An INTP on the Mission Field: Stuck in a Rut - Which Wheel needs a Branch?

Thanks for your Comments:

I have been encouraged by the positive comments some people have been leaving on earlier posts. It turns out there isn't much online for Christian INTPs. But yes, we do exist, and no, being creatures of logic doesn't mean we can't be believers in a God the worship of whom, given His existence, is not only logical, but the only sane course of action. Everything rides on the question of whether you first assume God, or first assume No-God; logic will take you in two different directions from that point, but to stick with the second assumption you must close your eyes to wider reality (general revelation), dismiss the faith of all believers throughout history along with the testimony of Christian scripture (special revelation), and reject any instances of God doing unusual things in your life to suggest His existence. Following up on any one of those would bring one to the point where logic suggested atheism was untenable, and one would either need to flee to the refuge of agnosticism or follow the journey of evidence and faith to its conclusion, as many atheists in history have in fact done. (C.S.Lewis being an obvious high profile example, but there are others)

Also, though some cast aspersion on the Myers-Briggs test for being "unscientific," etc, it has turned out to be a very helpful thing in the internet age, in that all of us people who are a certain way now have a name for ourselves and can find each other. Yes we all have our individual differences, but when someone is describing themselves in the context of being an INTP and you say to yourself, "Yes, exactly, so I'm not the only one!" then you know you have something of value in a categorization that allows that to happen. And I suspect it is not only INTPs who have that kind of experience.

1. Spinning our Wheels

Being both intuitive and logical types, INTPs are very capable of taking information from a wide variety of sources and suddenly arriving at valuable insights or conclusions on topics that may not be obviously related to the source material.

So, when confronted with a challenge in life, we tend to try to pull from our collection of data and observations and intuit a solution to it. Finding a creative solution which makes an apparently difficult problem simple is very fun, if nothing else, and feeling that every situation is both similar to others and unique in its own way, I tend to not want to apply a "standard" solution but either customize it to fit the particular context, or come up with an entirely new approach altogether. (This is somewhat useful on the mission field, since a lot of problems one encounters really are unique, or previous solutions are unusable because what worked in the past for a particular set of people in a particular context isn't a viable solution for here and now)

There are two weaknesses that arise from our intuitive problem-solving tendencies, however.

A. Being satisfied with a theoretical solution

The first is well known, and not limited only to INTPs; the idea that once a solution has been arrived at, the actual doing of it is left as an exercise for the interested student. You may have heard the joke about the three academics (usually a physicist, an engineer, and a mathematician) who, caught in a fire, all figure out how to escape, but one dies because having solved the problem of how to put out the fire he considers himself successful. Yet the fire still rages, despite a perfectly good solution now existing.

INTPs can fall into the same trap: I have on multiple occasions felt out of shape, and began googling exercise plans, seeking to get behind this or that plan and understand an "essential" workout might be in terms of an average human body, and thus arrive at the most efficient workout in terms of not needing to spend a lot of time on it but seeing adequate results (living in our heads, perhaps some of us begrudge our body the proper maintenance time it requires). But having done so, less than half of the time did I actually make an effort to put that basic, efficient exercise plan into action. The fact that I'd located and grasped the core physiological principles required for a brief and efficient workout seemed like winning half the battle, when it was really only a preparation for a battle I never ended up fighting.

The knowing of a thing is not the doing of it, and the essence of a workout is not understanding the essence of a workout, it's doing the workout, imperfectly and when you don't feel like it, over and over. (Something I'm terrible at, because I want to to do everything "in the flow" and workouts rarely start with that feeling and only sometimes end up achieving it)

Either way, whether the problem is academic, or concerns our work, our life, our interpersonal relationships, or all of the above, the result is that we remain where we are, and don't move forward.

B. Getting trapped in a vicious cycle

The other problem, and a nastier one, is when we are unable to quickly intuit a creative solution to a problem, and began to fixate on it. We assume there is some missing piece of information which, if put into the mix, would recalibrate everything and a solution would magically emerge as it so often does. And when that happens it's a beautiful feeling, but often it simply doesn't. (It especially doesn't when it's an interpersonal problem.)

Like a car with tires in the mud, in that situation throwing more mental resources at the problem, focusing more intensely on it, often only makes things worse. The problem begins to loom large in our psyche, and though some INTPs might do their best thinking under stress, I suspect for many of us this is not the case. For those of us prone to getting mentally flustered, the effort thrown at figuring out a problem might become more or less totally unproductive, just churning processor cycles, spinning our wheels fruitlessly.

We might try to thrust the problem aside, to think about other things, but it's there, like a dead mouse under a hard-to-move bookshelf, sending a vague odor that makes us feel guilty for not solving the issue but not guilty enough to start taking all the books out of the shelves just to get at the rodent corpse. And like a bad odor, the-problem-we-can't-figure-out will taint our mental life if we let it run unabated.

As before, we can pretend to ignore the problem while subconsciously continuing to be stressed about it, or we can obsess over it, but either way we are stuck.

2. Actually Pragmatic Lateral Thinking

Perhaps I am simply a wimpy example of an INTP, but sometimes in these situations I find myself wishing or hoping I might simply find a way around the problem. Being clever and creative, I am quite good at this, but in the end the one I'm outsmarting is myself. The problems that bring us INTPs up short and without solutions are precisely those kinds of problems that we have to figure out how to solve to continue achieving personal growth. And if our eternal side project is not personal growth but, somewhat relentlessly, the pursuit of the theory of everything and how its all related to itself, we will find that personal growth actually serves this objective as well. (We can perceive more standing on higher ground)

Wanting to get in better shape, I once agreed to a friendly bench-pressing competition with some coworkers, back when I was a programmer. I started out pretty weak, and never got to impressive weights, but was pleased after a while to be benching 110% of my bodyweight. At that point I hit a frustrating plateau, where more effort on the bench seemed not to translate into more results. After talking to more experienced lifters, I began to realize that, as someone who hadn't been doing this long, nor being particularly robust, I needed to strengthen my whole body before my bench started improving again. I'd maxed out my short-term capabilities, and needed to grow stronger overall before more effort in a particular exercise was going to be effective.

