Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.
In this final video where Rowe closes up the S.W.E.A.T. Pledge, I find what is maybe the most important of all the principles. It will make or break all of the others we have examined in this miniseries.
Most people (but not all) will be able to “show up” for life to do what is necessary. But there is an intangible quality to the fact that a much smaller group demonstrate an internal fire and personal commitment to “get up” long before what is necessary and do what it takes to be excellent.
Angela Duckworth calls it “grit” in her well-known TED Talk.
And Rowe is right. This commitment is about choices.
It is not about talent; it takes no talent to get up earlier and work harder than anybody else. It is not about education; you cannot teach this to others in a lecture hall. It is not something that can be medicated or consumed as a product.
This commitment is an internal commitment to be a part of something (to use the cliche) “bigger than yourself.” For many from the secular perspective, they find this fire by being internally committed to themselves. Others find this in their commitment to the larger team, community, or group of “others.” I am assuming that for some, this internal fire is even dysfunctionally fueled by guilt, insecurity, and fear.
Appropriately placed (in my mind), this fire comes from a deep and abiding belief in what is most true about the world: a belief that God is putting the world back together, that this project is deeply meaningful to lots of other people and a planet that suffers from all kinds of brokenness. It is a belief that God is looking for partners and an unbelievable gratitude that we get the opportunity to be a part of these restoration efforts.
We have the opportunity to get up every day and be a part of what the Jews call tikkun olam, or “the repairing of the world.” If this opportunity doesn’t inspire us to be deeply committed to personal growth and hard work — not for ourselves and our own Towers of Babel, but for the wholeness of the universe — then I don’t know what will.
But getting up and working hard is the piece we can control that has the ability, when used by God, to turn morsels into miracles. When neglected, it is also the thing that has killed more potential than any other problem we have ever encountered.
Of all the principles we looked at in this series, if there is one thing I could magically give to each of my students, it would be this principle of hard work and dedication combined with a healthy understanding of identity and a true rest of the Spirit that comes from knowing we are loved as we are. It should be a beautiful mixture of work and rest — work finding its appropriate place, and a healthy human being at rest in the love, value, and acceptance of God.
And the bummer is that you cannot manufacture this in a blog post any more than you can in a classroom.
But the combination of those two realities can change a world — your world. And when enough of our worlds are changed, it helps us be a part of changing the big one. This is why I work with college students: I have a deep, abiding belief that if you can mentor this in enough students, you can change the course of history. If you Impact the U, you Impact the World.
10.31.2019
10.21.2019
Life Is Not Fair
Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.
In this video, Mike Rowe talks about a principle we toss around with frequency — particularly when it is convenient (in realms like parenting or mentoring) — but rarely do we ever take the time to consider how profound and difficult the truth of the statement is.
Life is not fair.
Rowe uses the example of a job he had earlier in his life and a generous holiday bonus he received with great joy — until he found out a coworker had received more than him. Rowe goes on to simply observe and accept the very honest reality that life is full of these moments and circumstances. I really appreciated that he did not spend any time trying to explain the details of “what could be going on” or why we may or may not be “seeing it correctly.” Instead, he simply stated it and accepted it as a common life experience: life is not fair. Life will be full of moments just like this one. Rowe spent no time trying to blame the bosses or talk about what is wrong with the culture of his former workplace.
Nope, this is going to happen in life. A lot. We can either accept it as a common experience or fight it (to no avail, I might add) at every turn.
And he rightly pointed out the two things I think are important about remembering how to respond to life’s unfair moments: circumstance and control.
First there is circumstance. Life happens. Each day you wake up, and life hands you your pieces of the puzzle. All you have to work with are the pieces of the puzzle you are handed that day. They might be more than what you need, and they might be wrong in every way. You might not have the right puzzle pieces, or the picture on the lid may be inaccurate. You might not have enough to finish the job. Whatever it is, each day presents you with another piece to play in the puzzle of your life.
So when that piece is lousy, what do you do? When the circumstances are off, and life is unfair, how do you respond? Do you jump on Facebook and rant about how things aren’t turning out in your favor? Do you blame others for the plot you find yourself in?
You certainly could. Of course, it just doesn’t make a difference with those puzzle pieces. It doesn’t change the circumstances. And if it does anything, it changes you from the inside — and not for the better.
But then there is control. There are things we can control. We can control our choices, and we can control what we are going to do with the mess that lies in front of us. No matter who is to blame, no matter how hopeless, and no matter how unfair, there is only one direction we can head: forward. We pick up the pieces, and we do the best we can with what we have. We do not concern ourselves with how our table of puzzle pieces compares to our neighbor’s. We simply do the next right thing with what we have to work with.
And as I have added throughout this series, this does not mean we cannot address injustice and that there aren’t proper ways to address things in life that are wrong. This is about being crippled by the idea that you are entitled to a different situation just because somebody else experienced something different.
And I won’t be taking the time to write some cheap blog post about this or that group and their “participation trophies” or their generational entitlement; those are easy straw man arguments to make, and the thick irony is that those who make them miss the very principle we are espousing here.
It is your path. Be grateful for what is on your path. Be grateful for the opportunity to walk your path and to make something of the hand you have been dealt. And do not calculate the value of your path by comparing it to your neighbor’s.
And as for your neighbor’s path? Be grateful for that, too. Cheer for their success and celebrate their victories. For their path will have its own turns and disasters — and we all need cheerleaders. And the negative internal change we spoke of above? It can be reversed by celebrating the success of others. Gratitude begets more gratitude.
No matter what life throws us today, let’s crack our knuckles and be glad to tackle it the best we can.
In this video, Mike Rowe talks about a principle we toss around with frequency — particularly when it is convenient (in realms like parenting or mentoring) — but rarely do we ever take the time to consider how profound and difficult the truth of the statement is.
Life is not fair.
Rowe uses the example of a job he had earlier in his life and a generous holiday bonus he received with great joy — until he found out a coworker had received more than him. Rowe goes on to simply observe and accept the very honest reality that life is full of these moments and circumstances. I really appreciated that he did not spend any time trying to explain the details of “what could be going on” or why we may or may not be “seeing it correctly.” Instead, he simply stated it and accepted it as a common life experience: life is not fair. Life will be full of moments just like this one. Rowe spent no time trying to blame the bosses or talk about what is wrong with the culture of his former workplace.
Nope, this is going to happen in life. A lot. We can either accept it as a common experience or fight it (to no avail, I might add) at every turn.
And he rightly pointed out the two things I think are important about remembering how to respond to life’s unfair moments: circumstance and control.
First there is circumstance. Life happens. Each day you wake up, and life hands you your pieces of the puzzle. All you have to work with are the pieces of the puzzle you are handed that day. They might be more than what you need, and they might be wrong in every way. You might not have the right puzzle pieces, or the picture on the lid may be inaccurate. You might not have enough to finish the job. Whatever it is, each day presents you with another piece to play in the puzzle of your life.
So when that piece is lousy, what do you do? When the circumstances are off, and life is unfair, how do you respond? Do you jump on Facebook and rant about how things aren’t turning out in your favor? Do you blame others for the plot you find yourself in?
You certainly could. Of course, it just doesn’t make a difference with those puzzle pieces. It doesn’t change the circumstances. And if it does anything, it changes you from the inside — and not for the better.
But then there is control. There are things we can control. We can control our choices, and we can control what we are going to do with the mess that lies in front of us. No matter who is to blame, no matter how hopeless, and no matter how unfair, there is only one direction we can head: forward. We pick up the pieces, and we do the best we can with what we have. We do not concern ourselves with how our table of puzzle pieces compares to our neighbor’s. We simply do the next right thing with what we have to work with.
