Capt Jack had it Made!

Captain Jack Aubrey was the commander of the HMS SURPRISE in the 2003 film "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," as adapted from Patrick O'Brian's series of novels.  The movie itself is probably the finest cinemagraphic representation ever of the realities of life aboard a naval vessel in the days of, "Wooden ships and iron men."  Though Capt Jack is fictional, his position as master of a fighting frigate is clearly historical.  From my position as a commander in the 21st Century I look at Capt Jack with great envy.  While he was at sea, his only duty was to ensure that his men were doing their duty and that ship was well tended, fitted and fought.  He had little, if any, administrative minutiae to fog his days.  He kept logs, wrote letters, and read & reread accounts of other naval officers, to be sure, but the majority of his time was spent on the weather decks ensuring that his ship was on course and "tight." 

 

Unlike Capt Jack, I am constantly buried in an avalanch of paperwork to the extent that it takes significant effort just to get out of my office.  There is so much that I could do that I have had to deliberately choose what will not get done.  Modern communication technologies, as great as they are, more often add to time pressures than take away from them.  Here's an example.  When I first came on active duty we had very few computers capable of performing word processing.  As a result, if I wanted to type up something official, I had to use a typewriter.  We didn't even have electric ones - just manuals.  When I finished writing my document and wanted to forward it to someone in another command, I either had to hand-deliver it, or put it in a messenger envelope and have it sent through our courier system.  If I sent it at the beginning of one week I might reasonably expect a documenatry response by the beginning of the next week.  Now someone will forward a 15-page document by email and expect it to be read, digested and critiqued in less than an hour.  That might be fine if it were done only once a day.  The reality is that the ease of generating documentation with today's technology means that the quantity of documentation has multiplied exponentially.  This boils down to a lot more time looking at my computer and trying to dig through my "in" box than I would like to be spending. 

 

Good leadership is about people.  Just as life is about people.  Everything else pales in importance to people.  If my paperwork doesn't have a beneficial effect on the people with whom I am charged to lead, then it is counterproductive and a "sea-anchor" slowing progress.  There are some collaborative tools out there that I want to investigate using in order to decrease the time it takes for me to handle paperwork, but for the moment I still find myself signing my name up to 50-60 times a day on documents that I usually have to reacquaint myself with in order to ensure that what I'm signing is accurate & trustworthy. 

 

No matter how important a piece of paper is to the operation of my unit, I still need to get out to see, and be seen by, the people I lead.  I've already had several situations in which I have learned things just by visiting my people, that I otherwise never would have known.  In those situations I have learned of needs that I could fill in order to help my people get the mission accomplished.  There is no great leadership without presence.  No email or video teleconference can make up for looking someone in the eye and dripping sweat with the people in your charge. 

 

Jack Aubrey had it good.  He was on a small ship with a contained amount of sailors.  They learned very quickly what was important to him and what he expected.  That is critical for anyone in a leadership role.  One of the things I'm doing to get out from behind my desk is that I'm going to get a stand-up desk soon.  It will make walking away from my office that much easier, because I'll already be standing.  More updates on this later.

 

If you haven't done so yet, watch "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World."  It's a great leadership film.

 

Dirk

What are Your Standards?

Part of almost every military officer's career is the study of leadership.  I will caveat that and say that, though we almost always talk of "leadership" as a positive virtue, the fact is that leadership is often bad, because bad leadership is pretty easy.  It doesn't take much effort to lead poorly.  Great leadership, on the other hand, is inconvenient.  It requires focus and effort on almost everything put personal desires and comfort. 

 

So, we study good leadership in order to have the tools to lead well those of whom we have been given charge.  I keep several books on leadership on my desk and every day read a few passages or paragraphs in order to get thoughts on leadership flowing.  One passage I read last week really got me thinking about the standards by which we critique ourselves and our oranizations.  The author mentioned how a large athletic shoe company might motivate their employees by setting a goal to "beat" their major competitor, or a rental car company might do the same.  The author mentioned these as possible means by which an organization may establish unifying goals for its members - goals/objectives that motivate everyone to work together to achieve. 

 

The more I thought about this passage, though, the more it bothered me.  It finally hit me why I think this type of goal-setting is only second-rate at best.  Setting your sights on outperforming a competitor, in effect, means that you are letting the competition set the performance standards.  If we succeed by just being "better" than another organization (and what metrics do you use to make the comparison?), then what do we do when we "arrive?"  Does the goal then become, "staying ahead of the competition,"?  If so, the competition is still the one setting the standard by which we judge ourselves. 

 

I just don't think there is any way around the need to have objective, immutable standards by which we judge our own performance and the performance of the organizations with which we are associated.  Let's take our athletic shoe company as an example.  Instead of setting a goal to provide a greater monetary return for investors than the current, "industry leader," this company could decide that its objective, immutable standards include high quality products, great customer service and a corporate environment in which excellence, honesty and valuing individuals are the most important characteristics of daily operations.  What the competition does or doesn't do has no impact on those standards at all.  In fact, the company could be tracking very well on all those standards but not be the "industry leader" in terms of profitability.  So what?  Most people who we want to be around would much rather be part of an organization in which excellence and taking care of people are highly valued and rewarded. 

 

A benefit of being imperfect human beings is that we can always improve.  Therefore, if we have standards that require perfection to attain, we may never get there, but we can always get closer than where we are right now.  Objective, immutable standards of performance keep us focused on the right path and protect us from using subjective comparisons to others in order to justify complacency or laziness.  Improvement is a journey, not a destination.

 

"Take responsibility, finish well & have fun!"