Very often, for INTPs (or anyone), we need to stop pushing forward obsessively and do some lateral thinking. Lateral thinking should be a strongpoint of INTPs, so it's a bit ironic that we rarely follow that logic when it comes to our own lives.

For a more specific example, in studying Chinese I was finding myself hitting a plateau, or even losing confidence with the level of Chinese I had already attained. I tried berating myself, tried concentrating harder, nothing helped significantly. But then I started taking vitamins due to other health issues, and suddenly the problem resolved itself, and I felt like I'd suddenly remembered to release the emergency brake. My mental cloudiness was seemingly the result of a nutrient deficiency. Thinking harder didn't help at all, but a little vitamin pill after lunch with some magnesium helped considerably.


[N.B. If you have the gift of a higher abstract level of self-awareness, as I suspect INTPs typically do, then you are already ahead of the game because you are capable of a high level of metamotivation; the ability to regulate and coordinate your behavior in support of long-term goals. There is no inherent conflict between this tendency and your walk with God, it simply means you have to submit yourself to God very intentionally to ensure you are not undermining your walk with God with self-serving goals. (Maslow was a smart man, but his theory is inherently flawed since he rejects the idea of a sin nature) High levels of self-actualization are something like a human version of sanctification, and thus while it is a good thing, it should never be confused with what only the Spirit can work in us, nor given de facto priority since it's something we can control. I'm seeing a lot of confusion of the two lately from the squishier side of evangelicalism, and it's as dangerous to those who are attracted to ideas like the power of positive thinking as it is annoying to those of us who find solace in Ecclesiastes.]

3. Don't just lower a Window; Get out, Look at the Car, and Figure out which Wheel needs a Branch thrown under it for Traction

So, INTP or not, if you find yourself in a wheels-spinning-in-the-mud situation, don't just keep mashing the accelerator. Even if you are blessed with a mental V10, no traction means you're not going anywhere. In the worst case, you'll just run out of gas or set your tires on fire. Now, it's pretty common to suggest "you just need to shift your focus," but I'm not just talking about taking a walk or doing something random to distract yourself. I don't know about you, but I can't fool myself with that kind of thing, I'll just obsess over my problems on my walk too, etc. Or if I successfully distract myself during the nice walk, the problems wait patiently until the evening grows late, to arrive just in time to induce insomnia.

Instead, think laterally with regards to your own life, and be prepared to make changes. If you find yourself unable to rise to a particular challenge, your problem may not be a lack of mental effort or ability. Take a look at your current condition of life instead. One or more of your wheels aren't getting traction, which means your mind is stuck in a rut too, until everything gets moving again.

Emotional and mental and physical health are all tied together, and spiritual health affects all of these as well. Whether you are a dichotomist (body, soul) or trichotomist (body, soul, spirit) or octochotomist (who knows), humans were created with a body and meant to have one. Our existence after death as spirits awaiting final judgement and the new beginning of all things (whether in glory or in shame, with God or having rejected Him and existing in isolation from Him, which truly is hell), is actually an artificial and temporary state of affairs. In the new earth we will have bodies, just as Christ did. So while quotes like "You don't have a soul, you are a soul; you have a body." which C.S.Lewis never said, are popular, in one sense they are not biblical, or at least they are too short-sighted. You will only temporarily not have a body; the eternal plan is that you will have a glorious one.

We are designed to function as a unified whole. So for INTPs, who tend to ponder and throw their mental circuitry at every problem, when we get stuck in a rut, or up against problems we can't think our way out of, the problem might not lie in a failure of thinking at all. Look for weaknesses in other wheels. Where is the slippage occurring? Get some traction there, and you may find everything else begins to move forward.

Chinese Compliments: Peeling the Cultural Onion

"A Culture is like an Onion!"

The First Layer: Appreciation ("Your Chinese is so good!")

As I continue to live and serve in Taiwan, certain parts of Taiwanese culture I learned at the beginning reveal themselves to be more complicated than they first appeared.

Years ago, during my previous stay in Taiwan, I felt like Taiwanese people were very generous with compliments. People often commented at how I was good at using chopsticks, how my Chinese was impressive, etc. I felt it was just a way to be polite, especially to a guest in their country.

Another missionary commented once that if your Chinese gets really good, you stop getting compliments. His theory was that people stopped thinking of you as struggling to speak the language and needing encouragement, and simply focused on communicating with you, or even that if your Chinese was really good, they would start comparing you to themselves or other native speakers and not feel excessive praise was warranted.

The Second Layer: Realization ("Oh, it's Just Saving Face")

He may have been right, but I think there is something else in play as well. As I think back on the times I've been complimented, sticking to the examples of using chopsticks and speaking Chinese, there are usually two special situations where someone will most frequently offer a compliment (obviously in many parts of the world if you do something well someone might notice and compliment you on it; I am speaking of situations where cultural factors are more obviously at play):

1) You are a foreign stranger
Compared against the average stereotype of a Westerner, any 'waiguoren' in Taiwan who can use chopsticks without dropping things all the time, and speak even a few intelligible sentences in Mandarin, is already ahead of the curve. The bar is typically very low for anyone who "looks like a foreigner" (ethnically non-Asian based on appearance), so you get a free chance to fly high over it and impress someone the first time you meet them. After that they know you, and will probably tone down the compliments as they now expect it from you.

2) You fumbled
As Westerners the first example makes sense. Meeting someone at your work for the first time and witnessing they're fluent in Mongolian or skilled at origami, a compliment might come reflexively. It might not be so special in Mongolia, or Japan, but outside of those countries, and if they aren't from there, it's the kind of accomplishment that naturally garners some praise.

But in this second example of when people compliment you in Taiwan we encounter some significant cultural differences. For me, it began with noticing a funny discrepancy in the times I got compliments, in that often I felt like it came not at a time when I felt particularly fluent in Mandarin or adept at chopsticks, but when I was struggling. I might almost drop a piece of food, or barely manage to get my brain and mouth in sync to get all the right words out to express myself, and it's right then that someone smiles and compliments me on how good my chopstick skills are, or how good I am at speaking Chinese.

