I’ve been off the grid for a while due to being laid off unexpectedly.  It truly is amazing how quickly things can change.  One minute you’re part of one of the premier software teams in Nashville, TN – pinching yourself every day, thinking “this must be a dream….this is too good to be true”.  The next minute you’re unemployed and in the hole financially thanks to a thieving CEO.  I will blog about the “why” behind the layoffs another time, but suffice it to say that we not only lost our jobs, but were owed at least 3 weeks pay (which we’ll never see).  Job hunting was….interesting.  Despite numerous recruiters’ claims “Sure, there are plenty of senior level software positions open in Nashville”, none materialized.  I learned of an opening in Chattanooga through a fellow developer, and after researching them (plus interviewing), felt like it was great opportunity.

Fast forward to tonight.  I’m in my hotel, ready to start my second week with the new company tomorrow.  I’ve been sick for the last week – with the worst of it hitting me this weekend.  I miss my family, still have a house to pack (and…gasp…sell) and was primed and ready for a mini-pity party tonight.  My mind started wandering over silly little regrets – you know, the ones from 20 years ago that suddenly pop into your mind leaving you as embarrassed now as you were then.  Whether out of habit, or desperation, I began to discuss my situation aloud in prayer.  I lamented over those silly things, but especially over the very real financial challenges my family faces today: selling a house in a down market & expecting a loss; being without a paycheck since June; the credit debt we’re incurring until paychecks arrive, etc.

I suddenly realized how silly I sounded.  It’s not that my problems are’t real or important to me or to God, but seriously, I needed perspective!  In all of human history, I (along with millions of Americans) am in the upper echelons of salary and standard of living.  Even when I sell my house and take the loss I expect, we will recover and wind up in better shape than we’ve ever been thanks to a generous offer and a cheap cost of living in Chattanooga.  While I can easily pine-on-demand about wanting a life of meaning, how many millions of people have lived lives in the muck and filth of places like Kibera – maybe at one time they hoped for something better, but the world crushed it out of them, leaving them dead inside long before death claimed them?  I was struck with profound gratitude – the sense of which only grew as I voiced aloud what I was thankful for.

I have a job – and less than a month after I lost my old one.  I love what I do – how many people can truly say that?!  My job allows my wife to stay at home with our boys.  My wife and sons are healthy, safe and without want when it comes to necessities. Despite our impending move two hours from our current home, my boys have enjoyed 3 years with my mom and step-dad close by – and the two hours to Chattanooga is really not bad at all.  Living in Chattanooga puts us closer to my dad, step-mom and my oldest sister.  Despite the awful way my last job fell apart, working there introduced me to some of the sharpest developers I have ever met, and allowed me to forge friendships I will value the rest of my life.  I could go on….there truly is so much I have to be grateful for.  Saying it out loud is a powerful thing.  I encourage you to try it as well…

(Oh, and I’m also thankful for the 17-inch Macbook Pro my new company bought for me to use!)

Most of us have heard our parents say, at some point, that they’ve tried their best to do better for us than their parents did for them.  Most of us that are parents have figured out that they really meant it when they said that.  It’s far too easy, though, to focus on where our parents have fallen short, and miss their sometimes herculean efforts to be better parents than their own.

My parents separated when I was 15.  The ugly reality of divorce is that no matter how well all parties involved handle the aftermath, it’s still an aftermath!  Take the classic teen-know-it-all-hormone-induced-confusion-and-angst of most 15-year-olds, couple it with a divorce and constant conflict with your father and what you get is a recipe for long term negative focus, to put it lightly.  Complicating things, I misread my father for several years.  You see, we have a lot in common – shared interests, personality traits, values, habits, vocal inflections, etc.  It’s easy to assume you know the other person’s motives and intent when you have so much common ground.  About ten years ago, one of my sisters had us take the Myers-Briggs assessment and I was amazed that my father and I both weren’t “ENTJ”.  That was a critical moment for me, after which I really began to pay more attention to who my father was – and respect our differences.  Gone were the arrogant presumptions – now replaced with at least some humility.  Over the last two decades – and as a result of moments like those – my relationship with my father has improved beyond my expectations and hopes.