Dirk

The Boss Sets the Pace - Whether He/She Knows it or Not

This morning I learned a very valuable lesson in pace-setting.  Physical Training (PT) is a staple of military life.  This morning the commander of one of my subordinate elements invited me to participate in PT with his unit.  That’s one of those invitations that a commander really can’t easily refuse.  Since the session was based around a formation run of about 3.5 - 4 miles (you know, the ones where someone is singing “Jodies” and the unit repeats the lines) I used my status as a “guest” to run in different places of the formation and be seen by the personnel.  At one point I sprinted up to the front and ran next to the commander – the one who works directly for me.  Very soon I realized that we had picked up the pace significantly.  I had inadvertently become the pacesetter.  In my mind I was just trying to be with my subordinate and let him know that I was enjoying the invitation, but as I got to his pace, he wanted to make sure that he wasn’t running slower than I was, so he sped up a bit.  Simultaneously, I wanted to ensure that I didn’t fall behind his pace, so I sped up, too.  Pretty soon we had accelerated significantly -  much to the chagrin of the personnel behind us.  

 

I realized very quickly that my presence at the head of the formation had immediately resulted in a change of pace – and the pace was faster.  Even though I was the senior person there, I was an invited guest of my subordinate, and I did not want to overshadow his position.  It was a very poignant lesson on how the senior person out front sets the pace for an organization, and may inadvertently cause subordinates to toss aside plans that had been well-thought-out.  Sometimes, good leaders need to make radical changes in order to get subordinates out of inefficient or dangerous ruts.  However, things like that need to be done deliberately and with great forethought.  Getting out in front and making great changes, or implementing the “bright idea of the week,” can put an organization into terminal confusion.  I once had a commander who was a great man to work for, but had a different “bright, big idea” every week.  In August of 2000, after he came to my office and elaborated on his latest brainchild, I finally said, “Sir, I’m still working on your great ideas from April.  Can we slow down on the changes for a while?”  

 

Lesson:

• Leaders, good and bad, set the pace for their organizations, whether they realize it or not.  A good leader will regularly seek feedback as to the effect his/her pace is having on the organization, and then evaluate whether that effect is beneficial and how to maintain or alter the pace as necessary to meet the goals of the organization.  

 

Dirk

In Command

Command – leadership – and, in fact, all of life is about PEOPLE! We become so caught up in, and enamored by systems and processes that we forget that PEOPLE are the spice of life – the sources of the greatest joys (and the greatest sorrows) of our lives. Systems, programs and processes are supposed to help us care for people and help them succeed. Unfortunately, getting a system to work becomes so daunting a task that we achieve nominal success with the “thing” at the expense of the people for which the “thing” is supposed to exist in the first place. Accountability of equipment is a big deal in the military. Some units have in trust millions of dollars-worth of taxpayer-funded equipment. We need to ensure that it remains where it’s supposed to be, is used as it was intended and is maintained properly. Why is all that important? So that our people can use that equipment to ensure that the bad guys die, surrender, or otherwise decide that fighting us doesn’t make them good risks for the Term Life Insurance advertised on satellite TV last night.

Lessons:

• It’s amazing how most people respond when someone higher up the chain of command demonstrates true care & concern. How is that done? It spelled T-I-M-E. Taking 30 seconds to look an individual in the eye and really listen can change a life.
• People outside of established standards are not horrible losers – they’re just outside of the standards. It’s in their interest, and the interest of the organization for them to get back into standard.
• Give people your honest opinion – backed up with actions that demonstrate that you truly care. If you have proven that you care, your opinion, even a critical one, will be received with sobriety.

More to follow - Dirk

Three weeks in....

Now that I’ve been in the saddle for three weeks I’ve gotten over most of the saddle sores, but it is still a challenge.  I’m still “learning the ropes,” but I think my level of competence is increasing steadily – at least I hope so!  The mountains of paperwork associated with being “the boss” are staggering.  There are so many documents that require my signature by policy that I’ve found myself having to either come in early or stay late in order to have unhindered time at my desk in order to wade through it all.  I have determined, though, that I’m not going to be glued to my computer screen or chained to my desk any more than necessary.  If I’m stuck behind my desk I can’t interact with the people who make our organization successful.  They need to know what I intend and what I think is appropriate (or not).  

 

I’ve change my office a little bit from my predecessor, and I’ve cleaned it up quite a bit.  Note to self:  When leaving a location for someone else to fall in on, clean it up and make it look as presentable as possible.  It’s simply bad form to leave an office looking like a mess.  In that vein, I’ve determined to always have my desk look neat and tidy.  I remember a ship’s captain once saying, “A clean ship does everything else right.”  I would phrase that a bit differently, because appearances can be whitewashed with nothing of substance beneath the attractive exterior (sound like some female celebrities you know?).  I would say, “A well-organized outfit will demonstrate its effective organization in outward appearances.”  

 

I am going to get rid of the flat “executive” desk, though.  I’m having a stand-up desk built so that I can move around more easily and not have the desk as a physical obstacle to people who come to see me.  My stand-up desk will face the wall.  Have you noticed that once you are sitting down the law of inertia takes over?  Getting up takes physical and mental effort.  If I’m already standing up (or sitting on a bar stool from which I have to come down) moving around the office, or into the hallway or adjacent offices becomes a lot easier.  It also makes me sneaky!  My assistants around me won’t hear my chair squeaking when I get up.  It will make me more mobile, and thus, more accessible.  I can’t wait until it’s ready!

 

Journal point of the week so far:

• Good leadership is often inconvenient for the one exercising it – thus it is exceedingly rare in our self-absorbed culture.  (I use the qualifier “good” because I believe that there is no such thing as a “leadership vacuum.”  “Leadership” always happens – and it is usually bad.)

 

More later - Dirk

First Week in the Saddle

Well, I’ve been the “boss” for just over a full week now.  I find the feeling is much different than I expected.  Being in charge of such a large organization is much more natural than I had expected.  It helps tremendously that I have a good, no, great group of immediate subordinates who know their jobs, are committed to the success of the organization and believe that the only way that others are going to be loyal to them is if they demonstrate loyalty as well.  