And as I have added throughout this series, this does not mean we cannot address injustice and that there aren’t proper ways to address things in life that are wrong. This is about being crippled by the idea that you are entitled to a different situation just because somebody else experienced something different.
And I won’t be taking the time to write some cheap blog post about this or that group and their “participation trophies” or their generational entitlement; those are easy straw man arguments to make, and the thick irony is that those who make them miss the very principle we are espousing here.
It is your path. Be grateful for what is on your path. Be grateful for the opportunity to walk your path and to make something of the hand you have been dealt. And do not calculate the value of your path by comparing it to your neighbor’s.
And as for your neighbor’s path? Be grateful for that, too. Cheer for their success and celebrate their victories. For their path will have its own turns and disasters — and we all need cheerleaders. And the negative internal change we spoke of above? It can be reversed by celebrating the success of others. Gratitude begets more gratitude.
No matter what life throws us today, let’s crack our knuckles and be glad to tackle it the best we can.
10.10.2019
Choices v. Circumstances
Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.
This video was short and to the point. To be honest, I was so refreshingly surprised by Rowe’s proposition in this video, and I couldn’t agree more. Some people make horrible mistakes. I am a person who believes in second chances, and so do most of my readers. When people make mistakes and then respond to those mistakes appropriately, they should be given the opportunity to keep building on that positive momentum. Some of the greatest contributions to this world will come because of some of our worst errors.
What I love about what Rowe did here was that he did more than just agree to an idea. He didn’t just nod his head and decide not to get in the way of someone’s rehabilitation; he actually put his foundation out there to help the person be successful.
To be honest, if any of us are going to rebuild from our major mistakes, we are going to need more than just the tacit agreement of our right to do so. We are going to need proactive and compassionate help from others investing in our success.
The math doesn’t seem to work right. You take one negative (a person’s mistake) and add it to another negative (some other person’s sacrificial investment), and it seems like you should be losing ground and ringing up negative growth. And yet, the Kingdom economy doesn't work that way. It takes those two negative variables and turns it, somehow, into positive growth — often exponential in nature.
Is it possible we somehow end up even better by responding to mistakes properly than if we would have done it by the book in the first place? I think it is.
I know this series is supposed to be about conventional wisdom, but sometimes that wisdom takes us right into discovering some post-conventional truths, as well.
This video was short and to the point. To be honest, I was so refreshingly surprised by Rowe’s proposition in this video, and I couldn’t agree more. Some people make horrible mistakes. I am a person who believes in second chances, and so do most of my readers. When people make mistakes and then respond to those mistakes appropriately, they should be given the opportunity to keep building on that positive momentum. Some of the greatest contributions to this world will come because of some of our worst errors.
What I love about what Rowe did here was that he did more than just agree to an idea. He didn’t just nod his head and decide not to get in the way of someone’s rehabilitation; he actually put his foundation out there to help the person be successful.
To be honest, if any of us are going to rebuild from our major mistakes, we are going to need more than just the tacit agreement of our right to do so. We are going to need proactive and compassionate help from others investing in our success.
The math doesn’t seem to work right. You take one negative (a person’s mistake) and add it to another negative (some other person’s sacrificial investment), and it seems like you should be losing ground and ringing up negative growth. And yet, the Kingdom economy doesn't work that way. It takes those two negative variables and turns it, somehow, into positive growth — often exponential in nature.
Is it possible we somehow end up even better by responding to mistakes properly than if we would have done it by the book in the first place? I think it is.
I know this series is supposed to be about conventional wisdom, but sometimes that wisdom takes us right into discovering some post-conventional truths, as well.
9.30.2019
Education is Already Free
Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.
*
This is one of my favorite videos of the SWEAT pledge. Mike Rowe tells a great personal story about his time on QVC and uses it to make a great point. In his experience, he needed education; he realized education could be found anywhere, and it was his responsibility to get it.
To be clear, I love this video for purely selfish reasons. I have built most of my career on the premise of this particular conventional wisdom. To be fair, I did go to college and complete my undergraduate education, but I did it at an institution that was unbelievably affordable and not academically impressive. None of this, however, impacted the quality of education I was responsible for getting on my own.
I was able to study as hard as I wanted to study and access information from any field I so desired. My education was totally in my control, and my academic institution simply provided me with parameters for focusing that energy and proof of the work that I put in.
After graduation, I was able to use those tools to know how to study well. Not all information is good, academically vetted, or even scientific at all (when applicable), but college gave me the ability to know how to find resources and tools to educate myself.
After college I did not pursue graduate-level study, and to this day have no plans to do so. But I think it would be safe to say I have done far more education since I graduated from college than during my studies as an undergrad. There are some drawbacks: I don’t have letters after my name or degrees to prove the work I have done; I have had to exercise quite a bit of autonomy to accomplish all of this and doing so kept me from increased academic relationships and accountability, and my vocational career does not benefit from the academic network provided by a graduate-level education.
But I have been educated and seek to connect more and more of my students to the proper systems — oftentimes those are universities (sorry, Mike!) — and counsel them in pursuing their own goals. I have become an educated teacher and individual who can quote sources (not opinions) and talk about the larger academic conversations that drive my conclusions. I am not speaking of “rogue science” or self-published authors spouting nonsense. The same study from those fine institutions is available to me as a learner. Although the quality of this education is proportional to the money spent, and the oversight is minimal, the opportunity is still mine to seize.
But these goals are available to all of us. College students and high school dropouts, churches and think tanks, businesses and non-profits — we all have the opportunity to use the resources at our disposal to become better at everything we do. There is nobody who can keep us from this task. Some of us enjoy more opportunities and privilege than others, but all of us can work to become better versions of ourselves. It would also be wise to remember something Rowe hinted at in his video: there are many times when we are each other’s best resource. “Education” is not owned by an elite group of people or a system of institutions; it is a process we can all engage in, and the more we do so together, the better it will be.
It seems to me Jesus told a parable about people who were each given different amounts to invest in his Kingdom project (see Matthew 24:14–30). Some were given more than others, but all were expected to take what they had been given and use it to invest in more. Only the one who took the amount and buried it, refusing to do any more than keeping what was handed to him, was scolded.
May we hear the wisdom in this teaching and know we are invited to invest our blessings. May we remember much of this world’s education is already free, and it is our responsibility to pursue that learning.
*
This is one of my favorite videos of the SWEAT pledge. Mike Rowe tells a great personal story about his time on QVC and uses it to make a great point. In his experience, he needed education; he realized education could be found anywhere, and it was his responsibility to get it.
To be clear, I love this video for purely selfish reasons. I have built most of my career on the premise of this particular conventional wisdom. To be fair, I did go to college and complete my undergraduate education, but I did it at an institution that was unbelievably affordable and not academically impressive. None of this, however, impacted the quality of education I was responsible for getting on my own.
I was able to study as hard as I wanted to study and access information from any field I so desired. My education was totally in my control, and my academic institution simply provided me with parameters for focusing that energy and proof of the work that I put in.
After graduation, I was able to use those tools to know how to study well. Not all information is good, academically vetted, or even scientific at all (when applicable), but college gave me the ability to know how to find resources and tools to educate myself.
After college I did not pursue graduate-level study, and to this day have no plans to do so. But I think it would be safe to say I have done far more education since I graduated from college than during my studies as an undergrad. There are some drawbacks: I don’t have letters after my name or degrees to prove the work I have done; I have had to exercise quite a bit of autonomy to accomplish all of this and doing so kept me from increased academic relationships and accountability, and my vocational career does not benefit from the academic network provided by a graduate-level education.
