With all due respect...you're dumber than me.

Here is my plea to all administrators.  I am speaking to those within the academy specifically but this message also extends to those who work in real jobs in industry and commerce.

In short, trust your people and their expertise.  Don't let your default setting be dismissive or condescending.  In thought industries like higher education, you hire folks for not only their ability to process and render data, but also to interpret it, look at it in new ways, operationalize it, and distill it down in easily digestible chunks (usually called high points or executive summaries).  When you ask someone with expertise in an area to run reports and give you a recommendation based on the confluence of the data and their expertise, don't let your first response be, "....ummmmm...naaa.  I don't think so."

If you don't trust someone's expertise in the area they were hired for, do the right thing by both them and the institution and move them somewhere where they will be more effective.  But don't be dismissive.  Or even more importantly, if you have an answer to a question that you want found, point your team in that direction as their task.  Make the answer you want achieved the goal of the exercise and not the mystery.

I'm a qualitative researcher by trade so I tend to have a significant bias...but often, the story is in the details.  When the details are pressed and filtered and regressed down until they are flat (that was my biased "gotcha" toward some types of quantitive analysis), there is often no longer a story to be told.

And I'll take a narrative over a number any day.

Be respectful and remember that trust works both ways.

Dizz.    

40 Hours in Heaven

I'm always fascinated at our inability to revere or trust the past.  The newest, latest trends/research/way of doing things cycle in and out and if history serves us correctly, we have a habit of forgetting why we are doing the things that we are doing.

In the case of higher education, I think that now is an appropriate time to be looking at why we are doing what it is we are doing and how that is translating to our actions.  For instance, Super College might be interested in educating students towards critical thinking, a broad understanding of the liberal arts, and service to others.  I think an interesting and important question that must be asked then is whether or not a 128 hour degree plan is the best way to get there.  And so forth...

Anyway, this is tangental to the purpose of today's post.  My good friend James sent me this article today and it was both fascinating, true, and ironic.  It was fascinating in that I am currently wrestling through one of the more difficult seasons of burnout I have ever had.  Not totally uncommon for this time of year for anyone who works in education, but this year was especially long and full of challenges.  It makes sense that the research would suggest that because of the pace and schedule I've kept this year, i'm professionally and personally useless right now.  My wife would probably agree.

Circling back to my first paragraph, it is amusing that we seem to work insane hours and work even nuttier life styles, abandoning the traditional work week.  One step removed, it would suggest that 40 hours and five days a week were either arbitrary or for lazy folks.  Yet the research seems to be pretty strong in opposition to such hubris.

So in honor of this article, I'm heading to bed.

Dizz.
       

Providence is shenanigans.

It's probably been the weather...the overly hot pre-summer days.  Folks here in Texas are still scarred from last summer's screening of "Hell: The Movie" and I think most are a bit weary of another summer of 90 or so days of triple digit heat.

As graduation approaches both the high school and college crowd here in my little college town, the feel good verse of the bible is really being taken for a ride.

Jeremiah 29:11 reads:
For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

It is on seemingly every graduation card, used in every end-of-program speech, and popping up on email signatures of both young and old.  And quite frankly, I find it's use annoying.  

A quick story.  

I was a bit of a romantic back in high school - I loved writing good letters, poems, songs, etc.  This was before email and the twitters and so letters were more than just letters...done well, they were works of art.  I took great pride in the crafting good letters, perfect mix tapes, and writing overly dramatic plays (that I never seemed to finish).  Fast forward to now, where I have been married for many years to the love of my life.  I still write now, just not nearly as often.  Would it be fair for a stranger off the street to pick up one of these letters, read it, and begin telling the world how much I love them?  I would think not...the letter was written to a specific person in a specific time frame and with a specific purpose.  

As such, I'm annoyed at how often folks adopt the Lord's statement to Jeremiah.    Quite frankly, it has nothing to do with them.  In fact, think how different the starving child in Haiti must read that verse.  Or how the aging abuse victim reads that verse.  Or the young cancer victim.  It's almost insulting to adopt that verse as a universal statement of God's plans to make - insert yourself here - wealthy and give you hope.  Quite often, it doesn't work that way.  