 

I’ve implemented some changes, but mostly I’ve been trying to adjust attitudes and thought processes.  In places where I’ve found situations and practices that are out of line with my priorities or our organization’s core values I have taken a direct action that I hope gets the point across without any misinterpretation of my intent, but trying very hard to do so without blaming or making the changes appear to be personal affronts.  I know that some feathers will get ruffled, but that is the nature of change – human beings get very used to their ruts.  Having to carve new paths is uncomfortable.  I understand that.  But if we don’t have constant improvement we’ll be going backwards.

 

At the moment I am facing my first issue with a subordinate who has apparently been caught in a serious compromise of professional integrity.  This individual is in a position where he has significant influence over a very important part of the organization – so much so that if I cannot trust his integrity, I’ll have to sack him.  Since this is the first such situation I’ve had to deal with, and the circumstances will unfortunately be flying through the rumor mill very soon, how I deal with this will set a tone for the remainder of my tenure.  I hope there are mitigating circumstances that I will learn about later, but at this moment, given what I do know, I don’t think that’s possible.  My immediate subordinates and assistants hold their integrity high enough that they won’t sugar-coat anything – so I’ll get to the bottom of this soon.  

 

Lessons –

• Right & truth fear no investigation.
• Individual gain at the cost of organizational integrity is a “lose-lose” situation.
• The boss needs to appear organized & in control at all times.  If I look rushed & hurried when I’m walking around the building I give the appearance of disorder and that my demeanor is being dictated by circumstances.  Every organization is a direct reflection of its leadership.  If the boss is in control everyone else will be, too.  The converse is also true.
• Give people your full attention when you give them attention at all.  Don’t go half-way.  I’ve found several times when someone wants to talk to me & I’m in the middle of something else, I’ve said, “Give me a moment so I can give you my full attention.”  I get to a good stopping point and then pay attention.
• When given the choice between paying attention to inanimate objects, such as paperwork and email or people, always choose people.

 

Dirk

 

 

 

 

New Direction for Blog

I’m taking this blog in a completely different direction.   This blog will now focus on leadership in all its aspects.  I expect it to be log and primer regarding leadership as I assume the helm of a mid-sized organization for a finite period of time – about two years.

 

Today was my first full day “in the saddle.”  It is surprising what it is like to be the man in charge of such a large organization – the authority and responsibility are tremendous.  I began the day by giving my staff a fire-hose rendition of what is important to me.  In a word, PEOPLE!  It is my goal for all the people in our organization to be RIDICULOUSLY SUCCESSFUL in what they do, both professionally and personally.  I want to get everyone excited about making everyone else successful.

 

Leadership always happens – and it isn’t always good.  Everyone’s primary leadership audience is themselves.  We must each lead ourselves well in order to lead others well.  In fact, when others see us leading ourselves well, they will naturally follow our lead, or, if they are in authority, will give us greater responsibility for leading others.  How we lead ourselves and others is completely wrapped up in our individual identities.  Why we do what we do is completely based on who we think we are or want to be.  

 

Right now I’m still in a whirlwind of getting settled.  The first big thing I want to do is change the environment of my office so that people around me see a visual difference in what is going on.  The previous chief is an excellent leader and ran the organization very, very well.  Now he’s going on to bigger & better things.  I’m just different, and I want to demonstrate that not so much by changing what other people do, but by changing what the chief does, and letting that filter down slowly.  

 

More later.  This shall be an exiting ride.  - Dirk

Another Superhero - Tom Valentine

A news item you may have heard hit very close to home last week. On Wednesday Feb., 13 U. S. Navy Special Operations Senior Chief Petty Officer Thomas J. Valentine died during a high-altitude/high-opening (HAHO) parachute training jump in Arizona. His wife’s parents are the oldest friends that my parents have as a couple. They knew me when I was 18 months old. After multiple deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and having done much more than his share in the War on Terror, Senior Chief Valentine died doing what he loved to do – training with his fellow US Navy SEALs. You can read one of the many news reports here.

My family and I attended Tom’s funeral on Friday – held in the chapel and Naval Amphibious Base, Little Creek in Norfolk/VA Beach. The chapel, which holds about 800, including overflow, was standing-room only. The service itself was a primer on the leadership style of Tom Valentine. I have asked for a recording of the funeral so that I can take notes on it and develop some of the concepts for my own use. The first speaker was Tom’s squadron commander. The admiration with which he spoke of Tom said even more than his eloquent words. At a funeral you expect the eulogies to extol all the positive virtues of the deceased. Those who spoke about Tom, however, clearly exceeded that mandate because of the tremendous respect he engendered in all of them for the way he lived his life.

In spite of the tremendous demands that the life of a SEAL puts on family, Tom’s family came first, and they adored him. Christina has lost her best friend and the father of two children who made Tom’s eyes light up. Their son loved to get wind that Daddy was coming home and hide in a tree in their yard in order to ambush him.

Tom’s leadership philosophy can be summed up by the following question and answer:

“At what level are you willing to participate?” The only answer Tom could give is, “All in – all the time.” In Tom Valentine’s world something worth doing was only worth doing with his whole heart. His total commitment to everything he undertook characterized everything he ever did.

For those of you who only know about Navy SEALs from the way they are depicted in popular media, you would not recognize any of those caricatures in any of the SEALs I have ever met, let alone the ones I have seen this week. Tom in particular was as unpretentious and humble as you could ever expect a man to be. He would not talk about what he did unless you dragged it out of him. He had no need to grandstand. He had a family he loved more than life itself and a profession that allowed him to serve his country in the most direct means possible – by taking on our enemies face-to-face. What could be better?

As the testimonies demonstrated on Friday, few people have ever done it better than Senior Chief Tom Valentine. A family, the SEALs and our country have lost a man who was a hero to those we would call heroes.

Though the following words are mine, I think they describe how Tom lived, and a theme I wish to embody,

“The world will little note our words. May it, rather, mark our deeds and judge us worthy of emulation.”