But I have been educated and seek to connect more and more of my students to the proper systems — oftentimes those are universities (sorry, Mike!) — and counsel them in pursuing their own goals. I have become an educated teacher and individual who can quote sources (not opinions) and talk about the larger academic conversations that drive my conclusions. I am not speaking of “rogue science” or self-published authors spouting nonsense. The same study from those fine institutions is available to me as a learner. Although the quality of this education is proportional to the money spent, and the oversight is minimal, the opportunity is still mine to seize.
But these goals are available to all of us. College students and high school dropouts, churches and think tanks, businesses and non-profits — we all have the opportunity to use the resources at our disposal to become better at everything we do. There is nobody who can keep us from this task. Some of us enjoy more opportunities and privilege than others, but all of us can work to become better versions of ourselves. It would also be wise to remember something Rowe hinted at in his video: there are many times when we are each other’s best resource. “Education” is not owned by an elite group of people or a system of institutions; it is a process we can all engage in, and the more we do so together, the better it will be.
It seems to me Jesus told a parable about people who were each given different amounts to invest in his Kingdom project (see Matthew 24:14–30). Some were given more than others, but all were expected to take what they had been given and use it to invest in more. Only the one who took the amount and buried it, refusing to do any more than keeping what was handed to him, was scolded.
May we hear the wisdom in this teaching and know we are invited to invest our blessings. May we remember much of this world’s education is already free, and it is our responsibility to pursue that learning.
9.19.2019
Missing More than His Limbs
Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.
This video is loaded with good stuff — perspective, inspiration, personal challenge. Just from the perspective alone, the video is worth a watch. We often have opportunities to see things, hear stories, or meet people, and each helps us put things in perspective. That is one of the blatant and surface-level takeaways from this video, at least for me. Some people have it bad — really bad — and it helps me to remember how my circumstances stack up against those of others.
I live quite a life of opportunity, comfort, and privilege. This video reminds me of that, as I’m sure it does many others. In addition, it reminds me that some of those comforts and privileges have come from the sacrifice of others. I don’t take that lightly.
It’s important to note that the power of these stories lies in the stories themselves — and the people who get to tell them because of their own experience. One of the dangers of this video is that people watch it from a place of opportunity and privilege, feel the conviction and the inspiration, and then project it onto everyone else from their place of comfort. I’m not faulting Rowe for this, but the danger is there.
The power is in the story and the inspiration of seeing life lived out in a compelling way.
The danger is when we take that inspiration, turn it into a principle, and then expect everyone else to do the same. We cannot do that. Travis has his story: He is a human being with unbelievable complexity and nuance, personality, training, context, relationships, etc. Every human life is different, and every human story is valuable. The story is powerful when it is shared and used to start great internal and external conversations. The story is dangerous when it stops being a story and becomes an expectation projected onto everyone who struggles.
The projection is doubly dangerous when it is being projected by people who speak from places of comfort, power, influence, and privilege. We need to be aware of those things. I am purposely leaving out political buzzwords that will set off my audience, but I think we all need to be challenged (on all sides of our many debates and conversations) to think about where and how we project those things.
But I digress in a serious way, because after writing a whole post on the dangers of this video, I actually really enjoyed its conventional wisdom. The video ends with Rowe asking two questions.
“If [Travis] can get through the day without whining and complaining, why can’t I?”
This is the dynamite question we can all be challenged with. This is the question that inspires me and challenges me today.
His second question, appropriately qualified, is where it gets dangerous:
“With respect, why can’t anyone?”
May we be challenged to live with less whining and complaining. May we be resolute in our commitment to pursuing our day with a more positive attitude. But may we also ask that second question with much less assumption and more genuine intrigue. May our personal conviction lead to a better life (a “good eye” to call back to our previous discussion), and our intrigue lead us to more compassion and a less assumptive, less critical spirit.
And in this, may we find and help create a better world.
This video is loaded with good stuff — perspective, inspiration, personal challenge. Just from the perspective alone, the video is worth a watch. We often have opportunities to see things, hear stories, or meet people, and each helps us put things in perspective. That is one of the blatant and surface-level takeaways from this video, at least for me. Some people have it bad — really bad — and it helps me to remember how my circumstances stack up against those of others.
I live quite a life of opportunity, comfort, and privilege. This video reminds me of that, as I’m sure it does many others. In addition, it reminds me that some of those comforts and privileges have come from the sacrifice of others. I don’t take that lightly.
It’s important to note that the power of these stories lies in the stories themselves — and the people who get to tell them because of their own experience. One of the dangers of this video is that people watch it from a place of opportunity and privilege, feel the conviction and the inspiration, and then project it onto everyone else from their place of comfort. I’m not faulting Rowe for this, but the danger is there.
The power is in the story and the inspiration of seeing life lived out in a compelling way.
The danger is when we take that inspiration, turn it into a principle, and then expect everyone else to do the same. We cannot do that. Travis has his story: He is a human being with unbelievable complexity and nuance, personality, training, context, relationships, etc. Every human life is different, and every human story is valuable. The story is powerful when it is shared and used to start great internal and external conversations. The story is dangerous when it stops being a story and becomes an expectation projected onto everyone who struggles.
The projection is doubly dangerous when it is being projected by people who speak from places of comfort, power, influence, and privilege. We need to be aware of those things. I am purposely leaving out political buzzwords that will set off my audience, but I think we all need to be challenged (on all sides of our many debates and conversations) to think about where and how we project those things.
But I digress in a serious way, because after writing a whole post on the dangers of this video, I actually really enjoyed its conventional wisdom. The video ends with Rowe asking two questions.
“If [Travis] can get through the day without whining and complaining, why can’t I?”
This is the dynamite question we can all be challenged with. This is the question that inspires me and challenges me today.
His second question, appropriately qualified, is where it gets dangerous:
“With respect, why can’t anyone?”
May we be challenged to live with less whining and complaining. May we be resolute in our commitment to pursuing our day with a more positive attitude. But may we also ask that second question with much less assumption and more genuine intrigue. May our personal conviction lead to a better life (a “good eye” to call back to our previous discussion), and our intrigue lead us to more compassion and a less assumptive, less critical spirit.
And in this, may we find and help create a better world.
9.09.2019
Cheerfulness Is a Choice
Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.
I’m not sure I would add much to this conversation at all. I will just say, “What Mike said!”
In all honesty, I feel like if I were to write a few paragraphs, I would be trying to manufacture some deep, profound thoughts pulled from the pool of post-conventional wisdom.
So I won’t! There it is. Cheerfulness is a choice. May we all be challenged by the application of this in our own lives.
I’m not sure I would add much to this conversation at all. I will just say, “What Mike said!”
In all honesty, I feel like if I were to write a few paragraphs, I would be trying to manufacture some deep, profound thoughts pulled from the pool of post-conventional wisdom.
So I won’t! There it is. Cheerfulness is a choice. May we all be challenged by the application of this in our own lives.
8.29.2019
No Substitute for Common Sense
Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.
“Guidelines are great, but they are no substitute for common sense.”
For me, this video was not the most inspiring in Rowe’s series, but the content is decent, and the point is well taken. Even though people tell you that your safety is their priority, it does not remove it from being your responsibility. I think this goes for a lot of other things as well, not just safety. People might say this about your education or your success — they would suggest it is their priority; however, that doesn’t mean it stops being your responsibility.
I like it. There won’t be a lot to say here. Pretty straightforward.
But one passing thought: Some of these same ideas are relevant in a culture that loves to blame others for our circumstances. We love to point fingers and talk about how our situation is brought about by our family, our employer, our government, our neighborhood, our school. We go on endless rants about how somebody else’s mistakes have created my mess.
And this may even be true some of the time.