It confused me until I remembered the idea of "saving face" in Chinese culture. A lot of politeness that adults show to each other in Taiwan revolves around helping each other to "save face." It's an inheritance from the honor/shame aspect of Chinese culture which is still strongly influential in Taiwan. Saving face can either be positive (something done or said to "give face" to someone, honoring them), or negative (avoiding words or actions that would cause someone to lose face, or incur public dishonor).

Sometimes that looks like what we're familiar with in the West, trying to help someone get through an awkward moment gracefully to spare them embarrassment, or complimenting them in front of others to build them up, but sometimes it can happen in ways that are surprising, or sometimes even irritating, if one doesn't take the extra mental step of remembering what's going on behind the scenes.

[The Books aren't Always Right: While studying up on Chinese culture before coming to Taiwan, I read in a culture book on the topic of saving face that it was normal for people to not react when something was dropped and broken, and not come to help someone pick up what they dropped, in an effort to save them face and pretend they hadn't done anything potentially embarrassing. I can say from experience that neither of these scenarios are so extreme in Taiwan: a number of people will turn around to look if a dish is dropped loudly in a restaurant (but some will smile reflexively, to cover the embarrassment), and someone will often run to help a person who has dropped things, the one being helped typically thanking them profusely. I don't know if the mainland is different, or if that describes Chinese culture decades ago, but rubberneckers are alive and well in any part of the world I've visited thus far...]

So in the case of compliments, then, they are often not compliments per se, but a polite way to get past the awkwardness of a mistake or struggle in performance.

The Third Layer: Understanding ("I Guess that Actually Makes Sense")

Having realized this, I was tempted to be vaguely resentful: so in the end people were not "really" complimenting me, in fact they were doing something nearly the opposite--acknowledging that I'd messed up. From a Western perspective, it's less like an acknowledgement of merit, and more like whipping out febreeze and spraying it around in the awkward silence after someone has a bout of flatulence: in a sense it magnifies exactly the embarrassment the gesture was meant to cover/relieve.

In Chinese culture, however, there is a tacit collective understanding that mistakes or failings which everyone is willing to overlook or graciously cover for are like the tree that falls in the woods with no one around to hear it. No ears, no sound-no acknowledgement, no shame. Everyone covers for each other, if you have a good relationship with them, and the problems don't exist. (Which is one way that sometimes in East Asian cultures small problems can become enormous issues, but that's a topic for a different post)

A similar situation arises with making cultural mistakes, something I blogged about previously. While I typically want to be told when I commit a cultural faux pas, so that I can avoid making the same mistake next time, my friends might try to help me save face by not saying anything. We therefore have a somewhat humorous impasse: to me, being a good friend is telling me what everyone else already knows so I don't keep acting improperly and being the only one who doesn't know it, and to them, being a good friend means pretending I didn't do anything wrong so that it's not awkward. (Friends who understand you are trying to be a student of the culture and are good at explaining those things are very valuable)

This also explains the observation at the beginning, that as one's Chinese improves, the number of compliments you receive for it diminishes. You don't need as many compliments, because you are making fewer mistakes! Like so many things, it only seems counterintuitive until you understand the reasons behind it.

The Fourth Layer: Responding in Kind ("Do Unto Others...")

In the end, when one begins to become more familiar with the reasons behind the way people act, there is always a choice to be made. You can judge the cultural habit, and decide whether you approve or disapprove of it, or you can judge the motive behind it. In this case, trying to help you save face is definitely a friendly action. It's following the Golden Rule; what they would want you to do for them, they are doing for you. And that's the most you can ask of anyone.

So, one reaches a deeper layer of the cultural onion: learning to understand why people do what they do, and appreciating the good motives behind the action. Then instead of confusion, stress, or resentment, there is gratitude. That is also a necessary step to reaching the next layer down: learning how to help others save face, but doing so in a way that not only corresponds to the culture, but to the often counter-cultural teachings of Christ.

Think about the excruciating extent to which Jesus, as an honored teacher, let alone the Son of God, willingly lost face, allowing Himself to be publicly humiliated and dishonored as far as humanly possible, out of His love for us. 

As He taught us, we must often, rather than saving face, turn the other cheek.

"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.

"God isn't Fixing This"

Does God Care? 

After yet another grievous shooting, the NY Daily News is releasing a controversial cover, proclaiming in plus-sized font "God isn't fixing this." Clearly this is meant as a rebuke to those who claim "their prayers are with the victims" yet don't do the things the NY Daily News feels they should in order to reduce gun crime. I'm not interested in the politics here, let alone the grandstanding. "He who sits in the heaven laughs," not at the plight of humanity, but at those who would mock Him or set themselves against His authority. More interesting is that scripture clearly both states that the wicked will receive what they deserve, and has the Psalmist crying out asking God why that doesn't seem to be happening.

For the issue at hand, it suffices to say that as Christians we know men are sinful by nature, and are not corrupted by the tools around them. Perhaps we should investigate the breakdown of the family, the increasingly nihilistic worldview poured into the minds of our children, and a society become so antagonistic to human nature that mass percentages of people feel it necessary to be on antidepressants, before we start blaming tubes of metal for magically corrupting humans that secular society supposes are inherently neutral or even inherently good.

But what I'm interested in here is their intentionally provocative claim. Is God really doing nothing? Is He indifferent to humans killing each other, or is He powerless to interfere in our free will? This is often posed as an unanswerable question (Does God lack the will to stop evil, in which case He is not good, or the ability to stop it, in which case He is not great), but actually there is a perfectly good answer, that can be expressed in various ways.

So then, if God does care, and He is powerful enough to act, then...

Why God Doesn't Stop Evil or Fix the World (My personal analogy)

Ancient Chinese weaponry: one iron and two bronze swords

A Bit about Bronze

In Taipei, there is a fascinating museum of Chinese antiquities. Called the "National Palace Museum," some of China's great cultural treasures are stored there, brought by the nationalists both to hang on to them and ostensibly to keep them from being destroyed by the communists, for whom desecrating symbols of class oppression was a popular pastime and sometimes required symbolic act of allegiance.