The Ineffective Church - Part 3

Now we move on to another absolute “given” in modern evangelicalism – premillennial eschatology.  If you don’t recognize the term, you’ll recognize the concepts:  The world will become more and more godless and evil.  All the Christians of the world will be “raptured” (taken to heaven at once), and a demonic “world leader” will emerge, probably from Europe, and unite the nations of the earth into a “one world” government.  This “leader,” known among premillennialists at the “Antichrist” will establish himself as a pseudo-diety and cause pagan sacrifices to be made in Jerusalem.  After a “tribulation” of seven years, the armies of God will return from heaven for one final, climactic battle on the plain of Meggido in Syria (from which we get the term “Armageddon”), in which the armies of the Antichrist will be defeated and God will establish his kingdom on earth for the “millennium.”  That’s premillennial eschatology in a nutshell.

 

There have been lots of books and movies made about this – starting with, “A Thief in the Night” in the 1960s – which scared me to death when I was about 10.  In the 70s there was Hal Lindsay’s film, “The Late, Great Planet Earth,” after his book of the same title, and more recently we’ve been favored with Tim LaHaye’s, Left Behind book series and movie. 

 

The effects of this eschatology are just as troubling as the marketing effects of freewill theology, but a lot more confusing.  The premillennial thought is that the world is getting worse and worse, more satanic by the day, but it’s supposed to be that way.  Eventually God will take his people out of the earth so that he can rain judgment on those who have rejected him.  After the rapture (a term which doesn’t exist in the Bible) the Holy Spirit is out of the world and there is no more free will.  If you’re “left behind,” you’re lost and can no longer “choose” Christ. 

 

One contradictory aspect of this way of belief is that we, as Christians, are, in essence, “painting a sinking ship.”  If we’re about to be taken out of this world that’s bad and getting worse, why should we put much effort into spreading God’s good rule over the planet?  Why would we bring children into a world that is supposed to start really hating and persecuting Christians all over the place?  Why would we plan for leaving a godly inheritance and establishing faithful families when all the “end-times” profits, er, prophets, tell us that we’re on the brink of the Apocalypse?  On one hand we say, “Jesus is King,” and reigns over the universe, but then we say that satan is still ruler of this earth, and his power is supposed to grow until Christians are taken out of the world.  So why do we fight it?  Which is it?  Is Christ supreme and sovereign or not?  When we add an apocalyptic view to freewill theology we come out with a real mess of what Christians are trying to do.   One truly negative result is the apparent constant search for a political personality to stem the tide of unrighteousness. 

 

Those who hold to premillennial end-times theology might be surprised to learn that prior to about 1830 orthodox Christianity had no concept of this idea.  Before that postmillennial or amillennial theology was considered truly biblical.  The rise of premillennial theology mirrored the rise of freewill theology in the US.  Charles Finney, whose flamboyant and flaming oratory was responsible for the beginning of “tent revival” meetings, did more to push these errors than anything else.  I’ve heard of a seminary where Charles Finney’s methods are studied and critiqued for his overt and premeditated use of emotional manipulation to produce “pep rally”-type responses from the audience – and the instructor only uses Finney’s own writings to condemn his methods. 

 

Premillennial eschatology has affected our modern English translations of the Bible.  A key example is in Matthew 23:36 where Jesus Says, “Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation,” (ESV).  Many translations have a note with the word “generation” saying that the word could mean “race,” indicating that the Jews will still be on the earth when these things happen.  The funny thing is that there are no other places in contemporary (1^st century) Greek literature, let alone in Scripture, where that word is translated in any other way but to mean “generation – the generation of people who are alive right now.” 

 

So here we have a major problem.  Either the translation is bad, Jesus was wrong, or everything that Jesus predicted did happen to that “generation.”  When we get to the book of Revelation, where premillennialists hang their hats, we have a similar problem in the first three verses of chapter 1.  In verse 1 we have the words, “..the things that must soon take place.”  In verse three we have, “for the time is near.”  We clearly have an issue with time proximity to the writers of the New Testament.  Premillennialists brush these issues aside with nary a hint of perplexity.  “Soon is relative in the space of eternity,” they say.  “Peter says, ‘God is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.’” (2 Peter 3:9 – ESV). 

 

Well, if Jesus really meant that generation, and John really mean “soon,” and if they were true, then what possible historical event could we have missed that might have accounted for all the prophecies that the premillennialists stand upon?  How about the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and the accompanying horror of the Roman siege that preceded it?  There are tremendous, logical, historical and biblical reasons for believing that the “tribulation” of which premillennialists speak is, in fact, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. 

 

There are many well-respected Christian scholars and preachers who hold to postmillennial or amillennial theology: John MacArthur, R. C. Sproul, and Alistair Begg, just to name three.  However, even if you remain as steadfast in your premillennial view now as you were when you started reading this, please consider the contradictory and counterproductive effects of the American church’s “end-times” views and how we can fix that. 

 

“Fly high & roar loudly”

 

dvdk

 

The Ineffective Church - Part 2

It has become a “given” in Christian theology that, though no one would openly question God’s complete and total sovereignty over the affairs and fates of men, that in some mysterious way God gives everyone a free will to choose or reject him.  The cornerstone of almost all evangelism is that each individual must decide whether to intellectually assent to the claims of Christ or not.  The competing doctrinal viewpoint is that God’s complete sovereignty includes his predetermination and election of those who are to be his for eternity. 

 

Without getting too deeply into the arguments for both viewpoints, I would like to discuss the effects of freewill theology on the current iteration of the American church and ask if what we’re doing could rationally be called biblical.  Before doing that, however, I need to address the two greatest arguments against the doctrine of sovereign election.  The first is that the concept of election necessarily precludes evangelism – the spreading of the Gospel.  That is known in theological circles as, “hyper-Calvinism” and is not in keeping with the dictates of Scripture.  We are called to give an account of our hope and live our faith before those who don’t believe as a clear testimony of what we believe.  Furthermore, Scottish Presbyterians, who hold to election as tightly as anyone, have historically been some of the most pioneering missionaries the modern church has ever known. 

