"My Power is made Perfect in Weakness": Christian Antifragility

Dear Readers: I hope you all had a joyful Christmas. (I recognize it has not exactly been a peaceful holiday for many of you, with the crazy weather across the United States).

The New Year now approaches, promising to be even more complicated and chaotic than last year as tense and unstable situations around the world are further destabilized. Plus elections. It is well for followers of Jesus that our hope is not in this world, else it would be a bad time for hope.

(And to top it all off, next year will begin the Chinese Year of the Red Fire Monkey. As a believer I place zero faith in astrology of any kind, but I had a laugh at how humorously ominous that sounds...)

Doesn't start until February, actually

As an INTP, ideas are my currency, and the ever-present task in the back of my mind is to keep figuring out how our world works in all its complexity. A few years ago I was exposed to the idea of "antifragility," explained below, and found it to be a very important new property to look for in any human endeavor (including those of the Church). As we seem to be entering a time in which circumstances grow eerily similar to those that preceded the World Wars of the previous century, we can take heart knowing that the Church which has endured every hardship and trial of history will emerge from whatever societal chaos may come, because she is built on a foundation which cannot be shaken by the world.

The Idea: Antifragility

The concept as currently articulated is the brainchild of Nassim Taleb, a Lebanese-American thinker/author/risk analyst, who has written important work on the impact of "flukes" or "random catastrophes" called Black Swans, with the implication that it's foolish to regard them as unavoidable events, but that they should be expected to come eventually, and can even be profited from accordingly.

This initial work was followed by more research and contemplation of the subject, which he developed further conceptually and for which he eventually coined the term antifragility. The idea is usually explained in a threefold manner:

1. Fragility: We know what fragile means: that something which is fragile must be handled with care, that it cannot receive shocks or stress without sustaining damage or even being destroyed. Fine glassware is fragile, as an obvious example.

2. Resilience: Normally one would say that the opposite of fragility is resilience, or toughness: the ability to handle shocks and stress and not take much damage, or at least to recover quickly. A rubber sole is resilient, a piece of oak is resilient, etc.

3. Antifragility: Taleb's innovative idea is that resilience is not really the opposite of fragility. The true opposite of fragility would not be something which is more able to endure shocks or stress, but which would grow stronger due to them. With no good word to describe this property, Taleb made up a word: Antifragility. If you remember basic Greek mythology, there was a beast called a Hydra, which for every head cut off would grow multiple heads in its place. "Stress," in this case physical damage, was actually helpful to it. Another example would be the bones of a child: if they break, a properly healed bone is actually stronger at the previous breaking point than it was before the fracture.

The three-fold analogy of fragility, resilience, and antifragility is explained in a good summary article on the Art of Manliness. If this blog post interests you in the subject, that's a great place to start.

For now, suffice to say that while resiliency becomes very desirable when facing a time of rapid changes and above average stress, antifragility is the secret to those groups which don't merely weather the storms, but somehow seem to profit from them and come out stronger.

We see examples of this in the news today:

Muslim terror groups are often quite antifragile. The more Western military might tries to pulverize them, the more they melt away into the populace, recruiting more people to their cause due to collateral damage. Soon new cells pop up where none were before. It's the hydra all over again.

The stock market, on the other hand, is fragile. 2008 demonstrated what can happen when an entire economic system becomes fragile and is hit by a shock, in that case the housing lending bubble popping. The US economy is also fragile with regards to oil; any significant jump in the oil price and the whole taut system quivers anxiously.

This explains why somehow the mighty Western powers have found themselves unable to defeat a radical Islamic foe that is positively dwarfed in terms of military power and not really liked by anyone: The West is fragile with regards to dependence on oil, and antifragile radical groups are destabilizing the region where the oil is. We can't ignore them, then, for pragmatic if not moral reasons, but our previous strategies only seem to have made matters worse. Part of the reason we haven't defeated them is not because they are tougher than us, but because they are antifragile. While individual terrorists and radical muslim cells can be killed quickly, on the whole this strengthens their movement.

Fragility and Antifragility cannot be confused with weakness and strength either. Before the War in Iraq, Saddam's dictatorship was much stronger than the subversive elements in his territory, but it was also more fragile than they; once our both stronger and more resilient military wiped Saddam's forces off the map, the regime went down easily. The antifragile radical movements which took advantage of the chaos are not so easily dealt with, however, and will require different strategies.

Antifragility is often found in conjunction with small size, redundancy, decentralization, a willingness to take small risks if the chance of reward is good, and a focus on increasing one's available options.

With all this in mind, antifragility sounds like a great thing to pursue in one's personal life. But can it be related at all to our faith? Should a Christian even try to use this kind of "success" strategy? Let's take a look.