This year, my father’s birthday coincided with Father’s Day, and I took my oldest son with me to visit him for the weekend.  I found myself thinking back over the stories he’s told me of his childhood.  The youngest of 7 children – over 20 years separating him and his oldest sister (a sister who was more a mother to him than sister, and more grandmother to me than aunt).  His mother died when he was 14.  His father was, by all accounts, a good man, but strong on discipline and sparse with praise and emotional connection.  I learned this weekend that his father never took him camping or canoeing – something he did with me for many years when I was young.  And it occurred to me that those weekend trips (and many were week-long trips) that my dad took with me cost him real vacation time & rest.  Canoeing 50 miles, while tons of fun, isn’t terribly relaxing or easy on the muscles and back!  Many dads simply want to sleep on the couch during a football game, rather than in a tent in a south Georgia swamp, cooking cheap hot dogs over fires made with wet firewood.  What 42-year-old wants to don a backpack and hike sections of the Appalachian Trail with a bunch of 12-year-old boy scouts?  My dad did.  He made the choice to do something with me that I loved, something his father never modeled or did for him.

Our parents are children, too, just like us.  They carry their own set of hopes, fears and disappointments which they shared with their own parents.  I am tremendously fortunate that, regardless of all the ‘aftermath’ of coming from a broken home, both of my parents have fought hard to give me a better life than what they had.  I’m not dismissing or trivializing the challenges – don’t get me wrong, divorce sucks.  There are years we can’t get back, and words all of us wish we could forget having ever said.  But then the picture of redemption arrives.  Maybe at first it’s just fragile ‘green shoots’.  But it grows up in the presence of – in spite of – the pain, difficulty and scars, almost as if to prove to the hurt that it can’t be stopped or overcome.  Redemption, by its very nature, not only rescues us, but laughs in the face of our former captor.  “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…” (Psalm 23: 5)

General Douglas MacArthur is arguably one of the most accomplished military officers in American history.  His resume boasts having lead troops into battle in World War I, superintendent of West Point, Army Chief of Staff under two presidents (Hoover and FDR), World War II Pacific commander, presided over Japan’s surrender in 1945 as well as the military occupation of Japan following the war.  When conflict erupted on the Korean peninsula in 1950, MacArthur pulled off one of the most daring and brilliant invasions in modern history, choosing to land troops at Inchon in order to divide and route North Korean forces (who had pushed South Korean forces to the tip of the peninsula) – eventually forcing the North Korean army to retreat to the North’s border with China.  China – claiming the fear of invasion (a matter the students of history will continue to debate for decades to come) – joined the North Korean forces and pushed MacArthur back to the 38th parallel.

MacArthur had urged President Truman to take the fight to the Chinese.  Just as Patton, in many ways, foresaw the Cold War with the Soviet Union, MacArthur believed China needed to be confronted, and fast.  Frustrated that Truman saw things differently, MacArthur publicly announced his dissatisfaction, ultimately leading to his dismissal by Truman in 1951.  MacArthur was – and still is – celebrated as a hero, and he should be.  What should not be celebrated, however, is his public insubordination to the President.  It’s a difficult position to reconcile for many of us who felt Truman should have taken a different road – possibly even taken MacArthur’s advice.  Truman did the right thing in dismissing MacArthur, even if we disagree with Truman’s choices on the war.  The same goes for President Obama’s dismissal of General McChrystal.  McChrystal’s complaints should have been fully and bluntly discussed, in private, with the President.  If he still felt, after all that, that the President was not giving him what he needed to fight the war, then he should have resigned, retired and taken his case to the public.  Most Americans would have listened, politics aside, to a man who’d served his country honorably and respected the chain of command enough to not publicly denounce the President while actively wearing the uniform.