 

The next argument is the fear that if God preordains who will be his, then there are those who might want to be his who would be excluded from his kingdom.  That is also an error.  The concept is that those who demonstrate a desire to know God in his fullness have already been drawn to him by the inexorable power of the Holy Spirit.  The desire to commune with a perfect, holy God cannot originate from sinful, corrupt man.  That desire can only be placed in him by God alone.  

 

However, even if you can’t stomach the concept of divine election over free will, please stay with me because the issue is not the doctrine but its effects on the church and how it impacts our culture.

 

If we hold to the idea that faith is a result of individual intellectual assent, then that means that I was presented with options and I chose to believe in the claims of Christ.  When I then look at my responsibilities to share the good news with others I look at how I came to believe (intellectual assent) and realize that I need to sell the Gospel to others.  If we look at the mainstream evangelical church in America today, I think we can see that we’ve taken freewill theology to its logical conclusion – marketing faith as if it were a commodity on the open economy.  I’m sure many of you have received mailings from churches in your areas that aren’t much different from ads for car dealers.  If you want to see just a terrible example, browse through the website for “reality church” in Virginia Beach at this link. 

 

Take a look at the popular TV preachers.  What do they preach?  It’s all “feel-good” ego-centric patter focused on individual “fulfillment,” as a person.  Being accused of preaching a “health & wealth” gospel is no longer a stigma among the clergy – it’s a badge of honor.  Go into your local Christian bookstore and just try to find a single book, let alone an entire section, on solid theology.  If you can you are in the great minority.  But you can find racks of books on how God wants to fulfill your dreams at the local grocery store. 

 

It’s all a sales job that we’ve convinced ourselves is part of how we need to evangelize.  It’s all hogwash.  What we think of as the “fine print” of the Christian life, you know, the passages where Jesus said things like, “Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me,” “Whoever wishes to save his life must lose it,” “Narrow is the path and straight is the way, and few are those that find it,” and, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, because I have overcome the world,” should actually be in bold print in the pages of Scripture because Jesus did not preach a life of ease to his disciples.  Instead we focus on the “positive” statements of Jesus, “I came that they may have life, and that more abundantly,” and ignore the tough parts that Jesus promised would be part of life lived in obedience to him. 

 

Even the idea of using modern marketing/sales techniques to get people into our churches should sound reprehensible.  The problem goes back to our theology, though.  Are we recruiters for Christ, with a quota to fill, or are we his ambassadors?  I have done both in my life – first as a military recruiter and then as a member of the diplomatic corps in a foreign land.  I will tell you that being a recruiter is miserable.  On the other hand, being an ambassador is completely different – especially in a place where people know that there is a better country and I represented it.  If I had had the privilege of handing out visas, I never would have been left alone.  Everyone from that country that found out that I represented the United States wanted me to help them get here.  It wasn’t my reputation; it was the reputation of our country.  We should be working to build up the reputation of Christ and his church to such a point that those outside the kingdom will be flocking to us asking how to get a visa. 

 

Next – Pre-millennial eschatology and the contradictions of apocalyptic faith

 

“Fly high & roar loudly”

 

dirk

 

The Ineffective Church - Part 1

“Evangelicals.”  “Born-Again Christians.”  We seem to be everywhere.  The term, “mega-church” didn’t exist ten years ago.  Now huge churches seem to be popping up in big cities everywhere.  Depending on the survey you choose to believe, there are between 70,000,000 and 100,000,000 Americans who classify themselves as “evangelical,” or “born-again.”  With such a large portion of our country apparently similar, the big question should be, “Why is the Christian church so completely ineffective – not only in influencing our society, but simply in ensuring that those within the church remain faithful to the values we claim to hold. 

 

In this muli-part series I’m going to address what I believe to be major errors that cause the Christian church to be so ineffective.  Once again, these commentaries are aimed directly at Christians themselves.  The errors I will address build on each other and have reached such a crescendo that they dilute everything that the church does. 

 

The “errors” I will discuss touch on aspects of what I call, “Evangelical Correctness.”  I am taking direct aim at issues that many, if not most, in the evangelical world will consider basic fundamentals of faith – but none of which have any basis in historical, orthodox Christianity.  Some, no doubt, will accuse me of heresy.  Before you criticize, though, I ask that you ask yourself if your objection is really as biblical as you think it is, or if your reaction is mostly emotional because I have tipped a “sacred cow,” to which you might have attributed too much importance.

 

The first “error” – Simplistic, juvenile interpretations of English translations of the Bible.  Orthodox Christianity places supremacy on the Bible as the Word of God.  What Christians refer to as the “Old Testament” are the Jewish Scriptures (the law, prophets & poetry) and have never been questioned by the church fathers.  It wasn’t until late in the fourth century A. D. (no, I will not use the secular “C. E.” on this blog) that agreement was reached as to which books to include in what we now refer to as the “New Testament.”     The doctrine of biblical inerrancy is called, “Verbal plenary inspiration.”  Orthodox Christian doctrine states that all of Scripture, the 66 books that make up the Old and New Testaments were fully inspired by God in the original languages.  It’s the original languages part where we in the American church really blow it.  Once we start translating the Bible into other languages we have to be very careful about misinterpretation.  Those misinterpretations can cause significant doctrinal errors to creep in simply because the language into which Scripture is interpreted is not as precise as the original.  The Bible also had significant cultural and historical nuances to the original audience that are necessarily missing upon translation.  Thus great care must be taken to ensure that doctrines are based upon the original meaning of a particular passage in its intended context to the original hearers. 

