thing was that though they are the lowest ranked team with 100 straight losses (whereas the Yankees have at least 9 players with $150 million dollar contracts and have won the world series at least 4 times in the last 10 or 15 years) they chose to put the highest ranked rookie of the season down into their junior team.  You'd think they'd want to pull him into the Major League as soon as they got him.  Not so in baseball.  Baseball is a sport that you need time to play into.  Apparently the fear is that if a high ranked rookie goes straight to the Majors, he could get eaten up and overwhelmed with the level of play and professional intensity. 

Though he has the talent, he does not have the maturity and needed experience to play in the Majors yet.  The teams decision reflects their hard earned wisdom - that no matter how good a rookie is, he needs to play at a level that gives him an increased sense of confidence and experience before he's launched out into the big leagues.  This matures him as well as giving him an honest appraisal of what he's got himself into.  The concern in sending him into the malaise of the Big Leagues is that if its done to soon too fast, he won't last and a great career could come to a halting crash as a result.  By starting the super star in a league below the Majors, he builds confidence, gets experience, and matures into a position and an ability that matches the intense environment of the Majors - thereby extending his life in the Majors as well as procuring a matured playing style that will give him success in the long run rather than in the short run.

Anxiety can take place in the lives of people going through this process and cause them to shortchange themselves and everyone else. This reminds me of the horses at Arlington Race Track.  As they stand in the gate, ready to launch out, waiting for the gun to fire and the gate to fly open, they anticipate the launch.  So much, though, has been put into their preparation for their first race.  Many teenagers and young adults feel this same anticipation, this same longing to launch out into the world and make an impact.  Many of us want responsibility before we are entrusted with the authority that comes with time or we want authority without fulfilling the responsibility that accompanies the authority.  The time that is required to go through this process of waiting is difficult.

It has been said "Waiting is the hardest work of hope." -Smedes ( I believe ).

In the New Testament, Peter points out, "Young men, in the same way be submissive to those who are older. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, 'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.' Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.  Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you."

God cares about the anxiety involved in the process of waiting that we are going through.  In due time we will be given the responsibility and authority to lead others into an ongoing and responsible encounter with God.  We don't have to be "professional Christians" to do this, we simply need to pursue maturity in Christ and wait for God's timing.  What do we do in the meantime - play in the juniors, practice in the off season, be submissive to those who are older and practice acts of humility ( that's what helps one to become humble, because we aren't naturally ). Whatever strengths you have as a leader will come out and benefit the people that you lead immensely.  Whatever insecurities you have will come out and have the potential of harming the people that you lead, but they don't have to.  In a forthcoming post, I will talk about how to deal with those insecurities.  One of my insecurities is that my blog won't be read - so please come back.

Questions to ponder?

1. What happens to us when we short-change this process or are impatient?
2. Who are examples of people who waited for God's timing in life and in the Bible?
3. Who are examples of people who didn't wait for God's timing in life and in the Bible?
4. Have there been times in our lives when we didn't wait or did wait and what were the results?
5. What are some of our insecurities and how do we choose to cope with them?  How do other have to cope with them?
6. What are some of our natural talents?  How are we engaging and providing time and space for those talents to be matured and used.