My father was born in 1925, a child of the depression. He served in the Navy in World War II, and like many in his generation, he was long on matters related to discipline and short on matters related to spontaneous fun. Then there was my uncle— almost 14 yrs younger than my dad. When I was a kid, Larry used to take me fishing and to football games, and whether it was on the lake or in the stands, Larry was terrific fun.
So that’s how I grew up— strict serious dad, fun, laid back uncle, until this all changed when I graduated from law school and went to work for the law firm where my dad and uncle were partners. It took only a couple of days in the office with them to see that everything I thought I knew about my dad and about Larry needed to be updated. Maybe it was because Dad was nearing retirement when I joined the firm, but in the office, to my surprise, he was the one who came off as laid back, the benevolent senior partner, greeting folks in the halls. Whereas in the next office, Larry was now all business. He could be pretty serious about fishing and football, but he was really serious about work.
And this switch in personalities, in this new environment, left me not only asking where was this version of my dad when I was growing up and what happened to the guy who used to take me fishing, but realizing that in this new season of my life, I needed to update how I thought and interacted with both of them.
We’ll certainly look back on 2020 as a historic and tumultuous year and, in this new time, in this new place, we probably ought to ask what practical attitudes and what spiritual mindsets of our own, might we need to adjust and update going forward. To use another metaphor— just as all our cell phone apps, our computers and the operating systems on all our technology need to be updated from time to time, the way we think spiritually needs to updated from time to time, as well, and though it was almost 2000 years ago, this is what, I think, the apostle Paul seems to have had in mind when he wrote to the Christians in Rome in the first century. In Romans, chapter 12, verse 2, here’s what he urges them, Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern the will of God— what’s good, acceptable and perfect.
So, with that in mind, lets take a look at what I hope are three timely updates to our spiritual operating system: First, to resist conformity with the world by using our time differently than the world does. Second, to find a way to move our minds day to day, more and more toward God’s eternal values, and away from the world’s temporal and fleeting values. And finally, third, to push back against our culture’s tendency toward polarization and toward God’s way, God’s will for us, to become more respectful and graceful to one another, as peacemakers in our communities.
Our first update involves how we use our time in a busy, bustling and ever-changing world. A recent Rand Corporation survey found that on average— and you may not believe this, but on average, Americans have five hours of free time per day, which is more time for ourselves than we’ve ever had before. But if that’s the case, why do we feel the stress of being in a time famine, or being time poor all the time?
Ashley Whillans is a Professor at the Harvard Business School, andI think she’s put her finger on it. She tells us that the reason for this paradox, is that so much of the free time we do have now is broken down into such small units, such small increments, that its impossible to extract any abiding sense of well-being from them. Whillans says we don’t consolidate our free time, but rather we’re content with what she calls time confetti. Free time, yes, but only tiny snippets we end up often wasting just scrolling through our social media feeds, reading a quick article online or answering a few texts or emails. That is, we tend to use our free time for stuff with low or no start up costs rather than things that are harder, take longer and need some runway to get off the ground. Things like a deeper conversation with a spouse or a friend; things with longer term pay-offs like learning a language, a musical instrument, or some other new skill.
I feel this and I expect so do you, which makes me all the more impressed with the Cooper family. Ben’s an ER doctor who must be as busy, if not more so than any of us, yet Ben and his family have used their available free time together to construct their own treehouse. Ben and Ali challenge us to consolidate our time confetti into something that lasts, something constructive in a way that’s so counter-cultural, it’s news worthy. A local news station actually did a news story on their treehouse, not long ago.
Be not conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing, the updating, of your minds. Update confetti to a more constructive consolidation of your time.
Our second update is even more fundamental, as it’s clear the world, in a thousand different ways, tries to draw, coax us and tempt us, offering to deliver us happiness in our lives, when the true sense of well-being we all seek comes more from being happy with our lives. Let me tease this out w/a couple of examples: Laurie Santos, is a psych prof at Yale, who studies human and canine behavior. She asks us to imagine the picture a young family with a new baby. The feedings. The diapers. The sleep-less nights. The expenses. The exhaustion. The parents, especially in the first few months are actually experiencing less happiness in their lives, even though, if we pulled them aside and asked, they’d probably say they’re much happier with their lives.