 

One simple example of this error is the translation of, “world” or “earth” in the New Testament.  The original Greek words used can mean, “entire known world,” “the Roman world,” “the ungodly system of society,” “all of creation,” or “a single country,” among others.  This means that all the verses that talk about the “world” can have significantly different meaning.  Perhaps better known is the fact that when we see the word “love” in the New Testament the original word could be one of three words in Greek.  Another example is the word “life” in the New Testament, which can be at least one of two words in Greek – “bios” meaning living, breathing life, from which we get the word “biology,” and “psuche,” meaning the essence of life, the seat of emotional being, from which we get the term “psychology.”  Thus when Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” (John 15:13 ESV) it is significant that the original word is “psuche” not “bios.”  Laying down your “bios” for someone else is a one-time event.  You do it, you die, it’s over.  Laying down your “psuche” is a continual denial of self for others – it is a lifelong commitment to selflessness. 

 

The above examples don’t even touch upon nuances of word order and vernacular that can have great impact on what a passage meant to the original hearers or readers.  We put huge stock in our contemporary English translations, and for good reason.  Most of them took many biblical scholars many years to translate properly, and often with extensive linguistic notes that we rarely bother to read.  We also forget that the interpreters also had their own doctrinal biases which may or may not reflect upon their work. 

 

Why is this interpretation so important?  I believe the simplistic interpretations of Scripture account for significant theological errors which have the American church mired in doctrinal confusion. 

 

Next – Part 2:  Dispensational freewill theology and the marketing of the Gospel.      

 

Christian Political Activism - "Sharia-lite"?

In trying to keep with my conviction that the evangelical church has so much housekeeping to do that it should tread very carefully into the arena of secular culture, today’s entry is yet another introspective look into what I consider some of the major problems we need to wrestle with inside the born-again Christian community itself. I realize that many Christians consider political activism as such a part of their faith that they may reject what I’m saying here out-of-hand. Please, please, if you fall into this category, have the courage to consider what I’ve written. If you can argue my points biblically, please respond and educate me.

The bottom-line premise of this entry is that if American Muslims were as openly, politically active as evangelicals, we all would be a bit freaked-out – especially the Christians. Why do we expect our non-Christian fellow Americans to react any differently to us than we would to Muslims doing essentially the same things?

“But wait,” you say. “Our nation was founded on Christian principles. The great pillars of our government were formed when American society was overtly Christian in nature.”

My response? “Your point is well made, but it proves the opposite of what you think.” Our Founding Fathers worked excessively hard to create a secular governmental structure in spite of the fact that most of them took their faith very seriously and the society around them was openly, and in many places, monolithically religious and Christian. They saw no need to create detailed moral codes because they expected that common morality would continue to be reinforced by the church to keep people on the ‘straight and narrow’. They intended the moral uprightness of society to keep government in check, not the other way around. By trying to get government to enforce biblical moral statutes we are, in essence, admitting that the church cannot do its job within the culture and asking government to step in.

In my blog of 2/4/08 (here) I took Christians to task for being so politically active that we are actually scaring the people we claim we’re trying to “love” into the church. Since that entry I’ve had two more events which have convinced me of that fact.

Both of my new “events” happened last Thursday. In my office I heard an NPR interview with Norman Lear, the well-known television producer of shows in the 1970s such as “All in the Family.” I heard this Jewish man say that he left television because he wanted to produce a movie about Christian political activism because he was scared by what he saw happening with Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart becoming entrenched in politics. In his words, “The mixture of politics and religion scared the hell out of me.” You can listen to the interview here. Since then he has been a liberal political activist with an organization that has registered thousands of new voters. How do you think most of them vote?

The second event happened later that morning when I was talking with a colleague who just happens to be a black, catholic democrat. He and I have a terrific working relationship that is based on sincere mutual respect. The respect has risen to such a level that we can discuss race, faith and politics without any of it being personal. As a result there is great honesty. When I mentioned to him that I thought that my fellow evangelicals have gone too far into political activism, he really opened up. He said. “Evangelicals scare me because after they get what they want politically, then they’ll come after me (as a catholic) because of the whole ‘idol worshipping’ thing…” How could I argue with him? Though he has very conservative political views, he cannot stomach aligning himself with Republican conservatives because of all the evangelical political baggage is wrapped up in it.

If you still don’t agree that we in the Christian community have gone too far, consider this scenario: Muslim communities in the US begin to push for elements of Sharia law to be introduced. They start slowly, trying to get modesty laws passed in beach communities. Then they begin to build momentum. Next they push for “health taxes” on pork and push for prohibition on alcohol in their counties (nice precedent we set). They elect conservative Muslim representatives to Congress from districts with large Muslim enclaves like Detroit and the DC metro area of Virginia & Maryland. Muslims become more active in the country and start demanding that their cultural values be more respected.

It’s a bit scarier that way, isn’t it? Well, I really think that’s the way many of our non-evangelical countrymen see us. They think we want to impose some type of “Sharia-lite” on the country, and they’re scared. Too often we give them good reason to think that way.

Just because there is no law against something we would call sin doesn’t mean that we need to institute one. As long as law doesn’t require us to sin we need to be much more careful about the laws we say we want to have written. How quickly we forget how bitingly Jesus himself treated the Pharisees – and they at least kept their hypocrisy within their own community. We share ours openly with the world and wonder why the church is so weak, has so little positive impact on our culture, and we are known more for what we’re against than what we are for. I’m not the only one saying this. Read a recent article from World magazine (a conservative Christian publication) about it here.

I do not advocate that we become like the Amish, retreat from society and become apolitical. What I am saying is that we can live our faith in a much purer manner when we don’t try to wrap government up in it. We can execute our biblical responsibilities to government by learning and holding fast to both our federal and state Constitutions, and being upright citizens in our communities – so upright that our unbelieving neighbors will have to wonder what makes us so different. Then they just might want to hear about our faith.

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. (1 Peter 2:12-17, English Standard Version)

True Superheroes - Part 2

Today’s superhero also proved his mettle in the prison camps of North Vietnam.  While Lance Sijan was probably the most junior officer held in the camps, Seaman Apprentice Douglas Hegdahl was the most junior of all US prisoners held by the North Vietnamese.  Like Lance Sijan, every prisoner’s account I’ve ever read or hear first-person from men who were held in North Vietnam sang Doug Hegdahl’s praises – to a point of reverence.  