It’s all too easy for the ‘opposition’ (in this case, conservatives) to selectively ignore the importance of our military respecting the civilian chain of command at the top when the target of the complaint is a President with whom we strongly disagree.  It’s conveniently ignored by the Left as well, when it suits them (take the treatment of Petraeus today vs. the “Betray Us” ad in 2004).  The danger would be for us, as citizens, to take the military’s respect for civilian leadership for granted, or to sacrifice that respect for the sake of politics.  The importance of this principle – and the essential truth that the office of president must be respected, even if you don’t like the man – is one of the many reasons why our nation hasn’t fallen into the cycle of “bloody coup after coup” as other nations have when civilian and military leadership come into conflict.  Our current President doesn’t seem to mind ignoring, dismissing or even undermining the institutions that have made us great, but in accepting McChrystal’s resignation, he – whether for this motive or not – helped preserve them.

This has been a difficult post for me to contemplate, not to mention for me to actually write.  It is my hope that anyone who has faced (or is facing) similar issues will find some guidance and peace of mind. 

I grew up Presbyterian, but have attended mostly evangelical/charismatic ‘style’ churches for the last 20 years (see my earlier post).  Twenty years is more than enough time for some common problems to have been reinforced:  Many evangelicals have an underlying distrust (if not disdain) for intellectual thought, and have adopted a “fortress mentality” – where they attempt to combat the difficult questions and challenges of our culture with greater religious “emotional intensity” while never actually addressing or confronting the challenges leveled at them by those of different convictions.  Nancy Pearcey, in her book “Total Truth” (a book I’ve found to be a wonderful resource on Christian worldview), writes at length on this phenomenon, since it is a common scenario in many evangelical churches.  This vein of anti-intellectualism has caused evangelicalism to lend itself to a systemic distrust of questioning.  In some cases, it’s simply a moderate fear of “will I have the answers if someone questions my doctrine?”  That can be a healthy fear – if it leads one to confront those questions in their own life head on, rather than hide behind ‘religious experience’ alone.  However, in two specific instances, I have seen the ‘distrust of questioning’ taken to an extreme that I cannot find any Biblical support for.

At the heart of this is the desire – the need – for communal bonds.  For all that good that came of evangelicalism’s early days, there was a prevailing attitude of distrust towards the ‘religious authorities’ of the time.  In Total Truth, Pearcey writes, “Taunting religious authorities became so widespread on college campuses that in 1741 the trustees at Yale University had to pass a college law forbidding students to call college officers ‘carnal’ or ‘unconverted’” (pg 271).  The point here is that while there was good that emerged from what evangelicals know as the “Great Awakenings”, at the same time the old order of strong communal bonds within believing communities was disintegrating.  You cannot assault the institutions that made those bonds possible, without also dissolving the bonds as well.

The result is a problem evangelical churches have wrestled with for decades: how to foster real community.  Pearcey explains, “In the colonial period, the dominant political philosophy had been classical and Christian republicanism, which was highly communal.  But in the new liberalism…the ethos of self-sacrifice was replaced by one of self-assertion and self-interest” (pg 280).  In describing the emerging style of preaching at the time, Pearcey writes, “Increasingly, the populist preacher became a performer, stringing together stories and anecdotes…this method engaged the audience’s emotions while subtly enhancing the speaker’s own image by highlighting his own ministry and spiritual experiences.  The outcome of all this was the rise of personality cults, the celebrity system that has become so entrenched in evangelicalism” (pg 287).

And here is where the fine and dangerous line is crossed.  This is how many evangelical congregations have moved from the desire for real community, into the territory reserved for cults: “One of the dangers in personality cults”, according to Pearcey, “is that they easily lead to demagoguery…strong-willed leaders who, ironically, ended up exercising an even higher degree of dogmatism and control than pastors in traditional denominations, whom they denounced” (pg 289).