And that brings me down the path of some thoughts I've been having for some time.  I'm somewhat of a recovering Calvinist.  In two sentences (or less), I always identified with Derek Webb's notion that God is not some "cosmic janitor," racing around cleaning up people's messes while simultaneously trying to get some of his will done.  I've never really taken to the message that we have much of a say in what God chooses to do...because he's God.  Pretty simple.  If he chooses to predestine a few and torture the rest, so be it.  Not a whole lot I can do about it.  Now obviously, this view does not fare well, especially here in the United States where any successes we have or do not have are theoretically tied to our desire, fortitude, work ethic, and "want-to." 

 I have found in my own faith tradition, we like the idea of God having plans for us as long as they match our own desires, hopes, and dreams.  When all is well, God is planning for us.  When things go askew, we have somehow managed to mess it up. 

I've been talking to students who are on the eve of graduation and one of my favorite questions to ask is, "So now what?"  To a person, nearly every student at my faith based university says that they are really praying for God's wisdom and direction on what they should do next.  Take a job or go go grad school.  Work a summer job and chill or start something new next Monday.  Interestingly, I live very much the same way.  

Several years ago, I was the finalist for a wonderful job in a new city far away.  Dream job.  My wife and I prayed that God would just make things clear.  Make them easy.  So we would know beyond a shadow of a doubt.  After much prayer, we just knew that we would get either a mega-offer or that I would get turned down and God would be "letting us know" what he wanted for our lives.  We got neither.  I got a medium offer.  Good, but not great.  Good enough in theory...not good enough to pack up and head across the country for.  So I turned it down and we were left with some lingering questions as to what God wanted us to do.  Had we done the right thing?  Was I being a snob?  Was God calling us somewhere and I had just thwarted his will?  Blah, blah, blah.  

Several years, and many important decisions later, I think that I am losing belief in the idea of providence.  This idea of God having a stake in all major decisions in our lives.  I believe that lightening strikes...but I'm beginning to doubt whether God throws the bolts.  

In fact, I've come to believe that this idea of praying for God's providence in certain situations, i.e.: 

    "We found a great deal on our big new house...it was a total God thing!"

    "We're just praying on whether or not we should move to a new college."

    "I just don't think God wants me to go to grad school right now..."

and so on is passing the buck at best, and at worst, a total lack of willingness to be accountable for our own decisions and actions.  See, I've found that I'm quite the wimp when it comes to making big decisions.  Should we buy a house?  Should I take that job?  Should I_____?  Those decisions are so much easier to stomach when I can pawn them off on some cosmic deity carrying out a big game of chess.    

I think at the end of the day, God cares much less about the college I'm working for but instead cares that I'm serving him.  At work.  In the drive-thru.  At the dry cleaners.  And he would probably like me to quit co-opting his message to Jeremiah for my own sense of feel-goodness and placation.  Instead, I can make hard decisions, frightening decisions, and sometimes family-tree changing decisions...being prayerful the whole way.  And then taking personal ownership of the rewards/consequences.  

God never told me he would prosper me and not harm me.

So I forge on, praying for his guidance and blessing...hoping that I receive them.  And using prayer as a reminder to continue to be Christ-minded when making major decisions.  And remembering that God may just not care what I'm doing or where I'm doing it...but how I'm doing whatever it is I'm doing.  

                    

The Ragamuffin

About 10 years ago, I had a pretty heavy infatuation with the band Caedmon's Call and one of their chief song writers Derek Webb.  I continue to be highly influenced by Andrew Peterson, a singer/songwriter who is a highly gifted writer and performer.  If I was to reflectively traverse backwards into the deepest echoes of my mind, I believe I would find that Derek and Andy have served as pillars to my much of my personal/philosophical/epistemological foundation.   (Phil Anselmo of Pantera and Mike Ness of Social D are probably pretty thick back in there as well, so most of the time, I like to leave the caves to the spiders, bats, and sparrows).

Early on in my obsessions with Derek and Andy, they both often cited Rich Mullins as one of their most important influences.  Naturally, I checked out some of his music and writings.  Turns out Rich Mullins was a one in a million, modern-day prophet who seems to have grasped - and most importantly lived - the message of Jesus better than most.

