“Job Security”

Fr. James Smith

When you have been pastor of five parishes in 30-some years, once in a while you have had to call someone on the staff to account. That was always my hardest duty. I would spend days thinking of the best way to tell them they weren’t doing a good enough job.

I would think of reasons they might have for their poor performance and how to make their job easier. I practiced in my mind what I would say, what they would reply and what I would respond so they could do their job and we could get on with life.

But no matter what I said or how I said it, they would invariably get defensive. They would deny the problem or make excuses or blame it on someone else. What began as a conversation turned into a debate, then an argument. And instead of arriving at some mutual understanding, we would end with a new set of guidelines.

In a world already gridded with guidelines, I was baffled. No matter how pleasant and supportive I tried to be, the dialogue never had a chance. Then one day I finally realized why. It was not a true dialogue — it could not be one, because we were not on the same page. I was the employer; he was the employee. And no matter how personal and democratic I was, I still held his job in my hand.

That was it! He was afraid of losing his job, so he immediately built a wall around it to protect it. He could not admit that he was doing anything wrong or could do anything better because that meant someone else could do it better. He had to defend his job.

After so many failures, even pastors learn. I changed my approach from the very beginning. The first thing I would say was, “Your job is secure. We need to talk about some aspects of it, but your job is not on the line.” When he was relieved from fear of ultimate harm, he was able to consider the problem realistically, objectively. He might even see how he could do a better job and enjoy it more.

Now, this may sound like only a better technique, a more clever ways of handling people. It certainly did work better. But it was more than a technique; it was a different way of relating, based not on control but on a totally different premise. Once tenure was out of the discussion, we could talk about doing the job instead of losing it. Once I gave up control of his job, he was able to consider changes.

We seem to relate to God the same way as the unjust servant. We know that God made us out of nothing and sustains us by his goodwill. We realize that we have absolutely no claim on God, and even if we work ourselves to death we are still useless servants. God has no need of us at all; we are not even scabs on a union job.

That’s a frightening realization: to feel unnecessary and useless. That is surely enough to make anyone defensive and to put them in a permanent state of denial. How can we possibly think that anything is wrong with us if we have no excuse, no recourse, no way out?

When everything seems lost, that is precisely when we understand that we have to deal with God on a totally different basis. Not just with a new technique, but a radically different understanding of our relationship. We have to realize that we are ultimately safe; that our job, our life is not at risk; that God is not our employer, but our Father. Then we can safely talk about how we’re doing our job.

This scary experience of going from an employer God to a family God is one of the most important discoveries in life. Because until we actually feel safe, saved, we have not met the real God. But since God will not change, we have to change our perception of God.

We must stop transferring our employee relation techniques to God. Our God is not someone we have to learn how to manage. It’s much simpler: Our God adores us. We have to learn to live with that.

Will I be punished if I am angry at God, because I feel miserable and alone?