How those leaders assert their control can vary.  However, in my experience, the squashing of dissenting opinions seems to be a common symptom.  A close companion to that symptom is that members (especially leaders) in that congregation have no qualms about severing relationship with those they disagree with, regardless of prior history.  So, here’s a short quiz for you:  If you currently attend a church, how well do they handle disagreement?  If you disagree, are you ostracized, directly or indirectly?  What about others who have disagreed?  Does your church push for “unity” by attempting to enforce “uniformity”?  If the leaders of your church show no broken-heartedness over ‘severed’ relationships with those who’ve disagreed with them, may I humbly (albeit emphatically) suggest you find a new church?  As Christians, we should be among the best examples of the power of reconciliation.  We have several Biblical examples (Paul & Peter, Paul and Mark, to name two) of Christians who disagreed and came into conflict, and yet continued to support one another in the end.  If we have a pattern of cutting people out of our lives because they won’t “line up” with our “vision”, are we not simply acting like petulant children?  To borrow a paraphrase from Augustine: “In essentials, unity.  In non-essentials, liberty.  In all things, love.”

Recently, my wife and I visited a church in the Nashville area.  Everyone was very nice, welcoming and sincere – I say that because I have a complaint to make, and certainly don’t mean to malign anyone there.  During the worship service, we were singing a song that I had never heard.  It was building up to the climax of a passionate chorus and the first line of that chorus read “All I need is to feel Your love”.

In that moment I had inadvertently stumbled upon a portion of the complaint I have with evangelical Christianity.  I have become more and more convinced that the ‘currents’ of evangelical Christianity are hostile (mostly unintentionally/unknowingly, sometimes intentionally) to intellectual discussion, and obsessed with feeling and experience over any other aspect of ‘understanding’.  That statement may sound harsh, and to my evangelical peers, I can only say that I’m sorry if it does, please hear me out.

I understand the evangelical case against many mainline denominations.  I grew up Presbyterian, and as I began to read the Bible for myself, I questioned why certain topics and passages were ignored.  As a 15-year-old, I saw no real passion or vibrancy in the faith of those around me.  Instead, I saw a group of people adhering to a particular Protestant tradition – and many were not recognizable as Christians when I saw them during the week.  Something inside me knew instinctively that if a Creator existed, then He wasn’t limited to the ‘safe’ and ‘docile’ presentation of Him that I witnessed at that particular church.  In my teens I was introduced to evangelical churches, and discovered Christians who were passionate about their faith, and who wanted to impact those around them.  I was fascinated with Scripture, and being around others so passionate about their faith was a breath of fresh air.  It wasn’t until years later that I began to discern some issues.

Around 13 years ago, a conversation with a co-worker revealed to me just how ill-equipped I was to discuss hard issues – life, death, suffering, justice, purpose – with those who didn’t hold the same faith.  I began to see that there wasn’t really much of an effort in many of the evangelical churches I’d attended to understand the world around them.  No one seemed to be asking “how did we get to where we are?”, and “How do we answer the questions posed by a postmodern world?”  Oh, don’t get me wrong, those churches were asking “How can we make Christianity appeal to those who don’t believe?”  Some call it “seeker-sensitive” – but that’s just one of many frustrating examples of a language ghetto that is encouraged.  Absolutely no effort was being made to understand the mix of philosophies that had led Western culture to where it now sits.  As a result, many evangelical churches have accepted premises that find their roots in worldviews hostile to Christian thought.  We’re encouraged to share our faith, but without any foundation in apologetics.  And when we encounter someone who questions back, we’re given a trite response of encouragement, as if the sole failure is on the part of the ‘hearer’.

My Presbyterian heritage was fairly rich when it came to thought and teaching, though it was sorely lacking in many other respects.  But my complaint with evangelicalism is that anything smacking of tradition is dismissed as legalism and intellectual debate is dismissed as “the pride of man”.  There is such an emphasis on feeling and experience – both of which are an integral part of a much larger whole – but I fear it’s an over-emphasis.  Evangelical leaders lament the ‘consumer’ nature of many congregants, but their whole system lends itself to “what can I experience?” – since that’s all that appears to matter.  So, no, I’m sorry, I need much more than to just “feel” His love.  I need to understand how what Christianity teaches is relevant to my life – from the big, epic questions down to how I love my wife and sons, how I perform at my job, and how I take care of my property.  I need to stop chasing experience from weekly pep-rally service to service.  That kind of ‘consumerism’ only breeds an inability to understand or esteem anything other than the pursuit of the next ‘fix’.  That mindset, in my opinion, has dumbed-down religious discussion among evangelical Christians, it has robbed them of a critical tool in applying Christian teaching to daily life, and it has driven others away from Christianity as a whole.