A Case for Christian Antifragility

1. Is it ungodly to strive for something like antifragility?

When talking about making our ministries or churches more robust, the first instinct is that this is of course a good thing. Then, sometimes, a "spiritual" objection arises: shouldn't we be focusing not on our own strength, but on dependency on God? "When we are weak, He is strong," after all.

My answer to this is that "when we are weak, He is strong" is not a command but an observation. Paul makes it in Second Corinthians after "boasting" of his qualifications and his suffering for God in 2 Cor 11 and 12. He then mentions his "thorn in the flesh," an enigmatic term which commentators have enjoyed guessing about for centuries, as a reminder from God that His grace is sufficient, for His power is made perfect in weakness. Paul says, with much grounds for boasting of his "street cred" as a gospel worker, that "to keep me from becoming conceited" (ESV; NET has "so that I would not become arrogant) he was given this thorn in the flesh to remind him of his own weakness. His boasting of his own weakness is therefore both a willing submission to God's reminder and a joyful proclamation of the strength of Christ, of whom Paul lives to preach.

And that is generally my response to this kind of objection. We don't need to strive to be weak, because like Paul, whatever we think we may have to boast about, we are already weak. God's power is made perfect in us when we recognize that weakness, when the illusion of our own tiny ability is seen for what it is, and we humbly rely on strength from God. A crumb on the lens of a telescope can obscure stars larger than our sun. It doesn't mean the crumb might not be big compared to other crumbs, but our perspective tempts us to compare it to the star, which is more ridiculous than we can comprehend.

2. Honoring God in our Ministries

All that is to say, any kind of argument that trying to make our churches and ministries stronger is inherently an attempt to take glory from God and give it to men, or to exalt ourselves and our strength against God's, is simply wrong. Those things might happen if we go about it the wrong way, or with the wrong motives, but it's not wrong to do the best job we can, in fact it's sinful not to attempt to. We are not to strive for weak ministries, but good and effective ones. Our weakness is something to bring before God as an obvious condition, not a property with which we ought to seek to imbue our efforts.

So if we are loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we will not be ambivalent about setting up our ministries to function as well as we can, from the human standpoint, while praying always for the work of the Holy Spirit to accomplish the work in people's hearts that we cannot.

3. The Church is already Antifragile

And if we believe we have a responsibility to strengthen our churches and ministries, then, we should take note that God has already established the Church as an Antifragile institution.

In the early days of the faith, once Christianity was no longer viewed as an odd flavor of Judaism but a new, non-sanctioned faith that was rapidly spreading among the Roman populace, Roman emperors undertook campaigns to discourage or eliminate the growing Church.

From a human standpoint, the "stress" on the Church was very great; multitudes lost their property and were imprisoned, and many lost their lives as well.

(Note: I have not linked to the Wikipedia article on Roman Persecutions, as it seems mainly concerned that we understand the Christians were making an overly big deal about it and the Romans were just trying to keep order.. In general I suggest being cautious of Wikipedia these days; many of the editors who oversee page content are self-proclaimed activists who push the pages in the direction of their own views)

However, we have a saying, "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." (Tertullian)
The result of all those persecutions is that the Church grew very rapidly, both as the plight of believers drew attention and sympathy to their faith, and as they were often driven from one area to another, spreading the gospel to new areas it would have reached more slowly otherwise.

A similar thing happened in China during the closed years of the Cultural Revolution; when Christians came in from outside later, fearing the Church had been reduced or eliminated entirely, they found it had instead grown greatly during the difficult years.

To say, then, that the Church is antifragile, is not to deny that it was God's power that expanded and protected Her; antifragility is not a cause but a property, and the Church by its nature possesses this property, due to exactly what we discussed above: God's power is made perfect in weakness. This means the more desperate of circumstances we are reduced to, as a church, as the Church, or as individuals, the more we may see God do.

Therefore we see that "God's power is made perfect in weakness" is actually a bold revelation of startling truth. We thought the equation was:

"Do your best, and God will do the rest": 

But what Paul reveals is that in reality we have this:

"My power is made perfect in weakness": 

As you may remember from math class, as the denominator goes to zero, the value of the fraction goes to infinity. As our strength fails, there is no limit to what God can do.
This is not merely antifragility, but ultimate, supernatural antifragility.

Satan is very strong, but he is merely resilient. By the gift of "weakness," together with His power, God has made the Church so that the gates of hell truly may never prevail against it, by its very nature. This is why prosperity and ease are the most effective tools in the arsenal against the Church. Suffering and hardship actually make the Church stronger; of social influence, political power, and comfortable circumstances weaken it by hampering and slowing its development.

Antifragility for the Believer, Ministry, or Church

A. Church

So if the Church (the Body of Christ as a whole) is already antifragile, how about a church? How about your own local church?