Psalm 88 is pretty depressing. "O Lord, my God, my Savior, by day and night I cry to you." The mention of God as Savior is about as upbeat as it gets. "You have laid me in the depths of the Pit, in dark places, and in the abyss. ...You have put my friends far from me; you have made me to be abhorred by them... My sight has failed me because of trouble; Lord, I have called upon you daily; I have stretched out my hands to you. Do you work wonders for the dead?" (The presumed answer is "no.") "...Lord, why have you rejected me? Why have you hidden your face from me? Ever since my youth, I have been wretched and at the point of death; I have borne your terrors with a troubled mind. Your blazing anger has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me."
The psalmist not only cries out to God the passion of his misery, but also lays his circumstances upon God as the source of his suffering. Such boldness is not unknown, or even that uncommon in Hebrew tradition. But the unusual thing about this Psalm is that the prayer never mitigates the completeness of his plight with any hint of hope or praise.
There are other psalms of lament, but they usually find some expression of relief, even if only a verse. "But I put my trust in you, O Lord, and you will come to my aid." Not so in Psalm 88. This is a cry of unbroken distress. No pious words of trust or hope soften the words of grief, accusation, anger, and questioning.
There are many psalms that speak of the horrors of human suffering. Psalm 22, for example—"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? *and are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress?" But like other psalms, it too employs some expression of hope, some commitment to praise. Psalm 22 changes tone after 20 verses, when the psalmist says, "I will declare your Name to my brethren; *in the midst of the congregation I will praise you." Eight more verses of praise and hope then follow.
That's not the path of Psalm 88. It ends alone and dark: "My friend and neighbor you have put away from me, * and darkness is my only companion." That is the closing image— "darkness is my only companion."
No gentle encouragement. No "it'll work out." No "Take heart, God is with you." This is the cry of unbroken misery.
I'm glad we have Psalm 88. There are times and conditions that we experience as unmitigated sadness. There are circumstances that are hopeless.
This Psalm stands to affirm that such expressions of grief are legitimate. It is not faithless to cry out in helpless and hopeless anguish. It is not wrong to place responsibility for such wrongs at the feet of God. And you don't have to appease God with some word of piety, hope or praise.
We can be completely honest toward God with our thoughts and feelings. And God is big enough to take it all. God won't punish us for being hurt and angry, even hurt and angry at God.
In fact, only God can take this kind of suffering. To give it to God might restrain us from internalizing our angry grief into a depression or externalizing by lashing out at someone else. Only God is great enough to take this kind of misery and not compound it.
I wonder what happened when this poet finished his lament. What happened when he moved into the silence after he uttered "darkness is my only companion"? I don't know. But I'll bet thousands of his descendants have prayed this Psalm with tears and somehow felt understood.
Psalm 88 is pretty depressing. "O Lord, my God, my Savior, by day and night I cry to you." The mention of God as Savior is about as upbeat as it gets. "You have laid me in the depths of the Pit, in dark places, and in the abyss. ...You have put my friends far from me; you have made me to be abhorred by them... My sight has failed me because of trouble; Lord, I have called upon you daily; I have stretched out my hands to you. Do you work wonders for the dead?" (The presumed answer is "no.") "...Lord, why have you rejected me? Why have you hidden your face from me? Ever since my youth, I have been wretched and at the point of death; I have borne your terrors with a troubled mind. Your blazing anger has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me."
The psalmist not only cries out to God the passion of his misery, but also lays his circumstances upon God as the source of his suffering. Such boldness is not unknown, or even that uncommon in Hebrew tradition. But the unusual thing about this Psalm is that the prayer never mitigates the completeness of his plight with any hint of hope or praise.
There are other psalms of lament, but they usually find some expression of relief, even if only a verse. "But I put my trust in you, O Lord, and you will come to my aid." Not so in Psalm 88. This is a cry of unbroken distress. No pious words of trust or hope soften the words of grief, accusation, anger, and questioning.
There are many psalms that speak of the horrors of human suffering. Psalm 22, for example—"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? *and are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress?" But like other psalms, it too employs some expression of hope, some commitment to praise. Psalm 22 changes tone after 20 verses, when the psalmist says, "I will declare your Name to my brethren; *in the midst of the congregation I will praise you." Eight more verses of praise and hope then follow.
That's not the path of Psalm 88. It ends alone and dark: "My friend and neighbor you have put away from me, * and darkness is my only companion." That is the closing image— "darkness is my only companion."
No gentle encouragement. No "it'll work out." No "Take heart, God is with you." This is the cry of unbroken misery.
I'm glad we have Psalm 88. There are times and conditions that we experience as unmitigated sadness. There are circumstances that are hopeless.
This Psalm stands to affirm that such expressions of grief are legitimate. It is not faithless to cry out in helpless and hopeless anguish. It is not wrong to place responsibility for such wrongs at the feet of God. And you don't have to appease God with some word of piety, hope or praise.
We can be completely honest toward God with our thoughts and feelings. And God is big enough to take it all. God won't punish us for being hurt and angry, even hurt and angry at God.
In fact, only God can take this kind of suffering. To give it to God might restrain us from internalizing our angry grief into a depression or externalizing by lashing out at someone else. Only God is great enough to take this kind of misery and not compound it.
I wonder what happened when this poet finished his lament. What happened when he moved into the silence after he uttered "darkness is my only companion"? I don't know. But I'll bet thousands of his descendants have prayed this Psalm with tears and somehow felt understood.

Taste for Makers

Taken From http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html

February 2002

I was talking recently to a friend who teaches at MIT. His field is hot now and every year he is inundated by applications from would-be graduate students. "A lot of them seem smart," he said. "What I can't tell is whether they have any kind of taste."

Taste. You don't hear that word much now. And yet we still need the underlying concept, whatever we call it. What my friend meant was that he wanted students who were not just good technicians, but who could use their technical knowledge to design beautiful things.

Mathematicians call good work "beautiful," and so, either now or in the past, have scientists, engineers, musicians, architects, designers, writers, and painters. Is it just a coincidence that they used the same word, or is there some overlap in what they meant? If there is an overlap, can we use one field's discoveries about beauty to help us in another?

For those of us who design things, these are not just theoretical questions. If there is such a thing as beauty, we need to be able to recognize it. We need good taste to make good things. Instead of treating beauty as an airy abstraction, to be either blathered about or avoided depending on how one feels about airy abstractions, let's try considering it as a practical question: how do you make good stuff?



If you mention taste nowadays, a lot of people will tell you that "taste is subjective." They believe this because it really feels that way to them. When they like something, they have no idea why. It could be because it's beautful, or because their mother had one, or because they saw a movie star with one in a magazine, or because they know it's expensive. Their thoughts are a tangle of unexamined impulses.

Most of us are encouraged, as children, to leave this tangle unexamined. If you make fun of your little brother for coloring people green in his coloring book, your mother is likely to tell you something like "you like to do it your way and he likes to do it his way."

Your mother at this point is not trying to teach you important truths about aesthetics. She's trying to get the two of you to stop bickering.

Like many of the half-truths adults tell us, this one contradicts other things they tell us. After dinning into you that taste is merely a matter of personal preference, they take you to the museum and tell you that you should pay attention because Leonardo is a great artist.