Over the holidays I was visiting my folks house and my mother was cleaning out her home library.  In a cluttered pile on her kitchen table was an old copy of Rich Mullins biography An Arrow Pointing to Heaven.  It is a truly remarkable story and contains many of the most profound and powerful quotes from Rich's writings, speeches, and concerts. I read it many years ago and it became the seminal work of Christian thought in my mind (yes, I know...seminal is a rather dramatic word...but it has been that important to me in my faith).  I started re-reading it this past week and it may mean more to me know than it did back then.

Here are two powerful quotes that I have picked up thus far.  

     To a group of Christian Writers:
   
     I would like to encourage you to stop thinking of what you're doing as          ministry.  Start realizing that your ministry is how much of a tip you leave when you eat in a restaurant; when you leave a hotel room whether you leave it all messed up or not; whether you flush your own toilet or not.  Your ministry is the way you love people.  And you love people when you write something that is encouraging to them, something challenging.  You love people when you call your wife and say, "I'm going to be late for dinner," instead of letting her burn the meal.  You love people when maybe you cook a meal for your wife sometime because you know she's really tired.  Loving people - being respectful toward them - is much more important than writing or doing ministry (or being a professor or doing the business of higher education...)...if you are a Christian, ministry is just an accident of being alive.  It just happens.  And I don't know that you can divide your life up and say, "This is my ministry" and "This is my other thing," because the fruits of Christianity affect everybody around us. (175)

and

The biggest problem with life is that it's just daily.  You can never get so healthy that you don't have to continue to eat right.  Because every day I have to make the right choices about what I eat and how much exercise I need.  Spiritually we're in much the same place.  I go on these binges where it's like "I'm going to memorize the five books of Moses."  I expect to be able to live off the momentum.  The only thing that praying today is good for is today.  So...it's not what you did, and not what you say you're going to do, it's what you do today. (28)

Awesome.

Be excellent to each other,

Dizz



   
  
     

Here We Go

One of the more important skills in professional fighting is the cover up.  It is not as flashy as fancy kicks or as slick as a ju-jitsu transition but many times, it is the skill that allows you to survive.  Literally.  When you get your bell rung, when you're out of gas, or just out of synch and need the round to be over to reset your bearings, the cover up is key.

But it is a reactive posture and to the average viewer, it is chicken.  Why cover up?  Punch your way out of trouble or get knocked out like a man.  Wimps cover up.  Too many fighters cover up way to much because they are scared of getting hit and when you're covering up, you can't be offensive.  You can't damage your opponent.  You can't win.

I feel like I spent most of 2011 covering up.  Not being offensive.  Not throwing any punches.  Complaining.  Whining.  Letting the world dictate my mood, my work, my passion, and my responsibilities.  Up against the fence, hands over my face, waiting for the round to be over.

But the bell rang, I survived the round, and I'm back on my feet.    

Here we go.  2012 will be an awesome year.  I'm determined.

There will be many changes to the blog this upcoming year - I will be detailing them in the coming days/weeks.  There are some pretty exciting things on the horizon and I am looking forward to sharing them!

A few quotes to start the New Year:

"Finally, if we want to be at peace, we will have to waste less, spend less, use less, want less, need less.  The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and less wasteful."

Wendel Berry Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, p. 92

"Trying to draw the line where we are trying to draw it, between carelessness and brutality, is like insisting that falling is flying - until you hit the ground - and then trying to outlaw hitting the ground."

Wendel Berry Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, p.141. 

"Institutions all too frequently choose a timid course of incremental, reactive change because they view a more strategically driven transformation process as too risky.  They are worried about making a mistake, about heading in the wrong direction or failing...many mature organizations such as universities would prefer the risk of missed opportunity to the danger of heading into the unknown."

Richard DeMillo, Abelard to Apple, p. 264

"Like the Bisho of Perugia in 1558, every university administrator in the world would not be faced with a modern-day version of the Jesuit priest Nicholas, whoudl would point out that "if we use Sasso's book, they will say what our students have learned, they have learned from Sasso, not from us."  MIT ushered in the era of open courseware."