Sadly, though the Church only grows stronger through persecution, individual churches may split over any number of issues, mostly strong personalities coming into conflict. This kind of "church multiplication" is not antifragile, it merely takes something fragile and breaks it into two fragile pieces.

A strong and healthy church, however, which reproduces itself, could be antifragile. A church of healthy and developing small groups of whatever form is already very resilient, and is probably antifragile. Any harm befalling the church, be it financial, loss of important people, etc., can not only be made up for by everyone coming together, but it is an opportunity for training and discipleship to be put into action. Someone may need to step into the old role.

A church seeking to be antifragile will have redundancy as well; a church with a human bottleneck (one or more indispensable people) is quite common, and may be quite efficient, but it's very fragile. Should that one or those key personnel be removed, the church might be in serious trouble. Rather than praying for God not to ever let that person be unable to perform in that role, then if they are unable to, putting it down to God's mysterious will that the church suffer all these problems (this is what the Muslims do with "Inshallah"... it's not at all a proper application of the doctrine of God's sovereignty), a church seeking to become less fragile will have that person train others to do what they do.
(That feeling of being indispensable is both pleasant and addicting for very many people, but it's not helpful to the survival of the church. It must be laid at the cross along with everything else)

So, two tips for an antifragile church:
1. Healthy, "real" small groups, with the goal of each being capable of functioning as a microchurch if necessary
2. Anyone with an important role in the church has trained at least one person to do what they do (it doesn't have to be perfect, or even well, they just need to be able to do it) Note that this includes the senior pastor. Most churches' weakest point is the senior pastor, because he's irreplaceable. Some churches never recover from the loss of an especially beloved or capable senior pastor.

B. Ministry

Many ministries are fairly fragile just by their nature, and will dissolve naturally if there is too much disruption. This is not necessarily a bad thing; a ministry should arise from the gifts and calling of individual believers joining together, and there will always be other opportunities to pursue for the Kingdom. But there are certain ministries, say a church plant, where it is highly desirable that the ministry should continue long term, or at least survive until the primary objective has been accomplished.

So one hopes that a long-term ministry would at least be resilient. But it would be even better if it could be antifragile. What if a church plant, upon encountering difficulties, did not fail but spawned off a second, successful ministry? What if the end result was that three cell churches were planted instead of one?

Pursuing antifragility gets trickier for a ministry, but it can be done. The easiest path is to first identify what would cause a ministry to fail if it were absent. This is not always obvious, but once identified, either the crucial elements are replaceable, or they are not. Often, in smaller ministries, they simply aren't. If you have one Evangelist, they can show you how they do what they do, and everyone can practice it, but they can't give you that spiritual gift. In that situation, we are simply back to our weakness and God's strength, and trusting that if He wills the ministry to continue, He will not let that crucial element be removed, or He will give others the ability to carry on that important part of the ministry.

On the other hand, sometimes redundancy is possible. If the ministry depends on one guy who knows how to set up sound equipment, he should teach someone else how to do it. That's an easy step.

Another important part of antifragility is to keep things from expanding out of control. If your ministry is trying to do three fairly different things, perhaps one should be spun off, with your blessing, into its own ministry. If there are people in common, they may be able to invite others to participate in the ministry and it will be a training opportunity.
The attitude is not consolidation, but multiplication.

Three tips for an antifragile ministry:
1. Be aware of what is absolutely crucial for the ministry to continue and make sure that stays in focus
2. Redundancy wherever possible
3. Keep things focused. Preference is on multiplication versus consolidation

C. Personal

This is the one most people talk about, so I'll talk about it the least. However I rarely see it coming from the perspective of one's walk with God, so there are some worthwhile issues to raise.

Once one is aware of the concept, the Bible is actually full of references to antifragility. Grape vines bear more fruit when they are pruned heavily. Jesus says that a seed cannot grow unless it dies (to being a seed), but once grown it can produce many seeds. Romans 5 speaks of the importance of suffering, which produces endurance, endurance character, and character hope. Thus suffering, something we typically try to avoid, produces the hope we are looking for. Avoiding the suffering may, surprisingly, be the reason you feel hopeless.

Therefore an attitude of embracing productive suffering, submitting willingly to the stress that causes an antifragile thing to become stronger, can produce a vital change in one's walk with God. If upon encountering difficulties, rather than asking the very natural questions that spring to mind: "Why is this happening to me? What sin is this punishment for? Does God really love me?" we can try changing the question to: "What is God teaching me through this?" In what way is this making me a better person and more effective servant for the Kingdom?" No one signs up for gym classes and then asks the instructor why he's making you suffer. The difference for Christians is that sometimes we don't realize we signed up to be made into the image of Christ.