What goes through the kid's head at this point? What does he think "great artist" means? After having been told for years that everyone just likes to do things their own way, he is unlikely to head straight for the conclusion that a great artist is someone whose work is better than the others'. A far more likely theory, in his Ptolemaic model of the universe, is that a great artist is something that's good for you, like broccoli, because someone said so in a book.



Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it's not true. You feel this when you start to design things.

Whatever job people do, they naturally want to do better. Football players like to win games. CEOs like to increase earnings. It's a matter of pride, and a real pleasure, to get better at your job. But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job. If taste is just personal preference, then everyone's is already perfect: you like whatever you like, and that's it.

As in any job, as you continue to design things, you'll get better at it. Your tastes will change. And, like anyone who gets better at their job, you'll know you're getting better. If so, your old tastes were not merely different, but worse. Poof goes the axiom that taste can't be wrong.

Relativism is fashionable at the moment, and that may hamper you from thinking about taste, even as yours grows. But if you come out of the closet and admit, at least to yourself, that there is such a thing as good and bad design, then you can start to study good design in detail. How has your taste changed? When you made mistakes, what caused you to make them? What have other people learned about design?

Once you start to examine the question, it's surprising how much different fields' ideas of beauty have in common. The same principles of good design crop up again and again.



Good design is simple. You hear this from math to painting. In math it means that a shorter proof tends to be a better one. Where axioms are concerned, especially, less is more. It means much the same thing in programming. For architects and designers it means that beauty should depend on a few carefully chosen structural elements rather than a profusion of superficial ornament. (Ornament is not in itself bad, only when it's camouflage on insipid form.) Similarly, in painting, a still life of a few carefully observed and solidly modelled objects will tend to be more interesting than a stretch of flashy but mindlessly repetitive painting of, say, a lace collar. In writing it means: say what you mean and say it briefly.

It seems strange to have to emphasize simplicity. You'd think simple would be the default. Ornate is more work. But something seems to come over people when they try to be creative. Beginning writers adopt a pompous tone that doesn't sound anything like the way they speak. Designers trying to be artistic resort to swooshes and curlicues. Painters discover that they're expressionists. It's all evasion. Underneath the long words or the "expressive" brush strokes, there is not much going on, and that's frightening.

When you're forced to be simple, you're forced to face the real problem. When you can't deliver ornament, you have to deliver substance.



Good design is timeless. In math, every proof is timeless unless it contains a mistake. So what does Hardy mean when he says there is no permanent place for ugly mathematics? He means the same thing Kelly Johnson did: if something is ugly, it can't be the best solution. There must be a better one, and eventually someone will discover it.

Aiming at timelessness is a way to make yourself find the best answer: if you can imagine someone surpassing you, you should do it yourself. Some of the greatest masters did this so well that they left little room for those who came after. Every engraver since Durer has had to live in his shadow.

Aiming at timelessness is also a way to evade the grip of fashion. Fashions almost by definition change with time, so if you can make something that will still look good far into the future, then its appeal must derive more from merit and less from fashion.

Strangely enough, if you want to make something that will appeal to future generations, one way to do it is to try to appeal to past generations. It's hard to guess what the future will be like, but we can be sure it will be like the past in caring nothing for present fashions. So if you can make something that appeals to people today and would also have appealed to people in 1500, there is a good chance it will appeal to people in 2500.



Good design solves the right problem. The typical stove has four burners arranged in a square, and a dial to control each. How do you arrange the dials? The simplest answer is to put them in a row. But this is a simple answer to the wrong question. The dials are for humans to use, and if you put them in a row, the unlucky human will have to stop and think each time about which dial matches which burner. Better to arrange the dials in a square like the burners.

A lot of bad design is industrious, but misguided. In the mid twentieth century there was a vogue for setting text in sans-serif fonts. These fonts are closer to the pure, underlying letterforms. But in text that's not the problem you're trying to solve. For legibility it's more important that letters be easy to tell apart. It may look Victorian, but a Times Roman lowercase g is easy to tell from a lowercase y.

Problems can be improved as well as solutions. In software, an intractable problem can usually be replaced by an equivalent one that's easy to solve. Physics progressed faster as the problem became predicting observable behavior, instead of reconciling it with scripture.



Good design is suggestive. Jane Austen's novels contain almost no description; instead of telling you how everything looks, she tells her story so well that you envision the scene for yourself. Likewise, a painting that suggests is usually more engaging than one that tells. Everyone makes up their own story about the Mona Lisa.

In architecture and design, this principle means that a building or object should let you use it how you want: a good building, for example, will serve as a backdrop for whatever life people want to lead in it, instead of making them live as if they were executing a program written by the architect.

In software, it means you should give users a few basic elements that they can combine as they wish, like Lego. In math it means a proof that becomes the basis for a lot of new work is preferable to a proof that was difficult, but doesn't lead to future discoveries; in the sciences generally, citation is considered a rough indicator of merit.



