Thinking Critically

College church is cranking up this week (ourcollegechurch.org), and I was chatting last night about some of the biggest needs that our present on campus. They reinforced some of what I have heard school officials mention in the past: students have a hard time working through their emotions. One student said, if someone gets angry with a friend, they go into a silo and sit with their emotions…or worse, they post it on Facebook for friends, enemies, future employers and future spouses to see.

The old fashioned strategy of hanging out and having non-electronic discussions with non-electronic friends actually has value in helping us critically navigate the range of emotions that we have been created to experience. Playstations and smartphones make deficient friends and playmates. Google is great for quick information, but needs to be a launching point for a larger search for the “why” behind a question.

Bottom line, I have seen first hand how a lack of critical thinking affects an underdeveloped nation, some of those same symptoms could begin to root themselves on the college campus if we don’t help students think critically through their faith and other issues.

Humility: Insight Into Answering The Ultimate Question

Right now in Nigeria there is a continuing crisis of militant religious fundamentalist (of multiple faiths) carrying out gruesome attacks on hundreds/thousands of innocents. If you sat down and asked them why, they would tell you that it is the right thing to do.

Right now there are four men who are lobbying a voting nation, and subsequently destroying the character of the other three, for an opportunity to call the national shots. If you sat down and asked them why, they would tell you that it is the right thing to do.

A lack of humility leads to a justification of actions that a human being would rarely dream of doing to another human. A lack of humility is also a one way ticket to bypassing absolute truth and favoring a relative truth that has a convenience for the pride, but not for others.

Pilate asked Jesus a question that we constantly want to know the answer to, “what is truth”. Jesus’ humility allowed him to answer the question with silence. Arrogance leads to situational and convenient truth (which may actually not be truth at all); humility leads to the answer to the question.

Will Monday Be Obstinate Or An Opportunity?

Why are you going to work today?

“I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.
They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.” (John 17:15-19 ESV)

Maybe it is not about making widgets…maybe it is about living out the truth that you have been absorbing. Jesus lived and exemplified so that we could “go and do likewise”.

Today, may you go and do likewise.

Fragmented

Fragmentation is the enemy of your one “thing”. I know a lot of people who have skills in multiple areas, and are actually talented in most of them. The problem is that none of those skill sets are able to be drilled down into one driving lifetime of focus that has the capacity to change someone’s world.

You may have many interests, and still the opportunity eludes to lock in on the one “thing” that you are furiously compelled by. It is what causes you to stare off in the landscape when you should be completing a checklist; it is what motivates you more than chocolate, travel, political primaries, and Pinterist. Herein lies the slow-motion, chariots of fire reality…you may not see the urgency in needing to broadcast your one “thing”, all the while someone else is out there needing exactly what you have to offer. They need your one “thing” as bad as you do.

How to fight fragmentation? Any thoughts?

Storytelling

The previous post was about finding your one “thing and using modern tools to broadcast your story. Want to know what it looks like?

http://on.ted.com/ADLo

Storyteller

I write some about each of us having our one “thing”. This is the most commonly associated descriptive with you as a person; “she is all about __________”. In some cases this can be very clear cut, “she is all about…”

Engineering
Medicine
Teaching
Civic responsibility
Law
Administration

Many other times, your one “thing” can be ambiguously frustrating. What if your one “thing” is not a streamlined marketable skill? What if it is…

Connections
Leadership
Perspective
Vision
Storytelling
Mobilizing

Up till now it was very difficult to find outlets for the second group of skills, and so we were all categorized by universities and industry into distinct silos and managed unilaterally; probably more out of managerial necessity than anything else.. Now, with access to personal broadcast tools, we are able to explore and implement skills that do not require scale. You have the opportunity to tell a sustained and continuous story about your one “thing”. Here is the catch…you have to do it, the machine won’t do it for you.

Advocates Still Needed

If you ever look around and wonder, “what is my thing?”. You know, your cause, your focus, the common theme of your life; allow me to suggest one that is still in need of advocates…racial justice and unity. MLK stated in 1963 that he had a dream that one day, little black boys and little black girls could play with little white boys and little white girls; that all races could sit down at the table of brotherhood.

You may think that you have to raise money, start a non-profit, vow poverty and carry picket signs in order to impact the arrogant ethnocentrism in culture. Maybe, your advocacy could be as simple as intentionally having your little black boys/girls go to school with, play baseball with, have dinner with, go on trips with, go shopping with, go to church with, work with and build families with little white boys/girls and vice versa.

Or maybe you can adopt a little black/white boy/girl. It is well documented that Jesus ( a Jew) spent a lot of time with both Jews and non-Jews; an example to be followed, a dream that continues to compel.

A Work Expiriment

I recently read a NY Times article that Ashley passed along entitled The Joy Of Quiet: I am posting the link at the bottom. The noise levels in society have risen to an unthinkable decibel and speed. One result that I recently heard was from a University student affairs worker who said that critical skills thinking is sinking to an alarming level, and it is short siding relationships; most notably, how to deal with conflict (which is already hard enough). Instead of working through issues, students are choosing to simply unfriend their Facebook friends.

We have allowed ourselves to think that news is too important not to receive in real time, so we need alerts, updates, 24 hour cable, etc. The author makes a point that we are full of news that is empty of substance…but it is breaking so we keep watching and wasting time that you could be changing your world.

So, today, here is my challenge…
-check work email at 8am, 12p and 5p ONLY
-turn the cable news and other social networking off (OFF) until those times.
-produce something remarkable today, even if it just a handwritten note to someone

Let me know how it goes.

(thoughts on Luke 5:16)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?_r=2pagewanted=all

Because I Said So

As a parent, I hesitate to admit that sometimes (albeit rare) I have pulled the “because I said so” card in making a request. Sometimes it is a strategy that will create the desired result, err it can also lead to long term disinterest and a complete lack of sincere motivation.

Yesterday I heard an advert for the governments Selective Services agency. 90% of the advert was inspirational, informative and positive until the very last statement sucked the life, and motivation, out of the whole point. The final phrase was, “it’s the law!”

Did you hear that? That was the air leaving the whole point of the ad. In other words, “do it, not because you are motivated, inspired or convicted…but do it because I said so!”

When you lead people at work, is it from a forward thinking, motivational, what-is-in-it-for-THEM angle, or are you a “because-I-said-so” mandator? One fosters impassioned doers, the other creates unemotional robots. Others before yourself is Kingdom living, the opposite is the opposite.

Awakening @ Work

Anecdotal observances are rarely events that you want to stake major claims upon; however, I have noticed something of late as it relates to our jobs.

• God revealed himself to shepherds who were…at work (“in the fields watching over their flocks by night”)

• Jesus sequentially invited four men to his tutelage who were…at work (“he saw Simon and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen…he saw two other brothers…in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets…”

• Jesus invited another man who was sitting at his desk…at work (“he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, ‘follow me.’”)

What if our jobs are the place for us not only to live out the precepts of Jesus, but could also be a major place of revelation and invitation from Jesus?  This isn’t about proselytizing or wearing cross lapel pins to work.  It is about serving those you work with and work for.  It is about taking the Sermon that Jesus taught on a Mountain side and moving it to action at work.