And I’m definitely not suggesting accountability doesn’t matter or that we shouldn’t fight for justice. That is not my point at all, and anybody who knows me will know I am a big proponent of pursuing those things.
But there is a very significant line crossed when the objectivity of pursuing justice, mercy, and accountability becomes the subjectivity of blame.
People (especially leaders) should be held accountable for the worlds they create.
But we are responsible — solely — for how we respond to our circumstances. And I do get frustrated when people pick one of these sides and denounce the other. They are not mutually exclusive. I say that with all of the awareness of the comfort and privilege I bring to the conversation. As a white male, my list of circumstances working against me is horribly short. And yet, some of the people who have taught me the most about responsibility (especially in the last few years) have been people with much less privilege and comfort than I have.
So accountability does not remove responsibility. And responsibility does not remove the need for accountability. Can both of these statements be true? I certainly hope so.
What does this mean for you and your circumstances? It is not for me to say. I cannot understand what it is to walk in your shoes and I cannot apply wisdom in your life (only my own); but together, we learn from each other.
“Guidelines are great, but they are no substitute for common sense.”
For me, this video was not the most inspiring in Rowe’s series, but the content is decent, and the point is well taken. Even though people tell you that your safety is their priority, it does not remove it from being your responsibility. I think this goes for a lot of other things as well, not just safety. People might say this about your education or your success — they would suggest it is their priority; however, that doesn’t mean it stops being your responsibility.
I like it. There won’t be a lot to say here. Pretty straightforward.
But one passing thought: Some of these same ideas are relevant in a culture that loves to blame others for our circumstances. We love to point fingers and talk about how our situation is brought about by our family, our employer, our government, our neighborhood, our school. We go on endless rants about how somebody else’s mistakes have created my mess.
And this may even be true some of the time.
And I’m definitely not suggesting accountability doesn’t matter or that we shouldn’t fight for justice. That is not my point at all, and anybody who knows me will know I am a big proponent of pursuing those things.
But there is a very significant line crossed when the objectivity of pursuing justice, mercy, and accountability becomes the subjectivity of blame.
People (especially leaders) should be held accountable for the worlds they create.
But we are responsible — solely — for how we respond to our circumstances. And I do get frustrated when people pick one of these sides and denounce the other. They are not mutually exclusive. I say that with all of the awareness of the comfort and privilege I bring to the conversation. As a white male, my list of circumstances working against me is horribly short. And yet, some of the people who have taught me the most about responsibility (especially in the last few years) have been people with much less privilege and comfort than I have.
So accountability does not remove responsibility. And responsibility does not remove the need for accountability. Can both of these statements be true? I certainly hope so.
What does this mean for you and your circumstances? It is not for me to say. I cannot understand what it is to walk in your shoes and I cannot apply wisdom in your life (only my own); but together, we learn from each other.
8.19.2019
A (Potential) Bad Decision
Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.
This video is wonderfully straightforward. And while there are a couple of things I’m not necessarily interested in (the conspiracy theory mentality is just a little thick in this video, and the promotion for his foundation is beside the point for my purposes), I don’t think I would or could add much to his argument. As someone who is around universities and students for my job every day, I can tell you that this problem is real.
And that probably makes me a really bad campus minister.
But I don’t actually believe it does. I do think there needs to be a market adjustment on the industry of secondary education, but I don’t believe (nor does Mike Rowe) that the institution itself is broken. The university is still an essential place where many vocational pursuits receive specialized training necessary for a given job. I can hardly imagine a world without people trained in medical or legal fields. Engineering allows so much of our world to exist effectively and efficiently. And I need people trained in history, economics, political science, and the like to help lead us.
But what Rowe said in this video is so true. This is not how we’ve been selling university education.
When I was in high school (and I’m not aware of this changing much in recent years), the impression was that college is an absolute must if I want to be “successful” or even simply survive with a family in the future. I got lucky: I went to a very affordable Bible college and was able to, with the help of my family, escape without student loans. But this is becoming more and more of a miracle in today’s experience. And while undergraduate and graduate level training is actually quite effective and useful in many ways, it is not delivering what we were promised. It is developing us as human beings (at least in some ways), but it is not producing jobs.
It used to be true that if you went to college, you were almost guaranteed a starting position in your career field. That is no longer true. Such education used to be affordable; but as you saw depicted the video, this is no longer true. College is no longer (for many) the ticket it used to be, and it is no longer (for many) a wise investment. But we were all told that this is where the path to success starts. For far too many, it is no longer leading to the same destination.
I can tell you that classmates who did not go to college are a few steps ahead if they simply applied themselves and began a practice of hard work. To be sure, their earning potential is often much less than my college-trained counterparts, but the latter are so saddled with crippling debt and had such a slow start on their earning potential that they cannot round the curve.
Meanwhile, an entire generation has bought into a counter-productive narrative (when thinking of the Kingdom of God) that fills them with insecurity and leaves them empty of meaning.
It may be time we quit feeding the same trope of what leads to success and start teaching how to ask a better set of questions. To be sure, I hope our college campuses continue to be filled with people who are convinced of their calling and driven to be trained in their specialized field. I hope these students experience training that is more intentional and a job market that is more balanced with people who have a better understanding of what they do — but even more importantly, who they are.
If we are an organization that believes when we impact the U, we impact the world, then we have to take that logic out beyond the walls of the university campus. To be sure, tomorrow’s leaders are on our university campuses. But they can also be at our trade schools and our community colleges. They can be taking classes in the School of Life Experience. These people, with or without four-year degrees, will be tomorrow’s parents, artists, small business owners, and church leaders. We might even see a world where they can be our political leaders and representatives.
If all of this is possible without being enslaved to crippling debt, this world will be a better place. I hope for people to be found in our university classrooms, but I hope those rooms are filled with more and more of the right people. I hope those who have been fed a line will find the right place in a world that needs their leadership so badly — a place just as fulfilling and necessary.
This video is wonderfully straightforward. And while there are a couple of things I’m not necessarily interested in (the conspiracy theory mentality is just a little thick in this video, and the promotion for his foundation is beside the point for my purposes), I don’t think I would or could add much to his argument. As someone who is around universities and students for my job every day, I can tell you that this problem is real.
And that probably makes me a really bad campus minister.
But I don’t actually believe it does. I do think there needs to be a market adjustment on the industry of secondary education, but I don’t believe (nor does Mike Rowe) that the institution itself is broken. The university is still an essential place where many vocational pursuits receive specialized training necessary for a given job. I can hardly imagine a world without people trained in medical or legal fields. Engineering allows so much of our world to exist effectively and efficiently. And I need people trained in history, economics, political science, and the like to help lead us.
But what Rowe said in this video is so true. This is not how we’ve been selling university education.
When I was in high school (and I’m not aware of this changing much in recent years), the impression was that college is an absolute must if I want to be “successful” or even simply survive with a family in the future. I got lucky: I went to a very affordable Bible college and was able to, with the help of my family, escape without student loans. But this is becoming more and more of a miracle in today’s experience. And while undergraduate and graduate level training is actually quite effective and useful in many ways, it is not delivering what we were promised. It is developing us as human beings (at least in some ways), but it is not producing jobs.
It used to be true that if you went to college, you were almost guaranteed a starting position in your career field. That is no longer true. Such education used to be affordable; but as you saw depicted the video, this is no longer true. College is no longer (for many) the ticket it used to be, and it is no longer (for many) a wise investment. But we were all told that this is where the path to success starts. For far too many, it is no longer leading to the same destination.
I can tell you that classmates who did not go to college are a few steps ahead if they simply applied themselves and began a practice of hard work. To be sure, their earning potential is often much less than my college-trained counterparts, but the latter are so saddled with crippling debt and had such a slow start on their earning potential that they cannot round the curve.