 

Doug fell off his ship, the USS Canberra, on April 6, 1967 while it was in the Gulf of Tonkin.  After surviving overnight and into the next day, he was picked up by fishermen who turned him over to the North Vietnamese army.  By his own estimation, he was “rescued,” not captured, as he had seen enough sharks to know that he was not going to survive much longer in the water.

 

A country boy from South Dakota, Doug Hegdahl was smart like a fox.  Because the North Vietnamese viewed junior US enlisted personnel like they viewed their own – as uneducated hicks – they treated Doug as generally worthless for propaganda purposes.  He played up the “dumb country boy” part to the hilt, and was basically made the camp clean-up gopher at the “Hanoi Hilton.”  As the only American with freedom to roam the camp, he became the de facto “town crier.”  Using the prisoner’s “tap code” with a broom, coughs, clicks and other means of noisemaking, he passed and received news to and from virtually all the prisoners in the camp.  In doing so he learned all the key information about all the men held there – name, rank, date of capture, condition, etc.  Not only did he know the men in his camp, but he also learned the information about other Americans who where held in other camps from prisoners who had been shuffled around.   Since he couldn’t write any of the information down, he had to memorize everything – which he put into a song that he repeated constantly so he wouldn’t forget.  

 

In 1969 the North Vietnamese offered to release some prisoners as a “goodwill gesture” to accompany Fonda on her trip back to the US.  A senior US prisoner Dick Stratton ordered Doug to accept early release in order to get the word out as to their conditions and to inform the US about all the prisoners whose information was stored in Doug’s head.  According to the Code of Conduct for US forces, a US servicemember should not accept early release from captivity, and Doug, feeling great loyalty to the men, was reluctant to take it.  However, orders were orders, and soon many families of men who were still listed as “Missing in Action,” learned that their men were still alive. 

 

Over the next three years, Dough Hegdahl visited as many of the families of the men still captive as he could find.  He was at Clark AFB in the Philippines when the POWs returned in 1973.  He wanted to know one thing – did the men he grew to love think that he was a coward for accepting early release?  Only then did he learn that because of the information that he provided, and the details of the abuse, treatment of our prisoners in North Vietnam significantly improved in the months following his release.  Not only did they not think Dough Hegdahl a coward, they honored him as a true hero.

 

Isn’t it ironic that in the stratified world of the US military, where position is defined by a set of rank insignia, that the two men held up as heroes by the prisoners in Hanoi were the two most junior men there.  Both Dough Hegdahl and Lance Sijan did all they could in the awful circumstances in which they found themselves.  That’s what made them heroes to the men who we call heroes.  

 

“Fly high & roar loudly”

 

dirk

 

 

Two Real Superheroes - Part 1

A real superhero doesn’t fly or spin webs while swinging through the city.  A true superhero is the hero of men who themselves are heroes.  If you read the accounts of the US military men who were imprisoned in North Vietnam during the war, you will find that, to a man, they pick two specific men as their heroes during the dreadful years they spent there. 

 

The first was an Air Force 1^st Lieutenant named Lance Sijan.  Most of the men held in North Vietnam never met him, but he became a legend within the prisons and the shining example they all wanted to follow.  After ejecting from his F-4, Lt. Sijan was critically wounded, with a fractured skull and compound fracture of his left leg.  While a huge rescue effort was unleashed in the first 24 hours he was on the ground, his radio died and the rescue was called off.  He crawled through the jungle and evaded capture for 46 days while in his injured and weakened condition.  Found by the North Vietnamese while unconscious, he was taken into captivity on Christmas Day 1967.  Soon after he was captured, even in his terrible condition, he overpowered one of his guards (some accounts actually say he killed his guard) and escaped for several hours.  His resistance under torture became legendary.  He kept telling his captors that he could tell them nothing because the Code of Conduct didn’t allow it.  He resisted to the utmost of his ability.  Because he was in such bad shape he was kept with two other prisoners who were charged with caring for him.  In his delirium of fever he scratched at the floor of his cell trying to dig through – such was his desire to escape.  He succumbed to disease, abuse and malnutrition on Jan 22, 1968.  His uncompromising resistance and adherence to the Code of Conduct were models for everyone else in that prison to follow.  He became the hero they all wanted to imitate. 

 

Posthumously he was promoted to Captain and awarded the Medal of Honor.  His citation reads as follows:

 

While on a flight over North Vietnam, Captain Sijan ejected from his disabled aircraft and successfully evaded capture for more than six weeks. During this time, he was seriously injured and suffered from shock and extreme weight loss due to lack of food. After being captured by North Vietnamese soldiers, Captain Sijan was taken to a holding point for subsequent transfer to a prisoner of war camp. In his emaciated and crippled condition, he overpowered one of his guards and crawled into the jungle, only to be recaptured after several hours. He was then transferred to another prison camp where he was kept in solitary confinement and interrogated at length. During interrogation, he was severely tortured; however, he did not divulge any information to his captors. Captain Sijan lapsed into delirium and was placed in the care of another prisoner. During his intermittent periods of consciousness until his death, he never complained of his physical condition and, on several occasions, spoke of future escape attempts. Captain Sijan's extraordinary heroism and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty at the cost of his life are in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Air Force and reflect great credit upon himself and the U.S. Armed Forces.

 

Next – a most unlikely superhero in the “Hanoi Hilton.” 

 

“Fly high & roar loudly”

 

dirk

 

 

Christian Political Activism

Does the image above disturb you as much as it does me? There is no doubt that there are Muslims around the world, and in within the US, who want to turn our country into part of a worldwide caliphate – eliminating our civil rights and replacing our legal codes with Islamic religious law (Sharia). As difficult as it might be to make that happen, the idea of Americans being flogged in public or women being forced to cover themselves from head to toe is reprehensible to us, and rightly so.