In this museum you can see everything from very ancient jade wheels to the gold and pearl finial topping an Emperor's crown, to a piece of stone shaped exactly like a piece of pork and the most famous of all, the jade cabbage. (The food culture here goes back a very long way)

Another thing you can see are ancient bronze weaponry: swords, spear points, etc.

Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. A game-changing discovery of antiquity, it afforded its users an advantage over those using merely copper weapons, and remained popular even well after iron weapons were developed.

Among the various reasons that iron weapons -initially inferior to their well-developed bronze counterparts- superseded them, was due to cost issues. Once iron-working was developed, the abundant iron ore meant iron weapons were cheaper than bronze, which required the importation of tin.

Why couldn't you just get tin from used bronze weapons? Because it doesn't work that way. To separate metals once they have been alloyed is an expensive and complicated process, and at least to my knowledge there was no way to do this on a large scale (possibly at all).

Even today, with complicated procedures that can do it, it's obvious that to remove the tin from a bronze weapon destroys the weapon for all practical purposes.

Alloyed with Sin

This world was made good. Humans, in choosing to sin and step outside of God's will for them, not only destroyed their own spiritual life, but wrecked up the world too, meant as a beautiful home for people living in harmony with God and each other. Sin is not evil varnish, it is a flaw that goes to the core of people and the world. To remove it, you cannot strip it off, you cannot cut it off like a frostbitten finger; to get rid of the sin, the thing once pure and now an alloy of itself and sin must be unmade.

This is true of both of us and the world. To be made new, as Christ makes all things new, we must first be Unmade. Dying that we shall live; baptism is the earthly acting out of this truth, but then for the rest of our lives we must be melted down, put into the fiery furnace so that God may skim off the dross, and coming out each time more pure. This is sanctification.

While Christians are typically aware of this, I find that many are unaware that the world is in an analogous situation. We aren't fallen people in an unfallen world, we brought the world down with us. It too must be unmade and cleansed from the corruption of sin, but that will be the end.

"Fixing" the alloy of sin. True gold fears no fire; don't be dross.

One Day

When tin is removed from the bronze sword, the sword is no more. When sin is removed from this world, the world will be no more. Suffering and injustice will be judged and come to an end, but so will everything else.

I think what people are really asking is more like: "Why doesn't God take all the bad parts out of the world and leave the good parts?" That question is easy:
1) He made the world without any bad parts, but free will meant we could screw that up, and we did
2) Outside of Christ, you are a bad part that would be taken out.
3) He's giving everyone a chance to choose His side before he does exactly what you are suggesting

The fiery end that Peter speaks of (2 Peter 3) will happen, and a new heaven and new earth will be made including all that was pure from the last one. There's a reason that day is spoken of both with hope and with respectful fear; when it happens, it is final. The beginning spoken of in Genesis has its ending in Revelation, and what happens after that is part of the next book.  Hope your name is in it, or rejoice if you know it is.

Until then, as Peter speaks of in that same passages, that God is delaying in destroying the world to burn the sin out is a mercy to those who still have a chance to choose Him, and neither weakness nor toleration of sin on His part. If the end came now, there would be no more suffering, but no longer any opportunity to repent while there is still time.

So we pray: Come Lord Jesus. But increasingly I find myself saying "but not just yet"--I have too many friends who may yet choose God before the end, and I still hope to see it. Ending the suffering in the world today means denying them of that chance, forever.

Get Moving I - Holding the Line vs. Advancing the Kingdom

"Hold the Line" or "Advance the Kingdom"?

How do we in the Church balance a responsibility to "hold the line"--for doctrinal purity within churches, for resisting the decay in the culture outside of them, etc.-- with the responsibility of following the Great Commission? The first implies a defensive, static position, while the second is outwardly focused and concerned with advancing the spiritual kingdom of God on earth.

It would seem the two are in conflict, and while the idea of "missional"churches, and the ramifications of it, solves some of the problems, in this post I want to suggest a lot could be improved by simply changing the way Christians think about the problem, with a little help from an analysis of tactics strategy then offer a few steps to getting back into the battle where it's actually being fought.
First, a look at some the related issues:

1. Conservatism

The first issue I want to address is Conservatism. Most people identify this with political conservatism, but the cultural phenomenon of conservatism in America is broader than politics. I strongly believe one problem in the American evangelical church (and perhaps others) is that of conservatism, again not politically but as an approach to life and ministry and "being the Church."

A reckless and overly aggressive attitude Church-wide would of course be a problem, but as per Screwtape and the people wielding fire extinguishers in a flood, it does not seem to be the special problem of our time to be primarily guarded against. On the contrary, there seems to be a default tendency to avoid action because of uncertainty, lack of clear direction, and the desire to avoid potentially costly failures. This kind of reflexive conservatism, a fear of moving lest we move wrong, actually hinders the Church's work a great deal. If "don't rock the boat," "be careful," "don't make people uncomfortable," "don't go overboard," "we'll think about it (please go away)," is the default attitude in those churches which most revere and promote careful attention to scriptural truth, it's no wonder that around the world it is not conservative and evangelical but charismatic churches which are seeing most of the rapid growth.

In the US, in this new era which began roughly with 9/11, the cultural situation looks different for millennials. They are not fighting to conserve, but either to carve out stable lives in an increasingly unstable culture, if they're self-motivated, or simply remain in their current situation, if they're not. The system of comparative stability inherited by previous generations has finally begun to break down, and so conservatism is less appropriate than building anew, something which is more suited to weather the dark times that seem to be coming and the instability that is already becoming normal.

So my contention with regard to conservatism and the Church is that we may have found ourselves in the position of making great efforts to keep alive a beloved, mighty oak whose roots are all but dead, but which is still covered in acorns each year. I believe we should be less concerned with keeping the old tree going another year than with planting those acorns as fast as we can. Take pride, if you must, not in the grand old oak, but in fields of new saplings. Some won't grow into strong, healthy trees, but many will.
Now is not exactly the time to be conservative, then; we need to be active, intentional, and busily preparing for the future more than regretting what we've lost or fearing change we can't stop anyway.