Meanwhile, an entire generation has bought into a counter-productive narrative (when thinking of the Kingdom of God) that fills them with insecurity and leaves them empty of meaning.
It may be time we quit feeding the same trope of what leads to success and start teaching how to ask a better set of questions. To be sure, I hope our college campuses continue to be filled with people who are convinced of their calling and driven to be trained in their specialized field. I hope these students experience training that is more intentional and a job market that is more balanced with people who have a better understanding of what they do — but even more importantly, who they are.
If we are an organization that believes when we impact the U, we impact the world, then we have to take that logic out beyond the walls of the university campus. To be sure, tomorrow’s leaders are on our university campuses. But they can also be at our trade schools and our community colleges. They can be taking classes in the School of Life Experience. These people, with or without four-year degrees, will be tomorrow’s parents, artists, small business owners, and church leaders. We might even see a world where they can be our political leaders and representatives.
If all of this is possible without being enslaved to crippling debt, this world will be a better place. I hope for people to be found in our university classrooms, but I hope those rooms are filled with more and more of the right people. I hope those who have been fed a line will find the right place in a world that needs their leadership so badly — a place just as fulfilling and necessary.
8.08.2019
Bringing the "Awesome" to Anything
Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.
In this conversation, Mike Rowe speaks against this common idea of “following your passion.” I think Mike might say this idea falls squarely in the realm of the less mature, pre-conventional wisdom. He suggests passion is not something you follow, but instead something you bring with you.
One of the things we are intentionally working on at Impact Campus Ministries is the art of sacred vocation. We have a fundamental belief that all work is holy and sacred. There is a sanctity to a vocation that is often overlooked. Why is vocation holy and sacred? Because vocation is, in its essence, about the proper ordering and stewarding of God’s creation. For centuries, Christian theology has unintentionally (I hope) pulled apart soil and spirit, giving the impression that the “Kingdom work” is done by clergy and missionaries, while the rest of the parishioners essentially make money to help the real work happen. They rub shoulders with the unsaved at their places of employment. They bring the money and “the lost” to the conversation and the holy folks do the spiritual work.
But this is not grounded in good theology. God is putting the whole world back together, bringing shalom to the physical chaos of creation. What this means is that the real work is done by those people who have their hands in the soil (literally or otherwise). It is the job of the clergy to help others see why their work matters. The non-clergy folks are actually engaging in the ends and not the means to that end. It’s all holy and spiritual work, but the clergy are engaging in the means to the Kingdom end — we usually have it backward!
This is so important in the conversation Rowe begins above, and yet one of the hardest ideas to grasp is where the passion lies. For many, the conversation about sacred vocation revolves around the idea that they must find the perfect vocation where their true passion lies.
But as Rowe points out, this is backward thinking.
Passion does not lie in the content of the vocation; passion describes the way we engage vocation in the first place. I think some of us go through life looking for the thing in our future that will give us passion when that passion is already within us and would transform the way we engage with our present.
One of the values at ICM is passion. We use this word to talk about the energy we bring to our pursuit of God. In this case, it is fitting that Rowe’s point is we bring passion to our work. In the same way passion describes the energy we bring to our pursuit of God, passion also describes the energy we bring to our vocation.
We have all met people who remind us of Les (from Mike’s video). They aren’t driven by their circumstances but bring a passion that affects the circumstances around them. It might be a grocer who always makes you feel better by the time you are checked out. I once heard a speaker talk about the parking lot attendant at a local establishment; living in a major urban city, he will drive past two other stores of the same franchise just to interact with this parking lot attendant. Why? Because they bring passion to their job, and their job becomes a sacred kind of “holy.”
Some of these people have jobs that would impress us — jobs of influence and intense specialization and high salaries.
And yet, some of these people work incredibly menial jobs and have a similar impact on the world around them.
It is true we have been created with certain gifts and are wired to be good at particular things. It is true some jobs align with those gifts better than others and that some situations are suffocating and stifling the life that burns within us. But we are not created for a particular career. We are created to be a particular kind of person. Our careers are simply the place where we can let those things grow.
In this conversation, Mike Rowe speaks against this common idea of “following your passion.” I think Mike might say this idea falls squarely in the realm of the less mature, pre-conventional wisdom. He suggests passion is not something you follow, but instead something you bring with you.
One of the things we are intentionally working on at Impact Campus Ministries is the art of sacred vocation. We have a fundamental belief that all work is holy and sacred. There is a sanctity to a vocation that is often overlooked. Why is vocation holy and sacred? Because vocation is, in its essence, about the proper ordering and stewarding of God’s creation. For centuries, Christian theology has unintentionally (I hope) pulled apart soil and spirit, giving the impression that the “Kingdom work” is done by clergy and missionaries, while the rest of the parishioners essentially make money to help the real work happen. They rub shoulders with the unsaved at their places of employment. They bring the money and “the lost” to the conversation and the holy folks do the spiritual work.
But this is not grounded in good theology. God is putting the whole world back together, bringing shalom to the physical chaos of creation. What this means is that the real work is done by those people who have their hands in the soil (literally or otherwise). It is the job of the clergy to help others see why their work matters. The non-clergy folks are actually engaging in the ends and not the means to that end. It’s all holy and spiritual work, but the clergy are engaging in the means to the Kingdom end — we usually have it backward!
This is so important in the conversation Rowe begins above, and yet one of the hardest ideas to grasp is where the passion lies. For many, the conversation about sacred vocation revolves around the idea that they must find the perfect vocation where their true passion lies.
But as Rowe points out, this is backward thinking.
Passion does not lie in the content of the vocation; passion describes the way we engage vocation in the first place. I think some of us go through life looking for the thing in our future that will give us passion when that passion is already within us and would transform the way we engage with our present.
One of the values at ICM is passion. We use this word to talk about the energy we bring to our pursuit of God. In this case, it is fitting that Rowe’s point is we bring passion to our work. In the same way passion describes the energy we bring to our pursuit of God, passion also describes the energy we bring to our vocation.
We have all met people who remind us of Les (from Mike’s video). They aren’t driven by their circumstances but bring a passion that affects the circumstances around them. It might be a grocer who always makes you feel better by the time you are checked out. I once heard a speaker talk about the parking lot attendant at a local establishment; living in a major urban city, he will drive past two other stores of the same franchise just to interact with this parking lot attendant. Why? Because they bring passion to their job, and their job becomes a sacred kind of “holy.”
Some of these people have jobs that would impress us — jobs of influence and intense specialization and high salaries.
And yet, some of these people work incredibly menial jobs and have a similar impact on the world around them.
It is true we have been created with certain gifts and are wired to be good at particular things. It is true some jobs align with those gifts better than others and that some situations are suffocating and stifling the life that burns within us. But we are not created for a particular career. We are created to be a particular kind of person. Our careers are simply the place where we can let those things grow.
7.29.2019
No Such Thing as a Bad Job
Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.
This is a great conversation to follow our last post where we talked some about persevering in the face of rejection. In this video, Rowe shares more stories about his youth and what he learned about work. His point in this video is that every job is an opportunity to be shaped and to learn. This is good wisdom, rarely spoken of or promoted as worthwhile.
And yet, I know many of my students would struggle with exactly how to apply this truth. Do you just say yes to every opportunity that comes your way? Usually not. Especially as life begins to progress and take off, you will be given more and more opportunities; and in fact, saying no to things will be the bigger challenge. There are some chapters in life where you are not given multiple opportunities. You feel like you aren’t being given any shots, and you take the first thing that comes along. Yes, this happens as well. Life is full of complexity and just about every experience you can imagine. We aren’t talking about formulas, but general principles and conventional wisdom.