Another example— a more personal one: My son Hank landed a job in LA, so a couple of weeks ago, we drove to California together, and though I was on vacation, I still had our church’s pastoral care line on my phone and I got a call. It was someone we, as a church, had helped before and the caller, a man, needed a place to stay. And as the man was setting out his circumstances, I saw this was going to require some time and effort on the drive, so I started in, first calling a residential hotel to see if they could accommodate him. Hank then helped me download the hotel chain’s app onto my phone, then I filled out some electronic forms and made the online payment. Then I followed up with more calls and emails to make sure it all worked out, and as I was actually performing all these steps on the drive, I admit to having the thought, this doesn’t feel like vacation, but as it played out, especially with Hank there helping me and listening in as our church assisted this man, I felt a deep joy come over me, I felt a deep happiness with my life. That’s all to say that the way to renew our minds to better discern the will of God, as Paul urges, is for us to ask ourselves each day, not what will make us happy in our lives, but instead, ask what, at the end of the day, will make us happy with our lives.
This subtle yet profound shift in our perspective, will slowly bend our lives and our days away from conformity with the world’s short-term values, hyper-individualism, and loose connections, and toward God’s more durable and eternal values, like commitment, intimacy, collective purpose and community. Update ‘in’ to ‘with‘— it makes all the difference.
Our last update, and its perhaps the hardest one, is this: we need to attend our relationships with each other better, especially in this tumultuous time. You know when someone makes an argument, and you know you can twist it, pivot it just a little into making it seem like they were taking an unreasonable position, then attack that weaker position as if that was what they meant in the first place. That’s called straw-manning. We all do this straw-man routine sometime, in our relationships. For instance, hypothetically, I ask my wife, Kelly, do you want to go out to eat, and she replies, ‘I don’t think we should,’ to which I respond, you never want to go out, distorting her very reasonable response into something unreasonable to try to get the upper hand. This doesn’t work, yet we also see this routinely in the public square and online, as well.
But what if we didn’t? What if right now we all updated our tendency to straw-man each other to just the opposite— to what’s called steel-manning. Let’s try it with something that’s at the center of our culture right now: The idea of ‘systemic’ racism.
When I hear someone suggest America’s systemically racist, I have a choice as to whether I’m going to straw-man the argument or steel-man it, and my choice determines whether a good conversation follows or not. I can choose to straw-man the argument like this— ‘so what you’re saying is we’ve made no progress in race relations at all. Or I can steel-man the point I think the person’s putting forth in the best form I can think of— like this, as conservative writer and thinker, David French recently did:
I know that slavery was legal and defended morally, from the early 1600’s —1865 on our shores; for about 250 years. Second, I know that even after the end of the Civil War, racial discrimination raged and was lawful, in fact, defended openly and often violently for another 100 yrs until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 56 years ago, which I also know didn’t end discrimination, just provided the legal tools for black and other Americans to fight back against injustice. And third, I believe it’s reasonable to conclude that after 350 years of legal and cultural discrimination, in our society, its effects are likely to be so corrosive, so deep-seated, and so institutionalized, that there’s no way that a nation and society of over 300 million people could disenthrall itself from all its prejudices, and the resulting inequality within its schools, its law enforcement, its courts, its commerce, its churches, and in the very fabric of its life in 56 yrs.
You may or may not agree with all that, but that’s steel-manning the argument, and rather than weakly straw-manning each others’ arguments, steel-manning them like this, is the courageous and honest thing we ought to be doing if indeed that’s what we aspire to. But even more importantly steel-manning each others’ arguments coheres closely to the Christ-like ideal of ‘doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ That is to say, this update is noble Gospel work. We all ought to update our straw-man app with a steel-man as soon as possible.
One thing I’ve really missed not being able to go to the office during the pandemic is that my particular office is situated right between that of Carey Cannon and that of Brad Jernberg. What’s really entertaining is to hear Brad helping Carey with his computer, as invariably, before they can address what Carey needs, they’v got to update his computer, and the longer its been since Carey’s updated, the longer it takes to accomplish what he now needs to do.
We have to update when we’re being prompted to do so, and with all the change around us now, let’s not wait to update our spiritual thinking. Let’s become more intentional about using our time more constructively, asking not just what will make us happy in our lives, but what will make us happy with our lives, and finally, let’s commit to having better conversations, updating our tendency to straw-man each other’s positions to steel-manning them instead. Click the updates. Do it now.