2. Zeal vs. Fear

That brings us to the second issue. Continuing the oak tree analogy, despite the need for a new forest, there are those who for various reasons are very ambivalent about the work of planting new trees to begin with. In the parable of the wheat and the tares, instead of accepting the regretful loss of a few healthy wheat sprouts as an acceptable exchange for getting rid of those invasive weeds, his landowner commands that they be allowed to grow up together. The point is not a flawless field, the point is the wheat. I believe we may be in a situation where in many conservative evangelical churches today people are perplexed with a small and shrinking harvest but nevertheless point with pride to our immaculate church fields, where all our time and effort has gone into making sure all the weeds are eradicated before any new seed is put out. (On the other hand, many churches avoid even mentioning what happens to weeds at the harvest, for fear any of them might take offense)

Planting more churches, spreading the gospel actively (while none of these things are illegal yet)... all these things engage us in the harvest work we are called to as a Church. It may even be that we should be giving thanks for this season; not as a fearful time of corrosion of the Church's cultural influence, but as a time when overgrown fields everywhere are waiting to be planted and harvested, and we can simply rise up and do so. (That especially while we can see to the East, smoke rising off burning fields.)

So we should plant with zeal while we can, advancing into new fields and not spending all our energy in "holding the line" against the influence of weeds from the next field over. Maybe one field even gets slightly overrun and in need of serious attention, but in the mean time we have planted four new ones, and can now return and attend to it. If Paul had spent his whole life in Antioch to make sure that church stayed perfect, we wouldn't have a global Church today; our times are more like Acts than we know.

3. There are Two Lines

It's clear, then, that we can neither be apathetic about holding the line of truth with regards to what is taught and preached in our churches, nor lax in our efforts to advance the kingdom by planting more churches and taking the gospel into our communities. Both things must be attended to, and how can we do that, with churches full of "attendees" plus a small core of already over-worked volunteers?
It may be that in this decade, we need to overthrow the 80-20 (or even 90-10) rule; if the church is to survive, thrive and do the work it's called to do, it cannot be primarily composed of Christians who consider showing up regularly on Sunday mornings to be the majority of their Christian duty.
Even a shift to a third of church-goers deciding they weren't content to simply sit and listen, but demanded to be involved in taking what they learned and putting it into practice, and teaching others to do the same, would mean a massive increase in manpower and what the Church was capable of.

This dance of holding the line and advancing the kingdom is not a zero-sum game, however. More of one does not automatically mean less of the other. That is because, in reality, they are of course two different lines.

Think of a war: there is a line of battle, perhaps several, and a line further back which denotes secured territory. The line that protects doctrinal purity, that ensures our foundation remains biblical truth--that line must be held. But the line that expands out into a fallen world in need of light--that line must advance.

To win battles, both things must be happening at the same time. You must take ground, hold it, and keep it secure. You cannot take new ground by holding the line, and you cannot keep it secure by moving your troops away somewhere else.

Aha, you may say, but then they do detract from each other, because you need troops to do either the one or the other. In a physical battle that's true. In a church, it is to be hoped that some of the same people capable of recognizing and defending against false teaching are also capable of taking the gospel out into new territory. In fact, being good in one area hopefully implies one is skilled in the other as well. In a healthy church, there will be priority given to having these experienced warriors training others to walk in the same way.

Hold here or advance?

4. "The Line" vs. "Maneuver Warfare"

I think there's a better picture we can use, however, for this ongoing battle. While within the church there is absolutely a doctrinal line which cannot be compromised, perhaps in terms of engaging our culture, advancing the kingdom into our communities, the appropriate image should not be "a line" at all.

In World War I, the infamous "trenches" were lines held against the enemy, with a no man's land in between into which few could venture and return alive. Early artillery pounded, machine guns rattled, and soldiers fought to hold positions and keep from being overrun, with such horrific casualties and suffering that it shook Europe to its philosophical core.

When we talk about "culture wars," we could extend the analogy to these front lines. (I believe I've actually heard the phrase "on the front lines of the culture wars" used more than once) A lot of American Christians seem to have internalized this idea. If you understand this, it makes more sense why seemingly innocuous things like coffee cups and chicken sandwiches can become massively controversial: small things in and of themselves, they represent a feint or real thrust across the (constantly narrowing) no man's land of cultural neutrality. If not rebuffed, perhaps ground will be lost, and lost ground means a new foothold for the enemy.

A "holding the line" mentality means Christians have 1) blurred the kingdom of God and the cultural footprint of the Church (not the same thing), and 2) tacitly admitted than cultural conditions are too scary, and they are not really thinking of making progress anymore. Enemy trenches in what was, until fairly recently, neutral territory (things like "the Arts," and "the Sciences") and historically constructed largely by the Church itself, are ground so long not occupied that they have become unfamiliar anyway, and possibly dubious. (Maybe that's not ground we even want to hold. We can build our own little versions of them, over here on our side.)

But let's fast-forward to World War II now. The Germans have developed a new theory of tactics, called maneuver warfare. While the initially powerful French army, still thinking in terms of "lines," has spent vast amounts of resources and effort constructing the impressive Maginot Line, the Germans have decided that lines need not be overrun by force, when they can simply be evaded and attacked from an angle of their choosing. You may remember the history: the Germans simply used their tanks to drive around the Maginot Line and through Belgium. France fell within two months.

I have often seen the technological aspect emphasized here (the innovation of armored tanks changing warfare) but in this case the much more important thing is the core idea: "Your lines will not determine where the battle happens; we will determine that."

A Tiger Tank in occupied France.