What do you do when you graduate with your degree, and you are looking for that career? I know many, many students who are paralyzed by the fear of screwing their life up at that moment. Young adults at this age are crippled by the choices, often believing if they make the wrong decision in these moments, they will drastically change the trajectory of their life.
This may be true. But that is what life is about, and you have no other options — except, of course, to do nothing.
We do the best with what we have; we make the best decisions we can. What I see most of my students doing is trying to remove all uncertainty from the equation before they move forward. This is foolishness — the opposite of wisdom. All of life is a calculation of high/low risk, high/low reward situations. You make the best choices you can with the best conventional wisdom you can muster. You make the decision, and you move forward.
As much as I might have tried to convince myself otherwise, I have never made a life decision with a complete absence of uncertainty. There is always the unknown. Sometimes I have made decisions where I felt 90% confident (and I’ve been wrong about some of those, by the way). I often make decisions about things that I feel 75% sure about. And sometimes life has thrown me situations where I needed to make a decision immediately, or in the near future, and I made decisions I felt only 50.1% sure about (in non-mathematical terms, an “I have no idea, but I’m just barely leaning this way” decision). This is a part of life and a part of moving forward. It is necessary.
We will make mistakes; we will judge things wrongly. We will make honest mistakes, and we will make mistakes where we certainly knew better and chose wrongly anyway. This is all a part of life.
And every chapter we walk into will provide us with an opportunity to learn and be shaped by our circumstances. The moment after we make these decisions, it is no longer about the decision, but about the way we respond to the circumstances. What we learn, what we take with us, the way we will be different because of this chapter. These are the things that matter.
So press on and make decisions. Know that you will probably have to do things you hate and go through periods where you don't have “the right fit” and struggle to find yourself. This is a normal part of the human experience in the modern world. Resist the existential crisis and push on to the good stuff that will go with you into the “next.”
This is a great conversation to follow our last post where we talked some about persevering in the face of rejection. In this video, Rowe shares more stories about his youth and what he learned about work. His point in this video is that every job is an opportunity to be shaped and to learn. This is good wisdom, rarely spoken of or promoted as worthwhile.
And yet, I know many of my students would struggle with exactly how to apply this truth. Do you just say yes to every opportunity that comes your way? Usually not. Especially as life begins to progress and take off, you will be given more and more opportunities; and in fact, saying no to things will be the bigger challenge. There are some chapters in life where you are not given multiple opportunities. You feel like you aren’t being given any shots, and you take the first thing that comes along. Yes, this happens as well. Life is full of complexity and just about every experience you can imagine. We aren’t talking about formulas, but general principles and conventional wisdom.
What do you do when you graduate with your degree, and you are looking for that career? I know many, many students who are paralyzed by the fear of screwing their life up at that moment. Young adults at this age are crippled by the choices, often believing if they make the wrong decision in these moments, they will drastically change the trajectory of their life.
This may be true. But that is what life is about, and you have no other options — except, of course, to do nothing.
We do the best with what we have; we make the best decisions we can. What I see most of my students doing is trying to remove all uncertainty from the equation before they move forward. This is foolishness — the opposite of wisdom. All of life is a calculation of high/low risk, high/low reward situations. You make the best choices you can with the best conventional wisdom you can muster. You make the decision, and you move forward.
As much as I might have tried to convince myself otherwise, I have never made a life decision with a complete absence of uncertainty. There is always the unknown. Sometimes I have made decisions where I felt 90% confident (and I’ve been wrong about some of those, by the way). I often make decisions about things that I feel 75% sure about. And sometimes life has thrown me situations where I needed to make a decision immediately, or in the near future, and I made decisions I felt only 50.1% sure about (in non-mathematical terms, an “I have no idea, but I’m just barely leaning this way” decision). This is a part of life and a part of moving forward. It is necessary.
We will make mistakes; we will judge things wrongly. We will make honest mistakes, and we will make mistakes where we certainly knew better and chose wrongly anyway. This is all a part of life.
And every chapter we walk into will provide us with an opportunity to learn and be shaped by our circumstances. The moment after we make these decisions, it is no longer about the decision, but about the way we respond to the circumstances. What we learn, what we take with us, the way we will be different because of this chapter. These are the things that matter.
So press on and make decisions. Know that you will probably have to do things you hate and go through periods where you don't have “the right fit” and struggle to find yourself. This is a normal part of the human experience in the modern world. Resist the existential crisis and push on to the good stuff that will go with you into the “next.”
7.18.2019
[Maybe] The Best Thing to Ever Happen to You
Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.
Rowe took time in this video to share multiple stories of rejection he experienced on the path to his own calling. While I’m not a major fan of the phrase “pursuit of happiness,” I really did appreciate his overall point. But I would like to add something I don’t feel he touched on.
Throughout his story, the obtrusive question I kept thinking about was, “Why did he keep going down this path?” I do not ask that question with an assumption of the negative (“He should have tried something else!”), but rather an assumption of the positive (“Why was he driven to persevere?”). The fact of the matter is that Rowe would have never learned this great life lesson to share with the rest of us if he had not kept going back, again and again. But because he did, he learned a very important lesson about rejection.
I believe some people have an internal awareness of the thing they are made to do. There is this inner voice that tells them they exist to be a part of some idea or create a certain experience. Because of this, they keep getting up and walking down the same road. I do not want to give the impression that I understand the psychology behind this reality; certainly, insecurity rears its ugly head in many different ways for so many of us.
I do know what I have experienced with my students, though. Many of them are very quick to question what we are doing and who we are becoming. Many of us see obstacles and frustrations as signs that we’re not made to do “this” and we change our track. I often feel like every time we do this, we begin to suffer an increasing lack of resilience and rising levels of doubt about ourselves.
This is not to say that obstacles and pushback are not powerful tools to help us make decisions and find the best fit in life, but I want to recognize that there is a tacit awareness, a resonance of the soul, a leading of the Spirit, that wants to guide us to who we are becoming. When we find that thing, we need to run down that path with a resilient commitment to the calling. We need to trust that calling and learn from our mistakes — which is another thing I feel like Rowe didn’t address. He probably learned a great many things from those experiences of rejection. Still, we push on, knowing that if we keep pushing toward the good, we will experience hardship and rejection. And yet, through it all, the relentless pursuit of our calling might just lead us to a place better than we could ever hope or imagine.
Rowe took time in this video to share multiple stories of rejection he experienced on the path to his own calling. While I’m not a major fan of the phrase “pursuit of happiness,” I really did appreciate his overall point. But I would like to add something I don’t feel he touched on.
Throughout his story, the obtrusive question I kept thinking about was, “Why did he keep going down this path?” I do not ask that question with an assumption of the negative (“He should have tried something else!”), but rather an assumption of the positive (“Why was he driven to persevere?”). The fact of the matter is that Rowe would have never learned this great life lesson to share with the rest of us if he had not kept going back, again and again. But because he did, he learned a very important lesson about rejection.
I believe some people have an internal awareness of the thing they are made to do. There is this inner voice that tells them they exist to be a part of some idea or create a certain experience. Because of this, they keep getting up and walking down the same road. I do not want to give the impression that I understand the psychology behind this reality; certainly, insecurity rears its ugly head in many different ways for so many of us.
I do know what I have experienced with my students, though. Many of them are very quick to question what we are doing and who we are becoming. Many of us see obstacles and frustrations as signs that we’re not made to do “this” and we change our track. I often feel like every time we do this, we begin to suffer an increasing lack of resilience and rising levels of doubt about ourselves.