Good design is often slightly funny. This one may not always be true. But Durer's engravings and Saarinen's womb chair and the Pantheon and the original Porsche 911 all seem to me slightly funny. Godel's incompleteness theorem seems like a practical joke.

I think it's because humor is related to strength. To have a sense of humor is to be strong: to keep one's sense of humor is to shrug off misfortunes, and to lose one's sense of humor is to be wounded by them. And so the mark-- or at least the prerogative-- of strength is not to take oneself too seriously. The confident will often, like swallows, seem to be making fun of the whole process slightly, as Hitchcock does in his films or Bruegel in his paintings-- or Shakespeare, for that matter.

Good design may not have to be funny, but it's hard to imagine something that could be called humorless also being good design.



Good design is hard. If you look at the people who've done great work, one thing they all seem to have in common is that they worked very hard. If you're not working hard, you're probably wasting your time.

Hard problems call for great efforts. In math, difficult proofs require ingenious solutions, and those tend to be interesting. Ditto in engineering.

When you have to climb a mountain you toss everything unnecessary out of your pack. And so an architect who has to build on a difficult site, or a small budget, will find that he is forced to produce an elegant design. Fashions and flourishes get knocked aside by the difficult business of solving the problem at all.

Not every kind of hard is good. There is good pain and bad pain. You want the kind of pain you get from going running, not the kind you get from stepping on a nail. A difficult problem could be good for a designer, but a fickle client or unreliable materials would not be.

In art, the highest place has traditionally been given to paintings of people. There is something to this tradition, and not just because pictures of faces get to press buttons in our brains that other pictures don't. We are so good at looking at faces that we force anyone who draws them to work hard to satisfy us. If you draw a tree and you change the angle of a branch five degrees, no one will know. When you change the angle of someone's eye five degrees, people notice.

When Bauhaus designers adopted Sullivan's "form follows function," what they meant was, form should follow function. And if function is hard enough, form is forced to follow it, because there is no effort to spare for error. Wild animals are beautiful because they have hard lives.



Good design looks easy. Like great athletes, great designers make it look easy. Mostly this is an illusion. The easy, conversational tone of good writing comes only on the eighth rewrite.

In science and engineering, some of the greatest discoveries seem so simple that you say to yourself, I could have thought of that. The discoverer is entitled to reply, why didn't you?

Some Leonardo heads are just a few lines. You look at them and you think, all you have to do is get eight or ten lines in the right place and you've made this beautiful portrait. Well, yes, but you have to get them in exactly the right place. The slightest error will make the whole thing collapse.

Line drawings are in fact the most difficult visual medium, because they demand near perfection. In math terms, they are a closed-form solution; lesser artists literally solve the same problems by successive approximation. One of the reasons kids give up drawing at ten or so is that they decide to start drawing like grownups, and one of the first things they try is a line drawing of a face. Smack!

In most fields the appearance of ease seems to come with practice. Perhaps what practice does is train your unconscious mind to handle tasks that used to require conscious thought. In some cases you literally train your body. An expert pianist can play notes faster than the brain can send signals to his hand. Likewise an artist, after a while, can make visual perception flow in through his eye and out through his hand as automatically as someone tapping his foot to a beat.

When people talk about being in "the zone," I think what they mean is that the spinal cord has the situation under control. Your spinal cord is less hesitant, and it frees conscious thought for the hard problems.



Good design uses symmetry. I think symmetry may just be one way to achieve simplicity, but it's important enough to be mentioned on its own. Nature uses it a lot, which is a good sign.

There are two kinds of symmetry, repetition and recursion. Recursion means repetition in subelements, like the pattern of veins in a leaf.

Symmetry is unfashionable in some fields now, in reaction to excesses in the past. Architects started consciously making buildings asymmetric in Victorian times and by the 1920s asymmetry was an explicit premise of modernist architecture. Even these buildings only tended to be asymmetric about major axes, though; there were hundreds of minor symmetries.

In writing you find symmetry at every level, from the phrases in a sentence to the plot of a novel. You find the same in music and art. Mosaics (and some Cezannes) get extra visual punch by making the whole picture out of the same atoms. Compositional symmetry yields some of the most memorable paintings, especially when two halves react to one another, as in the Creation of Adam or American Gothic.

In math and engineering, recursion, especially, is a big win. Inductive proofs are wonderfully short. In software, a problem that can be solved by recursion is nearly always best solved that way. The Eiffel Tower looks striking partly because it is a recursive solution, a tower on a tower.

The danger of symmetry, and repetition especially, is that it can be used as a substitute for thought.



Good design resembles nature. It's not so much that resembling nature is intrinsically good as that nature has had a long time to work on the problem. It's a good sign when your answer resembles nature's.

It's not cheating to copy. Few would deny that a story should be like life. Working from life is a valuable tool in painting too, though its role has often been misunderstood. The aim is not simply to make a record. The point of painting from life is that it gives your mind something to chew on: when your eyes are looking at something, your hand will do more interesting work.