If we recognize that letting God walk us through a series of ever-increasing challenges is precisely the process of spiritual growth He intends for us, we might even be willing to voluntarily leave our comfort zones, to ask God to lead us to tasks too big for us to handle as we are now. If comfort is our goal, we cannot grow to be more like Christ; we must embrace a certain level of discomfort in order to develop. I think that's what Paul was getting at with some of his athlete analogies: If we approach the spiritual life like an athlete approaches a marathon, the Christian life suddenly starts to make a lot of sense.

"God doesn't call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn't come through." - Francis Chan

One could explore antifragility in the Christian life from innumerable other ways. (redundancy in one's personal walk, so that small things don't disrupt it; how we think of risk as believers; keeping our lives simple and flexible to serve God...) We'll save those for a future post. For now, check out the link near the top for the explanation of antifragility (actually here it is again), or find Taleb's book on Amazon if you want the full blown, way-too-much-information version.

3 Things I Wish Christians would Stop Doing

In this post I want to talk about 3 things I've noticed a lot of Christians doing (and of which I've certainly been guilty at times as well) which I submit aren't doing us any favors. I believe noticing them and trying to reign them in would strengthen the Church and our witness.

1. Being Careless with the Truth in our "Edifying Anecdotes"

Many of you have doubtless heard the story about the church in a persecuted part of the world where one day masked men broke in brandishing guns and demanded that anyone who wasn't a true believer and ready to meet their God should leave. Once a large portion of the worshippers had fled in panic, the leader removed his mask and said to the preacher something along the lines of "Ok, all the fakers are gone, you can keep going," and he and his team of not-actual-terrorists then joined the worship service.

This very well may be based on an original true story. (If you know the source, feel free to share) The problem is that I've heard it told as a true story many times, and the location seems to wander around. Africa, China, Russia, etc. Did anyone bother to verify the origins of the story before sharing it as true? "Oh, don't be such a stickler," you might think. "the important thing is that it's making a point."
But the same thing happens with miraculous stories...

Recently it has been in the news that a boy who told an amazing story about a trip to heaven while in a coma, having grown up a bit, recanted the story and chided Christians for believing his account which does not adhere to scripture. Lifeway has since pulled the book from its shelves. But these "trip to heaven," "trip to hell" stories which so many people marvel over and find edifying can usually be dismissed offhand early on, not because heaven or hell aren't real places, but because the stories in question describe a creative take on the pop culture version of heaven or hell. That's usually quite different from what we find in scripture, which is that upon dying one goes either into the presence of God or away from His presence to Sheol (Hebrew, "the grave"), and that the fiery place of torment of Matt 25 and pearl-gated golden city of Rev 21 are both descriptions of post-final-judgment destinations, not the immediate destinations of the departed.

(Another common mistake: while we don't know much about Sheol -the waiting place until judgment for those who die without Christ- from scripture, we do know the lake of fire was created for the punishment of satan and his fallen angelic allies (Matt 25:41), and they will suffer there too. Satan is not the ruler of hell, hell was created as his punishment. According to the book of Job, he is not enthroned in some fiery realm like Surt in the Muspelheim of Norse mythology, but apparently roams around the earth itself, which I find in some ways to be a more unnerving image.)

And speaking of angels, fallen or otherwise, there are innumerable stories about angels out there. Some are doubtless true. I've seen a weird thing or two myself. But note that the Bible is not very talkative about angels, at least not in the systematic way that would satisfy our curiosity (and lead to idolatry...). Angels are not the point- God is, and they are God's messengers. Scripture also describes angels as guarding us, though not to the extent that the "guardian angel" idea has been developed in popular thinking. (Psalm 91:11 is very general, Matt 18:10 is very interesting statement by Jesus but leaves us with more questions than answers, and it is unclear whether Hebrews 13:2's "some" is talking about people among his readership or referring to Old Testament accounts like Lot's angelic guests) 

How angels feel when you share questionable anecdotes about them...
("DespondentAngelMetCemHead" by Infrogmation -
Own work. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.)

I like the story about the guy in the jungle being protected by angels from the people who were going to attack him, who said he was surrounded by armed guards (who were invisible to him), but it turns out that may not be true either.


I say "may not" because the writers at Snopes dot com (urban legend debunking site) are quite obviously antagonistic towards Christianity (even for faith-inspired stories they had to verify as true due to factual evidence, they feel necessary to interject that they don't think anything supernatural occurred). At the bottom of that article, for example, they include stories of missionaries receiving help just as someone far away felt led to pray for them as supposedly obvious fabrications. I don't know about those particular incidents, but I happen to know that does sometimes happen, because it's happened to me before. On the other hand, they raise some reasonable doubts about the details of the story as presented in print, based on multiple printed versions. My guess would be that the earlier Billy Graham book account is closer to whatever true event inspired the story. Of course it's possible the story is entirely made up, but these things definitely do happen on the mission field, and my guess would be it was in someone's prayer letter and unfortunately things proceeded loosely from there.