There is a two-fold lesson here for the Church:

1. Culturally, there is no "line" to hold.
There may once have been; no longer. Forget it. Regardless of what you believe about America being founded as a Christian nation or as a secular nation with Christian influence, right now in 2015, America is "The World" (As in, "The Devil, the Flesh, and...") and we need to stop talking about "taking 'our' culture back."
Like Germany vs. France, the Enemy has not countered the influence of Christianity in the culture by drawing up an entrenched line of battle against it, he's simply driven all over the place and taken over. He owns the battleground, and already does in this world by default, until Christ's spiritual victory is made terrestrially manifest.
(That is what the Church in Europe attempted to do prematurely, by flawed, time-and-culture-bound human effort, therefore creating a "Christendom" at once as glorious as cathedrals and as miserable as serfs. God's eternal version improves on the cathedrals yet elevates His serfs above the angels. Wait for it. Trust me, you don't want a theocracy before the actual Second Coming)

Think of the times recently when the church finds itself in conflict with mainstream culture over an issue, doesn't it usually seem to be behind the times, caught off guard and trying to catch up? That's not because Christians are stupid and backward (of course some people are, inside and outside the Church, but that's always been true), and not because the gospel is irrelevant to today's culture, but because the enemy has been picking the battles, having them occur at the time and place of his choosing. It may also be due to the fact that as the culture increasingly rejected Christian values, the church increasingly retreated from culture as well, losing a sense of what the big issues are outside its protective cloister walls while we argued about worship music styles within.

2. If we sit behind a line of our own imagining, we do so merely to the Church's detriment.
Since the enemy has not confined himself to any sort of line, if we are still thinking in those terms, we are merely restricting our own actions to a failing and outdated conceptualization. Meanwhile, as mentioned above, there are acres and acres of fields, formerly full of wheat, now lying overgrown and dormant, on the other side of that line. We can either languish behind a shrinking area of cultural influence, observing which denominations and cultural institutions seem to still fall on our side, and which have "gone over" to the enemy's side, or we can discard that outdated concept and start thinking of all spirit-filled, scripture-honoring churches as individual outposts in the midst of a dark and darkening culture. The light there, if it is there, will shine more and more brightly as the storm gathers. Our goal is not to control, but illuminate; therefore it should be getting easier, not harder. As the culture increasingly teaches people we are wrong and dangerous, if we are following Christ, we will appear increasingly right and whole. People will be drawn to the Truth even having been taught to shun it.

5. A Path Out of the Trenches

So then, if we want to break out of the trenches in this so-called culture war, both because the important battles are being fought elsewhere now, and also because that's not really the battle the Church is called to fight, what do we do?

Reading this, ideas may already be occurring to you. Not radical ways to reinvent the Church, which seldom take hold widely. But simple things every Christian can begin changing in the way they look at the world, that will help them begin impacting people for Christ in their own context.

Here, I will just list a few steps to get you going.
(Points if you already recognize the reference...)

Step 1. Observe
As I have explained, some churches are still sitting behind the line of a battle which has moved elsewhere. If you're still down there, you need to get out of the trenches and find out where people are right now. Some Christians have non-churched friends and know how they think differently about life and what they do with their time, and are evangelizing over the long term by bringing scriptural truth into their lives and being good witnesses. A lot of Christians spend all their extra time on Church activities and with other Christians, however, and don't have a clear idea about what goes on in the wider culture. They've grown up in an alternate, parallel culture behind the lines. They may not know what unchurched people do, or how they think, and their attempts to reach them may be based on godly intentions but also a fair amount of ignorance.
While I never unspecifically recommend giving up ministry obligations, I can state without equivocation that if you actually don't have any friends outside of church, you are not being obedient to God in this area and need to fix that. God did not give you His love and truth for you to keep them to yourself and among those who already know Him; the Great Commission is quite clear that He intends us to let the entire world know about His offer of reconciliation, love, and life.

So try going to popular places and seeing how the majority of people in your neighborhood, community, or city spend their time. Have conversations with strangers. Do a little research about your area's demographics and neighborhoods. Equip yourself with some knowledge of what things are like in the environment in which God has placed you.

Step 2. Orient
Not a reference to the Far East where I live, but of orienting yourself. In this step, taking what you found in step 1, you combine your observations with what you already know. Pray thoughtfully about how God would have you, and if appropriate, your family too, engage the people around you for His kingdom. What are your talents and your background? Is God giving you a burden for a need that exists in your community? You don't have to strike off on your own with no experience (I don't actually recommend that), so what ministries may already exist that you can join to get more experience in that area?

Step 3. Decide
Make a decision. You may want to ask wise and experienced people you know for advice, ask friends and family to pray for you, etc. What is God leading you to do? Are you already involved in ministry and have no more time? Maybe you are called to stay there. Maybe God is calling you to ask about starting something new at your church, or maybe there's something another church is doing that's in line with what you feel drawn towards, and it's a change for you to introduce a link of cooperation between two churches. You may decide to get more training in a certain area. You may even decide to do nothing for now, and repeat steps 1 and 2.

Step 4. Act
Now the decision has been made, and it's time to get moving. You may be starting something new and need to begin gathering resources and volunteers, or be joining something already in progress. It may be a slow gradual beginning, or you may be off to a running start in a ministry with which you're already familiar. What you do is up to you and God, but I will say this: If it's successful, watch out. Progress in ministry and advancing God's kingdom puts a target on your back. Don't let fear slow you down, but be alert and pray. Old temptations may return, or new ones may arise. People who previously seemed friendly may suddenly seem like they are putting obstacles in your way, or even jealous of your progress. On the other hand, other people will almost certainly appear as unexpected help and blessings.
When something great happens, write it down. (I'm guilty of not doing this enough) When difficult times come later, you can remind yourself of what God has done.

"Going over the top"... out of the trenches and into combat

That's all I've got for now. I'm tired of the nit-picking debates on who exactly said what appropriately and non-offensively, tired of the gloom-and-doom talk of our declining culture; it's time we stopped focusing on what we can't change and begin focusing on what we definitely can, in whatever context God has placed us.

An INTP on the Mission Field: Periods of Low Energy

On the mission field, one is continuously exerting social, mental, and often physical energy, not to mention carrying the spiritual burdens of the ministry. This extra strain, brought on by the non-native cultural context and the stressful, no-such-thing-as-finished nature of the work, can sometimes push our natural highs higher, but more often drags the natural lows lower, or makes it more difficult to rise back out of them. In this post, I want to look at the high/low energy phenomenon that INTPs (and everyone else, to varying extents) experience, and what can be done about those lows which can be so damaging for INTPs.

Highs and Lows

A well-known tendency of INTPs is to move through cycles of high-productivity and creativity, then low-energy and depression. In the "high" periods, we are likely to experience what is called Flow-- that channeled focus which results in works of great skill and/or creativity beyond one's normal performance. In the "low" periods that inevitably follow, however, we may sink into a depressed state or general lethargy, in which there can be a sense that more ground is lost than was gained during the productive streak that preceded it.