Imitating nature also works in engineering. Boats have long had spines and ribs like an animal's ribcage. In some cases we may have to wait for better technology: early aircraft designers were mistaken to design aircraft that looked like birds, because they didn't have materials or power sources light enough (the Wrights' engine weighed 152 lbs. and generated only 12 hp.) or control systems sophisticated enough for machines that flew like birds, but I could imagine little unmanned reconnaissance planes flying like birds in fifty years.

Now that we have enough computer power, we can imitate nature's method as well as its results. Genetic algorithms may let us create things too complex to design in the ordinary sense.



Good design is redesign. It's rare to get things right the first time. Experts expect to throw away some early work. They plan for plans to change.

It takes confidence to throw work away. You have to be able to think, there's more where that came from. When people first start drawing, for example, they're often reluctant to redo parts that aren't right; they feel they've been lucky to get that far, and if they try to redo something, it will turn out worse. Instead they convince themselves that the drawing is not that bad, really-- in fact, maybe they meant it to look that way.

Dangerous territory, that; if anything you should cultivate dissatisfaction. In Leonardo's drawings there are often five or six attempts to get a line right. The distinctive back of the Porsche 911 only appeared in the redesign of an awkward prototype. In Wright's early plans for the Guggenheim, the right half was a ziggurat; he inverted it to get the present shape.

Mistakes are natural. Instead of treating them as disasters, make them easy to acknowledge and easy to fix. Leonardo more or less invented the sketch, as a way to make drawing bear a greater weight of exploration. Open-source software has fewer bugs because it admits the possibility of bugs.

It helps to have a medium that makes change easy. When oil paint replaced tempera in the fifteenth century, it helped painters to deal with difficult subjects like the human figure because, unlike tempera, oil can be blended and overpainted.



Good design can copy. Attitudes to copying often make a round trip. A novice imitates without knowing it; next he tries consciously to be original; finally, he decides it's more important to be right than original.

Unknowing imitation is almost a recipe for bad design. If you don't know where your ideas are coming from, you're probably imitating an imitator. Raphael so pervaded mid-nineteenth century taste that almost anyone who tried to draw was imitating him, often at several removes. It was this, more than Raphael's own work, that bothered the Pre-Raphaelites.

The ambitious are not content to imitate. The second phase in the growth of taste is a conscious attempt at originality.

I think the greatest masters go on to achieve a kind of selflessness. They just want to get the right answer, and if part of the right answer has already been discovered by someone else, that's no reason not to use it. They're confident enough to take from anyone without feeling that their own vision will be lost in the process.



Good design is often strange. Some of the very best work has an uncanny quality: Euler's Formula, Bruegel's Hunters in the Snow, the SR-71, Lisp. They're not just beautiful, but strangely beautiful.

I'm not sure why. It may just be my own stupidity. A can-opener must seem uncanny to a dog. Maybe if I were smart enough it would seem the most natural thing in the world that e^i*pi = -1. It is after all necessarily true.

Most of the qualities I've mentioned are things that can be cultivated, but I don't think it works to cultivate strangeness. The best you can do is not squash it if it starts to appear. Einstein didn't try to make relativity strange. He tried to make it true, and the truth turned out to be strange.

At an art school where I once studied, the students wanted most of all to develop a personal style. But if you just try to make good things, you'll inevitably do it in a distinctive way, just as each person walks in a distinctive way. Michelangelo was not trying to paint like Michelangelo. He was just trying to paint well; he couldn't help painting like Michelangelo.

The only style worth having is the one you can't help. And this is especially true for strangeness. There is no shortcut to it. The Northwest Passage that the Mannerists, the Romantics, and two generations of American high school students have searched for does not seem to exist. The only way to get there is to go through good and come out the other side.



Good design happens in chunks. The inhabitants of fifteenth century Florence included Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, Masaccio, Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Verrocchio, Botticelli, Leonardo, and Michelangelo. Milan at the time was as big as Florence. How many fifteenth century Milanese artists can you name?

Something was happening in Florence in the fifteenth century. And it can't have been heredity, because it isn't happening now. You have to assume that whatever inborn ability Leonardo and Michelangelo had, there were people born in Milan with just as much. What happened to the Milanese Leonardo?

There are roughly a thousand times as many people alive in the US right now as lived in Florence during the fifteenth century. A thousand Leonardos and a thousand Michelangelos walk among us. If DNA ruled, we should be greeted daily by artistic marvels. We aren't, and the reason is that to make Leonardo you need more than his innate ability. You also need Florence in 1450.

Nothing is more powerful than a community of talented people working on related problems. Genes count for little by comparison: being a genetic Leonardo was not enough to compensate for having been born near Milan instead of Florence. Today we move around more, but great work still comes disproportionately from a few hotspots: the Bauhaus, the Manhattan Project, the New Yorker, Lockheed's Skunk Works, Xerox Parc.

At any given time there are a few hot topics and a few groups doing great work on them, and it's nearly impossible to do good work yourself if you're too far removed from one of these centers. You can push or pull these trends to some extent, but you can't break away from them. (Maybe you can, but the Milanese Leonardo couldn't.)



Good design is often daring. At every period of history, people have believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you risked ostracism or even violence by saying otherwise.