Richard DeMillo, Abelard to Apple, p. 179

Welcome to the Jungle, 

Dizz

Should Get A Pass

I decided early on in the creation of this blog that I would work to be nameless, writing from the shadows of both personal and professional secrecy.  That I was a Christian working in higher education was the extent of what I wanted to share of myself personally.  The idea was that this would allow me to write more openly, ask harder questions, and give more direct and authentic responses.
 
At the risk of giving away my identity, I have to note the tragedy that has recently struck my home campus.  What a week it has been.

Last Friday, Anabel Reid, a sophomore at Abilene Christian University, left our world.  And what an incredible young woman she was.  What a legacy she has left.  The favorite part of my job is when I am humbled and taught by 18, 19, and 20 year olds.

Anabel Reid has left me forever changed.  

At the same time, there is incredible turmoil on the campus in relation to institutional direction, budgets, costs, enrollments, the recently released Provost, and a greater overall sense of panic and tension than I have ever witnessed professionally.  Anabel's passing is one of those "perspective" moments, when the rest of this nonsense doesn't matter much.  Or even at all.

I'm reminded of a letter that Andrew Peterson once wrote.  In writing about some time he and his wife spent in relative isolation in an Alaska fishing cabin, he wrote:

"...more than all the beauty, more than the rest our spirits had there, is the feeling that we understood a little better what we're for.  We are for Christ and his kingdom, and that means service.  We're not here just to build a better mouse trap.  We are not on this earth to make for ourselves a name.  We have been redeemed by Christ to infect the world with his love, and make joy the rule and not the exception.  We are called to use all of our resources to that end:  our time, our money, our property, our talents.  In the Kingdom, joy flies in the face of the storm, gathers strength from it, confounds it.  Remember those sparrows?  Many waters cannot quench love."

The tiny match lights of hope and joy in tragedies like this are that you get to see what people are made of...when individuals rise up and become the full picture of who God has called them to be.  Leaders rise up and lead.  18-year old students stand tall and summon words and actions that teach those of us who have been teachers for years.  Professional adversaries put aside tension and roll up their sleeves in partnerships to make difficult phone calls, hug, share tears, and do what needs to be done.  To come together as one.

On the other hand, you also see folks at their worst...as folks struggle to find their way into the spotlight, to make this about them, to do whatever they can to find their way into the tiny glow of the match light, and for some reason, make the tough times about them.

How sad.

It's like staring directly into the sun and complaining about the darkness.  

Anabel Reid will not be forgotten because she understood that life was a jumbo slurpee, there to drink and enjoy, but never the main course.  She was about Christ and his kingdom.

It's about Christ and his kingdom.

Period.


And for what it's worth, I'm not good with God now either.  Beautiful young servants do not die on the way to serve orphans.  That's absurd and ridiculous and not worthy of someone mighty and all loving and whatever other adjectives we typically throw his way.  It's sickening and disgusting.  It's stupid.   
If God above is hearing my cries, I trust he can handle my disbelief and anger at his handling of his own affairs.   May God give grace and peace to the Reid family and the massive wake of confusion and sadness left in the wake of Anabel's passing.  If I may be so bold as to say, not cool man...not cool.    


Dizz
~ Listening to Pearl Jam
          

Why Its Good to Doubt

I ran across this blog from Azusa Pacific Professor Peter Enns.  It's pretty powerful stuff.  I have cut and past it below.  Here is the original link.  

Dizz
~Listening to new Cold Play record

Why It’s Good to Doubt God   

The Benefit of Doubt

Doubting one’s faith in God is a very tough place to be. Faith in God is what keeps it all together when you are facing one of life’s many challenges things.

Sometimes things happen in our lives—it may be one big catastrophe or a line of smaller things that pile up—and you start having a lot of doubts. At first, when you have those disruptive thoughts, you try to push them to the side, hoping they’ll just go away, before God notices.

They don’t and he doesn’t.

So you feel your faith in God slipping away—and it is unsettling, disorienting, and frightening to watch that happen. You doubt that God cares, that he is listening; you doubt that he is even aware of who you are—that he even exists.