More on this in the future….

What exactly is disappearing?  Time.  In one of the great ironies of life, you simply never realize how much time you waste as a kid until you’re an adult, or as a single person until you’re married, or as a married person until you have kids.  A closely related cruel irony of life is that my interests seem to grow in an inverse proportion to the time which I have to indulge them.

“We’re at that point in life where we simply have to accept that certain things we want aren’t going to happen” – a good friend of mine said that the other day, and he’s right.  This isn’t about depressed defeatism.  Actually, it’s about focus, tenacity, clarity & purpose.  While I may wax nostalgic about the seemingly endless hours I had available when I was 23, I have so much more now – where it counts – than I did then.  I’ve lived long enough to be fooled by my desires, and that has given me discernment.  I’ve had enough successes to know I can hold out for what matters, and enough failures (far more, it seems!) to stir the pot of healthy discontent.  I’ve experienced enough heart ache to know that hearts mend when they’re planted in the right place.  I’ve seen enough of the reward of deep friendships to know that relationships trump ‘tasks’ and ambitions, period.

But – among all the things I’ve learned – there is one thing I simply do NOT do well: taking a break.  I’ve neglected the important ritual of at least one family vacation each year with my wife and kids.  We’ve taken trips, don’t get me wrong, but something gets in the way all too often.  I’m even worse about personal time by myself – to unplug, take a walk, think, pray, stare at the clouds.   Somehow I’ve missed the importance of the discipline of vacation.  That’s right, I said discipline.  More often than not, I’ve avoided vacation simply because we’ve not been disciplined in managing our time or money in order to afford it.  It’s fallen too low on the list of priorities – below the dinners at Olive Garden & the mind-numbing “I’m exhausted after work and mistakenly think a night of TV-vegging will relax my mind”.  Not having a regular habit of solitude and vacation has robbed me, I believe, of the critical perspective of the benefits involved.  I too easily forget how rested (oddly enough) I can feel after a vigorous canoe trip; I quickly forget the clarity and focus that comes as a result of spending several days in a new place with my wife.  Instead, I’ve gravitated towards the dangerous icon of the “reluctant martyr”.  “Gotta suck it up and keep  moving forward”; “{insert name, job, or church here} can’t afford for me to be away right now”; “I’m too busy to relax.”

The last few months have changed all that.  A perfect storm of both family-related and work-related hardships quickly proved that I can’t expect to be resilient and bounce back from tough schedules (physically and mentally) if I’m not going to give my body, my mind and my family what they need.  I used to be good at burying it, but I think the birth of my second son tipped the scales towards the “don’t even think you can hide this anymore” direction.  The discipline of vacation and solitude in my life has finally begun moving towards its proper place.  I need the time personally, to think, dream, clear my mind from daily demands & distractions and come back with clarity of purpose and focus.  My wife and I need the time to break out of the typical mold of the daily grind.  We need the weekend getaways & the nights reading at the coffee shop.  Our kids need the focused time with us, and we – as a family – need the week-long excursions to see old friends & family, & to explore new places.

In a couple of weeks, I will begin practicing what I preach when I disappear into the woods of Tennessee and Kentucky with a close friend and a canoe loaded with camping gear…

I’ve been quiet recently, as my thoughts have been tangled up in some of the ‘proverbial’ big questions of life and its inevitable hardships.

I’ve often puzzled at the spoken and unspoken attitudes about suffering which I’ve encountered in many evangelical church settings.  You’d think that we’re all destined for “upward and onward” in life – as if things would always get progressively better and brighter.  I don’t buy it – it simply doesn’t fit with real human experience (not to mention Biblical teaching).  There’s an underlying impression from so many in those circles that hardship must be because you’re not doing something right or often enough, or there’s a secret sin in your life.  To which I can only respond by saying “read the book of Job”.  Guess what?  Life sucks sometimes, and for no obvious reason.