However, just because "these things happen" doesn't mean that particular story is true, or should be repeated as a true story, details being altered as time goes on. The snopes article itself ends like this:

Moreover, it's sadly ironic that so many tales contrived to display a particular belief system as The One True Way include fabrications tossed in to better carry the message.

While their sarcasm is unwarranted, there is an important point we can take from it- our willingness to accept and pass along any story because we live in a world where supernatural events can occur is not a good witness, making faith seem like mere credulity. And it's dangerous for us too, a little like building our faith not on the solid rock of God's faithfulness and work in our lives but on the shifting sand of anecdotes that "seem likely."

So should we be finding inspiration in unverifiable stories just because the content is beautiful or motivational? Should we be scared to share any story at all? At least, let's treat them as just that: inspirational but unverifiable stories, and be very, very careful what we pass along as "true." Truth should hold special value to those who believe in the Truth of God's word.

Supernatural events do occur in this world (I have fun stories), and we have real evidence for what we take on faith, but assuming every story, whether miracles, angels, trips to heaven, etc., you hear is true (or not bothering to consider whether it is or not) and passing it along, slowly but surely weakens our habit of testing what we hear. We have to be neither cynical nor naive, like the Bereans who were praised by Paul for not taking his words for granted, but searching the scriptures before accepting them.

2. Confusing Apologetics with Evangelism

(Yes, I know apologetics can be used in an evangelistic way, first hear me out:)

A. Evangelism is not arguing until the other side admits you're right

I think we all know this already, and I'm reminding myself as much as any of you reading this, but we can't debate anyone into the kingdom. So as a method of evangelism, a good debate, beloved by so many educated believers in the Western tradition (me too), serves at best either as a transition for sharing the gospel directly/sharing one's testimony, or to remove the false facades which people claim prevent them from believing, which are really smokescreens and excuses. Having removed those, someone will typically say something like "well I still just don't think God exists." Now they're being honest- all that other stuff was not the basis for their unbelief, it was the other way around. The assumption is "no God," and all the other stuff proceeds from that assumption. Which is why...

B. It is typically not helpful to argue with scientists about evolution

It pains me to say that, having been raised in the proud homeschooled evangelical tradition of "creationism vs. evolution" debates, and have years of experience doing so online and occasionally in person. Sometimes I've "won" the discussion and sometimes I've "lost" (at least, I did my best to learn from each discussion, so they were profitable in that sense), but what I would say is that unless you have a pretty good grasp of the scientific principles involved and some basic understanding of what the modern set of theories collectively described as evolution are in 2015, you may actually do more harm than good in trying to jump into the fray. One thing you have to realize is that the average non-believing scientist (or worse, 'science groupie') considers questioning evolution to be about as viable as proposing the earth really is flat. It doesn't matter if that's an unfair comparison, that's what it's going to sound like to them.

You may quickly discover you are at a home field disadvantage, because for decades most scientists have taken evolution as a given and worked from that basis. So if you do something like claim there is no evidence for evolution, they can just laugh and bury you under decades of scientific papers that all assume evolution. No one not coming from a religious background is going to question evolution at this point except real experts in those fields where it becomes obvious that evolution lacks some basic mechanisms to explain very specific phenomena they are qualified to speak up about.

In short, if you really can't help yourself, realize that you're going both against popular trends and against more or less the entire scientific community. Also recognize this is typically someone who has "there is no God" as their premise. You'd better have a pretty airtight logical case, be familiar with the normal counterarguments (the Socratic method of asking more and more difficult questions is a good way to learn these, and doesn't put you in the position of being the antagonist) and be prepared to explain exactly why you feel you can challenge the underlying theoretical assumptions of entire fields of research. And hopefully, you are praying for them and that the conversation will be edifying, not a triumph of your finely honed reasoning skills. As an INTP I face a frequent temptation to bring the logical smackdown on those who are clearly out of their league, forgetting that we are called first to be evangelists of Christ, not knights of reason.

Most actual arguments for evolution go like this: [In the chart above, let's say that "Some birds can't fly" = "God did it." Therefore, since "that's crazy" or "highly unlikely" (claims entirely outside the realm of science) all birds -must- be able to fly. Therefore, since Science can demonstrate with total confidence that penguins are birds, penguins -must- be able to fly, and you are just another naive believer in outdated superstitions who doesn't understand logic.] Ignoring the insults and countering this valid structure but invalid premise means you have to show them that their underlying assumption of "no God" is baseless. Therefore the rigorous science which demonstrates that penguins are birds is great and no problem for us either, but it has no bearing on the assumption that there are no birds that can't fly. But we believe, and have quite a bit of evidence that points to the fact that there are birds that can't fly. (That "God did it")
The argument then rests on whether you can demonstrate that convincingly.