If you are not an INTP, think Sherlock Holmes: When he's Up, Sherlock is scintillatingly brilliant, full of restless energy, and everyone else is trying to keep up and being left far behind. But when he's Down, he is irritable, lethargic, and world-weary to the point that in the books (and some screen adaptations) he turns to small doses of cocaine to liven up his unbearable ennui, listlessness, and despondency. (Cocaine was not an illegal controlled substance when the original stories were written, but Watson still advises him to avoid it)

That's a hyperbolic literary example, but a lot of INTPs deal with a similar cycle on a lesser scale. When present, this high-and-lowing is very inconvenient for most adults, with jobs and lives and time that waits for no man's unfortunate tendency to cycle up and down with no real way to predict when the next phase will hit. However, the weaknesses that accompany one's personality are exactly that: weaknesses, which adversely affect our performance, ministry, and even quality of life if left unchecked. For INTPs, it's weakness which can't simply be ignored. (Some have suggested low energy spells are a coping mechanism for draining the excess energy/overstimulation we get from social interaction, but that's more connected to introversion than the up-down cycle which I'm describing)

Sometimes INTPs get stuck here. Hopefully the tips below
will help you get recharged, or stop the draining where it starts

The Downside of being Down

I have observed the up/down tendency in myself repeatedly, and frankly I'm sick of it; I don't see any reason why when normal people are moving along as they generally do, I suddenly go from energetic creativity to blank-brained exhaustion and want to find a rock to hide under and play tower defense games and eat cookies for a few days, avoiding excessive movement and definitely any social interaction.

But I can think whatever I want about it; just as being an INTP comes with unique positives, it also comes with strong downsides, and this is one of them, whether I like it or not. (What I choose to do when confronted with them is another thing; more on that below)

But as a missionary (and as a human being, for that matter), the low energy cycles are not merely inconvenient and undesirable, since they affect my quality of life and ministry as well. In a foreign culture, to be socially engaged always takes more energy. As an introvert, such engagement is already costly in terms of social energy, and doing it in my second language, with only a tenuous grasp of the underlying social mores and structures that lead to the observable behavior, the cost is much higher. This means the efforts I make to get more plugged into the culture, meet more people, expand the scope of our outreach ministries, etc., all begin to slowly lose ground when I can't gather enough social energy to successful continue doing all that. (If that sounds like I'm saying missions is best left to extroverts who will naturally not struggle quite as much with this, I'm not. Both introverts and extroverts have necessary roles to play in global missions, and neither are limited to certain kinds of roles.)

On the other hand, especially as a missionary, social activities are a large part of my ministry. I can't share the gospel with people if I don't meet them. (I've done it online before, but even that was usually preceded by knowing the person through repeated social engagements prior to the conversation) I can't disciple people if I don't spend time with them. I can't practice Chinese effectively if I don't meet with them. The list goes on.

Thus, depleting the energy I draw on for social stuff then leads to a direct diminishing of what I'm able to accomplish in my ministry, which contributes to the feeling that I'm not accomplishing anything (because that's partly true), which feeds back into the depressive thoughts that accompany the low energy state, producing an extended/worsened low which can go on for quite some time, especially if the weather stays gloomy.

Note: If this seems weak or whiny to you, think of it in terms of bench-pressing: if you're already struggling, regardless of what's on the bar, slapping a "harmless little" extra 10lb weight on each side could easily have you dropping it all straight onto your chest. (Especially since INTPs often don't have anyone who "gets it" to spot for them, and are trying to bench on their own, so to speak)
It's the same way when you're already in a low: even a couple days of gloomy weather or the early darkness of the cold months can add to the weight already on one's spirit in a way that wouldn't be a big problem normally.

People are a union of mind, body, and spirit. (I'm not espousing a particular trichotomous or dichotomous view here, just bringing up the mental, physical, and spiritual aspects of life) When one these components of our being is having issues, the other two inevitably are affected. This is true of all people (sadly often acknowledged in the theoretical sense, but practically speaking still ignored). But being so aware of our mental state, INTPs are especially equipped to notice how the one affects the others, though we may forget it works the other way around too.

Lows therefore do not merely cause one to "feel" tired and lethargic, but the symptoms are very real in one's body. Weight gain (possibly loss, for those who also lose their appetite during those times), poor sleep (despite feeling tired all the time), lack of any motivation to work out or even leave the house- all these things are not only symptoms of a low, but can prolong it. The converse may also be true; the mental/emotional low may be caused or encouraged by physical deficiencies.

The same is true of our spiritual selves as well; we can't always be "on fire," and will go through dark valleys and quietly restful periods as well, but a prolonged low can lead to listlessness, numbness, and dry periods in our spiritual lives too.

Tactics for Low Energy Periods:

So if these low energy periods are a natural tendency of our personality type, but also very problematic, how best to proceed in mitigating the damage? Can we overcome them entirely?

I suspect we can never overcome the tendency itself, as it's rooted in the strength and liveliness of the world in our minds, but we can go a long way towards shoring up this weakness, to the extent that it becomes a nuisance to be guarded against rather than a continual ongoing problem we're stuck inside.

I can begin with an example from my experience here: In learning Chinese over the longer term, I have found that the best time to understand my progress is not the occasional high points: throwing out a chengyu (4 character idiom) at exactly the right time and getting praise from my local coworkers, but rather, on those days when I didn't sleep well or have caught whatever 24-hour virus is going around the metro system and don't seem to have two brain cells to spare for speaking more than my baseline Chinese. On those days, has my worst Chinese improved over my worst Chinese a month ago? If so, then I have improved. Measuring from the lows gives you a far better sense of how much your baseline has improved than measuring the peaks, which are heavily dependent on circumstances.