In such a state of doubt about God, you feel like there is clearly something very wrong with you.

“Maybe I’m not smart enough. Maybe I’m a faker. Maybe I haven’t memorized enough Bible verses. Maybe I need to go to church more enough.”

Whatever it is, you’re doing something wrong. It’s all your fault.

And so we do the only thing we have been taught to do. We do everything in our power to get out of that state of doubt as quickly as we can. For some, if doubt persists, they live lives of quiet desperation, ashamed or afraid to speak up. Others simply walk away from their faith.

Surely, doubt is the enemy of faith, right?

To have faith means you don’t doubt, right?

Doubt is a spiritually destructive force that tears you away from God, right?

Wrong.

There is a benefit of doubt.

Doubt can do things spiritually that nothing else can do.

Sometimes we think of our faith as a castle—safe, comfortable, familiar. But what if God doesn’t want us to be comfortable and safe? What if comfortable and safe keep God at a distance?

Doubt tears down the castle walls to force us on a journey. It may feel like God is far away or absent when in fact doubt is a gift of God to move us to spiritual maturity.

Doubt is not a sign of weakness but a sign of growth.

Doubting God is painful and frightening because we think we are leaving Godbehind, but we are only be leaving behind the idea of God we like to surround ourselves with—the small God, the God we control, the God who agrees with us.

Doubt forces us to look at who we think God is.

If we’re honest, we all think we’ve God figured out pretty well. We read the Bible and maybe memorize some of it. We go to church a lot. Maybe even lead Bible studies or something.

We’re doing great, and God must certainly be impressed.

It is so very easy to slip into this idea that we have arrived—that we really think we’ve got all the answers and that we almost possess God.

We know what church he goes to, what Bible translation he reads, we know how he votes, we know what movies he watches and books he reads. We know the kinds of people he approves of.

God happens to like all the things we like. We feel like we can speak for God very easily.

All Christians who take their faith seriously sooner or later get caught up in that problem. We begin to think that God really is what we happen to think he is. There is little more worth learning learn about the creator of the cosmos. No need. God is the face in the mirror.

By his mercy, God doesn’t leave us there—and doubt is God’s way of helping that happen.

“I want you to die constantly.” — God

Doubt is experienced as distance from God. But that doesn’t mean that God is dying for us. Doubt signals that we are in the process of dying to ourselves and to our ideas about God.

Jesus talks about that. He says, ”take up your cross” and ,”lose your life so you can find it” (Matt 10:38-39)

Paul talks about being crucified with Christ—“I no longer live, Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20); or “You have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3).

All that talk of dying and being crucified and hidden does not describe a one-time moment of conversion. It describes a required daily mode of Christian living—where you surrender control—all the time.

Dying is a normal mode of Christian existence, and doubting is a common way to get the dying process moving. And when you are in that process, God feels far away—but that is when he may be closer to you than he ever was.

Don’t run away from doubt. Don’t fight it. Don’t think of it as the enemy. Pass through it—patiently… and honestly… and courageously…. When you are in doubt, you are in a period of transformation.

Welcome it as a gift—which is hard to do to if your entire universe is falling down around you. God is teaching you to trust him, not yourself. He means to have all of you, not just the surface, going to church, volunteering part. Not just the part people see, but the part no one sees.

Not even you.

The Dark Side of the Bible

God wants you to doubt? Really? What about John 20:31: “These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

John seems to be saying, “If you know your Bible, you won’t doubt but believe. So Christian, if you doubt, you just don’t know your Bible well enough. Your faith is weak. Maybe go to one more Bible study that week.”

But think of this from another angle. Jesus himself had his moments where he doubted God and God was very distant from him—God abandoned him—and he knew his Bible very well.

In the garden and on the cross, Jesus said what psalm after psalm says: “God where are you? I don’t see you anywhere. Are you even there? I am giving up all hope.”

That one passage in John doesn’t cover everything. It just means that John wrote his Gospel so people could see how great Jesus was and put their trust in him. It does not imply “henceforth thou shalt be a perfect faith machine and never doubt.”