Relationships are powerful.  The things that you say and do – they hold tremendous power.  We all have moments that our brains seem all too willing to replay – a ‘pivotal’ moment in life where nothing was ever the same afterwards.  A book I’ve been reading recently has the dubious honor of bringing to mind one of those moments from years ago – one I’ve long preferred to keep buried.  A phone conversation with my father when I was 15, being told “You’re the man of the house, now.”  Forgiveness is also powerful.  It frees you from the trap you’ve set for yourself (no one else is going to fall into it, that’s for sure).  But, as I’ve learned all to well in the last 21 years, forgiveness is only the beginning.  It removes the hooks that would otherwise drag your heart into darkness, but it doesn’t, on its own, rectify things.  By itself, it doesn’t restore what has been stolen; it gives you a fighting chance. Two decades later, I’m still trying to take hold of that fighting chance as best as I can, though I confess that lately it’s been a difficult road.  Broken families are deep wounds, and I’ve apparently struck another vein in the mine of my heart.  But it’s not my own loss that I’ve been pondering only….

A man whom I dearly love, respect and whom I have looked up to as a big brother since I was 12 is suffering from terminal cancer, and has not been given long to live.  While my family and I have found immeasurable comfort in our shared faith, and in the reality of Heaven, we are not spared the grief of loss (however temporary in the grand scheme of things), nor the challenges it brings to my sister (whose husband is the man I’m referring to) and her three children.  I have not wept in years like the night I sat at his bedside and poured my heart out, wanting him to know how loved he is, and to have hope for the new life ahead of him.  I can see the concern in his eyes for his wife and children, and as a father myself, I can empathize.  In the days ahead, they will need me, and I, them.  My nephew is not much younger than I was when my family’s world was turned upside down.

It’s fitting I’ve been reading Kierkegaard lately.  Much like Job, we all want to ask “Why?!” in the midst of suffering – but it’s astonishing how unimportant that question becomes once  redemption arrives.  As Edward Mooney writes, “The reception of a life beyond dust and ashes throws the need for an answer aside."  While I, as Christian, believe in a day of ultimate redemption, I also believe in the tens of thousands of days in between.  We can be a part of those “little redemptions” in other’s lives.  Crying with those who are hurting, giving generously to those who need, teaching those who are unskilled – none of which can happen if we let our own losses paralyze us.  And none of which can happen if we subscribe to the self-help, decorate-my-life-with-my-God-bracelet mindset that denies or avoids real suffering, and hides from the deep questions it provokes in all of us.

Most of us, at one point or another, have stopped to consider who we are today, and compared ourselves to who we desire to be one day.  This is a great example of the philosophical tension between “being” and “becoming”.  In one sense, I’m not the man I was 10 years ago, nevertheless, I am the same man.  I survey my past and find many instances where I cringe at things I have done.  I’m not that man anymore.  I look ahead to the future and know that both joy and heartache await but I’m not yet the man I will be when I face those things – then I again, I am.  Confusing, isn’t it?!

Two of the earliest philosophers to wrestle with this question were Heraclitus and Parmenides.  Heraclitus is famous for the phrase “You never step into the same river twice”.  He argued that between “steps” into a river, both the river and you have changed.  In the the time it takes to place your left foot into the water, and then your right, the river’s composition changes, however slightly.  You are, at the very least, seconds older.  Heraclitus argued that everything is in a state of flux. “Whatever is, is changing”, he would say.