So it's the same for low energy days. When I first arrived here long term, just making it through the day and feeling like I was still okay with life in Taiwan and how the ministry was going (as opposed to visions of impending failure--don't laugh, I suspect church planters all have those, and INTPs are especially plagued with them) seemed like a minor victory, as I was going through longer-term culture shock and the more stressful adjustment period. Now, into my second year here, I demand at least some level of productivity from myself even on the lowest days. If I can't run towards a goal I walk towards it, or maybe even trudge, but at least by the end of the day I've gotten closer. A paragraph of my novel is not much compared to the rare days I sit down and crank out a chapter or more, but it's a paragraph closer to being finished that wasn't there before.

Staying Productive

Since church-planting is a 24/7 but not strictly 9-5 occupation (there are mostly-free days and also 18-hours-of-constant-work days, like a lot of other non-desk-job occupations), to-do lists are helpful for me on those days that aren't busy with ministry. Lists are not for everyone, but I have been compiling them more consistently lately and making a goal of getting at least a few boxes checked off each day makes the day not feel wasted if I do rest more than usual. Last year I seemed to need a lot of extra rest as my brain tried to process all the cultural newness at INTP levels of multilayered depth, comparing it to all my previously assimilated information about our world and updating lots of things as necessary. (It's been better this year.)

Regardless of your occupational schedule, Perfectionism and Procrastination are a lethal duo, and both can raise their ugly heads on low energy days, preventing you from starting anything because you don't feel able to finish it "properly." For me, dividing up the responsibilities into chunks that I can tackle is like traction on the wheels of productivity, it gets me started again. It also helps avoid the situation where a day feels busy and productive but by the end of the day you mysteriously don't seem to have accomplished much; keeping track of what you actually did reveals that sometimes restful days are actually more productive.

Sleep

Overall, recognizing the exhaustion, mental and physical, is there, but that at the same time you got some good work done, can pull you right out of a low energy spell and back at least into the normal swing of things. Normal tiredness from work you got done or even a good workout is one of your best friends in this situation, both for shaking off the weary spell and also for healthy sleep.

If you are in a low energy period and therefore took a day to rest, you may not be tired by the time night rolls around either, and will almost certainly have trouble sleeping. (Or you're like me, an inveterate night owl who perks up once the sun sets)

Though it's never a good idea to skip a night's sleep, I would almost recommend doing that if you find yourself stuck in a poor sleeping pattern, in order to reset it. I've done it before and it works for me. It probably doesn't work at all for some people, or your career may be such that missing a night's sleep would make the next day unsafe. I'm certainly not advising that, but a cycle of poor sleep can contribute to getting stuck in a low energy pattern and can certainly prolong it by days, so ending it one way or another should be a priority unless you are one of those cool people who don't need as much sleep as the rest of us. (Or you might think you are, until the long term health effects set in)

Hot > Cold

Sometimes a kind of righteous anger can be helpful in dispelling or even preventing low spells as well. Anger has been treated like an inherent sin by a lot of people lately, but I think we need to look closely at what scripture says about anger. Anger is an emotional reaction just like happiness or sadness. None of those are sinful. What we do with all of them can be sinful, however, and a look at scripture suggests that anger is a more "dangerous" emotion and we don't want to be in the habit of stirring it up in ourselves, or being an "angry person." Happiness may lead to flippancy, sadness can lead to wallowing, but anger leads to rage rather naturally. That's why it's often depicted as a fire; once it catches, it tends to spread.

So the Bible says to avoid anger and malice, Galatians 5 lists "fits of anger" as one of the works of the flesh, and wrath is one of the seven deadly sins. But Jesus is reported as feeling anger on various occasions as well. He did not sin in His anger, and neither should we. His anger was directed towards the proper objects as well, as should ours. I don't want to derail this post on a discussion of anger, but personally I think an anger problem is like a drinking problem. It can be cultivated, encouraged, and become addictive, until the person stirs up anger in themselves just to get that feeling. But if you can be filled with the love of Christ and at the same time feel anger towards sin or wrongness, in yourself or others, and not sin in the way you express that anger, then the anger may in some cases be the only appropriate reaction. We should be angry at the things that anger God. (Remembering that He reserves wrathful judgment for Himself only, that's not ours to dish out on those we personally deem deserving)

So when I feel despair and listlessness seeping in like cold fog, a flare of righteous anger can sometimes dispel it immediately. I know my own tendency to sink into depression well enough that I recognize it coming. Whereas in the past I may have said "well, here we go again," and let the icy tendrils sink in, lately I find myself saying "you know what, not today. Shove off." (This has become increasingly doable the more I focus on eating well and getting into shape, going back to what I mentioned before about the mind-body-spirit connection we can't ignore as rational, spiritual, but physical creatures)

Various

Other suggestions I found around the web were mostly diet/lifestyle related:
1. Eat less carbs, more protein  (I've already been doing this and it does help.)
2. Get in shape (Yes)
3. Focus on sleep consistency more than just how many hours (this is nearly impossible for me)
4. Eat well in general (plentiful nutrients, not junk food)
5. Get in shape (Seriously)
6. Reduce overstimulating factors in your daily environment (This one is interesting. A lot of INTPs have a comparatively low toleration for external stimulation, so if you are getting consistently overstimulated by things around you (loud noises you can't control, etc) this can lead to feeling drained and having low energy as well)
7. Get in shape (No really, do it) This was the most common thing cited by people who overcame their low energy problem. As I mentioned above, it helped me too. If you are an INTP reading this, and you're out of shape, the best thing you can do for your mind and everything else is to get your physical machine in better working order. It will help everything else, even depression, though it won't change overnight. If you don't have friends to work out with, I recommend a workout routine you can do quickly in your own place to start out, because otherwise going out to workout at a gym or somewhere else may be just another social burden which you'll keep talking yourself out of. For INTPs, getting into better shape is probably one of those "just do it" things. Don't overthink it, act on it, and keep acting on it until the results speak for themselves and it becomes only rational to continue.

I hope something in here was helpful for anyone out there struggling with low energy and the guilt that might accompany them. It helps me to remember something I heard a Taiwanese pastor share in a sermon: "To be, is more important than to do." We must do, as well, but if we work on who we are, we'll find the doing comes more naturally. With a healthy mind, body, and spirit, fatigue or exhaustion should pass naturally with adequate rest, and well-earned rest pleases the God who designated a day specifically for it.