Note: You can challenge their premises, with the method I outlined in the picture caption there. But I pick that kind of battle carefully these days. Only a few will be fruitful, and a good conversation about the gospel is so much better than lots of arguing which half the time ends up being over how you're using the same word in two different ways. I usually try to get the discussion over to my testimony, if I can.

A sad excuse for preparation:

(I rarely rant on this blog, so please excuse me while I do so for just a moment.) Back when I was in high school, we were taught as Christian students to challenge future college professors with "unanswerable questions" that would stump them. Personally I studied engineering which didn't require biology at my school, so topics like evolution only came up once or twice in chemistry class, and I didn't have any of those antagonistic sort of professors I read about.

But I submit that part of the reason so many students raised in the church get disillusioned and their faith shaken while in college is that some people are doing them the disservice of sending them into college thinking a) they will encounter Richard Dawkins-like antagonists who rant against God and use logical-fallacy-riddled arguments to promote evolution and other anti-scriptural ideas, and b) that their duty was to publicly call out these educated, experienced authority figures who could wipe the floor with them rhetorically, with the idea that this is "defending the faith" and their responsibility.

Instead they find that a) often their professors are of the shrugging agnostic or "I grew up in church but decided religion wasn't for me" variety, are sometimes even charismatic and dignified, and can make a student feel not that the gospel is false, but simply that they've lived their entire life in a broom closet, and the gospel might apply in there, but this is the big, wide world, and they're being invited to grow up and join it. Or, b) they do run into one of those antagonistic atheist professors, and trying to be a good witness, stand up to him/her in class, are then subjected to a good drubbing and public humiliation by the professor who has years of education and life experience to his advantage, and has perhaps polished his craft on the few unfortunate students who do this from time to time. At that point a crisis in confidence is almost certain, and without the right support a student will start to question what seemed so certain and straightforward "back in church."

And that "back in church" is where a lot of the trouble starts anyway. Getting plugged in both to a good local church and to a Christian fellowship at school can go very far to mitigate both of these dangers. Far from being bowled over and questioning their faith, students can come out of college strengthened in their faith and with some valuable ministry experience if they are active in a (good) Christian campus fellowship of some kind. (Be aware that there are one or two cult-ish groups that operate under this disguise)


So hopefully we can avoid the problem of setting students up for possible failure by making sure they'll have good spiritual fellowship and growth opportunities during their time at school, and not teaching them a vastly oversimplified version of what they're likely to encounter out in the world. Which leads me to my third plea, which is to please stop...

3. Simplistically Stereotyping other Belief Systems

I sometimes wondered, as a young Christian, how anyone could not be a Christian. It made so much sense, and none of the other religions I'd heard of seemed to make any sense at all. How could those people keep believing something so weird and nonsensical and obviously false?

But I found, around the time I started doing mission trips, that the beliefs of people I encountered overseas seemed fully developed too. Of course, many adherents of Chinese religion here in Taiwan don't even claim to believe the various major and minor gods to be real in the way we believe God to be real (more like "they might be out there, and if so it's better to be on their good side"), but developed in the sense that they had a worldview which explained things around them to a degree they found to be satisfactory. If a gap does occur, if a time comes when their religious system becomes unsatisfactory to them or their worldview can no longer adequately explain the reality they live in, then there is an increasing openness to new worldviews and metanarratives (which are something I'll discuss in my next post), and often a special spiritual hunger and the potential for gospel movements as well, like what happened in China during the turbulent years of communism when it was closed to outside missionaries and is happening in some other places as we speak.

But when reading about those other religions, in non-academic Christian materials, I have often found a strictly polemic attitude. That is to say, the main purpose was not to explain what other people believe, but to demonstrate the flaws and weaknesses in those belief systems, and perhaps reassure readers/listeners that only our own faith makes any sense at all. On the other hand, some explanations are not antagonistic but are simply such a watered-down, simplified version of those beliefs that one is left wondering how any adult could really believe that. Yes, some localized religions have degraded to more or less that point, and any contact with outside religions results in the locals hastening to drop their "old ways" and embrace what is clearly a more impressive belief system. But any major world religion has survived long enough that it's got to have some qualities which people find attractive, especially if it's spreading, like Buddhism or Islam. Prior to encountering the Perspectives course materials and then attending seminary with some great books on the required reading lists, the resources regarding other religions never mentioned what those might be.