Also, I don’t expect the New Testament to say, “Doubt is God’s way of making you grow.” The New Testament doesn’t answer every question we might have for all time. It describes the early mission of the church.

The Old Testament is another matter. The Old Testament records Israel long history of day-to-day life with God. And the Old Testament writers aren’t shy about the dark side of their faith.

For example, the Psalms talk about God’s distance. In nearly half of the 150 psalms, something has gone wrong—some barrier has arisen between Israel and faith in God. At times, the psalmist feels abandoned by God and he is holding on by a thread.

One example is Psalm 88. In summary, here is what the psalm says: “God, I have been on my knees to you night after night. I am so troubled, and in so much agony, I might as well be dead. I am absolutely without hope…and you don’t care. All night and all day I call to you—I’m on my knees—but nothing. I am in absolute pain and the only friend I have is darkness.”

Feel free to call this a faith crisis.

Maybe he doesn’t know his Bible well enough. Maybe he needs to go to another Bible study so he can learn you shouldn’t feel this way, let alone talk this way. I mean, what’s wrong with him and his weak faith?

This “abandoned by God” experience is in the Bible because it is valued as part ofnormal Christian experience. John Calvin said that the Psalms are a “mirror of the soul.” Sometimes the soul looks like Psalm 88. If your soul ever looks like Psalm 88, at least know that you are good company.

Another example is Psalm 73. Basically this is what the psalm is about: “Yeah I know how the system works: God blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked. I’ve read the Bible. I’ve been to Hebrew school. I get it. My problem isn’t that I have forgotten what the Bible says. My problem is that what the Bible says doesn’t work.”

This writer goes on and on about how the Bible says that God is supposed to bless the faithful and punish those who are not. But he looks around him and sees the exact opposite. The wicked and arrogant, they are healthy, strong, they prosper. But he’s doing his best, and—nothing. “I am wasting my time. Why bother? The world makes sense without you. Hey God, if you were there Donald Trump wouldn’t own half of new York City and homeless shelters wouldn’t be struggling for every dollar.”

The dark places of the Bible connect with the dark places of our souls.

I know a lot of people raised in the church who are like the writer of Psalm 73—but they are afraid to talk about it.

They have heard sermons and Bible studies their whole lives where they were taught to think of the world in a certain “Christian” way, and then maybe in high school, maybe in college, they begin to see that it’s more complicated. Then there is a major disconnect between what they had been taught and what they see. Faith is no longer a convincing way of explaining the world, and so they leave it.

When you feel like that, realize that you are right where so many of the writers of the Psalms are—not to mention Ecclesiastes and Job.

Your period of doubt has value—to move you further on in the journey, even when you feel like you’ve left the path altogether

Doubt gets you moving.

Listen to Some Deep People

Embrace the doubt. Call it your friend. God is leading you on a journey.

Spiritual masters of the Christian church caught on to this long ago. It is not a part of the contemporary Protestant scene as much (with exceptions, of course), which is a shame.

Many (especially Protestant) Christians tend to intellectualize the faith—we live in our heads. Our faith tends to rest in what we know, what we can articulate, what we can defend, how we think. We tend to place “thinking” over “being” rather than the other way around.

That is why doubt for people like us is the great enemy. We spend a lot of effort in removing doubt. Our world is flooded with books and apologetics organizations whose job it is to give the answers quickly and easily—no struggle, no doubt—all this Jesus stuff, piece of cake.

That attitude robs us of a spiritual experience that you can’t avoid anyway and that wiser Christians, since almost the beginning of Christianity, have told us is vital for the Christian life.

This experience of deep doubt is sometimes referred to as the “dark night of the soul.” That expression has come to us through the writings of two sixteenth century Spanish Catholic mystics: John of the Cross and his mentor Teresa of Avila.

Many people have spent their lives thinking about what these and other mystics wrote concerning their experiences of God. I am not one of them, but I am learning. Let me boil down what they are saying.

The “dark night” is a sense of painful alienation and distance from God that causes distress, anxiety, discouragement, despair, and depression. All Christians experience this sooner or later—some more intensely than others, some for longer times than others. But the feeling is the same: they lose their sense of closeness to God and conclude that they no longer have faith. And so they despair even more.