If our own time were any different, that would be remarkable. As far as I can tell it isn't.

This problem afflicts not just every era, but in some degree every field. Much Renaissance art was in its time considered shockingly secular: according to Vasari, Botticelli repented and gave up painting, and Fra Bartolommeo and Lorenzo di Credi actually burned some of their work. Einstein's theory of relativity offended many contemporary physicists, and was not fully accepted for decades-- in France, not until the 1950s.

Today's experimental error is tomorrow's new theory. If you want to discover great new things, then instead of turning a blind eye to the places where conventional wisdom and truth don't quite meet, you should pay particular attention to them.



As a practical matter, I think it's easier to see ugliness than to imagine beauty. Most of the people who've made beautiful things seem to have done it by fixing something that they thought ugly. Great work usually seems to happen because someone sees something and thinks, I could do better than that. Giotto saw traditional Byzantine madonnas painted according to a formula that had satisfied everyone for centuries, and to him they looked wooden and unnatural. Copernicus was so troubled by a hack that all his contemporaries could tolerate that he felt there must be a better solution.

Intolerance for ugliness is not in itself enough. You have to understand a field well before you develop a good nose for what needs fixing. You have to do your homework. But as you become expert in a field, you'll start to hear little voices saying, What a hack! There must be a better way. Don't ignore those voices. Cultivate them. The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it.

The Angel that Troubled the Waters

"A scene in Thorton Wilder's play,The Angel that Troubled the Waters .
The scene is a doctor who comes to the pool everyday,wanting to be healed of his melancholy and his gloom and sadness.Finally the angel appears.The doctor,he's a medical doctor,goes to step in the water.The angel blocks his entrance and says,'No step back,the healing is not for you.'
"The doctor pleads,'But i've to get into the water.I can't live this way.'
"The angel says,'No, this moment is not for you.'
"And he says,'But how can i live this way?'
"The angel says to him,'Doctor, without your wounds,where would your power be?It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble in the hearts of men and women.The very angels cannot themselves persuade the wretched and blundering children of this earth as can one human being broken on the heels of living.In love's service only the wounded soldiers can serve.'

Are we not really fortunate to be blessed with our troubles?Winds of depressions and frustrations continually blowing unabatedly in our lives,ravaging it and leaving their scars, are gifts for us.Intertwined with wordly failures we are the greatest achievers for only we have searched for and found the torch that gives light and that never dies out.As the vessel of our hearts are 'allowed' to be filled with rigors, what overflows is ,understanding.It is given us so we may not be mute any more but speak volumes to those who are in similar circumstances and are unable to see the light to be guided by. It is given us to become a stitch in their wounds,a stitch that Christ is putting in their lives"

Is God Vulnerable?

Epics. Eras. Beginnings. What list of famous openers would be complete without including, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth?”

Genesis is the book of beginnings. Out of nothing God brings forth everything, which was enough to tax even His strength—He rested on the seventh day. The crown of His creation was man and woman, created in the image of God. Of all creation man alone had a prototype: the Godhead. “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness,” the heavenly triumvirate decreed (Gen. 1:26). At last, among all of creation, there was someone suitable for the Lord; someone courted for a divine romance; someone made and fashioned like God.

God walked and talked with Adam and Eve each day in the garden, just as you and I do with those we love. Together they lived in complete transparency and trust. There was no reason not to; after all, they truly loved each other, and perfect love casts out all fear (1 Jn. 4:18).

The Lord looked at this scene and the potential it held and called it very good. He was totally enthralled with His creation. All of His riches were available to Adam and Eve in the garden. Everything was as it should be: perfect.

But (Don’t you hate that word sometimes?)... But sin entered the picture and the young hopes were infected with the reality of sin’s insurgence.

I was out riding my bike a few days ago and stopped at a busy intersection. A man and his son pulled up beside me in a Suburban and the little boy pleadingly, tearful, asked if I had seen a little black and white dog... “His name is Sport; call me if you see him.” In my mind I hear the Lord’s voice in the same way, “Adam...? Eve...? Adam, Eve, where are you?” Sure, He realized the unthinkable, knew the inevitable.

If you read carefully, the first chapters of Genesis must have been a poignant period for the Lord. “Who told you that you were naked, Adam?” He looked at the man and woman’s feeble attempt to cover themselves with leaves. If it hadn’t been so pitiful it might have been comical: “Really, Adam! Leaf-slacks?” He created them perfectly, but He did not give them the ability to make clothes for themselves; they weren’t intended. Thus, their poor effort with leaves.

The Lord asked them an honest question, even though He must have known the answer, “Have you taken fruit from the tree which I commanded you not to eat?” But honesty was gone and God got the run-around: “The serpent deceived me, and, and...” I wonder if it was tempting for God to think of yesterday and long for the way it once was. This was a heart-breaking loss the Lord grievously endured.

Fourteen verses later the text quickly, almost in passing, says, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.” What must have been gong through His mind and heart as he crafted those skins into clothing? This time, instead of creating something from nothing, He obliged Himself to kill something in order to create.