This is not to say that obstacles and pushback are not powerful tools to help us make decisions and find the best fit in life, but I want to recognize that there is a tacit awareness, a resonance of the soul, a leading of the Spirit, that wants to guide us to who we are becoming. When we find that thing, we need to run down that path with a resilient commitment to the calling. We need to trust that calling and learn from our mistakes — which is another thing I feel like Rowe didn’t address. He probably learned a great many things from those experiences of rejection. Still, we push on, knowing that if we keep pushing toward the good, we will experience hardship and rejection. And yet, through it all, the relentless pursuit of our calling might just lead us to a place better than we could ever hope or imagine.
7.08.2019
Values Reflect Gratitude
Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.
In this first video Mike Rowe shares, he covers two big ideas that are directly connected in his mind. Those two ideas are gratitude and the trade skills gap. At first, when I watched the video, I couldn’t see how those two ideas were connected. But Rowe connected them with a couple of sentences. We’ll go over those ideas.
GRATITUDE
Rowe’s idea is built upon the premise that an “attitude of gratitude” changes your posture enough in life to affect everything you do and experience.
From a Jewish perspective, this point is spot on. This is practiced within the Jewish tradition by the commitment to say multiple blessings throughout the day, thanking God for all the ways He provides and how we encounter Him in our lives. There are blessings for waking each morning, blessings for food (both before and after you eat), blessings for bowel movements (not kidding!), blessings for Sabbath and rest — most orthodox Jews will tell you that a typical day contains anywhere between 70 and 100 blessings (or more). Just try that exercise; it’s hard to get to 40! A great book for further study here would be One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.
Beyond the practice of blessing, the rabbis teach that this impacts your perspective. Or is it that your perspective impacts your gratitude? Either way, it is a beautiful circular experiment. The rabbis have spoken at great length about the “good eye” (also known as ayin tovah in the Hebrew) and the “bad eye” (known as ayin ra’ah). To have a good eye is to live with a sense of optimism and hope; it is to see the good in everything and to assume the best in others. The bad eye is connected to a “scarcity mentality” that always assumes the worst and sees the potential danger, never opening up and sharing, never giving others the benefit of the doubt. Our gratitude impacts our eye, and our eye impacts how grateful we are throughout our experience.
Notice what Jesus says about this idea in Matthew 6:
TRADE SKILLS GAP
Now, while I love to float in conceptual clouds and dwell in poetic possibilities, what I loved about Rowe’s work in these videos is how he connected it to very practical application for young adults — the people I work with every day. Rowe’s one statement that just clicked for me was toward the end of the video when he said the following:
But the practical application for young adults entering the world of education is also quite staggering. There will be more discussion on this later, but it is helpful for us to consider as families, parents, teachers, mentors, and churches how this truth comes out in the way we mentor our children.
Are we truly grateful for skilled labor?
Do we encourage vocational trades as great options for young leaders?
Do we actually discourage those decisions, telling them “college” is the only option for a bright future?
And while we’re here, has our lack of gratitude impacted the way we see other people groups who usually engage in these trades on our behalf — groups who are often different from many of us ethnically, economically, and culturally? And what’s up with my pronouns? Why do we talk as if there is an “our behalf” — as if the middle-class, white, suburban experience is the one that matters most?
Good food for thought. May we become more grateful for the lives we are given and aware of the ways our eye — tovah or ra’ah — affects our interactions with others and the futures of our children.
In this first video Mike Rowe shares, he covers two big ideas that are directly connected in his mind. Those two ideas are gratitude and the trade skills gap. At first, when I watched the video, I couldn’t see how those two ideas were connected. But Rowe connected them with a couple of sentences. We’ll go over those ideas.
GRATITUDE
Rowe’s idea is built upon the premise that an “attitude of gratitude” changes your posture enough in life to affect everything you do and experience.
From a Jewish perspective, this point is spot on. This is practiced within the Jewish tradition by the commitment to say multiple blessings throughout the day, thanking God for all the ways He provides and how we encounter Him in our lives. There are blessings for waking each morning, blessings for food (both before and after you eat), blessings for bowel movements (not kidding!), blessings for Sabbath and rest — most orthodox Jews will tell you that a typical day contains anywhere between 70 and 100 blessings (or more). Just try that exercise; it’s hard to get to 40! A great book for further study here would be One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.
Beyond the practice of blessing, the rabbis teach that this impacts your perspective. Or is it that your perspective impacts your gratitude? Either way, it is a beautiful circular experiment. The rabbis have spoken at great length about the “good eye” (also known as ayin tovah in the Hebrew) and the “bad eye” (known as ayin ra’ah). To have a good eye is to live with a sense of optimism and hope; it is to see the good in everything and to assume the best in others. The bad eye is connected to a “scarcity mentality” that always assumes the worst and sees the potential danger, never opening up and sharing, never giving others the benefit of the doubt. Our gratitude impacts our eye, and our eye impacts how grateful we are throughout our experience.
Notice what Jesus says about this idea in Matthew 6:
“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”
TRADE SKILLS GAP
Now, while I love to float in conceptual clouds and dwell in poetic possibilities, what I loved about Rowe’s work in these videos is how he connected it to very practical application for young adults — the people I work with every day. Rowe’s one statement that just clicked for me was toward the end of the video when he said the following:
“The skills gap isn’t a mystery; it’s a reflection of what we value, and what we value is a reflection of what we’re grateful for.”This is a great statement of truth to dwell upon for a bit. Obviously, I’m captivated by how appropriate that statement is for so many things, things well outside the topic of skilled labor. The statement is just resounding with some of that conventional wisdom — I want to consider and ponder how far its truth goes.
But the practical application for young adults entering the world of education is also quite staggering. There will be more discussion on this later, but it is helpful for us to consider as families, parents, teachers, mentors, and churches how this truth comes out in the way we mentor our children.
Are we truly grateful for skilled labor?
Do we encourage vocational trades as great options for young leaders?
Do we actually discourage those decisions, telling them “college” is the only option for a bright future?
And while we’re here, has our lack of gratitude impacted the way we see other people groups who usually engage in these trades on our behalf — groups who are often different from many of us ethnically, economically, and culturally? And what’s up with my pronouns? Why do we talk as if there is an “our behalf” — as if the middle-class, white, suburban experience is the one that matters most?
Good food for thought. May we become more grateful for the lives we are given and aware of the ways our eye — tovah or ra’ah — affects our interactions with others and the futures of our children.
6.27.2019
The Loss of Conventional Wisdom
It has been a while since I have written here. I was waiting for inspiration and the right time to “have something to say” rather than “having to say something.” Those things are radically different.
Well, my inspiration finally came from an unexpected place. This means, as usual, the upcoming series will require a disclaimer since we live in a world that likes to make assumptions rather than give the benefit of the doubt. (Is that another series waiting to be written? Maybe!)
At any rate, I bumped into a series of videos by Mike Rowe. It was promoting a scholarship program funded by an initiative he calls the SWEAT Pledge. The pledge is a written covenant of twelve commitments a person is willing to make, and they “buy” the pledge to hang on their wall with the donations going to a scholarship program. You can read about the program on your own; I am not writing to promote Rowe’s program. Whether you support or not, that’s none of my business.
What struck me was the content of the twelve videos that outlined the commitments contained in the pledge. They were full of what I would call “salt of the earth” conventional wisdom. They are things I desperately want to share and teach college students; they seemed to resonate with the soul of what I want to impart to young adults as a professional campus minister.
Having said that, I was taken aback by the source. Mike Rowe is the creator of Dirty Jobs, but he is also a relatively significant online personality — and not one I typically agree with, particularly when it is addressing political and social issues of the day. I rarely find his voice to be helpful. But in this case, I feel like his videos for the initiative nailed it. I have always been committed to celebrate truth wherever I find it — no matter the source — so I decided to eat some humble pie and share the information. I will be doing that in the posts to come.