Makes sense, so far, right?  But this begged deeper questioning.  How can someone say I’m not real, because I’m changing?  It flies in the face of both common sense and experience.  Of course I’m real….right?  Another philosopher, Parmenides, made the claim that “Whatever is, is.”   R.C. Sproul summarized Parmenides’ argument by saying “Reality…to be real, cannot be changing.  Because that which is changing, never truly is.”  Let that tweak your brain for a while!  This dilemma – wrestling with the idea that if we, and the world around us, are constantly changing then we are never truly real – spawned entire schools of thought that believed the physical world is ultimately an illusion.  Striking a stark contrast, though, is the way in which God defines Himself to ancient Israel: “I AM” (not “I am becoming”).  To borrow terms from Aristotle, God is complete and full actuality.  Simply put, he is real and because He is real, he doesn’t change.  He has no need to grow to become more perfect in any area, since He is infinite, and infinitely perfect.  We, of course, are not infinite and we live as creatures ‘inhabiting time’ – so we are “beings” who are “becoming”.

This tension between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ – and the ultimate question of ‘what is real’ took an interesting path for me recently as I was reading about John Henry Newman – an Anglican-turned-Catholic thinker, writer & priest (ultimately a cardinal) in the 19th century.  The memorial tablet at Newman’s death (in 1890) was inscribed with the words “Ex umbrus et imaginibus in veritatem” – "Out of unreality into Reality.”  While I’m honestly in no hurry, I do, though, often think about that “Reality” – and the deepest parts of me long to be as real one day as Newman is now.

I think a lot about leadership – what makes a great leader?  What ruins one?  Are leaders born, made, or some combination of the two?  Often over the course of my life I have been handed the compliment of being told I have leadership qualities.  But what does that really mean?  Since as far back as I can remember, I’ve loved to watch and understand people.  As a 15-year-old, reeling from the separation and divorce of my parents, my ability to understand others helped me overcome my natural inclinations towards mild introversion to become outspoken, bold, opinionated – but staying as likable as possible in the process (not always successfully, I might add!).  During those years I learned what I believe is one of the most important qualities for a leader to possess: the ability to admit you’re wrong and apologize.  I began to be amazed at how much respect someone was willing to give to you if you were simply honest, and how quickly it faded when you became defensive.  A good leader must possess the ability to admit they’re wrong, humbly apologize and take responsibility for their mistakes.

I’ve written before about discovering early on in life the immeasurable value of deep friendships.  As a result, leadership in my mind is inextricably linked to relationships and respect (the kind of respect that flows downhill).  No leader can be (nor is realistically expected to be) everyone’s best friend.  Making decisions that can affect so many lives is not an easy weight to bear – and it comes with it’s own version of loneliness.  However, good leaders must not insulate themselves from the lives of those they are responsible for.  If you want to be a good leader, then you must make every effort to remember that real people work for you, not numbers on a ledger, nor merely bodies in a cube.  They are real people with families, dreams, hopes, fears and yet-untapped abilities.

I once heard a man say “Authority flows to those who serve.”  As leaders, we serve those around us by enabling them to realize their goals and dreams.  The  best kind of “follower-ship” a leader can hope for is a fully-engaged-but-voluntary following by those who are endeavoring to be the best that they are capable of, with your company, department, church (or some other organization) benefiting from it in the process.  It’s a healthy symbiotic relationship.  This is not to say that other leadership styles don’t produce results.  Napoleon produced unprecedented results, until his maniacal arrogance blinded him to Wellington’s superior strategy.  A CFO I once worked for – brought in as a turn-around expert – successfully completed the turn-around and sale of our company.  However, he left in his wake an atmosphere of fear and contempt – as his style of explosive shout-downs and expletive laden rants were adopted by his underlings.  My departure from that company shortly followed.  A good leader delicately balances positional authority with the morale and support of those reporting to him, and seeks to inspire their support and buy-in to his vision as opposed to demanding it for fear of retribution.  As my father-in-law so wisely said, “Authority is like soap, the more of it you use, the less of it you have.”

If you are truly interested in becoming a good leader, I think you need to ask yourself if you could handle moving down the ladder as well as moving up?  It took about 2 years for me to learn this lesson.  Up until 2008, I had always moved “up”.  However, for many reasons, I hit a plateau.  The next natural step was another step “up” – and the CIO I reported to was offering a higher position.  But something wasn’t right.  It was as if the head coach was asking me if I wanted to move from quarterback to offensive coordinator.  More power and authority to implement things as I saw fit, higher pay, more prestige.  It had some tempting elements.  However, looking at myself in the mirror every morning, I knew that I was actually lucky I was even quarterback.  My knowledge of the ‘game’ was far from mature.  Instead, I sought a new team that was looking for a rookie quarterback to take a back seat to the arsenal of experienced ones, so that I could learn from those who’s abilities far exceeded my own.  A good leader knows when to not lead, and instead follow a better leader from whom they can learn.  A leader who holds tightly onto a position at the expense of their growth as a leader is no leader after all.