This was His last act before sending them out of the garden. It’s almost as if while they were still with Him He didn’t care about their nakedness or ridiculous clothes sewn from leaves. But in one more act of kindness and accommodation, He fashioned clothing from skins so they wouldn’t leave with embarrassment.

And then came Cain. Despite his surly attitude the Lord still came to him with loving counsel. “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and it’s desire is for you, but you must master it” (4:6-7). The setting is reminiscent of a fatherly talk. On a rock too big to move from the field they sat and conferred about life: God, as father and mentor, offered encouragement to His son turned man who was still acting adolescent by asserting his will. One verse later, six pages into history, murder is committed; no responsibility is taken. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” the arrogant-acting Cain retorted to his Maker.

It is not simply a manner of speaking when the Bible says, “Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord” (4:16). How it must have torn at the Lord’s wrenching heart to watch Cain walk away to survive by his own devices and settle in, and for, the land of Nod—literally, “wandering”—instead of thriving in God’s presence. To opt for the destitution of self-reliance in lieu of his Heavenly Father’s abundance is the epitome of blind arrogance. Sadly, in my flesh I can identify.

There is one bright spot after the Fall: Enoch. Moses records with brevity, “And Enoch walked with God.” This is good, and God thought so too. Enoch was taken to heaven without experiencing death because he walked with God. However, it strikes me that there were seven generations who came and went before the Bible notes a man who walked with God. That’s a long time to walk alone!

Finally, only six chapters into an epoch beginning with high hopes and extraordinary expectations, the Bible confesses, “And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on earth, and He was grieved in His heart” (6:6). Could an era end more painfully than this one did? Could a father’s heart hurt more intensely than God’s must have on behalf of His creation? Could a love ever be spurned more carelessly? Could hope ever fall so far again?

This is more than a poignant look at the heart of God. It’s a saga about relationship. This thing we have in common called “Christianity” is not merely religion or philosophy. It is interaction, give and take; vulnerability, joy and sorrow, ecstasy, pain, and the mutual love of relationship. Sure, God is King of the Universe, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, King of kings and Lord of lords. But in our presence, He doesn’t really throw these titles around much. He prefers to go by, “Father” and “Husband” and “Brother” and “Friend.”

I don’t think of any relationships that are more intimate and caring than these, especially parent and mate.

Our Father is integrally and intimately involved with our lives on every level, from mundane to critical. He isn’t too concerned with keeping the moons and rings of Saturn in the right order, although He certainly does this. Really, He’s more interested in us.

Have you ever come home and asked your wife what she had for lunch? Why? Not because you cared about lunch, but because you were interested in her. You’ve also come home and told her about the computer going down and taking your latest spreadsheet with it. You know, the one you spent two days developing. Why? Because you share life together, from the mundane to the critical. The Lord calls us His bride because He likes the relationship implied within that title.

Why do parents feel cut out of the picture when their teenager won’t take off the Walkman and talk to them? Because life is relationship and at that point it has become one-sided. Why does a boy who’s bigger than his dad cry tears down his dad’s back when he doesn’t make the team? Because life is relationship, coving the gamut from music to heartache. God calls Himself Father because that means relationship, and that’s what He is all about.

Have you ever gotten down on your knees and looked your boy in the eyes to see if the words, “I love you,” are making their way into his heart? or told your daughter you are proud of her as she headed off to the Christmas formal? or held hands with your wife while walking the dog along the dam at the lake? Knowing Christ is no different. It is relationship, start to finish.

Throughout the pages of history, or as Sam Ericsson says, “His-story,” God makes His heart vulnerable to us. His intention? The risk of your rejection or indifference is worth the possibility of connection.

The real question is not whether God is vulnerable. He is! The stark reality we are left to consider is whether or not we will make ourselves vulnerable to Him.

© Lifetime Guarantee Ministries [published: 2005-04-01]
These articles are written for your spiritual growth. Copying, printing, and distribution are encouraged. Thank you for crediting Lifetime Guarantee Ministries and our website (www.lifetime.org) as the source.

God's Will and God's Ways

“God, what do you want me to do? Tell me.”

Silence. The vaulted doors of heaven seem locked and double-bolted, impenetrable. “Please... I desperately want to know.” In his imagination and frustration, he can almost hear God saying, “Nope. Not going to say. I know and have my plans for you, but that information is unavailable.” So he begins to search all his Sunday School memory banks and quiet time insights for a revealing Scripture to be used as leverage on the Almighty.

“Ah, Ha! That’s it,” he declares... “I think.” And then, in barely audible muttering, he recounts, “There was a fellow in the Bible who ran out of bread to make sandwiches for his guests and went to his friend’s place to bum a few slices. He eventually got the bread, but only because he persisted.” With renewed commitment to persistence, he forges ahead to find God’s will.

Days pass and the decision-making deadline approaches. Whereas initially his intensity was fueled with frustration, now there is another factor—fear. What in the world am I going to do? I don’t want to miss God’s will, he thinks. “And what will my fate be if I mess up?” he blurts out, thinking of the misfortune that will be his if he misses God’s best. Reverting to saner rationale, he contemplates, but how am I supposed to know what God wants me to do if He won’t tell me! “Lord God, can’t you just give me a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’?”