Let me be blunt. That's bowling with the lane guards up. If we truly have faith, and if we are grown-ups, or even teenagers bumping into classmates with other belief systems, we need to recognize that people have reasons for what they believe, and if they're going to stop believing that and accept Christ, they're going to need reasons for doing that. That could be as simple as someone having grown up in a non-religious family and being curious about what you believe and asking you to explain, or as challenging as a need for deliverance from demonic oppression which only the power of Christ can effect through the prayer and fasting of His saints. But either way, if we're afraid that merely reading or hearing accurate depictions of earthly religions is going to tempt us away from the Living God, the effects of whose Incarnation changed not only our lives and the destiny of our souls but all of modern world history, then the problem lies not in those descriptions but in our own lack of faith.

Now obviously, I'm not suggesting you send a bunch of grade schoolers to Buddhist summer camp. And in the States, when teaching younger students about world religions I have always pointed out the differences between those and God's revelation to us. Anyone who feels their faith is weakened by exposure to other beliefs should pray for their faith to be strengthened, and take heart from the evidence that abounds, showing that though not seeing, we have believed, yet our faith is not blind.
But students who are mature enough, and certainly adults who are mature in their faith, should have a basic understanding of what other people in this world believe, especially if they intend to witness to them.

 For example: Paul was upset by all the idols in Athens, but he observed them carefully and when sharing the gospel before the Areopagus he used the example of one idol dedicated to an unknown god, and also quoted a Greek poet. He was not respectful of their beliefs (he got very quickly to attacking the idea of idolatry itself), but he made careful observations and tried to share the gospel in a way that had some connections to their worldview. He wanted to share the gospel in a way that would make sense, and used what he knew about Greek culture and had observed about their religion to do so.

A Taiwanese altar to an unknown god

Why does it matter?

It matters not only because if you don't understand what someone else believes, you will have more difficult sharing the gospel with them, but because when we are always surrounded by other believers it's easy to fall into the idea that the gospel is inherently reasonable or self-evidently true. Don't forget what Paul said:

For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:22-24)

The gospel is not going to sound inherently reasonable either to people of other religions, or to people who think that a modern education puts them above "organized religion." But understanding that following another religion or belief system doesn't make them stupid or naive, but merely in need of the gospel that will sound a little strange to them, we can speak God's truth into their own context in an effective way. Some will never accept it, but "to those who are called," of all nations, tribes, peoples, and languages, it will be the saving message of Christ, the power and wisdom of God.

That's it for today. I hope by understanding these issues a little better, we can be a stronger Church and more effective disciples of Christ.

The Hard Grace of Failure

1. What Failure is Not

Who likes failing?

These days, maybe some people would be clever and say they do. But what they mean is not really failure in the sense I'm talking about. I'm not talking about delayed success.

Now I know in the past few decades, piles of profound motivational statements have been made about failure and how important it is. I don't have to recount a list, you've seen many of them I'm sure. Edison failed how many times before he hit on a successful design for the incandescent bulb? (It seems no one knows... I saw 700, 1000, 2000, and 10,000)

Speaking of fails... Edison begs to differ

Uh-oh, an escalation of inspiration. Someone call Oprah.

That is not the kind of failure I'm talking about. Those are not really fails, those are attempts, experiments. "Cross that one off the list and get the next one" is not failure, it's a kind of confirmation.

2. Failure of a Sort

Not winning the presidential election is getting closer to actual failure. Half the country is angry and disappointed, maybe more at the other side, but still many will be angry at you. The best you could probably do is try again and succeed in four years, but even then it's not the same. However, you'll probably still do ok. You can leverage your now-massive name recognition somehow. That's also not really failure, it's more like what used to be called a "pivot" in business-speak. (Maybe it still is. Maybe I'm also using the term incorrectly... I'm an engineer by trade, pivots are things that require memorizing force equations)

Taiwanese students know about failure. There's an national university entrance exam at the end of high school, and how you perform on it has a profound impact on the rest of your life. Doing poorly on that test (there are a few limited options for retesting, but it's not like the SAT where you can take it multiple times and use your best score) means a low-tier college, a low-tier job, and fewer alternate paths to success than in America (even America circa 2015). In the US, even with bad grades or a degree from a lower-tier school, if you hustle*, you can nearly always be successful. In Taiwan, you have to do that anyway to keep your job.