In part 1 of this series, I posed the question: is it really possible to be neutral on subjects like religion, politics & belief?  In that post, I briefly discussed the odd paradox that we endure daily as a result of the influence that relativism and logical positivism have had on our culture.  All belief is rendered equally true or equally meaningless by the ‘absolute’ of "’no absolutes” in relativism.  Yet, at the same time, claiming the backing of science is still one of the ultimate trump cards that can be played in any metaphysical, philosophical or political debate.

I think special attention needs to be paid to the desire we have to appear ‘objective by being neutral’ on contentious issues.  There is an underlying fear: if we admit to having any sort of bias or opinion, that somehow undermines our credibility and brings any contribution we make to the debate under suspicion.  The flipside is that we are expected to trust “neutral” voices without question.  Questioning those who claim to be neutral is more often met by name-calling (or some sort of political categorizing) as opposed to honest answers.  How did we arrive at a place where having an opinion and belief on a given topic disqualifies you from participating in a debate on that topic?  If neutrality were truly possible, how could two parties debate an issue on which neither of them held convictions?  There’s no real answer to either question – because neutrality in these contexts is a myth.

Today’s “notion” of neutrality is an outgrowth of the Enlightenment’s idea of the “state of nature” – the concept of what humanity was before (and would be like outside of) the existence of the state.  Many philosophers during that time period (like Jean-Jacques Rousseau) believed that man was neither good nor bad in this state, but that civilization causes humanity’s ills and vices.  The modernized version of this is that religion (or partisanship, or intolerance…{or insert belief system here}) has caused innumerable deaths through war and persecution, and that its influence should be marginalized continually until it’s altogether eliminated.  So, the postmodern ‘idyllic neutrality’ is a person devoid of religious conviction, since such convictions would make “objective” thought impossible.  This logic, however appealing to our post-modern minds, is flawed.

All action is driven by belief.  That belief may be in science, God, yourself or your political party leader.  You may believe something because someone told you, or because you examined the evidence firsthand.  You may believe that belief doesn’t matter – nonetheless it’s still a belief.  As my friend Steve Betz recently said, “There is a great line in the book (and film) "Contact" in which the religious counselor to the President asks Ellie the scientist "Did you father love you?" "Of course" she answers. "Prove it" — and she is left speechless.”

What about the arguments we hear around us today?  Evolution vs. Intelligent Design, for example.  The idea that the universe can be explained apart from the existence of some force or entity that exists outside of it is a philosophical stance (naturalism), not a scientific one.  Because of this, evolution finds itself as rooted in philosophical belief as many other worldviews.  This reality should be taken into account as we seek to understand the viability of either theory – since both make claims outside the realm of empirical measurability.  Take political “hot potatoes”, for example.  The shrill shouting match over issues like abortion and gay marriage are often tinged with phrases like “you ought not to push your morality on others”.  To which I have one question in response, “Why not?  You just did.”  If you feel that way, then your beliefs and your morality have compelled you to oppose anyone promoting a moral system that does not match your own.  How, then, are you any more objective, tolerant or neutral than the opposition? (And, no, I am not advocating the idea of me or anyone like me “forcing” my beliefs down anyone’s throat.)  Legislative action on either side of these kinds of debates is inherently biased by nature – because an action based on moral belief is being carried out.

I think part of why we esteem neutrality stems from our desire to keep the peace in culture where so many conflicting belief systems interact – we desire to be (and to encourage others to be) tolerant.  In my next post in this series, we’ll look at how the idea and meaning of ‘tolerance’ has changed significantly in the last few decades…