In doing a bit of internet research for my blog on the movie “’V’ for Vendetta,” I came across some web sites that really got me thinking. It appears that political activism by evangelical Christians really has some non-Christians scared of our ambitions. Our rhetoric has a lot of people convinced that we want to establish a theocracy and effectively throw out our Constitution. As hateful to all of is as the idea of an “islamisized” US flag is, there are a lot of people in our country who think that we want our flag to have the stars replaced by crosses.

Like the Islamists, I’m sure that there are many of those who disagree with Christians who have what we would classify as “anti-constitutional” ambitions, but I’ve also become convinced that evangelical political ambitions are seen as just as much a threat to our secular government as the Islamists would like to be. This is a real problem for Christians who claim to be “patriotic” and to love our country.

While Christians have a clear biblical call to live upright lives in society, I have yet to hear a cogent argument for Christians to be trying to change our culture by changing our government. Indeed, the biblical mandate appears to be crystal clear:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. (Rom 13:1,2 – English Standard Version (ESV))

and

Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. (1 Peter 2:13-17 – ESV)

In the US, the supreme governing authority is not a person, as in the Roman empire when these passages were penned, but a document - the Constitution. It seems to me that the biblical mandate is for Christians to demonstrate their submission to the authority established over us by being strict constitutionalists. That would mean deferring to the Constitution even when that means doing so would give people the freedom to do things with which we would disagree. President Reagan famously stated that, “No country ever taxed its way to prosperity.” Similarly, I think we can say that no country ever legislated its way to moral righteousness. There are certainly those that try, though. Iran & Saudi Arabia have very strict moral codes – and secret police breaking down doors in the middle of the night to enforce them. By trying to change our culture by changing our laws, we give in to the mistaken notion that public morality is determined by law and not by the behavior of people. Anything might be made legal, but if no one participates in that behavior, then the legality is irrelevant. Abortion my never be made illegal in our country again, but if we demonstrate true compassion and sacrificial love to those women whose pregnancies cause personal crisis, we might eliminate abortion simply by loving them away from that decision. If there are no customers for the abortion clinics then the effect is greater than criminalization of the act itself.

This past weekend our church sponsored a seminar on sexual purity. The speaker has been doing intensive counseling for Christians caught up in pornography and marital infidelity for more than 17 years. Half of his 2500 clients in that time have been pastors and missionaries. Just that anecdotal evidence alone demonstrates that the problems with immorality within the Christian world (what we would call the “church”) are so great that we have no business trying to force those who don’t share our values to adhere to our standards of behavior. Let me say that again – I believe that we as Christians have no business trying to enforce our moral standards on those who do not willingly submit to biblical authority. We must focus on getting those within the church to live up to the standards they themselves claim as their own. We have a huge credibility problem, and we don’t help ourselves, or honor God, by pointing the finger at those outside the church when our problems with sexual immorality, divorce, abortion, and business and personal integrity are statistically not much different than those who claim no allegiance to Christ.

In the 1980s a Christian rock group called “Petra” wrote and performed a song called, “Seen and not heard.” Part of the lyric goes:

“There’s too much talk, and not enough walk.

Sometimes God’s children should be seen and not heard.”

That lyric echoes Peter’s admonition:

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. (1 Peter 2:11, 12 ESV)

In addition to the “passions of the flesh” that those words immediately bring to mind, I think we could add, “an ungodly desire for earthly political influence.”

“Fly high & roar loudly”

dirk

"V" for Vendetta

“People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people.”

[A junior police detective asking his boss about the potential for masses of citizens to defy a curfew and face off against heavily-armed troops] “What do you think will happen?” The response: “What usually happens when people without guns stand up to those who do.” [Implying that many will be killed]

The above quotations are from a surprisingly bold and thought-provoking movie called, “’V’ for Vendetta,” – a futuristic drama (not to thriller status) about England becoming a fascist state and one man’s quest to wreak vengeance on those who shattered his life and in the process stir the consciences of the people to throw off the shackles of the police state. To me the film hits painfully close to home because of its portrayal of a population frightened enough by a terrorist threat to willingly give up their civil rights in exchange for the illusion of security.

The movie is rated “R” for violence, a bit of foul language, and some “disturbing images,” but it is well worth the viewing if you wish to ponder how easily it might be to fall into such a state. In “V” the seminal events were poisoning of large numbers of citizens by chemical weapons. In Weimar Germany the last straw was the burning of the Reichstag – blamed on communists, which led very quickly to Hitler being named Chancellor and then receiving extraordinary power less than three weeks later.

How many more 9/11-type attacks would it take for Americans to willingly give up as many of our rights as the Germans gave up in the 1930s? The Brits and Canadians have already given up their firearms. They have done so in the expectation that their government will always be able to keep them safe. But what happens when the government itself is the threat?

One additional caveat about the movie – homosexuals are clearly portrayed as a persecuted class, subject to being dragged from their homes and “disappearing,” into the abyss of police detention. Such a portrayal is disturbing, but has really made me think. While I in no way condone any homosexual act, I shutter to think that anyone would have their lives ripped away from them by governmental decree for such activity. All governments in human history with that much power have abused it to abominable ends. Just as no country has ever taxed itself into prosperity, no government has ever been perfected by voluminous legislation. Human beings are fallible. Every government ever instituted among men is imperfect and must be subject to and subservient to its people.

Thomas Jefferson, an honored Founding Father in spite of his proven sexual indiscretions, penned the following, “The government which governs best, governs least.” I wish the American people would demand that their legislators and other elected officials pledge to govern less every year until, perhaps, we could get back to congressional sessions lasting only a few weeks each spring and fall – like they did before air conditioning was installed in the Capitol.

Anyhow, if you can stomach the tough parts and want to tackle the thought of how easy it would be for our government to become oppressive, watch “’V’ for Vendetta.” I fear it is much closer to reality than any of us would wish.

“Fly high & roar loudly!”

dirk