Nothing. Not a word. Not a sign. Not a sound. Not even a whisper.

“God, even a whisper would be OK. That’s the way you spoke to Elijah.” But it was in a gentle breeze, he recalls, and so promptly moves his quiet time outside to the patio. Now I’m in the right spot! OK, Father. I’m ready for your breeze.

And time ticks on. Hours pass into days as he tries varied and sundry methods for prying God’s will loose. He thinks, Maybe my friend Chuck can help.

“Hello! Chuck, my man. Hey, I need some counsel on discovering God’s will? It’s like He’s gone on sabbatical. I’ve asked Him for an answer so many different ways that I’m fresh out of methods. I’ve been persistent. I’ve looked for open doors. I’ve asked for a direct revelation. I’ve tried to find God’s peace. But nothing, not even a simple note. Got any ideas?”

“Wow! You’ve really been putting your time in on this. As bad as I hate to say it, there’s one thing you have not done: Before you can get God to tell you what His will is you’ve got to get rid of the sin in your life. It’s a simple matter of unconfessed sin.”

“Thanks, Chuck. Bye now.”

Jeepers! Sin in my life? Like I haven’t been asking the Lord about that for the last gazillion days. And so, he begins to confess everything that remotely resembles sin, even sin he has only heard about. Still nothing.

“Dear Lord Jesus, the ball’s in Your court. I don’t know what else to do. Amen.” This was the second shortest prayer he had ever prayed. The first was uttered three weeks ago: “Help!”

Trying hard to quash the questions and frustrations, he grabs a Diet Coke out of the fridge and settles into his favorite chair. All he really wants is a “yes” or “no.” Nothing fancy, like handwriting on the wall. But God has something more in mind, and only time could have laid the proper groundwork. For only now is he sufficiently weaned from his methods, his ideas, and his strategies to hear God’s voice.

A thought came into his mind: How do I know if the Lord speaks to me? The only way to know is to become very familiar with His voice. And the only way to do that is by spending time with Him.

God spoke, and he heard. He was shortchanging himself and God by limiting their interaction to a pedantic, black and white, yes or no, mechanical relationship when what God really wanted was time alone with him. Only in this way could He really be known.

For many Christians the motivating factor in their search for God’s will is to get the right answers so they don’t make any mistakes. If they can just do His will then they won’t have to worry about being in the wrong place, backtracking from a poor decision, suffering failure, or struggling to make the right decisions when every indicator is clouded with ambiguity. If they can just find God’s will they won’t have to fear the unpleasant consequences, or dread the decision-making process, or sad to say, have to put forth the effort required to build a relationship with God. Understanding God’s will is not a matter of playing your cards right; it’s not like looking something up with the right reference tools, then saying the right words, or acting just the right way. God is not a mechanical dispensary. His will is wrapped up in His Being. By knowing Him we know His will. By communicating with Him we discern His voice.

Yes, there is the biblical story of Gideon laying out the fleece in order to find God’s will. However, what have you gained in terms of relationship if all you hold in your hand is a fleece? While you may know the direction of your next step today, you don’t have anything telling you how to discern God’s will tomorrow. In this scenario, all you gain is the experience of what God did with your fleece, but you won’t know God any better.

Don’t misunderstand. God has a will and He expresses it regularly. But knowing God is not about getting His will straight. It’s about knowing Him. Perhaps the term “God’s will” does not accurately reflect the heart of God. Maybe “God’s ways” would more accurately convey His heart.

Let me illustrate: If I were to ask you if you know me, you might say, “Why, yes. You are the eldest of four brothers, born to Bill and Anabel Gillham in Ardmore, Oklahoma, deep in the winter of 1956. You ride a bicycle and write books and fly fish.”

All of this is true. But these are just informative things about me. There are lots of folks who know about me and what I do. I have a bunch of acquaintances, and a fair number of friends, but I count my confidants and close friends on one hand. These people are the ones who really know me and my ways. It is with them that I have shared my hopes and dreams, bared my soul, and opened my heart.

God does not intend to be intimidating. He wants to be called “Father.” Knowing Him is not presumptuous. It’s His idea! Quite literally, it is an invitation. Discovering God’s will is far more profound than doing the right things as a result of hearing God express His wishes. Knowing God’s will is really an invitation from God to discover His ways, discern His heart, listen to His dreams, understand His thoughts, and see through His eyes. If you have sat with God as He bared His soul and revealed His dreams, questions about His will become much less daunting and mysterious because you know Him more deeply than His will can reveal. You know Him and you know His ways.

What is the most dangerous aspect of attempting to discern God’s will? That we would become so focused on His will that we will miss knowing Him and understanding His ways.

© Lifetime Guarantee Ministries [published: 2003-11-01]
These articles are written for your spiritual growth. Copying, printing, and distribution are encouraged. Thank you for crediting Lifetime Guarantee Ministries and our website (www.lifetime.org) as the source.