But it also caused me to reflect for weeks on why these truths were so powerful for me. And I thought of two things: wisdom and my dad.
First, there is this idea of wisdom. One of my favorite teachers loves to talk about the ideas of pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional wisdom. Human beings all experience the idea of pre-conventional wisdom. This is immature wisdom, usually experienced during infancy and childhood. Pre-conventional wisdom would say, “I don’t want to go to bed; I want to stay up all night.” It is not really wisdom at all. It masquerades as wisdom but is really foolishness. Of course, as we grow, we move into an awareness of conventional wisdom, the idea that all human beings need sleep and have to get sleep every night. This is wisdom — standard, straightforward truth. But some will move into post-conventional wisdom. This is wisdom able to look back on conventional wisdom, break down some of the structure, question the assumptions, and move to transcendent wisdom. Perhaps this is the person who becomes even more aware of controlling their sleeping patterns and rather than simply “getting sleep” every night, they are very intentional about the sleep they do get and engage sleep in a whole other way.
While the easy way to see this truth is in our childhood, adulthood, and continued maturity, we often struggle with this development culturally, financially, socially, and spiritually — well into adulthood. I have watched plenty of full-grown adults indulge pre-conventional wisdom at will.
The nature of my job and my desire to be a lifelong learner means that I often find myself dwelling in the realm of academia and study. It is a world filled with wonderful thought and critical engagement of our culture. I eat deconstruction for breakfast. It is a world dripping in self-proclaimed post-conventional wisdom.
And in that space we start to sound (and act) like idiots.
We need to return to good ol’ conventional wisdom. We need to remember the things that are just true, built on common sense, and provide a foundation on which to grow toward healthy critical thinking. This is what I found so refreshing about Rowe’s take on this upcoming generation of young adults: his blue-collar, common-sense work ethic is full of wisdom I struggle to impart to my educated student base. I was drawn to that.
Second, this made me think of my dad. As I watched these videos, I kept thinking, over and over again, “My dad taught me this.” One of the biggest things to strike me as I’ve matured is how thankful I am for what I never realized my dad was giving me. This SWEAT Pledge, created by a communications genius, was common knowledge and daily living for my father. As I have wrestled with these truths in the last weeks, I have also realized how important the little things, the everyday occurrences, are in our family and our parenting. It’s the small, mundane opportunities that teach us things like faithfulness, attitude, and hard work.
I’m so thankful for what faithful parents, mentors, and instructors have taught me through the underestimated acts of character and integrity. It is for these reasons that I introduce this series.
And since we’re talking about wisdom, it might be right to remind ourselves of where wisdom comes from. No matter its form — pre-conventional, conventional, or post-conventional — all wisdom comes from one place. Ultimately, it is not our parents, nor our study and learning, nor Mike Rowe. It is from the very mouth of the LORD. May the words of Proverbs 2 guide our critical thinking along this journey.
Well, my inspiration finally came from an unexpected place. This means, as usual, the upcoming series will require a disclaimer since we live in a world that likes to make assumptions rather than give the benefit of the doubt. (Is that another series waiting to be written? Maybe!)
At any rate, I bumped into a series of videos by Mike Rowe. It was promoting a scholarship program funded by an initiative he calls the SWEAT Pledge. The pledge is a written covenant of twelve commitments a person is willing to make, and they “buy” the pledge to hang on their wall with the donations going to a scholarship program. You can read about the program on your own; I am not writing to promote Rowe’s program. Whether you support or not, that’s none of my business.
What struck me was the content of the twelve videos that outlined the commitments contained in the pledge. They were full of what I would call “salt of the earth” conventional wisdom. They are things I desperately want to share and teach college students; they seemed to resonate with the soul of what I want to impart to young adults as a professional campus minister.
Having said that, I was taken aback by the source. Mike Rowe is the creator of Dirty Jobs, but he is also a relatively significant online personality — and not one I typically agree with, particularly when it is addressing political and social issues of the day. I rarely find his voice to be helpful. But in this case, I feel like his videos for the initiative nailed it. I have always been committed to celebrate truth wherever I find it — no matter the source — so I decided to eat some humble pie and share the information. I will be doing that in the posts to come.
But it also caused me to reflect for weeks on why these truths were so powerful for me. And I thought of two things: wisdom and my dad.
First, there is this idea of wisdom. One of my favorite teachers loves to talk about the ideas of pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional wisdom. Human beings all experience the idea of pre-conventional wisdom. This is immature wisdom, usually experienced during infancy and childhood. Pre-conventional wisdom would say, “I don’t want to go to bed; I want to stay up all night.” It is not really wisdom at all. It masquerades as wisdom but is really foolishness. Of course, as we grow, we move into an awareness of conventional wisdom, the idea that all human beings need sleep and have to get sleep every night. This is wisdom — standard, straightforward truth. But some will move into post-conventional wisdom. This is wisdom able to look back on conventional wisdom, break down some of the structure, question the assumptions, and move to transcendent wisdom. Perhaps this is the person who becomes even more aware of controlling their sleeping patterns and rather than simply “getting sleep” every night, they are very intentional about the sleep they do get and engage sleep in a whole other way.
While the easy way to see this truth is in our childhood, adulthood, and continued maturity, we often struggle with this development culturally, financially, socially, and spiritually — well into adulthood. I have watched plenty of full-grown adults indulge pre-conventional wisdom at will.
The nature of my job and my desire to be a lifelong learner means that I often find myself dwelling in the realm of academia and study. It is a world filled with wonderful thought and critical engagement of our culture. I eat deconstruction for breakfast. It is a world dripping in self-proclaimed post-conventional wisdom.
And in that space we start to sound (and act) like idiots.
We need to return to good ol’ conventional wisdom. We need to remember the things that are just true, built on common sense, and provide a foundation on which to grow toward healthy critical thinking. This is what I found so refreshing about Rowe’s take on this upcoming generation of young adults: his blue-collar, common-sense work ethic is full of wisdom I struggle to impart to my educated student base. I was drawn to that.
Second, this made me think of my dad. As I watched these videos, I kept thinking, over and over again, “My dad taught me this.” One of the biggest things to strike me as I’ve matured is how thankful I am for what I never realized my dad was giving me. This SWEAT Pledge, created by a communications genius, was common knowledge and daily living for my father. As I have wrestled with these truths in the last weeks, I have also realized how important the little things, the everyday occurrences, are in our family and our parenting. It’s the small, mundane opportunities that teach us things like faithfulness, attitude, and hard work.
I’m so thankful for what faithful parents, mentors, and instructors have taught me through the underestimated acts of character and integrity. It is for these reasons that I introduce this series.
And since we’re talking about wisdom, it might be right to remind ourselves of where wisdom comes from. No matter its form — pre-conventional, conventional, or post-conventional — all wisdom comes from one place. Ultimately, it is not our parents, nor our study and learning, nor Mike Rowe. It is from the very mouth of the LORD. May the words of Proverbs 2 guide our critical thinking along this journey.
My son, if you accept my words
and store up my commands within you,
turning your ear to wisdom
and applying your heart to understanding—
indeed, if you call out for insight
and cry aloud for understanding,
and if you look for it as for silver
and search for it as for hidden treasure,
then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God.
For the Lord gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
He holds success in store for the upright,
he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless,
for he guards the course of the just
and protects the way of his faithful ones.
Then you will understand what is right and just
and fair—every good path.
For wisdom will enter your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
Discretion will protect you,
and understanding will guard you.
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