(*- Apparently the positive connotation of this word is not universal. I use it in the sense of getting out there and working harder and with more focus than the average person, not selling drugs or deceiving people)

There is also heroic failure. This is the kind of failure that is irreversible, but where the importance lay mostly not on success but on being willing to try. The firefighter that does not succeed in getting the last person out of a burning building may be haunted by his failure, but we do not blame him for it, we praise him for the attempt, for his courage, even for his grief over not having succeeded. (We wouldn't praise him nearly so much if he shrugged it off as one of life's inevitable tragedies)

Failure is not lead that can be alchemied into gold. In reading for this entry I stumbled across this quote from Elizabeth Hardwick, and felt it strikes a chord:

"Failure is not funny. It is cockroaches on the service elevator, old men in carpet slippers waiting anxiously by the mail slots in the lobby, neighborhood walks where the shops, graphs of consumption, show only a clutter of broken vases, strings of cracked beads, dirty feathers, an old vaudevillian’s memorable dinner jacket and decades of cast-off books—the dust of ambition from which the eye turns away in misery." (from Grub Street: New York)

So how about real failure? What about the firefighter who not only fails to find the trapped child, but fails to find the courage to go look at all? What about the child of brilliant parents who just can't manage to ever do well in school, year after year, regardless of her effort? What about the man who fails to get help for his addiction and drags his family down with him?

Even those stories could end in redemption. You can probably imagine movies where the low point is any of those situations, but somehow manages to end triumphantly.

Failure of the kind I'm talking about is irredeemable. It's not noble, it's not "failing upwards," it's not one small step in the long road to victory, it's not even the nadir, the lowest point, at which one begins to climb back up from the pit again. It's an unrecoverable loss. It is coming to the end and there being no road ahead, no further options. Final failure. We don't even like to contemplate it.

It's also absolutely necessary to understand ourselves and our salvation.

3. Failure to the Point of Surrender

Its necessity doesn't make it any more pleasant- the real, visceral recognition that one cannot be good, that one cannot bring anything good to God in exchange for salvation, that attempting to do so will always end, finally, in failure. Discovering that Pelagius was so very wrong, though we long for him to be right in some little corner of our personalities. Some tiny hook from which to hang our righteousness, some shiny trinket unique to us, expressing our unique value, to trade for some slight reprieve from the terror of total surrender. To finally realize that we have nothing with which to redeem any part of ourselves back from the Redeemer is a devastating kind of experience. Some reach a point and then simply refuse to look further or go deeper; the continued loss of self is too terrifying. But Christ said only by losing our life can we save it.

As believers we think we've grasped this. We can say along with Jonathan Edwards, "you contribute nothing to your salvation but the sin that made it necessary," and acknowledge that it is true, but until we've really tried and failed, we don't get it. We are like addicts in that state of denial who still believe they can quit if they just put their mind to it. Next time, for sure.

Truly recognizing your failure before God is an extremely unpleasant experience. If you have not had such an experience, it's possible you haven't tried to fully surrender to God. When you do, He will show you something you were holding on to, and you will try to argue you should get to keep it. And you are quite likely to base that argument on some goodness or good behavior on your part that justifies a trade. Finally realizing you have nothing to offer, that you are merely a recipient of grace upon grace, you may surrender, until you are called to surrender again in the future, more deeply. And on it goes.

So when Paul says in Philippians 3 that what he once counted as gain he now counts as σκύβαλον (dung, rubbish), he is speaking as someone who has emotionally grasped how utterly comprehensive is human failure. His credentials didn't matter, his zeal wasn't "a valiant if misguided effort," he had nothing, no ground to stand on. That's what he's saying in the passage: if anyone should have had a standing with God, a bit of a starting point from which to barter, any confidence in the flesh whatsoever, it would have been he, and he could see that it was all rubbish. Paul had nothing- except Christ, who is everything.


That recognition of our total failure to have, do, or be good -to bring anything at all to the bargaining table with God- is like a kind of death. Although we recognize it when we repent and believe in Christ, it's something we experience repeatedly in the sanctification process, part of maturing in Christ, as God burns away the dross. We believed truly then that we could not save ourselves; now we experience the fact more and more fully with each painful recognition and admission of our failure. 

If you want a god you can barter with, come to Taiwan. That's religion here.

This is yet another reason the prosperity gospel is no gospel at all. Without failure, without falling on our knees in recognition of our abject spiritual poverty, we do not learn to grow more deeply into God. God's blessings are but one way to experience Him. If we love God and not merely His blessings, we must continue down the path of self-abnegation that sometimes comes only with pain and brokenness. There is no promise to name and claim which skips over the valley of the shadow of death.


But the joy grows, if we are willing to surrender. When in the deep darkness of our new awareness of utter failure the door of grace opens, leading further up and further in, we become more and more willing to grasp the offered hand.To reject it either in pride or despair leads only to bitterness and fruitlessness in the Christian life; yet more fully and painfully aware of our failure, yet refusing to let His grace heal us that much more deeply. Instead we must be recklessly humble, casting aside the reasonable-sounding temptation to reject the gracious consolation of the one who allowed the pain. Bow and worship instead, for it was His pain which earned our grace.