St. John’s great insight is that this dark night is a special sign of God’s presence. Our false god is being stripped away, and we are left empty before God—with none of the familiar ideas of God that we create to prop us up.

The dark night takes away the background noise we have created in our lives in order to prepare us to hear God’s voice later on—in time, when God deems we are ready.

When the dark night comes upon us, we are asked simply to surrender to God and trust him anyway. The reason St. John calls this a dark night is very important: it is because you have no control over what is happening. That is a very important piece in all of this, because people want to control.

Imagine, like the Chilean miners, being all alone in a deep dark cave, miles down, with absolutely not a single ray of light—utterly pitch black. You have no idea where you are or how to get out. All you know is that you are helpless. You try to find your way, you grope, but nothing. You start walking slowly at first, and then you realize that wherever you are, it is big, dark, flat, and you can’t do anything about it.

You are out of control. The point of the dark night has done its job.

Listen to Another Really Deep Person

In 1975, the Jesuit philosopher, John Kavanaugh, went to work for three months at the “house of the dying” in Calcutta with Mother Teresa.

He was searching for an answer to some spiritual stuggles. On his very first morning there, he met Mother Teresa. She asked him, “And what can I do for you?” Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him. “What do you want me to pray for?” she asked.

He answered with the request that was the very reason he traveled thousands of miles to India: “Pray that I have clarity.” Mother Teresa said firmly, “No. I will not do that.”

When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.”

When Kavanaugh said, “You always seem to have clarity,” Mother Teresa laughed and said, “I have never had clarity. What I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

The point of the dark helpless place is to strip us of absolutely everything so that only surrender and trust remain. That is the daily and severe Christian calling

Are you one of those people who wonders why you can’t just be a happy Christian like your roommate or that lady in church? Listen to Mother Teresa. Apparently, she was in her dark night from 1948 until near the time of her death in 1997, with perhaps some interludes in-between.

You know all that great things she did? Don’t think her dark night wasn’t somehow connected to how she spent her life. You might even say that “spiritual greatness” and the dark night go hand in hand—you must pass through the one to get to the other. She learned trust—not certainty—trust in God. And all of that poured out to the people around her.

We’ve heard this many times: “Let go and let God.” It’s true—but “letting go” might be more than we bargained for. We must be taught, for we will not willingly go there ourselves.

When we are not letting go, when we try to stay in control of something, cling to something as Mother Teresa says, that’s when God turns off the light and makes it dark—not because he is against us, but because he is for us.

Being out of control is another way of saying “dying to yourself.” When we are out of control, that is when God can speak to us—without all of the layers of stuff we have piled up inside of us. God puts us out of our control so that we can learn to trust—like Mother Teresa said—not “believe” or “have faith” but something deeper and harder:

Trust.

You can only trust when you have let go completely, when you don’t try to control. When we learn to trust God out of our emptiness,

• when God is out of our control,
• when God becomes God more deeply in us,
• when we surrender and trust,

we become liberated from our attachments, from our fears, and we learn to live with freedom and joy.

That is the Christian journey.

We see this even in our relationships with each other. You cannot have a truly growing, intimate relationship with another if one person is trying to control the other. That destroys true intimacy.

If we are trying to control God, what do you think he is going to do? Rather than leave the relationship entirely he may initiate a period of separation, a period of absence, a period of darkness—so that we can learn that in this relationship we have to surrender, we have to let go of control.

One cannot have contentment in the Christian life without the darkness. Dying is the only path to resurrection, and that is the only way of knowing God. There is no shortcut. Jesus himself is our model for this.

I think that is the heart of Paul’s mysterious words in Phil 3:10. Knowing Christ means experiencing both the power of his resurrection and participating in his sufferings, being made like him in his death. Death and life. Both are part of the Gospel life. It’s a package deal

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When your faith has no room for doubt, then you are just left with—religion, something that takes its place in your life among other things—like a job and a hobby, something soft and comfortable.

Doubt is God’s way of helping you not go there.